Feral is a builder-and-finisher rotation with an Energy cooldown on top. Shred builds combo points, Rip spends them, and Shifting Power refills your Energy from your mana whenever it is ready. Energy limits how often you Shred, and mana limits how much Energy Shifting Power can give you.

Before the pull

Go into Prowl before the pull and stand behind the boss. Prowl holds your first white swing for the opener and is worth 2.6 % on its own. The pre-pull Faerie Fire is worth 0.0 % here only because the benchmark raid already keeps a Faerie Fire on the boss. If your raid has no Balance Druid, keep it up yourself: in Cat Form it costs nothing and lasts 40 seconds.

At the pull, Berserk, Elune's Light (Night Elf) and your on-use trinket go out first, then Ravage. Ravage deals 350 % weapon damage plus 343, can't be dodged, and with Berserk up it always crits. The opener is worth 2.6 % on a one-minute fight and 0.7 % on three. If you carry a Manual Crowd Pummeler, wear it for the pull, use it, and swap back to your two-hander when its 30 seconds of attack speed run out.

Priority

Whenever your global cooldown is free, go down the list and use the first line whose condition is met. The order settles which ability wins when two are ready. It doesn't say what comes next. The table shows every line the simulated cat plays, its casts a minute and what the rotation loses without it.

1. Shifting Power at 60 Energy or less. It gives 40 Energy for 684 mana, and with Improved Shifting Power and the Howling Idol it is ready every 7 seconds. Waiting for 60 keeps the 40 from spilling past your 100 cap. The sims press it about 8.9 times a minute, close to every time it is ready, and the line is worth 16.3 %.

2. Ravage while Prowl is up, once, at the pull.
3. Rip when it has dropped off the boss and you hold enough combo points. It is a 12-second bleed of six ticks that can crit, worth 16.9 %. The sims never refresh a running Rip.

On this fight the rotation waits for 5 combo points.

4. Shred with everything else. At 42 Energy it is your builder for the rest of the fight, and the line is worth 57.2 %. While Rip is running and you sit at 5 points, the next Shred's combo point is lost. The sims accept that rather than spend the points on Ferocious Bite.
5. Leave Cat Form only to use a consumable. The rotation cancels Cat Form when a Goblin Sapper Charge is ready, or a Demonic Rune with 1,500 mana missing, or a mana potion with 2,250 missing, uses it, and shifts straight back. Furor keeps your Energy while you're out. The Sapper line is worth 3.9 %, and the shift back 60.8 %: without it you would never return to Cat Form.

Ferocious Bite is in only one of the six rotations, the one for a one-minute fight against three bosses, and its line scores −0.2 % there. A Rip is worth more for the same five points, so keep them for Rip.

More than one target

Three bosses don't change what you press. A cat has no area attack in Forever, since Swipe stays a Bear Form ability. Keep Shred and Rip on the main boss. The simulated cat never moves Rip to the others. Your Goblin Sapper Charge, Dragonbreath Chili and, on some three-boss sets, Smokey's Lighter reach all three. On a three-minute fight against three bosses the Sapper is 1.7 % of your damage and the Chili 2.5 %, against 0.5 % on one boss.

Cooldowns

• Berserk goes on the pull, before Ravage, and comes back after 3 minutes. If the boss outlives that, use it again the moment it's back.
• Elune's Light, your on-use trinket and the Pummeler go with it on the pull.
• Goblin Sapper Charge goes in the first 15 seconds or so, at a moment when the next Shred is still about two seconds of Energy away, so the trip out of form wastes as little as possible.
• Demonic Rune and mana potion go when they fit: 1,500 and 2,250 mana below full.

Cooldown	Uses	At
Manual Crowd Pummeler	1	0:00
Elune's Light	1	0:00
Molten Heart of the Mountain	1	0:00
Berserk	1	0:00
Goblin Sapper Charge	1	0:07
Demonic Rune	1	0:14
Major Mana Potion	1	0:41

What your log should show

Your own Warcraft Logs parse should look close to this. A low Shifting Power count means Energy you never got. A low Rip uptime means late finishers.

Ability	Casts per minute	Of damage	Crit
Shred	22.6	32.6 %	56.5 %
Auto attack	74.5	32.0 %	45.9 %
Rip	5.3	20.8 %	41.9 %
Auto attack via Windfury Totem attack	18.2	8.6 %	45.9 %
Ravage	1.0	3.9 %	100.0 %
Goblin Sapper Charge	1.0	1.6 %	26.3 %
Dragonbreath Chili	–	0.5 %	25.9 %
Elune's Light	1.0	–	–
Berserk	1.0	–	–
Faerie Fire	1.0	–	–
Major Mana Potion	0.3	–	–
Shifting Power	8.9	–	–
Molten Heart of the Mountain	1.0	–	–
Manual Crowd Pummeler	1.0	–	–
Prowl	1.0	–	–
Cat Form	3.1	–	–
Demonic Rune	0.9	–	–

The numbers to look for: about 22.6 Shreds, 8.9 Shifting Powers and 5.3 Rips a minute. Shred near 32.6 % of your damage, Rip 20.8 % and your white swings 32.0 %. Windfury Totem's extra attacks show up as their own line, at about 8.6 %.

Uptimes

Buff or debuff	Uptime	Times per fight
Windfury Totem aura	100.0 %	13
Faerie Fireon the boss	100.0 %	1.9
Cat Form	99.4 %	4.1
Ripon the boss	86.7 %	5.0
OtherActionItemSwap	50.2 %	3.0
Haste	50.0 %	1.0
Berserk	25.0 %	1.0
Molten Heart of the Mountain	25.0 %	1.0
Elune's Light	25.0 %	1.0
Windfury Totem	4.5 %	18
Clearcasting	3.6 %	2.4

Watch Rip above all and aim for about 86.7 %. Every second without it loses its ticks and Rend and Tear's bonus on your Shreds.