I find sub and outlaw to be harder than feral, but difficulty can be subjective. Regardless, if feral was simply just a hard spec then it’d to be underrepresented in all content, since core design is the same no matter what you are doing. However, the spec has, at one point or another, been top tier for both PvP and raids, but never for m+.
If it is true, that Blizzard only balances around 15s, then that is just absurd. That’d be like balancing around normal raids or unrated PvP. Everything is viable lol. That might explain the state of m+ “balance” though.
Or perhaps they are more represented in PvP because they have been consistenly great at PvP for over a decade. If the same attention to balancing the spec for m+ were given then you’d see more representation in keys, because the consensus would be to invite one to your group.
Since keys have come out, nobody has ever made a group and said, “Oh, hey, we need a feral.” You can white knight and make excuses all you want, chalk it up to just not enough people playing the spec while you breeze through easy keys thinking everything is gucci, as if the spec’s problems don’t affect you (spoiler alert: they do).
It’s an entirely different balancing thing. Arenas focus on single target, funnel, and pressure. The things Feral excels at. Take 9.0 raid tier for example. Majority was single target focus and they excelled.
The balancing between PvP and PvE has always been off since one change always seems to affect everything across the board.
Problem is: m+ is comprised of only 5 people. Of 36 specs, only 14% of them are making it into the group.
Ferals biggest problem is their middle of the pack. When they have superior damage, someone else’s utility shines. When their utility shines, someone else’s damage is preferred.
If your group doesn’t already have a Druid, Feral is a great fill. They’re good damage (not obscenely good), and good utility (not overall great, but most options available compared one on one to any other melee).
But since it’s a group setting, people can forgo a little utility for increased damage or forego damage for a bit more utility.
And the fact that Balance exists. Meta right now is 2 ranged and 1 melee. Same utility (from being the same class) plus ranged. That’s where we fail to compete.
Never said problems don’t exist or that they don’t effect me. Ferals not being meta isn’t the reason theyve got a low representation is what I’m saying.
As a whole, Feral is a great all rounder.
High representation in a low representation area of the game is not a good metric to go off of. The majority of the minority is still a minority.
Feral has just been considered a more complex spec than most of the others. It’s not as easy as most to pick up and do well on. And that’s been a turn off for many people to play the spec.
Like hunters always having a high population demographic and representation. It’s not because they’re oh so amazing (although they’ve been known to be good consistently). But it’s because they’re considered the easiest class to pick up on.
When someone asks for a starter class, everyone points to BM hunters. They’re not playing the class because of how it plays in the top 5% of keys.
M+ balance does play a role, FotM re-rollers do sway numbers considerably. But even if Feral > Balance, I don’t think we’d see the jump in numbers as one would expect from new balancing. Like everyone who re-rolled to Balance because of the numbers they put up with Convoke at release. So many bad Balance Druids that couldn’t break 2-3k at 210+ ilvl. So so many.
Same would happen with Feral. The numbers would spike and then drop off once they realized they couldn’t do what those who have mained feral for awhile were capable of.
TL;DR - m+ balancing isn’t going to suddenly inflate Ferals representation in the game as a whole
ferals excel at arena because they are passively immune to one of the biggest forms of CC in the pvp game… Polymorph. Have great defenses (bear form) substantial self healing / off healing, amazing CC… Cyclone, several different stuns on short CDs, incap roar, entangling roots (which is often instant cast)
the damage profile of feral suits arena very well. HOWEVER. even if damage wasnt stellar, they still have amazing arena rep because everything about the druid class fits PVP perfectly. i know you are just going to write this off as a QQ post, but its really not. druids are designed top to bottom to perform well in PVP. Resto, Guardian, Balance, Feral… its extremely hard to screw up druid’s pvp when the base of the class is so well honed.
Monk is the least played class, yet WW is 4th most represented dps spec at 15 and higher. If something is good, especially if it’s not just FOTM good, then enough people will use it. There are too many dps specs that are fundamentally more advantageous to bring than feral. When that changes the numbers will change.
Exactly. This is one of those high burst (insane burst windows actually, my monk at 205 is able to pull 15k easy on decent pulls). But if Feral becomes a good choice for M+, it’s not going to suddenly double the overall numbers (in game) of Feral. That’s what I’m saying.
Representation in a specific demographic doesn’t refer to the class as a whole though. As your example with monks prove. That’s all I’m saying good sir
It’s even more impressive that WW is so well represented if it’s the entire class that’s underrepresented. This means there are even fewer players available to switch to WW when it’s desired, as opposed to if there were still a lot of monks, but they just weren’t playing WW.
