Feral — Bear Druid

Is Bear worth levelling?

You do not get a choice before level 20. Bear Form comes from a class quest at 10; Cat Form does not exist until 20. The published advice: "As you reach Level 10 you will mainly want to level in Bear Form, using your Mana to heal yourself after killing enemies, and then recovering your Mana while in Bear Form."

Be aware the class starts slowly: "Since Bear Form is not unlocked until Level 10, and Cat Form first at level 20, Feral Druid has a fairly slow start."

Forever has three tanks — Protection Warrior, Protection Paladin and Feral Druid. Bear is a real tank, not a levelling convenience.

Your talent points

Level 20 — 0/11/0. Four different level-20 Feral builds are published and they disagree on most of the eleven points. Here is the one with a published click order:

1. Ferocity, 5 points — "helping with both your Rage economy while leveling allowing for more Maul casts, and reducing your energy cost in Cat Form"
2. Brutal Impact, 2 points — "both strengthen your Bash and reduces the cooldown by 30 seconds"
3. Feral Instinct, 1 point — "for Swipe damage and improved Prowl at Level 20"
4. Feral Swiftness, 2 points — "a sizable movement speed increase in Cat Form, and an added benefit of granting increased Dodge chance in all forms"
5. Feral Charge at 20

A tank-specific alternative skips Ferocity entirely for armour: Heart of the Wild 5 / Feral Swiftness 2 / Thick Hide 3 / Feral Charge 1.

A third: Ferocity 5 / Heart of the Wild 3 / Feral Swiftness 2 / Feral Charge 1 — "The fastest way to go — literally, due to Feral Swiftness and Feral Charge."

Level 30 — 0/21/0. One published build stays dual-role and adds Savage Fury 2 · Sharpened Claws 2 · Predatory Strikes 3 · Blood Frenzy 2 · Leader of the Pack 1. A tank-specific one takes Feral Instinct 3 and Primal Bite 1 instead of the cat mobility. Both spend the twenty-first point on Leader of the Pack.

Threat and mitigation rotation

1. Growl to pull and to hold. Rage comes from taking hits and auto-attacking
2. Enrage — 30 rage over 10 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown, "at the cost of reducing your Armor slightly"
3. Faerie Fire to strip armour. In Forever this is usable in form, which it was not in Classic
4. Maul as your rage dump
5. Bash to stun, and with Brutal Impact it comes back much faster

Pre-buff Mark of the Wild and Thorns. Drop form to self-heal. Nature's Grasp or Entangling Roots to disengage — both now work in form and indoors.

Multi-target: Swipe, and know its limit. Swipe hits three targets. The warning worth carrying: "Three-target Primal Bite does not secure a fourth or fifth enemy on its own, and Swipe also only strikes three nearby enemies." Note Primal Bite only hits three under Berserk, a level-40 capstone — below that it is single-target, so Swipe's three is your whole answer.

Stat priority

Stamina and armour first, then Agility (dodge and more armour), then Defense.

Bear Form multiplies the armour on your gear, so a leather piece with a high armour number beats the same stats on cloth. And the Forever-specific part: the weapon's damage counts in Bear Form, and more damage means more threat — so choose the weapon on its stats and its damage together, not as a stat stick.

One published tank list orders it Defense > Dodge > Armor > Agility > Strength > Attack Power > crit > Haste. One source disputes the weapon-damage priority outright, arguing you should "Compare the item's form-relevant bonuses, armor, Stamina and defense instead of importing a Warrior list." Three sources and the client data are on the other side, but the disagreement is real.

Your kit, by level

The Forever Feral spellbook is thin under the cap, and it is worth seeing why.

So a level-30 bear has no Lacerate, no Dire Bear Form and no Frenzied Regeneration. That is most of the tanking kit, and it is why no beta report tells you much about tanking.

What defines Bear

What Forever changed for Bear

• Thick Hide is a different talent under the same name (above) — base armour per level and defense scaling, rather than a percentage of your gear.
• Frenzied Regeneration is now a real defensive cooldown: "Each point of Rage is converted into 1% health", where Classic gave 10 flat health. Ranks 2 and 3 were deleted; the one remaining rank trains at 36.
• Enrage front-loads — "Instantly generates 10 Rage and another 20 Rage over 10 sec", where Classic gave 20 over 10 with nothing up front.
• Bear Form's health bonus went from +20 to +180. Growl's cooldown dropped to 8 seconds. Demoralizing Roar is −46 attack power, up from −30. Faerie Fire is usable in Bear, Dire Bear and Cat Form.
• A new rage economy: Natural Reaction gives rage on dodge, Blood Frenzy gives it on crit at 100% by 2/2. Improved Enrage and Faerie Fire (Feral) are gone as talents because their effects became baseline — Enrage now front-loads 10 rage itself, and ordinary Faerie Fire works in form. Lacerate was added.
• Heart of the Wild kept its bear clause exactly — +20% Stamina at 5/5, the same as Classic — while the Intellect and Cat Strength clauses were both halved to +10%. It also moved from tier 5 to tier 1, which is why a level-20 build can take it.
• Two renames to watch for: Mangle is now Primal Bite (and lost its debuff), and Primal Fury is now Blood Frenzy — its bear clause unchanged from Classic at 100% for 5 extra rage on a crit, plus a new Cat clause Classic did not have. Half the guide sites still use the old names for the same nodes.

At level 60

Unknown, and for this spec the question is sharp: whether Bear holds threat and survives without Classic's armour-from-items scaling. Nobody has had Berserk, Lacerate, Dire Bear Form, Frenzied Regeneration or a level-60 defense value.