I keep hearing left and right that feral druids and in the absolute worst state right now. Some say they are fine, but most say that they are not even worth playing cause they bring very little dps and you will immediately be kicked from a group for even playing one.
I’ve been playing feral since the start of BFA and never been kicked once nor was I bottom of the barrel. I do just fine.
EDIT: That’s not to say it’s not happening! Just it hasn’t happened to me.
Eh, to be honest – they’re fine. They’re not the best, they’re not the worst. They do respectable damage in the current raid. They just can’t compete as well on spread AoE cleave types of encounters because they’re melee. Balance just does spread AoE cleave fights better & brings a little better utility to the raid.
Stampeding Roar just isn’t enough to bring a Feral over other melee specs.
Other classes do the same thing you do but buff the whole raids damage by 5% while doing it. Why take a feral?
So you havn’t played feral before you might enjoy it. Although you’ll have to work harder to do less.
As a long time playing feral, i think the class is a mockery of what it once was.
I really do like the play style of Feral.
It’s just unfortunate that it’s a kick in the mouth when you weigh your secondary stats properly, pick all he right azerite traits, pull off a rotation with precision, and wind up doing on par with other players that just slapped on what they have on their alts, 30 ilvls less than you, with more utility on top of that.
Better playing a rogue if you want utility for M+.
The biggest issue I’ve seen with Ferals (mind you I just came back yesterday after 3 months off) is that effort/reward system isn’t the same as other classes.
My Assassination Rogue is very simple and hard to screw up. And puts out great numbers. While I can put out good numbers with my Feral, it takes more effort to do so. And screwing up your rotation or messing up your BT priorities sets you back more so than it would on a Rogue or a Paladin per se.
BUT…they’re not “bad”. They’re just not topping the meters in Mythic Raid logs and therefore because “Top Player X” said there’s no need for a Feral on his raid roster, all the little sheep say Ferals are horrible.
ferals are terrible in both PVE n PVP
Most other classes and specs got simplifed and also got better performance to go with it, plus the simplification happened over several expansions.
Ferals got simplified less, it happened more recently, and took a performance hit to do it. A Draenor feral played about the same as a Wrath feral. Most other classes can’t say that. Even now it remains one of the most complicated and easiest to screw up melee specs.
Feral feels like theres way to much down time i been playing one to see if it has got any better but it still sucks
Ferals are the most clunky class around. Their rotation is tediously lame and their numbers are a joke. Wish they could be fun.
We should of got abilities like killing spree; would fit the cat theme a lot more , jumping from target to target.
Abilities like eye beam changed to feral fury where we unleash barrage of claws and bites in general direction.
When we put a rip on the target it should devastate them. Should do massive damage.
Alas we swipe like my little cat does at home. There is no power behind the spec.
Instead we heal ourselves in order to do more damage ? What ? We have to keep an annoying do nothing buff to increase our damage instead of doing fun damaging abilities. Why? Make ferals savage cats who destroy not little kitties who have never stepped outside their homes.
14 years of being a mock rogue has just left the spec in a perpetual state of “being a rogue but worse”. Two rogue specs outperform feral in every aspect right now while bringing more utility.
Happy St.patty Day and a bump for FERAL buff in PVE n PVP
Last night, I tried to tank a +9 Freehold in 394 gear. I had so much difficulty on the second boss one of our DPS stepped out and switched to tank for the rest of the run. I stepped out and switched to feral, which I have not played for the entirety of this expansion, and my observation was that I have buttons which light up after a combo that I can use while in cat form, but if I accidentally use them when not lit up, I’m forced out of cat form.
I think that’s the most broken thing I’ve ever seen in this game, and I main a fire mage.
That’s kinda Feral 101. We have an ability called Predatory Swiftness that procs on using a finisher. When it procs, we are allowed to use our heal and a few other abilities for free, instant, and without changing forms. It’s the key component to our talent Bloodtalons. We’ve had this for years.
I agree to an extent that the taking out of forms should probably be done away with. Brez used to be on the list of spells this affected, but they removed that in 8.1.
The problem as many people said already is that they are too complicated to play for the amount of damage and utility you bring. Balance does more damage, and brings way more utility in the form of treants and solar beam.
There’s just no reason to bring s feral to m+ over any other dps spec. There’s very little reason to bring one to a raid, because doing even decent middle of the pack dps requires perfect play and almost 100% uptime on bosses. You also have to have BiS traits and stats to keep up with most other dps.
The most tragic part is that they have a really small playerbase, and thus almost no voice when it comes to being noticed by the Big Blue. Feral changes are so slow that usually by the time we get the changes we’re asking for, they aren’t really relevant anymore.
Now this, while certainly true historically of Feral, has become true of almost everything in the game. It’s like they sit there and say to each other in the meeting “You know, if we just take our time and delay responding to this, they’ll be past the content where this matters and we’ll have saved all the man hours addressing it.”
Feral is middle of the pack and lacks strong utility. Roar is more valuable to our group since we’re a bit more melee heavy, but pales in comparison to DH damage/utility.
Not to condescend as a balance player, but unless you prefer the look/feel of feral, from a numbers-to-effort standpoint, there’s really no reason not to play balance over feral currently.
One of the problems with playing feral right now is that Balance is just straight up better, brings more utility, and is ranged, so there is very little incentive to be feral right now.
If we do our “rotation” correctly, no faults, we are still middle-ish in damage. Which is sad because we have the most complex DPS “rotation”, yet when we do good, we aren’t rewarded nicely.
I was always top 3 in dmg last night in raid, which felt alright, but the top 2 were DH and BM hunter, and they have the easiest rotation ever.