Feral Tank Rotation and Gameplay Guide — WoW Classic: Season of Mastery

• Author: Oxykitten
• Date: December 22, 2021
• Updated: November 13, 2024
• Expansion: WoW Classic

Welcome to our rotation and gameplay guide for Feral tanks in WoW Classic: Season of Mastery! This guide will outline how best to play a Feral tank to maximise threat output and overall performance. For guides on other facets of Feral druid gameplay, make sure to use the navigation pane above.

Rotation and Gameplay

Single target rotation:

• Maul on every swing, and: 
• Faerie Fire (Feral) if the Faerie Fire debuff is not on the boss; otherwise:
• Swipe if above 40-60 rage and if the rage will go to waste if not used on swipe; otherwise:
• Faerie Fire (Feral) on cooldown.

Multi-target rotation:

• Exactly the same as on single target, but switch targets between melee swings to spread them out
• Goblin Sapper Charges (only usable by engineers) are extremely useful for multi-target threat.

The Feral tank rotation is extremely simple: it relies fully on Maul. While Maul does not deal much more damage than a regular auto attack, it is extremely strong for two reasons: firstly, Maul has a 1.75x threat modifier, meaning that Maul generates 1.75 times more threat than an auto attack dealing the same damage; secondly, Maul is an ability and therefore cannot result in a Glancing Blow, whereby melee attacks have a 40% chance to deal significantly less damage (and generate significantly less threat).

Because Maul occurs on a bear’s next melee swing, it does not trigger a Global Cooldown, and can be used alongside other abilities. Therefore, using Swipe in addition to Maul is beneficial when the Druid has excess rage; using Swipe at low rage and therefore causing the Druid to not have enough rage for Maul is very detrimental to their threat generation. This is because Swipe does very little damage and rage, and its damage dealt does not increase with attack power. When low on rage, using Faerie Fire (Feral) on cooldown generates a small amount of additional threat, and refreshes a very powerful debuff on your target.

Note that Maul is tied to the Druid’s swing timer and generates nearly all of its threat. Since haste effects (such as Manual Crowd Pummeler, or Chicken Squawk from Gnomish Battle Chicken) directly decrease the swing timer, they increase the number of Mauls cast and are extremely powerful on Druid tanks.

In terms of Feral-specific gameplay, what you do most often depends on your tanking position. If you are the Main Tank in a raid (which is a perfectly viable role for Ferals, but more commonly taken by a Warrior), you will most often be in Bear Form, tanking the main target. As an offtank, however, Ferals will often switch between Bear Form and Cat Form throughout a raid. Many Feral tanks will think of themselves purely as a tank, rather than a DPS, but in truth, Feral is a single, hybrid role that includes both tanking and DPSing. Not taking advantage of your toolkit and versatility is an unfortunate mistake that is far too common. In fact, the only reason I separate these guides into tank and DPS is because they’d be far too long otherwise! If you plan to play a Feral Druid well, make sure to read up on how to optimise your DPS performance as well; all my guides will be linked within this one.

More generally, tank gameplay is engaging and can be complex. This is mainly to do with positioning, i.e. making sure your target is standing in the correct place and facing the correct direction. Generally, your target should always be facing away from the raid, as melee DPS get parried from the front; this reduces their damage output and causes the target to parry haste, whereby your target hastens their next swing after parrying an attack. This is very dangerous for a tank, who can suddenly take two swings in an instant and die unexpectedly. Aside from that, many enemies have frontal-cone or cleave mechanics where anyone they are facing takes damage.

Tank gameplay and positioning is largely dependent on specific boss mechanics. Still, standing in a safe place, facing away from the raid, and having spatial awareness are key factors in tank gameplay that keep it engaging even when all you do is press Maul on repeat!

Thank you for taking the time to read our Feral tank rotation and gameplay guide for Season of Mastery. I hope it was helpful, and if you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment below, or find me as Oxy on the Druid Classic discord.