The feats in D&D: WoW are mostly either excellent or terrible, but when they’re excellent, they’re often fiddly too.
D&D: World of Warcraft has many new character options to allow players to build characters in the world of Azeroth. To aid creating a Warcraft character, there are a handful of feats. Primarily, these are for 3 different types of characters; Humans, mages (wizards) and monks.
While the Human feats are exclusive origin feats only available to Humans, the monk and mage feats are available to anyone, as long as they meet certain requirements, but they have been designed with monk and mage characters in mind. While the mage feats do tend to make sense for mages, some of the monk feats actually work better on certain other classes.
While these are feats built with World of Warcraft in mind and have a prequisite of being part of that setting, I don’t think they need to be exclusive to the Warcraft setting. You should still talk to your DM if you want to use these outside of the Warcraft setting though.
I’ve analysed all 10 of the new feats from D&D: World of Warcraft so you can see which are worth taking and which are not. I’ve also provided scores and tactics to help you too.
World of Warcraft Human origin feats
These origin feats are only available to Humans and help represent different variants of Humans from Azeroth. They don’t come with a background, but Humans get an extra origin feat so you can pick one up using that trait.
Arathi heritage – 2/5
Requirements: World of Warcraft campaign, Human species
Good for: Those that want resilience against conditions.
Ability: Advantage on saving throws to avoid or end charmed and can turn a failed saving throw to avoid or end the unconscious condition into a success.
Tactics: Better against charmed is decent. It’s a common condition that can cause a fair few problems. unconscious resilience could be alright, but it really doesn’t come up a lot. There are 3 spells causing this (maliciously); sleep, eyebite and symbol. Sleep only causes it on the 2nd saving throw and both symbol and eyebite have other conditions the caster can choose instead.
Of the monsters that cause the condition, I could only identify 10. Some of those actually don’t even do saving throws against the unconscious condition. Instead, the saving throw is against another condition (like poisoned) and then they become unconscious while they have that condition (like with the homunculus).
This feels a bit underwhelming as a result and feels kind of like half a good feat.
Child of the sea – 2/5
Requirements: World of Warcraft campaign, Human species
Good for: Those wanting to be good in water.
Ability: Hold your breath for 2 + your constitution modifier minutes and have a swim speed equal to your speed.
Tactics: Holding your breath for 1 minute longer is not that big a deal and will rarely be more useful than just having a great constitution. It’s rare that this is needed and even rarer that 1 minute will make any kind of difference unless your constitution is very low.
A swim speed is still decent and will work best on a fast character (like a monk). Swimming remains situational though so unless you’re in an aquatic campaign, I’d be inclined to give this a miss.
Will to survive – 1/5
Requirements: World of Warcraft campaign, Human species
Good for: It’s not a great origin feat, but I think spellcasters with saving throw spells will probably suffer less from the negative effects of this than martials.
Ability: Can ignore the incapacitated condition on your turn but gain a level of exhaustion and can’t also be unconscious.
Tactics: Not many creatures or spells only cause the incapacitated condition, but it’s a little sneaky. That’s because the stunned, paralyzed and petrified conditions also cause incapacitated (unconscious does too, but this feat won’t help there). That means there are quite a few situations where this could be useful.
However, there are a couple of fairly big “buts” here. The first is that it doesn’t end the condition, it just means you can ignore it for your turn. So after your turn, you will be back to being incapacitated. Not only that, but you will still be affected by stunned, paralyzed or the other condition leading to you being incapacitated.
The other issue is it gives you a level of exhaustion. That means -2 on d20 tests and -5ft speed which accumulates the more levels of exhaustion you gain. This will stay until you finish a long rest, so you’re trading in having a likely weakened turn for many weakened turns later. I think this could be a case of the cure being worse than the illness except in some very rare instances where you badly need a turn, but that’s going to be rare in my book.
World of Warcraft mage feats
These are all general feats and are intended for mage/wizard characters but can be taken by any class. The intelligence increase and spellcasting focus do mean they lean more into the mage archetype though.
Clearcasting – 2/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Intelligence casters like wizards and artificers I guess, but it’s not great.
Ability score improvement: +1 intelligence
Ability: Cast a cantrip with a reaction when you land a critical hit with a spell attack and treat 1s for damage dice on force spell damage as 2s.
