Embarking on your druidic journey in World of Warcraft? The Druid class offers unparalleled versatility, with a plethora of playstyles to suit every preference. For those seeking a balance between healing, damage, and Crowd Control (CC), the Feral Druid is an excellent choice. But with a plethora of talents and abilities, building your character can be daunting. This guide walks you through a popular leveling build: the S_ATB, or "Safe Animal Treants Big Bearcats"' build, named for its empowering animal companions.
S_ATB is renowned for its smooth leveling experience, offering consistent damage, excellent survivability, and powerful CC. It prioritizes 2-piece Feral sets, allowing you to keep your precious Energy and Shamans Rage up, which in turn fuels your powerful finishing moves. But enough about the endgame, let's talk about getting there!
Understanding the Build
The S_ATB druid focuses on maximizing your first three threat abilities: Maim, Claw, and Claw/Feral anymore. By stacking damage on these moves, you'll maximize your DPS (Damage Per Second) at lower levels, ensuring swift progress through dungeons and raids. The build also prioritizes powerful CC, creating opportunities for your party to diminish enemies further.
The build is called 'Safe' because it's incredibly forgiving. With a well-timed Fae Guardians Favor, zero-energy abilities like Thrash, and a constant influx of healing from your Prowl, you'll stay alive while delivering consistent damage.
Talents
Starting off, you'll want to focus on feral talents. Catalyst does nothing for you at low levels, and Shred fisherman doesn't significantly improve your damage. Instead, grab Feral Instinct and Omen of Clarity as your primary talents.
Feral Instinct reduces the cost of your finishers, allowing you to spam them more freely, while Omen of Clarity provides a free energy if your ability crits, resulting in even more spam. You'll also want to grab Bear Form and Survival of the Fittest as soon as they become available to improve your bear form for a more resilient playstyle.
Glyphs and Enchants
Glyphs are crucial to rounding out your playstyle. Glyph of Maim increases the damage of Maim, your primary threat move. Glyph of Feral Swiftness improves your cat form's speed and energy efficiency, while Glyph of Fading makes your Fading's 3s duration feel almost constant, thanks to your energy efficiency.
Enchants are equally important. Maximize your agility and stamina on all slots, favoring agility where you have a choice. Agility directly improves your damage, while stamina increases your health pool, making you more resilient.
Playstyle and Rotation
The S_ATB playstyle is simple but potent. Open with a Maim, then spam Claw or Claw if you have Energy. Use Fae Guardians Favor when you get low on Energy to keep your spam going. Thrash is also a great zero-energy move to keep applying damage and pressure. If you need to heal, use Prowl to slip away and restore your health.
When you're not in combat, make the most of the downtime. Collect leather and herbs to sell for profit, level up your alchemy and leatherworking professions, and ensure you're always in top form for the next fight.
And there you have it! The S_ATB druid is a fun, flexible, and powerful build that will carry you smoothly from the low level dungeons of vanilla to theSoD (Shadow of the Docks) beachhead. Happy druiding!