We’ve worked through the following adjustments to Balance and Feral Druids, which we intend to make live with scheduled weekly maintenance on Tuesday, March 8 in this region.
Druid
Balance
(2) Set Bonus: Entering a Lunar Eclipse now creates a Fury of Elune at 20% effectiveness (was 25% effectiveness).
(4) Set Bonus: While in an Eclipse, the cost of Starsurge and Starfall is reduced by 15% (was 20%).
The synergy of the Balance tier set with some of Balance’s options made it perform a bit higher than intended. We want to bring Balance in-line with other tier set bonuses while still rewarding those synergistic choices. These changes should keep the power of Balance’s tier set bonus, but rein in some of the higher outputs we’ve seen.*
Druid
Feral
(2) Set Bonus: Berserk’s cooldown is now reduced by 0.7 seconds per combo point spent (was 0.5 seconds).
(4) Set Bonus: Sickle of the Lion’s damage is increased by 25%.
We really appreciate all of the feedback on the Feral set and feel that we should take some time to explain these changes. When previously tuning this bonus, we took multiple factors into account: the synergy of the set with other legendaries, its synergy with Feral’s kit, the AOE component, and more. Since we last made adjustments during PTR testing, we’ve gotten a chance to incorporate a great deal of the feedback provided and take a fresh look at the numbers and we found that – as players rightly called out – there was a disconnect in how impactful this bonus was in situations such as single-target encounters.
Our goal with these changes is to keep Feral being a strong option in single-target encounters while increasing their AOE throughput. We will continue to actively watch discussions about this, and we want to say again: thank you for the feedback, and we appreciate the community’s patience as we take care with the tuning of this spec.
Nooooooo. Boomy is so bad in arena without being able to benefit from convoke/venthyr ability in competitive 3s settings. Please don’t nerf the tier set and just continue nerfing ravenous frenzy / convoke to avoid nerfing us in other aspects of the game that we are not strong in!!! :((((((((((((
A huge step in the right direction regarding the tier set. Thank you.
Although feral still has some glaring issues like berserk not even been that much of a CD. I spend most of my time during berserk waiting for energy…Revert so energy costs of abilities during berserk reduced by 50% like it used to be so it’s a fun ability to press.
Dead talents need a look at, namely scent of blood. Thrash needs to do about 400% more damage, or be a significant debuff for that much energy.
Necrolord base cov legendary is kinda garbo and counter intuitive for Necrolord ferals running draught.
I can understand the need to keep things balanced but this fix does not feel great.
The previous 65% nerf was WAY too heavy. A 25% buff here still leaves it less than half as strong as it was in the past.
The lower CD while nice desyncs zerk from Convoke. This feels bad on every other zerk because Convoke is used as a way to juice the CD both from a resource perspective as well as from a mastery perspective.
The lower CD does not make up for the remaining missing damage lost from the set bonus. Combined with the above point we are still undertuned in a tier where AoE is looking to be a very important factor (and that’s not even looking at the problems in M+).
What I don’t understand is why any of this was even needed. The simple solution is to apply the damage falloff that every other AoE in the game has.
Let it be strong. Let it be fun. Azeroth Knows, Feral deserve a little love after being slighted for so long. Just don’t let it be entirely overpowered.
2p: This change needs reverted to .05 . It has to line up with convoke or the 2pc is kinda meh. This change was largely pointless.
4pc: While this is a set in the right direction it’s so underwhelming it’s laughable. It needs the full 65% unnerf for Feral to be even lower middle of the pack in AoE.
This is an okay start but not even near what is needed to make feral -playable- in M+.
We need a 10% aura buff just to be where we were in 9.1 ST wise.
Feral gains little if Anything from 2/4pc on ST while some specs get 10-15? How is that even fair? Currently we aren’t strong in ST or AoE-I don’t see how that’s “balanced” if we’re low mediocre at both that even with these buffs we still won’t be invited on content.
We gave you the data and the figures-what more do you want from us short of pulling our hair out?
This is actually such a bad nerf. Why are you nerfing balance druid when they are literally the 2nd worst spec in the game right now. They only become viable to raid when they have 4 set. Its not like its the best class in the game either. You’re looking at sims jsut from a stand-still venthyr boomkin which nobody actually does.
Wooooow a 65% nerf turns into a 56.25% nerf. That’s just not enough. Right direction but not even close to enough. If more cdr from 2 piece keeps it from lining up w/ convoke then the “buff” to the 2 piece is useless. And every other covenant is completely dead in pve so convoke is actually just the only “choice”. The problem is you can’t make the 4 piece viable for ST w/o making it omega busted for AoE. You’re making it so hard on yourself by trying to fix feral w/ a tier set when easy fixes lie in the spec itself. Easy solution that actually everyone already knows and has stated repeatedly. Buff Feral’s baseline abilities. Need more AoE dmg? Buff thrash, buff Primal Wrath initial dmg, buff swipe dmg. Need more ST? Buff bite, or rake. Although hell, why even worry about the single target, it’s not like anyone’s going to bring a feral to raid anyway when it has half the utility and a generally worse dmg profile than balance. Can we get a dev that actually pays attention to our spec please? Like someone that works on it regularly in ways that are effective and actually make sense. If you’re afraid of making it busted, just make small changes once a week to different areas until it’s in a spot where it needs to be. I don’t think that’s asking for too much.
Except that in pve, everyone IS playing nf. It’s the only viable choice. Venthyr has been dead since day 1 and is even more dead now that it doesn’t line up w/ berserk. Kyrian was potentially an option for 9.2 before the tier set nerf and the kyrian lego nerf. Necro lego does literally nothing in single target and necro is just awkward in aoe cuz of how the ability and the lego works and even still is just worse. But that was kind of my point in my post earlier. Fix the baseline class cuz tuning the lego is just giving themselves an impossible job.
