Classic Feral Druid Melee DPS Stat Priority (2024)

Last updated on Sep 29, 2019 at 13:00by Impakt20 comments

1. Hit chance until 9% (Hit Cap)
2. Agility;
3. Strength;
4. Critical Strike Chance;
5. Attack Power;
6. Intellect;
7. Stamina;
8. Spirit.

Feral Druids scale extremely well with crit and AP, and the more crit you getthe smoother your rotation will be. Ferals start out with less stats than otherclasses early since Feral Druids are locked into using two relatively low level, poorly itemizedpieces with Wolfshead Helm and Manual Crowd Pummeler due to theiramazing secondary effects. Additionally, Ferals scale extremely well with Strength,but finding Strength on leather pieces can be a challenge, especially early onwhen gear choices are limited. You should be looking for Hit, Crit, Strength, andAgility wherever you can.

Against targets your level, you have a 5% chance to miss attacks. Raid anddungeon bosses are considered to be 3levels above you, meaning your chance to miss attacks is slightly higher at8.6%. Reaching the cap on hit means having a 9% increased chance to hitthrough gear. As a Feral Druid, your rotation is quite fast-paced and complex attimes, and a missed ability could ruin a cycle, forcing you to waste Energy orwait for an extra global before power shifting. Getting hit cap is both numericallyyour biggest damage increase and your best quality of life increase for when youwill not need to worry about Shred missing, potentially throwing you offyour rotation.

Critical strikes as a Feral Druid deal 100% increased damage. Additionally, FeralDruids benefit heavily from crit due to Blood Frenzy, which causes yourgenerators to award an extra combo point when they crit. More crit means more Ferocious Bite casts since you will be generating more combo points per Shred. Crit does have a soft cap, however, and is only exceptionally goodup until that point, at which point stacking AP through Strength and straight APbecomes a higher priority.

As a melee DPS, you have your auto attacks and your abilities. When you usean ability like Shred, there are four options: it will either bedodged, miss, crit, or hit. Your auto attacks have 5 options, adding in thepossibility of a glancing blow where the attack deals 70% of its normal damage. Fordodges and glancing blows, the chance of those happening does not change. You canlower your chance to miss by reaching your hit cap, but the dodge and glancingblow chance is still there. Specifically, this becomes an issue for glancing blowsbecause of one key reason; glancing blows cannot crit. Because of this,the actual chance that an auto attack has to crit cannot be 100% or anywhere closeto it because if it is dodged or is a glancing blow it will never crit. Your critsoft cap is equivalent to the chance that an auto attack will hit normally sincethose are the only attacks that have a chance to crit. As a Feral Druid, yourcrit soft cap is 54.4% minus your chance to miss. If you are at the 9% hit cap,then 54.4% is your crit soft cap, and you should not go for more crit above thisamount. At a higher amount than this, your abilities will still be able to critmore, but your auto attacks will not, which greatly diminishes crit's value.

Feral Druids get 1 AP and 0.05% crit chance from each point of Agility. Untilyou approach your crit soft cap, Agility is going to be better than Strength dueto the value that the crit chance provides. After you are at your crit soft cap,Strength becomes more valuable due to the crit not being as valuable. Agilityand Strength are very close however, so do be afraid to take more of either.

Druids receive 2 AP per point of Strength, but this becomes 2.4 AP with Heart of the Wild. This is your strongest stat for pureAP gain, which will increase your damage done by all attacks. Even though thisis a very strong stat for Feral, it is not quite as a good as Agility early ondue to the importance of crit. After you reach your crit soft cap, Strength becomesyour best primary stat. Note that it is sometimes challenging to find end game gearwith Strength since it is not a common stat on leather pieces.

AP is the base stat off which all of your damage is calculated. For Feral Druids,this is especially true since your auto attack damage is not based off yourweapon DPS. In fact, weapon DPS has zero value to Feral Druids. Your auto attacksare normalized on a 1-second swing timer, and the damage is calculated based onyour AP. All of your abilities have their damage calculated either as a multiplierof a single auto attack's damage or are based on your AP as well. You generallywill not want to pick up straight AP pieces, however, because while it is a greatstat that scales exceptionally well for Feral, Agility and Strength will offermore of it point for point.

Stamina increases your health and is important for your survival. A higheramount of health means that you can take more damage before dying, which giveshealers more time to heal you during raids or dungeons.

Intellect increasesyour Mana pool, which is incredibly important for Feral Druids. Power shiftingis extremely Mana intensive, but is a key part of your rotation for doing maximumdamage. More Mana means more power shifts over a fight, which means more Shred casts, thus more damage.

Spirit increases your health regeneration and your Mana regeneration. Your Mana regeneratesaccording to the 5-second rule, which is quite difficult to follow for FeralDruids due to the specific windows that you need to power shift in. If you findyourself out of Mana on a fight, sit in Cat Form without power shiftinguntil you have regenerated enough Mana for more power shifts.