Let's get into feral leveling. I will first mention that restoration is not even a spec you should be considering if you wish to level through questing. If you want to heal dungeons you could go that route but I would highly recommend you simply go moonkin then as you don't need a healer talent tree to heal most instances while leveling (once you hit 50+ you may want to reconsider though, unless you have the gear to make up for the lack of talents to boost your healing).
With that out of the way let's truly move into the feral goodness.
As previously mentioned druids are slow starters. This is mainly because 1-10 you are forced to smack stuff with your staff while casting spells, and 10-20 is spend in bear form which is meant for taking damage, not dealing it. This doesn't mean it won't be easy to level though, especially in bear form there's very little risk of dying and the damage isn't that bad.
Besides that, the focus of this Guide is finding the talent build that allows you to level your druid as fast as possible and because of this you will have to differentiate between the bear and cat talents to optimize your damage and survivability. Remember that even though you will spend most of your time in cat form, your bear form is still there for those clutch situations where you get in over your head.
As you can see this build leaves you 2 points shy of level 80. I did this because I only got the talents that are good and required. Once you fill these talents in the tree you move to the restoration tree as it also has a wide variety of great talents for feral such as clearcasting, master shapeshifter and naturalist.
Let's have a look at our build. Unfortunately the talent choices aren't too nifty until you start getting Feral Swiftness at level 20. Feral Swiftness is the beginning of the greatness that is the feral tree, giving you a superb 30 percent movement speed increase in cat form on top of some well needed dodge chance. This movement boost is something you will sorely miss whenever you spec out of feral, or heaven forbid another class. You will always get full benefit from this talent.
The reason we pick up talents as Survival Instincts and Thick Hide is because nothing will slow down your leveling more than dying. With every class I try to pick up some survivability talents to reduce the risk of dying. Especially Survival Instincts is great as you can use this in cat form as well.
After the slow start you'll now start getting your damage dealing talents for your cat form. After picking up Primal Fury, any combo point generator that critically strikes will generate 2 combo points. Primal Fury will allow you to use more finishers as monsters usually don't last very long.
I'll now explain why I didn't pick up Shredding Attacks. It's not all that complicated. It's hard to find a place for it when soloing, unlike in group and raid content. Mobs die to quickly to bother setting it up so you can get behind them. On top of this is shred very dependent on effects such as bleeds and glyphs to deal good damage. As a result your combo points will mostly come from Claw/Mangle, depending on your level.
As you get in deeper you will just get even more talents that increase your damage through stat and attack power boosts. Now you've hit level 40 you'll be able to replace your Claw with Mangle. I don't like the improved mangle though, as your damage rotation doesn't use mangle enough for such a small energy cost to be worth it, nevermind how fast targets die anyway. After mangle you can start picking up King of the Jungle which changes your tiger's fury from a cute little buff to a powerful on-demand energy boost. It's easy to forget having it, so I hereby remind you to use Tiger's Fury on cooldown as soon as you pick up at least a single point in King of the Jungle.
This then brings us to another great leveling talent, namely Rend and Tear. Your usual attack being mangle, increases the bleeding damage the target takes while dealing superb damage. This is followed by using rake on the target to put a bleed effect on it. Then you look at Rend and Tear and you realize your Ferocious Bite now has an increased 25 percent chance to critically strike. Considering this is a finishing move that is usually used when your target is already weakened it makes this even better at what it's supposed to do, namely finishing stuff.
As we've finished the key feral talents we'll move to the restoration tree for some, gasp, damage talents. My personal favorite is clearcasting as it doesn't just add a dynamic aspect to feral dps but more importantly gives you 0 energy cost abilities.
All in all I can recommend going feral for anybody who wants a unique but powerful leveling free games experience. If you're ever looking for a change you can always have a look at the Balance tree, but as I find feral faster and more enjoyable I'm afraid you'll have to look for a balance guide somewhere else ;).