There are few overlapping issues with Balance Druid PvE:
baseline is weak, it was in a good spot initially but got weaker and weaker with every patch for the sake of covenant balancing
baseline doesn’t have good DPS niche, previously you would say it was spread uncapped AoE and good 3 minute CD that worked well for both single target / AoE, but after numerous nerfs to the Starfall and uncapping other classes’ AoE, baseline AoE kit is hardly competitive, so is baseline single target
3 minute CD was a good niche on its own before 9.2 if you consider full package (best covenant / best legendary); in 9.2 though no tier bonus / single legendary setup was brought down to the point when it is not good overall pick, unless you want to burst something down every 3 minutes; in realistic competitive scenarios overall single target damage is low both in raid and in M+, AoE damage in M+ is very low outside of cooldowns; at the same time many classes / specs that in the same no tier bonus / single legendary category beat Balance Druid in almost every damage aspect by a mile
players were hoping that single target is going to be good / competitive with 4 piece tier bonus and double legendary, and it is a recurring theme every major patch for many classes / specs, how about balancing it to be good and competitive both before and after said power gains? (and we were extremely lucky with changes before 9.2, and how many times it was that entire specs went dead in a similar scenario)
it is a reasonable thing to balance tier sets across the classes / specs to be the same % gain, but it only works in overall scheme of things when other things are balanced, and they are clearly not, specifically baseline damage profile needs major numerical changes
the main thing that is still severely lacking in overall balancing approach is how infrequent it is, most of the time balancing acts are major misses that remain as such for months after patch goes live, you will never get it right without more frequent iterations after release
I won’t piggyback what other ferals here have said (they’re right), so I’m gonna bring up my other concerns.
First being the fact that Phial did more damage in a +15 than my near 100 casts of trash did (or, it did before patch). I grouped with a guardian druid today who did 15k aoe with just thrash + incarn in a +13. The damage for thrash is there, just not for feral. And why not? It’s a (near) required spell to trigger bloodtalons, we’re (supposedly) a bleed class, so why is it still just absolute garbage? Tuning of the spec? What did you tune that benefits us before we get or after we lose the tier set and/or 2nd legendary?
Second being that, per “the guides”, we’re supposed to “owl weave” when we run out of things to do in cat form. Remember when you were requiring us to cast regrowth or entangling roots every other 5 combo points? And then at the end of BFA you said, “that’s not a fun play style for feral, so we’re changing bloodtalons”? If you recognized that forcing us to play off-heals felt bad, why is it that we have to turn to Heart of the Wild and Balance Affinity to make up for damage we don’t have with our own core abilities? You aren’t making guardian or boomkin “stance dance” as part of their core rotation to stay competitive in aoe, so why us? I don’t like balance, so I don’t play it, and I shouldn’t have to when I’m choosing to play feral.
As long as you choose to ignore this spec, it’s numbers, and play style, there will be players out there who love the idea of feral, but feel the need to have to choose a more competitive spec if they want to play high end content. As long as the top PVE streamers keep giving us C/D/F “tier ranks” because of our damage and no utility, people will continue to decline us to their groups (or we’ll get invited then booted with a note, “sorry, thought you were moonkin”). Get the top feral druids on the line and have them talk to your design team, cause you’re absolutely killing it for us.
2pc buff now desyncs it with Convoke (and Tiger’s Fury too) and seems like an incredibly minor gain (edit: sims are showing this is likely indeed correct, very negligible buff).
Possibly holding Berserk until 2 mins anyway which would render it outright not a buff on single target (except for the small 4pc buff). Plus would feel horrible wasting the 2pc by holding.
You either hold it to line with Covoke and waste 2pc (feels bad), or you send early and have a much weaker Berserk without Convoke as well as weaker 4pc without Niya Mastery - AND likely have to hold Tiger’s Fury before that. Just all around not syncing well.
These buffs only really benefit AOE so while you noted your goal was to improve single target here, its really failed at addressing that.
Soul of the Forest becomes even more dominant. A lot of people were excited to use Savage Roar with the pre-nerf 4pc and it seems you did not listen to a lot of the community on things like this (that being, talent diversity / options).
Night Fae remains dominant and pulls further ahead and Necro still weaker than it was before all the nerfs. 2pc sucks for Necro - both because they can’t get the same level of CDR and Berserk is awful for the covenant. Pre-nerf opened up Necrolord on AOE.
No baseline damage profile buffs after all that feedback too is somewhat disappointing.
I think 2pc probably needs to be 0.8s to reliably get Berserk to a 90 second CD to use with Tiger’s Fury then. If it sits too close to 2 mins, we will just be holding to use with Convoke.
I would also like to see talent, cov, etc tuning and possibly dmg profile - after all the feedback on things like this from hundreds of posts this I figured devs would become more aware of how bad some things are.
Happy to be wrong and maybe these buffs are more significant than appears, but doesn’t feel like its what we needed.
Regardless, appreciate the effort but hope this isn’t the last we hear from you.
Just started my shadowlands journey today and I’m having a BLAST! Also fun to see a blue post for us druids! I personally really appreciate the post and communication to us druid players. It really feels validating as a player.
Hope feral can perform well in M+ because I need to get my +15 for my artifact weapon balance of power skin! So hyped:)
. Sucks that boomy keeps getting nerfs when they’re far from the best but what are you on about? They’re definitely still good in pvp.