In the case of druid, you have one of the most played classes, so there are plenty of people who could easily switch to feral. You are saying that those players wouldn’t do so, even if feral became as good or comparably as good a choice for m+ as WW, which is ridiculous to say, in a game littered with optimizers, theorycrafters, and players who will literally do anything for 1% more dps.
Maybe it makes what few ferals remain feel better thinking they are playing some hipster-niche spec that is so 5-D chess-complicated that it’s just beyond the understanding of the casual caveman who clumsily mashes buttons and eyebeams while drooling on a bag of doritos. Feral has been bad in keys for so long, that you come on here ask for something like LotP to improve the situation and the only ferals left are the ones who don’t even realize how significantly this would help us secure spots in m+.
The problem with doing that is you now make that SPEC required for content. Like Monks and DH and their special physical/magic buff. But the thing is, you can take any DH and any Monk for those buffs. 2 specs and 3 specs respectively.
Giving Feral LoTP now makes Feral, not Druid, but Feral required for content because of their unique/significant buff.
That in general is a bad design. But giving it to Druids as it should be in the case of giving LoTP to someone, doesn’t help Ferals cause at all either. What would need to happen would be make something like Scent of Blood which is a dead talent become baseline, or make PW baseline and add in something else that could help.
LoTP isn’t the answer though, as nice as it would be.
Only fights after Council mattered for composition and we were bad for Sludgefist (because we were melee), bad for Generals because we had no funnel with Draught, and mediocre for Denathrius.
The big problem with Feral is that regardless of numbers, the class is just very narrowly focused and inflexible mechanically. Skewing our damage profile so hard towards FB vs. bleeds, Berserk being a very inflexible 3 minute CD, and lacking any sort of on demand burst is always going to kneecap Feral as a competitive spec at the high end (top 50ish guilds).
If we could see some major changes, I’d like to see:
Berserk completely reworked. Bring back the energy cost reduction, roll Frenzyband’s effect into it baseline, increase duration to 20 seconds. Or just get rid of it conceptually and replace it with something like the 9.2 4pc. Right now it’s both not a very strong CD and also has too long of a CD.
Do something with Thrash. I’d like to see them go the direction of much higher bleed damage but with a short CD (18-30 seconds). Make it a 12 second duration bleed, 2 second tick, and increase the energy cost.
Primal Wrath baseline, trash Brutal Slash. Revisit Savage Roar and maybe build in some synergy between SR and nu-Thrash.
Do something with Tiger’s Fury. If you could swap it for a short CD single target burst (say, a 45 sec CD version of Feral Frenzy with the energy burst supplanting the 5 CP) that’d be an interesting direction to take the class in.
I don’t think these are perfect ideas or even good ones but I do think that they get at our major issues. I don’t think Feral really hurts for utility as much as it hurts for flexibility in our damage profile.
Yeah I went back and looked at some of that data and it appears it was about mid level. I took a break back in 9.0 and I thought at the time they were top tier in CN. Perhaps it was just a few fights. But looking at it, as long as there wasn’t a lot of down time on the bosses or lots of swapping, Feral was #1 or #2 melee dps.
That data is after the 0.5 patch and several major Sludgefist nerfs, most importantly the rubble nerf. Prior to that we couldn’t keep a melee spot on serious progression.
Although it points to the same issue. The problem isn’t that Feral does bad damage, that’s not been true at any point this expansion. It’s that the niche where Feral excels is pretty narrow, and if you’re choosing a Feral for your last melee spot you’re forgoing a spec that might do slightly less damage when compared directly in the same niche but brings a much wide breadth of toolkit to the raid.
Yup my bad, but still holds true for 9.0 not number one on the board, but still best melee for the fight
Yeah and that’s the problem I pointed out earlier in the thread too, and it’s not just raids. Utility > DPS or
DPS > Utility
Whereas feral seems to fit in with dps = utility. Middle ground. Issue being, what puts us at middle ground is covered by someone else a bit better, so it’s okay to sacrifice a little bit of one for another.
Well, I think that’s overly reductive and conflates damage toolkit with ‘utility’.
‘Utility’ gets way too much spotlight when it comes to the problems with Feral, IMO. Innervate/Treants/LOTP don’t fix the fundamental problems with our toolkit and damage profile, which is how you end up with “I don’t know give them a 5% crit aura with self healing again???”.
I think something Blizz could do pretty quickly would be to shift more of our damage back into Bleeds and out of FB, especially PW base damage and Thrash.
That’s why you give LotP to guardian too. This is how it was before they got rid of it btw. There’s nothing wrong with certain classes (or specs) desired for difficult content. There are comps in arena that use certain specs over others, every season/tier there’s a meta tank and multiple meta dps that get priority invites over other specs, and then there’s chaos brand, which you can get from just two different specs.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting a specific combination of specs. It’s what makes the game non-homogenous. You don’t need any one spec; based on your comp you might prioritize one (like WW monk if you already have MM hunter + war), but you can run multiple comps. In raids this isn’t a big deal, because you can invite more than five people. If certain specs are required then that’s a great thing for the game because it makes your raid less homogenized and it gives other specs more opportunity to get invited to higher m+ keys.
