I have not mained a druid since MoP. I just came back from a 7 month hiatus. After seeing some youtubers and streaners talk about feral, it feels like its not that bad. The only thing that is a big negative is the minimal/zero utility it brings to group situations.
I still have hope that tuning will make feral more competitive. I dont need it to be a topping the charts in dmg. I just want it to be viable. I think regardless I’m still going to play it but I just want to know what others really think can be improved/tweaked to make it better.
You just made your own point and then sidestepped it.
Feral damage isn’t terrible. Feral utility is lacking. Giving us a little extra damage, while great, because beta parses are not encouraging, is not addressing the main issue.
what do you mean feral damage is fine? it’s not fine.
all the data we have shows feral is solidly in F tier according to the icy veins and wow meta tier lists
of course this could change tomorrow if Blizzard buffs feral but come on, let’s be honest, blizzard has had years to buff feral damage and hasn’t done so, do you really think they are going to do it now?
the feedback from streamers has been clear: even if blizzard did buff their damage, giving stampeding roar to all druids means they no longer even bring that or any utility to the raid to justify taking a melee raid spot from another far superior melee dps class
You are going to turn me into Tical 2.0 at this rate.
Damage on live can use a small boost and damage in beta is awful, but also too early to really panic about. Numerical fixes are easy for the devs to implement and I am much less worried about those than the asinine new blood talons/zerk non-interaction, the lack of feral raid buff/utility and the apparent retirement of guardian tanks.
If they don’t address those issues now, while dev team is still focused on class design, they may not get attention for a long, long time.
The damage really isn’t terrible.
I don’t normally play with BT anyway, so the flow, or lack thereof, of the new BT doesnt really bother me.
The biggest con against the spec is the lack of group utility vs balance and resto.
Those two specs have gotten the best end of SL changes, and the only 2 specs to really get “unpruned”
I will still dps as feral in SL, sadly I will be moving on to tank on other classes because of bears lack of magic mitigation going into another xpac of big magic damage.
Mark or Ursoc or somthing similar would keep me on the druid, but because I mainly tank, I will spend far less time with my druid this time around.
Feral scales better than a lot of other specs with gear. Some specs just have something build in so that they get a kind of exponential scaling, or double dipping of certain stats. Like Crit for Feral. If you look at Ret Pali all it gets is the extra damage from a crit. So 1% extra crit = roughly 1% overall DPS. So Ret actually scales like crap because every stat is simple. Feral gets a much larger boost from crit. You don’t just get the bonus damage from the crit, but you get 1 extra combo point. And combo points are actually huge damage boosters. So you get twice the benefit really. Because of that scaling Blizzard makes base Feral suck much more to compensate. Which is why it has a bad reputation. It’s garbage at the start of an expansion, and that’s what people remember most about it, so you don’t get invited later on, even though the spec may have improved a large amount.
Everyone thinks they don’t contribute much to a group, because in reality most classes these days don’t contribute that much.
-Feral gets a Battle Rez, and a raid wide speed boost. There are situations where if you don’t get out of an area fast enough half your raid dies. So it’s not as useless as it might sound.
-Pali has a 3% damage reduction aura, and some blessing, and trust me, you go on their forums and they are doing nothing but complaining as well.
-Warriors get 5% AP shout which really only results in a 3% damage increase, and only effects like half the raid. That and Rallying Cry.
-DK has Battle Rez, and Anti-Magic Zone.
I don’t see how these are that much better compared to Feral’s. Everything seems pretty comparable to me. There are definitely classes that provide more. Mages and Warlock provide a lot for instance.
I’m guessing you’re talking about innervate. I suppose it’s something, but I’ve also kind of felt it to be underwhelming these days. Back when it restored mana it was very beneficial. You get a long silence as balance, but you do get a more frequent cast interrupt as Feral. If Primal Wrath remains as uncapped AOE it could be one of the highest AOE specs in game.
Personally I’d like to see Feral get the same Stamp roar buff that guardian gets. A 1 min CD instead of 2 min. I guess innervate would be nice.
Innervate is part of it, but Balance also has a strictly better utility kit than us. There is exactly one utility spell Feral has that Balance does not: Skull Bash. Balance on the other hand has: Solar Beam, Treants, Innervate. For soft utility advantages, Feral is able to spend Predatory Swiftness on Entangling Roots and cast Stampeding Roar in form, Balance is able to have the Typhoon/Vortex combo, and is able to cast Rebirth, Cyclone, and Hibernate in form (unlike Feral.)
My issue is that Balance’s kit is literally just the Feral kit plus addons. That’s not appropriate no matter how minor the utility is and honestly I’m tired of paying the Feral tax on things like Cyclone and Rebirth while Balance doesn’t. They should be put on Feline Adept.
I wouldn’t worry about icy veins and wowmeta since they’re very unreliable, however I do agree that our utility isn’t the best. My only hope for feral now is that it has uncapped aoe so it might pull ahead of other melee in some situations.
However, it’s not looking good, feral is my favourite spec and if I can’t play it in Shadowlands I’d rather just not play. If feral is at least a viable choice compared to rogues, dh and boomkin I will be satisfied - it doesn’t need to be top tier, but it does need to stop being a meme spec
Well a feral willing to swap specs isn’t a bad dps if the numbers are there. That kind of versatility is pretty nice for raid groups.
However thats still like 1 spot max. I’m m+ utility means a lot more considering you’re competing against classes that can do more dmg and bring more to the group. And being 5man inherently makes utility all the more important.
Is strange how balance brings so much utility and feral none though
Not really, Is he implying that I believe feral is “fine”?
I dont.
Iv never said this.
People get confused because ill often correct their arguments as to why feral “isnt fine”, but thats more so due to their exaggerated claims. Im all for class changes, but not on the basis of false claims.
So yeah… some clarification would be nice.
Had to google that word.
First time reading it.
You adore me?
Aww thanks!
(im choosing the french definition, as bad tempered and combative sounds like a stretch) lol
