Welcome changes for Feral Druid tanks. That being said, I’m still not sure if Lacerate and Mangle will be worth using.
Previously they were drastically outclassed by Sunfire due to it’s range, raw damage and lack of cooldown.
Lacerate seems like it could be useful for boss encounters, but isn’t helpful in attaining immediate threat, especially in AOE.
Mangle going down to 15 Rage cost helps, but it feels out of place being exclusive with Lacerate, seeing as it’s effect increases the effect of bleeds. Would much prefer to have these two on different runes.
Hoping to see Thrash in the next set of runes to help with AOE threat.
Would also love to see some cooldowns for Feral Druid.
Berserk: Reduce Energy/Rage costs by 50% for 15 seconds.
Survival Instincts: Reduce damage taken by 50-75% for 8-12 seconds.
With Thrash and one of these cooldowns, I could see Feral Druid Tank being quite powerful in the level 40 bracket and beyond.
In the level 25 bracket however, it definitely feels underwhelming.
With this change, your health lost should be temporary - it should be slowly returned over the duration of the cooldown. This hurts.
The problem is with current rotational play for Spriests this ability is necessary as a core - not a kill shot - alos, can’t see mob hp like on live so it can be pretty risky so it doesn’t feel good to use it. This ability would make more sense as is as a “risk vs reward” option if the core spriest rotation was in a good spot, but unfortunately, that is not the case.
Then at least in PvE we have solid yet weak filler to help alleviate our Mana issues, but access too both Twisted Fate + Void Plague for PvE and can switch out Twisted Faith for SW: Death for PvP.
My concern is Lava Lash is still too weak to be used. Right now, our best OH is another fast attacking weapon. That said, Lava Lash hits about as hard as a normal melee attack from the MH. That is not a WoW factor we need in this game for Shamans. I am not joking that Lava Lash needs to be buffed to 300% weapon damage.
Outside of Lava Burst, Shamans have no ability that hits for 300+. Hunters have this, Warriors have 900 crits on their Execute phase, Rogues have this, Druids have it, mages can deal full life bar of damage with the gimmick but in deal a lot of damage overall.
Shamans are not very good right now for Healing and Damage. Still need a good tank rune in P2 to help with mitigation damage in future raids, but very happy with the Shaman Tank.
Can we please look at making lacerate a legs rune? Lacerate and Mangle are both core tank abilities and losing one for the other hurts. Bears have no viable leg rune atm and savage roar only works in cat.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Seriously. I don’t want to see our nice door dented.
(Imbalance is awesomely classic – give it a month and watch it flip. That’s part of the fun. No one class is amazing at everything right now, but several do excel in certain areas. That’s great.)
Please buff vanilla spells with runes in the next couple phases, and make Twisted Faith possible to use. For Shadow Priest, making the new rune spells super strong and super low mana, while your 3 vanilla spells tickle mobs and are extremely expensive to cast isn’t good.
Making SW:D hard hitting isn’t a good Spriest damage solution either, cuz now crits take off 2/3’s of your health. SW:D is not a core rotation ability, its a “I’m on the move and can’t hard cast anything, so I’ll throw a SW:D while I’m moving” ability, or a finisher in PVP if a target has no health.
yeah the buff is honestly great for that, i just wish that my move over from the current Spriest SWD spam rotation in retail wasn’t… straight into the same damn thing lol