Then people will just wait out for Guardians. They’re already amazing tanks. A lot of the tanks are fairly close to one another in terms of balancing.
Right now Guardian is your Meta tank, and they’re only getting stronger in 9.2. So it’ll be Guardian > Feral in 5 mans. Still doesn’t solve the problem.
Being desired is one thing. Being required is another. Every raid has at least 1 DH and 1 Monk, regardless of which spec for their buffs. Giving the buff to only Feral would REQUIRE (not desire), a Feral in the comp for their buff.
And like I mentioned already, giving it to both Guardian and Feral, we just got passed up for 2 specs now (tank and ranged) within the same class.
Right, but as a DPS, they’re not competing against themselves for a slot. And because of their buff, they are REQUIRED in raids. As is a Monk. I’m not saying Havoc is required, but DH is required. BrewMaster isn’t required, but MONK is required. The class is required, not the spec.
With LoTP, Feral, a spec, would be required and not the class. It’s a bad design.
Wanting and needing are two different things though. I agree with you, and wanting a specific set up isn’t bad, and with 36 specs, you can tailor a group many a different ways. But LoTP would push past “want” and go into “need”. At least in Raids. 5% crit may be negligible in 5 mans, but in Raids it would be required. And then the issue still stands…we haven’t increased our desirability in M+ =/
Not every comp/group uses a guardian. If you’re running any of the other tanks (which people do, believe it or not) then you might want to get LotP from a feral… or maybe you’re a caster-heavy group and want chaos brand instead, or maybe you’re a physical dmg group but want to go with a higher io war or monk. The point is, at least there are multiple options that feral can be a part of, unlike now.
Yeah, and it doesn’t matter for raids, because the group size isn’t limited to 5 players. Requiring certain specs is nothing new for raids… it’s the norm. More damage is more damage, whether it comes from group buffs or certain specs just being better.
Havoc competes for vengeance for a spot when vengeance is meta (two specs, just like guardian and feral, and one less than the same situation with monk). Same thing with WW/BM/MW. So what if you need either a guardian or feral to optimize your raid group? Bad design is homogenization, where everything is the same, and that’s why we have way more unique buffs now than we used to. It’s why they got rid of scrolls, and why drums aren’t as good as a real hero/lust.
It doesn’t matter for raids. They unpruned and de-homogenized to make buffs required. There are plenty of raid spots, and giving feral and guardian LotP would literally be no different than having one tank and one dps spec offer chaos brand. Also, the 5% crit would really only be required for early mythic raiding. You said yourself the game is balanced around heroic, and you don’t need a maximum optimized group to clear heroic.
TL;DR: LotP would increase feral desirability in m+ because not every m+ group uses a guardian druid. Plenty of raid spots to go around.
While true, a lot of your world first racers have a lot of sway over the community. When they say they didn’t have a use for suchandsuch spec in their roster, guess what happens. It’s misinterpreted to “suchandsuch spec” is no good and can’t compete in raids.
Then they get blacklisted. Thus Ferals stigma.
Still don’t think it would have the effect you’re thinking. You keep talking at the “highest” keys. Rogues will still take that spot because they have good/better utility and better damage.
The buff we would bring doesn’t suddenly increase our utility. It doesn’t suddenly boost our DPS by 15%, it doesn’t change the design of Feral and that there’s no burst and most of our damage is end-loaded. And you said that’s where the flaw is. Suddenly bringing a 5% Crit buff doesn’t give us that AoE burst thats desired.
Feral can fit into any group that doesn’t have a Druid in it. As said before, they’re not horrible on damage, and for a melee spot, bring the most utility possible.
A group buff is utility though. LotP might not boost our dps by 15% but it would boost the group’s dps by ~5%. It’s why people want AI, battle shout, mystic touch, and chaos brand. As for our damage profile, that can (and should) be tuned each season, but core buffs like the ones mentioned are more permanent, and help to maintain consistency in representation… something feral has never even sniffed in m+.
Consider, hypothetically (because I know the dps isn’t equal), if you could invite a 10k dps WW that offers 5% physical dps group buff or a 10k dps feral that offers a BR, you’d usually take the monk. The group buff is more valuable, especially since our only big utility spell BR can be replaced by nine other specs or an engineer (funny how they get rid of scrolls but decide to keep that). So, even if our damage profile changes (and it looks like we’ll have more burst AoE in 9.2), it still won’t matter without LotP.
not number one on the board, but still best melee for the fight