Thank you, thank you, thank you. You addressed many of my issue with this talent tree. I’ll go further more, wildpower surge… going from cat to bear (for feral)… does either of them (mangle/swipe) count as builders and yield a combo points? Also do they count towards bloodtalons? And Tear Down the Mighty is weak (feral).
Hot Take: Make Wildpower Surge the signature ability at the top and build the tree around that.
Just tested, in current gear.
A rip is doing about 100k damage over its duration, plus or minus
A T&C Maul is doing about 120k damage.
One can only assume that a Massive Attack will need to hit quite a bit harder to make this tree worth taking.
Swapping to cat will lose you rage, uptime on your Dreadful Wound bleed from the massive attack, defensives and health while in cat form, and your capstone if you’re in Beserk during this time, and undoubtably quite a bit more.
Don’t think 150k damage every 30sec or so is going to be worth it (in current damage) vs 5% mangle damage (which works very well in beserk) and reduced magic damage taken.
Not sure what is so hard about just giving bears Rip in bear form if that is what they want to allow us. If they want us kitty weaving, they will have to up the damage we can get from it significantly. With no cat mastery, bear/cat bleeds hit like a noodle.
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I’m a bit of a feral druid noob: is the dreadful wound subtext for feral intending to encourage some type of dot maintenance gameplay while tf is up or just supposed to act as rng insurance so you’re not holding onto your proc after it ends? If it’s the latter, that’s fine. If it’s the former my inner frost mage is vomiting remembering icy veins shadowlands with icy propulsion.
The later. Just insurance so you don’t try to hold it.
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SHADO-PAN CAPSTONE
Wisdom of the Wall: Every 10 Flurry Strikes, become infused with a Wisdom of the Wall for 20 seconds. Wisdom of the Wall grants the following effects:
- Your critical strikes deal an additional 30% damage.
- Your Mastery’s effect is increased by 25%.
- Versatility now also increases your Dodge and critical strike chance by 25% of its effect.
- Flurry Strikes now deal additional Shadow damage to all uncontrolled enemies within 6 yards.
Now thats an amazing capstone! Might have to reroll Monk next expansion.
Shado-Pan are the closest talents to Druid of the Claw and none of that Hero talent tree is recycled DF talents.
That NEW versatilty bonus and that huge Mastery boost are very nice. Could Guardians get more Dodge bonus too? Thanks!
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Massive Attack Maul, from the way it sounds it should have some kind of devastating effect on the target being hit rather than more AOE, I would be okay if it remained single target. Something like throwing the target off balance, making them stumble, or delivering a crushing blow.
Effects I could see happening:
Increased Critical Strike Chance with Maul by 10%
Crits grant damage shield equal to 20% of the damage done
Target stumbles, making it easier to avoid/dodge their attacks
Target armor shatters, taking more damage from your attacks
Refreshes your Bleed effects by 6 seconds, up to 18 seconds
Interrupts casting when Massive Attack is active
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Why not …?
Martial Precision: Attacks penetrate 10% of the target’s armor.
How is Shado-Pan so good!???
is this WotLK???
This tree has got me considering maining Feral over Boomy again after nearly a decade 
The irony is most monks (that are posting) aren’t happy and yet here you are asking for it. These forums never cease to amaze.
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I was curious why, and since I really only read this from the perspective of a bear, I went back through it from a cat POV.
The rotation is exactly the same as it is now, shoves more damage into Ferocious Bite in multiple ways. The only difference from right now will be that you can go bear as a defensive CD, pop back out and have some of the HP/Armor from your bear swap retained for 6s (which is not bad, but is just a cumbersome defensive talent).
You get harder bites that proc and deal some AOE, which is what Feral does now with Rampant Ferocity. You get a bleed that procs after a big bite that you can keep up with your normal rotation. If kept up it will give another 5% (one assumes) to FB damage through Taste for Blood.
That all flows well, but it will have essentially no change in playstyle from what cats do now. Your rotation will not change, or feel any different, from today (outside of tier changing…)
Frankly, it would be nice to feel like these talents made a difference in either how bear OR cat played, but they all look super passive.
Also, noticing that both Feral trees have talents for Feral Frenzy in them. Is no tree going to be associated with Adaptive Swarm? Will that still be in the spec tree come the xpac???
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Looks like I’m about to play the role of the lone dissenter here.
I’ve always loathed kitty weaving. No offense to its enthusiasts, but for me, being a bear means embracing the bear lifestyle, not dabbling in feline frivolities.
What I’d like to see is the left-hand side of the tree being choice nodes where one choice embarrasses the kitty weaving, while the other choice rewards you for staying in your role’s form.
I love the thrash build playstyle and have played it even when it’s worse than the moonfire builds, like it has been this season, but the talent tree as it stands right now is going to force me to take the Elune’s Chosen talents as it won’t force me out of bear.
Moo!
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First, agreed that swapping forms might prove cumbersome. I hope we see a GCD reduction for form swapping.
Bigger picture: when Wildstalker was the only option revealed for Feral, I think I was in a similar boat—my main thought was “this does nothing to change the rotation, it’s just going to be a proc that I largely ignore,” but honestly, now that I see both options, I think that’s what they’re going for AND I actually think it’s a good thing.
I think these trees should be largely about the “feel.” I trust that they’ll be tuned in a way that my bleeds in Wildstalker will feel big and I’ll have good self-healing sustain, and that my Ferocious Bites (or Massive Attacks—I’m in the “fan of the name” camp) will feel like they’re trucking enemies and I’ll feel more tanky when I need it in Druid of the Claw. And I don’t think it’s an issue if my rotation doesn’t dramatically change between the two.
I think Wildstalker is well-suited to work with Swarm, even (and perhaps especially) the beekeeper build. Originally, I felt that Wildstalker should have something that generates Swarms—I still kind of think it’d be an interesting interaction, but potentially problematic to implement—but the emphasis on bleeds does enough (or should do enough with the right tuning) to make Swarm a great choice with the tree.
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You are far from a lone dissenter. Most of the high level bears I talk to have no desire to swap to kitty. I generally see that from people who do low content or have no clue what they are talking about (or massively just miss the first few expansions when kitty weaving was still a thing).
This tree won’t force kitty swapping (without major adjustments). You’ll take the passive talent and just be a bear mauling your head off.
You have 3 different paths to choose from. You dont have to choose the left path that leans in to that
I agree with you 100%! I actually like that the trees are mostly passive, but encourage different types of builds-- one based more strongly around bleeds, and the other more strongly around bites. I kind of thought this was their intention in the first place, so I guess that’s why I already liked Wildstalker.
There are still concerns I have about Druid of the Claw specifically that I brought up in my previous post but aside from that I am feeling a bit more optimistic. Just have to hope that they are tuned at least somewhat competitively so people can pick the one they prefer.
I’m not sure this is true.
“Unlike regular talents, you will earn all 10 Hero Talent points on your way to level 80, allowing you to unlock all the hero talents, similarly to Legion Artifact Weapons.”
You are correct. We will get all of them, sans whatever choice node options we don’t select. Anyone who takes this tree with have some cat switching option, but nobody is going to use the choice node for it unless they buff the everliving hell out of it.
You can’t even clear heroic, quit talking as if you’re some authority on bears.