Tactics: My problem here is that these effects are very situational. Most spellcasters are not consistently making attack rolls like martials are unless you’re a warlock based around eldritch blast. Problem is, this is also primarily for intelligence casters (with the ability score improvement) so wizards and artificers. However, these classes will often be casting spells that need a saving throw, provide a buff or perhaps only make 1 attack, so reaction cantrips will be rare.
On top of that, not many spells actually cause force damage. In 5.5e, it’s 23. Even then, some of these aren’t available to intelligence casters (like hunter’s mark, eldritch blast or conjure barrage). The best you could do with this is blast magic missiles which will roll a 1 a quarter of the time, but that’s an average damage increase of 0.25 per missile which is fairly pitiful. It also prevents you benefitting from the other half of this feat as you won’t be making attack rolls. Sadly, I think this feat has some really poor synergy.
Fingers of frost – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Cold casting wizards (so frost mages).
Ability score improvement: Intelligence +1
Ability: Spells you cast ignore cold resistance. Deal extra cold damage when a creature is restrained.
Tactics: A couple of the new mage spells in D&D: World of Warcraft cause cold damage and the restrained condition (frost nova and flurry). I think this has these spells in mind. Ignoring cold damage is decent enough if you’re a cold spell focused caster and you can perhaps work in getting creatures restrained more with the spells and effects you choose as a party.
I think if you build and play for this a bit, you can make it decent. Without many cold or restrained spells though, this is a bit rubbish. I’m going to assume you build for this in my score though, it’s still a bit of a niche build, but can work alright.
Hot streak – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Wizards with plenty of fire spells, especially multi-target fire spells.
Ability score improvement: +1 intelligence
Ability: Spells ignore fire resistance and fire spells cause burning and if they’re already burning, increases the burning by d4.
Tactics: Ignoring fire resistance is pretty decent as there are quite a lot of fire spells around and some of them are quire good. Fire’s also one of the more common damage resistances among monsters so this helps there too.
What’s more interesting is that your fire spells now cause burning. It doesn’t come up loads so as a reminder, a burning creature takes 1d4 fire damage at the start of each of its turns and can only put this out by spending an action and rolling around prone.
In essence, this causes an extra at least 1d4 to your fire spells (imagine using a fireball and hitting a few creatures with this). That damage can continue too unless they use up their action and roll around prone (they can just stand up again but that’s a chunk of movement gone and their action). That means a lot of creatures may just tough it out. Problem for them though is subsequent fire spells will add an extra d4 to those burning effects. This makes repeated fireballs or scorching ray very appealing (as if it wasn’t already).
I really like this and think it can be excellent.
World of warcraft monk feats
These are general feats created with monks in mind. They’re also available to any class, but their wisdom and dexterity requirements realistically mean that they’re largely only an option for monks, druids, rangers and some clerics. In some cases, I actually think these other classes may actually be a better fit for these feats.
Elusive brawler – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+, dexterity and wisdom 13+
Good for: Druids, clerics and rangers that want a big defensive boost. It’s decent on monks too.
Ability score improvement: +1 dexterity or wisdom
Ability: Can use a reaction to take the dodge action when you take damage.
Tactics: This is obviously intended for monks but is a difficult sell for them. They can already use patient defense for a bonus action dodge if they expect to be attacked a lot and deflect attacks is already a reaction for when you’re hit by an attack. This gets worse on the warrior of mystic brews who has incredibly easy access to the dodge action without this reaction.
Where this is better is on a druid, ranger or cleric. They don’t have any of these reactions, but all can get themselves caught in the frontlines. Dodge is really good, they should usually qualify for the requirements (though for clerics, that may depend on the build) and there’s no limit to uses. On these classes, this is excellent. On monks other than the warrior of mystic brews, this is OK. I’ll score it based on optimal class options rather than the ones recommended by the book though.
Enveloping mist – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+, dexterity and wisdom 13+
Good for: Warrior of mercy monks and clerics and druids that do a lot of healing.
Ability score improvement: +1 dexterity or wisdom
Ability: Provide either damage reduction or temporary hit points for creatures healed by you equal to a healing die.
Tactics: This is intended mainly for monks and the monk with healing is the warrior of mercy. They can heal a fair bit and probably should be. The extra protection here is decent and scales a fair bit too but it will cost your reaction which monks often like to use on deflect attacks. Of course, you could just not use your reaction and let the life cocoon transform into temporary hit points. If you can, that would be preferable.
