Feral PvP has not been a widely discussed topic and the information to learn and perfect the art is quite difficult to find.

From conversation and alternative sources here are a few topics I can suggest to begin discussion on a class more PvP enabled than ever before.

1. What PvP Gear:

PvP gearing order. What is the value of a medallion of the alliance, off-set pieces, PvP set pieces/bonuses, PvP piece (glove?) bonuses. What pieces of gear should a druid obtain and in what order - does PvE gear change the order a feral should obtain PvP gear.

2. What PvP Stats:

What stats should a feral value in gear selection. For gems - Meta, Red, Yellow, Blue - what should be gemmed. What values of stamina or resilience are effective for what bracket. Enchants?

meta - agi+crit, armor, spellpower damage reduction

red - agi, strength, ap, dodge

yellow - haste, crit, hit, resiliance

blue - stam, mp5, spirit

3. PvP Spec:

How should a PvP feral spec dependent on group / bracket. Examples below show the difference between a full dps and full control spec.

Feral DPS - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Feral Control - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

4. Compatible Groups:

Aside from a skilled partner do certain team compositions work better than either? For various brackets/groups does this change any of the previous conversation values.

5. Feral PvP role:

When should a feral heal/stun/dps/kite. What form should a feral be in typically to be most effective in general PvP arenas.

6. Feral vs class/team:

Depending on role on the team, and value of certain aspects to compensate or pair with partners what strategies should be used against specific teams to kill the opponent.

Sources:

Druid PvP guide - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

The Druid Wiki home discussion Help : Feral PvP.

Northrend gems by color - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

looking at the top feral PvP specs it appears the changes primal tenacity (50% shifting mana reduction) allows the five points in master shifter (4% damage/crit) and natural shifter (30% less shapeshift cost) to be re-allocated. Individuals appear to value the new Protector of the Pack (12% flat reduction) with 2 free points for elsewhere (predatory instincs 10% AE reduction per point?).

After reading the above post on going bear form while focused protector of the pack seems quite useful.

Regarding the use of shadowmeld / catform / prowl I use a macro for the shift as follows.

#showtooltip Shadowmeld
/cast [noform] Cat Form; [combat] Shadowmeld; [nocombat] Prowl;
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

If out of form/combat Cat Form

If in form / out of combat Prowl

If in combat - any form shadowmeld.

If hit three times while in combat - shadowmeld // cat form // prowl. This can? be modified to include bear/tree? form but I am not willing to put anything that removes me from bear form on my cast bar. The above macro can replace your usual cat prowl ability with no aesthetic changes if the first line shows the prowl tooltip.

The first line will show the cooldown of shadowmeld, last line removes the red error text.

Yeah, the new changes do allow for those points to be rearranged. As sweet as 200-something mana per shapeshift is, there comes a point where your limiting factor becomes your healing rather than your shifting, so you're basically paying 5 points for 4% crit in cat or 4% damage in bear, and that's just silly.

I went with Protector of the Pack and Imp. MotW, as that benefits not just me but my team mates as well.

As for going bear while being nuked, I have a sort of "Oh Poop" macro that does Trinket -> Bear -> Barkskin (or rather, should do that >_>) - I'm not terribly sure about macro syntax, so I'll refrain from posting it, but the idea is that over 10 seconds or so I should get a 22% damage reduction. It's pointless against mages - instead of three-shotting me they now four-shot - but it helps against undergeared rogues and DKs.

As for the questions posted by the OP:

I don't pretend to have a definitive answer to these questions, but generally speaking, at the moment it's much easier to gear up through PVE than through PVP. It's silly, but it's true. For feral druids in particular, burst is so silly that trying to tank through it is useless unless you have a kickass healer and they fail to CC him/her in any significant way. Seeing as there's no defense in our gear and resilience only accumulates significantly *after* you progress quite a bit up the ladder, stacking stamina is meaningless when a mage can output 20k damage in three or four spells and then keep spamming Arcane Barrage until you die - or a muti/prep rogue/retri pally can keep you stunned more than long enough to kill you, or a DK can heal himself more than you can, etc etc etc.

The solution, then, is to stack agility, strength and AP; hit rating and expertise are nice as well against pesky rogues or prot-specced warriors and pallies. The point is, obviously, to burst them before they burst you. In these areas, PVE is far more rewarding than PVP; you can get lvl 80 epics off heroics easily enough.

In my humble opinion, as long as you have an epic Medallion (of the Horde if you don't mind :P), you're better off running heroics to gear up, unless you happen to have high-end Season 4 gear.

