Timeless Azeroth

Gear & Stats

Feral Cat gearing in TBC is all about stacking Agility and ensuring your yellow attacks reliably land through enough Hit and Expertise. Agility is king because it provides Attack Power and Crit simultaneously, smoothing your rotation and scaling exceptionally well with raid buffs. Unlike most specs, Feral is effectively locked into Wolfshead Helm for optimized powershifting, which means your other slots must carry a larger share of your raw stats. Prioritize clean Agility-heavy pieces, then use Hit and Expertise to stabilize your cycle — missed Shreds can desync your timing and force wasted Energy or awkward shift windows.

Feral DPS Pre-Raid BiS

Feral DPS BiS (Phase 1)

Stat Priority

Primary Stat Focus

Agility is your best overall stat. It provides Attack Power and Critical Strike together, scales extremely well with Survival of the Fittest and Blessing of Kings, and improves the smoothness of your combo point generation through more frequent crits.

Hit and Expertise

Hit and Expertise are your most important secondary stats until their caps. Against level 73 bosses you need 9% Hit (142 rating) to cap misses, and 6.5% Expertise reduction (103 rating) to cap dodges from behind. In practice, you do not need to force hard caps if the trade-off costs too much Agility, but you should avoid being extremely low on either stat to keep your rotation stable.

Strength and Crit

Strength is strong because it converts to 2 AP per point and is amplified by Heart of the Wild in Cat Form. Crit is valuable both for damage (2.2x crit modifier with Predatory Instincts) and for combo point flow via Primal Fury, but it is generally outpaced by Agility because Agility gives you both AP and crit together.

Haste, AP, and Armor Penetration

Haste is generally lower value for Cats than for many melee specs, but it still contributes through white damage and on-hit effects like Judgement of Wisdom. Attack Power and Feral Attack Power are always good, but are typically best acquired through Agility and Strength. Armor Penetration starts weak and becomes more valuable later as you accumulate more of it (increasing returns).

Survivability and Mana Stats

Stamina does not increase DPS directly, but melee take significant raid damage in TBC, so survivability matters. Intellect and Spirit can help sustain powershifting on longer fights, but are generally not prioritized because your mana sustain is usually solved through raid buffs (Judgement of Wisdom), Intensity, and consumables like Fel Mana Potions.

Wolfshead Helm Note

Wolfshead Helm is a low-level item with poor raw stats, but its powershifting Energy bonus is so strong that it remains optimal for a large portion of the expansion. This is why Feral gearing often looks unusual: you are effectively trading a helmet slot for rotational power, and you compensate by stacking more raw stats everywhere else.