This can work on druids and clerics who can heal often but also have little use for their reaction. I’m inclined to think that the warrior of mercy will probably heal in smaller chunks, but more often even than these classes, but it does depend on your build. Healing dice usually aren’t that high either, whereas martial arts dice tend to get quite large so I think the warrior of mercy remains a better fit for this. Rangers can heal too, but likely won’t be doing this a lot.
There’s not necessarily a limit to how much you can use this other than the constraints of focus points/spell slots so there’s potential to use this quite a lot, potentially without using any extra action economy (or much of it).
Fists of fury – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+, dexterity and wisdom 13+
Good for: Monks. No one else can make enough unarmed strikes to make this worthwhile except fighters who are unlikely to have the right ability score mix (and even then, only have enough attacks at late levels).
Ability score improvement: +1 dexterity or wisdom
Ability: Treat 1s as 2s on damage dice for unarmed strikes and light weapons. +1 damage on melee attacks for each time you hit them previously with a melee attack on the same turn.
Tactics: This is really created with monks in mind. Your best build here will be just unarmed strikes for every attack. With flurry of blows and from level 5, a monk can be making 4 unarmed attacks per turn. That’s +1 on attack two, +2 on attack 3 and +3 on attack 4 (so +6 damage). Of course, all those attacks need to actually hit to take make the most of this. Stunning strike or allies knocking prone can help here. This increases further from level 10 too when flurry of blows gets another attack!
The 1s into 2s isn’t a lot of extra damage, but it’s also a nice boost. Overall, the extra damage here can be excellent, but only really on monks.
Stagger and sway – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+, dexterity and wisdom 13+
Good for: Monks, rangers, clerics and druids, though it’s best on very high dexterity and wisdom builds with little use for their bonus action.
Ability score improvement: +1 dexterity or wisdom
Ability: Reduce damage taken by your dexterity modifier then gain a d6 each time. These d6s are rolled at the end of your turn and give force damage. You can remove a number of damage dice from your pool of d6s up to your wisdom modifier with a bonus action.
Tactics: You really need a high dexterity for this one. With a +5 dexterity modifier, you’ll average -1.5 damage every time you take damage. That’s not bad. This assumes you actually roll all your delayed reaction dice. The question is whether a bonus action is worth it to clear out that pool. 5d6 (if you have a +5 wisdom modifier) is an average of 17.5 damage. Your flurry of blows assuming the same modifiers will likely be dealing more damage, but will sometimes miss and, sometimes you need to defend rather than attack. At other times, you want to spare your focus points so this might be good if you’ve acquired enough dice and you have a high enough wisdom.
My examples above are best case examples though. I don’t think this is good at low levels and is only worth it once your dexterity is 20. At that point, it might do enough over time, but is only decent at those higher levels.
I think I prefer this on a class that relies less heavily on their bonus action. Maybe a high dexterity druid could be getting quite a lot out of this and could clear their delayed reaction pool a fair bit. Some clerics might fit the bill too. Rangers might be alright as well, but they can be a bit bonus action dependant too.
Are the feats in D&D: World of Warcraft any good?
I found the Human origin feats to be a big disappointment. None of them are much good and they rely on some fairly situational effects or are just really punishing when used (like will to survive). The mage feats improve things a little with a poor feat, an average feat and an excellent feat. Fortunately, the monk feats are far better.
There’s some really interesting ideas in the mix here too. Hot streak makes proper use of burning mechanics, fists of fury has some nice build up effect and enveloping mist makes nice use of protective magic too.
However, even among those potent feats, there’s quite a bit of admin required. Hot streak’s burning effects need to be remembered, as do those with enhanced burning effects. stagger and sway’s delayed reaction pool must be tracked and enveloping mist has multiple stages of altering effects. So where the designers have made some great strides in inventiveness, they’ve unfortunately ended up making things quite fiddly.
I do think it’s unfortunate that some feats also don’t have synergy with the classes they’re intended for. Clearcasting would have been better on a warlock were it not for the intelligence boost while elusive brawler is best on other dexterity/wisdom classes other than monks.
I think this means that the D&D: World of Warcraft feats are a mixed bag of results. Some poor feats, some great, but many of the great ones are too fiddly. For me, these feats feel like they could have been better, but at least there’s some interesting new options to try.
What did you think of the feats in D&D: World of Warcraft? Let me know in the comments below.