Agility > Strength > Crit Rating > AP, and this goes for all gems/chants. Use of mixed-colour gems is recommended to get the socket bonuses, as is the use of a prismatic +6 to all stats gem in that extra socket you're getting on your belt :P

Essentially, try to improve your damage output as much as possible. I personally favour agility because it gives you AP in cat form, dodge, armour, melee crit chance and +healing if you have Nurturing Instincts. I also favour Strength over AP because at high enough values, the 6% extra from survival instincts makes a large difference, especially because those 6% are then affected by the extra 10% from Heart of the Wild.

I had the control spec, but my point was DPS without sacrificing too much survivability.

My guess is that your style of play matters more than your specific spec, and the success of your style of play is more dependant on your gear than your spec (assuming, ofc, you have a minimally sane spec; no dumping 20 points into resto and then complaining you can't get yummy things in the feral tree etc).

I believe ferals stack up best with other melee classes due to Leader of the Pack. Stacking up with a healer can be tricky, as ferals can be nuked down much too fast by two dedicated people, and despite pairing with a good mage being nearly a guarantee of high ratings, in terms of class convergence I don't think that works particularly well.

Depends on your partner and what you're up against, obviously. I used to play with a rogue and now play with (that's rogue's alt, actually, he says the rogue is boring nowadays) a DK, and things were working well enough until the "new system" came along. We peaked just shy of 1700.

When I played with the rogue, we'd take advantage of our stealth to settle on a strategy, but generally it revolved around me opening in cat, getting some damage in and then going bear to tank through their burst while the rogue unloaded his DPS (hopefully) unhindered. With the DK it's different now, and it even changed when he went from Unholy to Frost. Generally speaking though, he's the one (usually) tanking through bursts while I do DPS.

Kiting, for a feral, is rather pointless, as you can't slow them from afar and the only ranged damage you have in feral form is Faerie Fire in bear, which is silly.

Generally speaking, what I do is DPS while I can, keep my stuns to interrupt spells as much as possible; go bear if I'm being targeted so as to minimise damage and maximise self-healing (Frenzied Regen/Lifeblood/Endless Healing pot). I never kite, though I do run and use pillars to my advantage when I need to heal. As for healing, I have a Lifebloom macro to heal my partner and mostly use that. I'll try to pull off the occasional Nourish if our strategy isn't working and I need to stop to think for a moment (or rather, if I can stop for a moment...).

Always go for the healer. If their healer is a pally, pray it's a bad one.

If you have a DK partner you can try to DPS through a Resto Druid's healing, but only as long as you stop the druid's Healing Touches.

Don't be afraid to use your Maim early on (as an exception to the stuns-as-interrupts rule) to boost your Shred DPS, for which you'll obviously want a glyph. If I want to maximize my DPS I often open with Pounce - Mangle - Shred - Tiger's Fury - Maim - Shred etc. On a 2-DPS setup this can mean a dead healer on the other team before his/her partner can understand what's going on.

If you're left vs a Mage, better hope he's nearly dead.

If you're left vs a Lock, better hope it's not in an arena where he can easily teleport out of reach (Blade's Edge being the foremost example).

Versus Rogues, you'll want a few things; Protector of the Pack is a must. Barkskin during their bursts' early days as well. Remember they have Preparation, so you'll have to tank through two bursts; don't leave bear form until the second burst is over. Use Barkskin for the first one and any bear-form healing skills you have for the second. Bash is priceless for buying you time to heal *and* to let you do some DPS, as they can't dodge while stunned, but avoid using it when he has Evasion up - the fight will likely be over by the time the CD is done and odds are you'll lose that priceless stun. Also, don't let them take the eyes and vanish from your sight.

1. What PvP Gear:

PvP gearing order.

I got the Medallion of the Horde first and never regretted it. I used my badges of heroism to buy my blue pvp 4 piece set and badges of valor/arena points to buy the hateful set. Spend your Wintersgrasp tokens on the trinket, helm and boots. Honor to buy the rest hateful gear. If you don't have the rating to get the deadly ring and you don't have a really good pve alternative, buy the pvp caster ring.

Until you get to 600+ resilience, it seems to be a waste of time so if you have better pve pieces use those instead.


2. What PvP Stats:

The crit meta is good, the armor meta is good as well as you will be in bear when you get focused. Really depends on your team or partner.

3. PvP Spec:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Having both Primal Tenacity and Natural Shapeshifter I never ran out of mana, so I am going to try the above spec without Natural Shapeshifter to see if I have enough mana with just Primal Tenacity. I like having cheap shreds and cheap mangles, because I tend to use both a lot depending on the senario.

Protector of the Pack seems worthwhile because there are many fights where I barely survive the burst to run away and heal up, so investing in a bit of extra survivability seems wise. (800ish res.)

I end up doing a lot of healing so Nurturing instinct is helpful (I run with a DK). If I had a healer, I would skip that for more damage.

You have to play around with your talents to find what works best for your team and gear level. Fortunately we have a bit of flexibility to do that in our tree.

