Feral — Cat Druid

Is Cat worth levelling?

Yes, and it is the strongest published recommendation of the three Druid specs — but only from 20. Feral Swiftness gives "a permanent 30% speed buff while in Cat Form", you have Prowl, and shapeshifting breaks roots. One guide calls Feral "one of the fastest and most mobile specializations in the WoW Forever beta."

Cat Form now comes from a quest chain, not a trainer. "In WoW Forever, druids earn Cat Form with a quest chain at level 20. Your trainer sends you to Moonglade, the Great Cat Spirit asks for three relics hidden in the Stormrage Barrow Dens, and when you bring them back your trainer teaches you Cat Form, Prowl, Claw and Rip in one go." It is 2,885 experience in total, and the relics are party loot — "Five druids in a group loot the relic once instead of five times."

Your talent points

Level 20 — 0/11/0. Most sources publish one build shared with Bear; see the Feral — Bear page for its click order. The shared reasoning for Ferocity names both roles: it helps "your Rage economy while leveling" and reduces "your energy cost in Cat Form."

Two sources do split them at 20. The cat-specific lists are:

• Dungeons: Ferocity 5 / Heart of the Wild 5 / Savage Fury 1
• Duels: Ferocity 5 / Heart of the Wild 1 / Feral Swiftness 2 / Brutal Impact 2 / Savage Fury 1

Level 30 — 0/21/0, and here the divergence from Bear is documented exactly:

Cat buys Feral Swiftness and Shredding Attacks — Shred's energy cost — and underfills Ferocity. Bear buys full Ferocity, Feral Instinct for Swipe, and Primal Bite. Both spend the twenty-first point on Leader of the Pack. A third published build stays deliberately dual-role at 30.

Rotation

At level 20 it is two buttons, and that is not an omission:

1. Claw to build combo points
2. Rip at 5 combo points

From 24 you add Tiger's Fury "when below 40 Energy", and Rake.

From 30:

1. Maintain Faerie Fire — usable in form now
2. Shred on Omen of Clarity procs — Omen is baseline at 20 in Forever, not a talent
3. Maintain Rip at 5 combo points
4. Maintain Rake
5. Shred as filler, from behind

One correction to a widely-copied level-30 rotation: it calls for Ferocious Bite, which trains at level 32. You will not have it at a level-30 cap.

The target-selection rule worth internalising: "pick Rip when the enemy will live through the ticks, and direct damage when the remaining kill time is too short. Keep an existing bleed running instead of restarting it."

Multi-target: there is none in Cat Form. Swipe is Bear-only. Either shift to Bear and Swipe, or spread Rake and Rip on targets durable enough to be worth it.

Stat priority

Agility first, then Strength, then Stamina.

The reason Agility leads is that "in cat form it is attack power, critical strike and armor at once."

And the Forever-specific part that reverses a Classic habit: your weapon's damage now counts in Cat Form. Cat Form's flat attack power was cut from 40 to 12 plus Agility, and abilities gained weapon-damage terms — so "the weapon here is chosen on its damage first, then on its stats." Published level-20 cat weapon picks are two-handers on both factions, held in both hands.

One source disputes the weapon-DPS priority outright. Three sources and the client data are against it, but the disagreement exists and no source publishes the actual conversion formula.

Your kit, by level

A level-20 cat has Claw, Rip and Prowl and nothing else. A level-30 cat still has no Ferocious Bite.

What defines Cat

What Forever changed for Cat

• Powershifting is dead. Furor was rewritten: instead of a flat 40 energy on entering Cat Form, you "regain 100% of the Energy you had when you were last in Cat Form, plus 10 Energy for each second you spent not in Bear Form, Cat Form, or Dire Bear Form, up to a maximum of 100" at 5/5. Stated plainly: "Leaving an empty bar and instantly re-entering supplies no flat refill."
• Tiger's Fury was reworked — it costs nothing (Classic: 30 energy), has a 30-second cooldown (Classic: 1 second), and is now a flat +15% physical damage buff. Ranks 2 to 4 were deleted.
• The spec was rebalanced off Shred and onto bleeds. Shred was cut from 225% to 155% weapon damage; Rip was buffed enormously — rank 6 deals 243/396/549/702/855 over 12 seconds by combo point, against Classic's 45/73/101/129/157, and it now scales with attack power.
• Claw became a weapon-damage multiplier — "110% normal damage plus 27", where Classic gave a flat "27 additional damage." Ferocious Bite is unchanged from Classic, and trains at 32.
• Cat Form's flat attack power was cut from 40 to 12 plus Agility. This is the mechanism behind the weapon change.
• Six new talents: Primal Bite, Predatory Instincts, King of the Jungle, Natural Reaction, Rend and Tear, Berserk. Heart of the Wild moved to tier 1. Feral Instinct was rewritten from bear threat to +30% Swipe damage.
• Two renames: Mangle is now the Primal Bite talent and is gone from the spellbook; Primal Fury is now Blood Frenzy, with a new cat clause giving combo-point generators a 100% chance at an extra point on a crit.
• All damage-over-time effects can now crit.

At level 60

Unknown. The open question is whether bleed-centric damage with Rend and Tear beats a Rogue once Berserk, King of the Jungle and real weapons exist.