i play a feral druid in the 1900-2000 rating range, hardly pro i know but if you read on hopefully youll understand a bit more of why its harder to win with this class than most others. Im not going to cover spec, nor gear, its pretty obvios in itself crit/hit/stam is what ure aiming at, Tho this all factor's in what partner you have. That brings me nicely onto partner choice.
Which partner?
Unlike many classes a feral doesnt have alot of choice, 3 main partners you can pick, Rogue, Holy pala, or a Disc priest. You can go with others and obtain high rankings but these are the "Bread and butter" of the partner choices for a feral, i want to go over a little a bit about the strengh's and weakneses of these 3 classes.
Rogue - With double dps you allways have the point blank problem of no healer, this is sort of negated with a feral as a few well timed heals can mean a feral can atleast keep a partner alive in a life or death situation, The downsides are if your playing a decent healer/X team youve really got ure work cut out for you, Priest-Rogue is allmost impossible with the stun locks and blinds a rogue can throw on you, messing up your rotation completely. However the burst of this team is absolutly insane, With a bit of luck you can nuke resto druids and priests down in 1 stunlock.
Personally if your new to feral or ure partner rogue isnt very skilled, id really opt for a healer for ure team, ill discuss why below.
Holy Pala - in S5 this was a ferals only option for a healer, as back then holy palas were just plain OP, these days i roll with a disc priest and ill give my reasons below, For now tho lets look at the palas Strengh's, Plate is a major factor, im guesstimating it would take a rogue atleast twice as long to solo a good pala over a good priest, same goes for warriors, this can play into feral/palas hands, when a rogue attacks a feral in bear the damege is pethetic, and it isnt great on plate either, this is the main reason id suggest going with a holy pala, but palas also have massive CC issues, castable heals are also a big downfall for palas, as if a feral is caught in cat form by a ret/rogue/warr ect ect, trobule looms.
If you know a good holy pala id suggest going with him in 2s, seeing if you work well together, its all about communication, shifting forms is also more important here.
Disc Priest - What im with currently, In my opinion the best class a druid can team with currently, With the quickest heals and mana burn, most of the game u can outlast a pala/shaman with mana burns and well timed stuns, Also a disc priest can give you just the right amount of damege you need to win a game, not so much for palas. There ofc is a downside being that cloth is terribly squishy, Feral/Disc have massive problems over Rogue/disc. So much so when me and my partner face any of that comp 2k+ we pretty much can guarentee were going to lose.
I wont go into huge detail why however one of my favirote sayings on vent is, "A rogue is a feral druid with a healing debuff" take that as you will
Now, i want to move on to rotation, Unlike a rogue where its a simple matter of Muli Muli Muli KS Muli Evis, its a tad more harder than that, The BASIC rotation for pvp should be somthing like this.
Pounce > Savage roar > Mangle > Rake ( now you check combo points. if 5 Rip, if 4 Shread ) then pretty much repeat until you get the person ure dpsing into a posistion where using beserk will take them out.
Now i want to touch on cooldowns, Ferals have 2 major Cd's Beserk and Survival instinct's. one can win you the game if rightly used, the other can save ure life.
Beserk - One of the things i notice on many pvp vids or games when i meet ferals if there so loose with this CD, they either pop it as soon as they open or dont use it, its rare to see a druid use it right at the time its needed. Heres a couple of tips when to use it and when not to.
Never use it while a rogue has blind, any rogue worth his salt will instantly blind u as soon as zerk is popped, rendering u useless, even with trinket ure wasteing valuble time. Never pop it to break a fear unless its a "pop now or lose the game" sort of thing, Good locks will see u break it with zerk and kite you around then simply teleport away. If u blow this CD the game ofc isnt over, but with this CD you should win the game.
Survival Instinct's - Like beserk i see so many druids blowing this early or wasteing it, The main reason this gets wasted is druids will use it and then recive a heal, making using this pointless. Heres when to use it and when not to. Before i go into it the main thing is to communicate with ure healer. Watch his cast bar and if hes casting dont blow it even if ure dipping low. The best time to use it is when ure healer makes a mistake, i use it as a panic button for when somthing goes wrong, i try not to use it if my healer is in LOS. A handy tip is to combine it with Frenzied Rejuvination, and lifeblood if ure a herbalist, I usually heal to full when i combine these 3 Cd's, if ure getting beatan on barkskin is also a good idea.
Genral Strengh's and weaknesses of a feral druid.
Strength's - a Feral's burst can be totally OTT with a bit of luck, you can nuke a warrior/DK down from 50% in 2 GCD's and the opposing team wont know what hit them, Bear form is also a massive strength for ferals, it forces dks palas and warriors to go on ure priest as there damege is pethetic while ure in bear, and actually bear form damege isnt half bad. Stealth is also a massive strength, it gives the element of suprise and the first hit in every game, these can be key to winning.
Weaknesses - If ure caught in catform u can drop so fast you wont know what hit you, ive been in situations where my trinkets down its 2v1 ( with me and my healer still up ) im on around 70% my healer lets his guard down and starts dpsing the ret thinking we'd won, Only to find he got repentence'd and i got killed, we lost that game. However the major disadvantage of a feral is we have no healing debuff, U can time everything right, get a pala to 5% hp then boom, one Holy light crit and its back to Square 1, The burst "kindof" makes up for it, but somtimes you say to ureself, if id have had a healing debuff that game, wed have won.
Well i hope you can forgive my spelling mistakes this is an orginal write up from snugglepants :/ Gj if you managed to read it all.