4. Compatible Groups:

I run 2s with a DK who is Frost/Blood. We just started last week and our highest team rating thus far is about 1700.

I feel pretty good against most match ups so far, except Healer/Survival Hunter is currently giving us problems as we haven't quite figured out the best tactic against them.


5. Feral PvP role:

Burst down the target, keeping him snared/stunned as much as possible.
Shift out to bear when you are being focused.

I tend to blow my energy in cat, then shit out to bear if they are on me, or pop up to cc them if they are on my DK while my energy returns. I try to save berserk or TF for when they are low to make sure I have the energy to burst them down when needed. Holy Paladins are a bitch.

Thought I'd put some input into this thread as I've just had quite a heavy pvp session last night.

I'm currently running with a mage in 2s. Now he was frost spec, and things went well. He would provide alot of control but problems would occur if he was being focussed to much and unable to get any casts off. In that situation where I'm the only damage dealer, sometimes a single dps just isn't enough to take the other person out in time. So he respecced Arcane and wow, the damage was ridiculous. The burst a feral+arcane mage can put out from Pounce is absolute insane. And with sheep, cyclone, charge->bash and CS, there are alot of opportunities to shut healers down and put out some major damage. We stopped at 1750 so we could do some serious honor grinding for the deadly off-set pieces but I can see us climbing higher.

Gear wise, I agree with Duiliath: The 4pc set pvp set bonus is almost mandatory. The extra run speed in cat means less "target out of range" when you are chasing behind them trying to shred. Also the speedy travel form means super fast getaways when you need to reset (usually due to paladin bubble). I initially piled on the resilience as my pve gear made up for the damage lost. But I'm around 630 resilience now and finding myself alot more survivable, so damage gemming is what I'll be going for now.

I've personally gone for this spec since the patch: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Running double dps means games rarely last long enough for mana to be a problem, so I've skipped Natural Shapeshifter. Protector of the Pack is an absolute godsend when you're being focussed. The most hilarious thing I saw was when a rogue jumped me and I had switched to bear just in time. With barkskin up, his mutis were hitting for 500-600. I put the remaining 2pts into PI for the little extra burst and the AE damage reduction is nice (I believe it affects whirlwind and bladestorm which are the main reasons I took it)

I've hardly done any 3s, but we done a little with an inexperienced and undergeared holy pala back when my mage was frost. I think Feral/Arcane Mage/Holy Pala could definitely work better. With a BoP for the mage and freedom for me, there is some serious damage that could be flying around.

On the subject of Maim, does anyone know if it breaks after a fixed percent of damage done or is it just random chance on damage ?

It breaks after a fixed percent. In my experience, the percent is the same regardless of how many combo points you spend and seems to be about ~20% of max health. Thus, the extra points on maims more than 2-3 points are usually wasted unless you use them before a target switch (this is a great way to peel, btw, especially against double DPS - maim one target, switch and cyclone the other, then root the maimed target as it wears off or whatnot). Cooldowns permitting, ferals are fantastic peelers - Maim, Bear Feral Charge, Bash (30 second cooldown), roots, and cyclone can all be used to good peeling effect, and are on 4 separate DR timers. Infected Wounds is also a good kiting tool, though it can be frustrating at times - I wish it procced on swipe and rake, but what can you do.

You are losing a TON of potential burst by not using shred. You can pump out some really nasty damage with it. With a mangle, bleed and stun/incapacitate, you get some crazy burst out with shred, especially with the [Idol of the Ravenous Beast] which will then receive all those modifiers too.

Maiming a target with 5CPs is almost always a waste as your damage will usually break it early. But not shredding a target that is currently maimed is wasting a potential 20% damage boost. It find it most useful on rogues, mages, DKs and Paladins (incidentally, the "big 4" at the moment).

Rogues are always a pain in the ass. Trying to land any hits can be difficult especially with evasion. But landing a a 1cp maim from behind will stop their avoidance and almost guarantee a kill. I usually follow it with a rake to ensure a bleed and then a shred for a nice big hit. Then I either Bite if they're low, or rip->bear form and wait for their death.

The other nice thing about maim, is that its not considered a stun, thus mages can't blink out of it, palas can't freedom out of it, and you can slap a DK right in the face with it when they have Icebound Fortitude up.

But then, perhaps it's because I play with a mage and synchronised burst and cc is what wins us the games.

hmm ill have to try some more with it if thats much of a difference.

also, the glyph of shred, does that work when the target is under the effect of maim? or would it really only work under bash/pounce?

It says quite clearly in the tooltip that it works with incapacitates, so yes, it's added to maimed targets.

Can anyone post a feral dps gem/enchant setup? I'm always torn between AP+crit gems or AP+hit gems
or agi+hit or all sorts of crap. Still a useless arena contender, trying to up my game.