How well do the changes meet the goals described?
As for hidden information, those have mostly been removed or better displayed (swarm particularly ones that are in-the-air, progress towards bloodtalons, snapshotting to an extent). 3 things that can be improved:
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Whether or not using skull-bash would cause you to charge towards your target or not. On live, your character charges if you are between 6 and 13 yards, though there is no indicator for this.
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Pouncing Strikes snapshot for rake isnt differentiated in any way from tigers fury. One idea Iâve seen is to make the icon purple+some sort of fade around the edge if its buffed by stealth. So it would be purple+faded if buffed by stealth not buffed by tf, purple+faded + bleeding if buffed by stealth + tf. Bleeding and red if buffed by tf but not stealth. And its current default icon if neither.
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Primal Wrath ability icon is not adjusted to be âbleedingâ when tigers fury is up.
Gameplay clarity pain points youâre still experiencing, such as information thatâs important to playing the spec well, but is difficult to track.
There are 4 things Iâm looking at. The first is Berserk rotation for 2 reasons. 1, having the overcapped combo points be displayed as a buff instead of showing up under combo points in some fashion is very unintuitive. It is fairly common that people are completely unaware of its existence until I or someone else informs them.
The typical route that Feral Druids employed to show these combo points was by changing the color of the first few combo points to be blue-- though this alone isnât exactly accessibility-friendly since colorblindness does in fact exist-- so maybe like a shimmering effect on the border of those combo points can be included? Iâd say either implement that or show 8 combo points while we are in Berserk.
The second point of confusion has to deal with Claw Rampage. Currently, the effect triggers per target hit, which means on live we prefer to spam brutal slash or thrash-- because these hit more than one target-- in order to generate more Ravages: In Midnight this likely means swipe spamming instead. This isnât very intuitive, since most people would look at applying Rakes as higher priority.
The second concern at the moment has to deal with Chomp. As it stands, with the 30 energy threshold, it can situationally be difficult to dip that low, and cast the spell in time when we do, due to the gcd. Currently on Alpha this spell seems to update its availability on some sort of server-tick, which means even when we are below 30 energy, we cannot always cast the spell. Ordinarily, this would be clear and intuitive (assuming server-tick issue is fixed), however the energy constraint is likely to lead to gameplay where we spam Rake to meet the threshold, since clearcasting makes our shred/swipe casts free, and thus we arenât dumping energy. The alternative is not much better-- that is, cancelling our clearcasts altogether to meet this threshold. This only gets worse as our haste increases over the expansion.
The third point of possible confusion has to deal with the talent Coiled to Spring. It is unclear to a new player if this means we should be overcapping in order to trigger this effect. Currently on live, it is only worth overcapping if it would trigger Bloodtalons when you need to refresh its buff. Well, that, and during Berserk as druid of the claw as essentially an extra chance to trigger Ravage. There is absolutely no way a new player would think to not overcap all the time. I think this talent should be redesigned to trigger upon reaching 5 combo points (or 8 during berserk if you so desire).
Lastly, Sudden Ambush is consumed by Rake, Shred or Swipe. Logically speaking, if one were to read this, they would think that the crit bonus applies to the full duration of Rake (ie snapshotting the very thing that was being replaced). And as such, intuitively, they would think that Sudden Ambush should be spent on Rake. In practice, rake will virtually always be the wrong spell to cast with Sudden Ambush available. It is possible that it is worth using on low target counts with Double-Clawed Rake talented⊠though that only makes things more confusing. My proposition? Remove Rake from this buff. Shred VS Swipe is pretty clearcut⊠usuallyâŠ
Building characters for different types of contentâdo you feel you can get the tools you need for dungeons, delves, raids, and PvP?
For raid, not really. I suppose it is likely better than what Feral talents currently offer on live servers. For instance, Hunger for Battle wouldve been pretty nice for Forgeweaver Araz. We would use cooldowns on the first set of adds roughly 30s into the fight and then have a 20% amp to put into the boss. And then we would use cooldowns again on the first set of adds after intermission.
Frantic Frenzy is a bit awkward as it is an aoe-exclusive talent. It provides zero value in single target, which means there needs to be a sizable amount of AoE on the boss fight to justify its selection. That being said, this is a more âsnap-AoEâ damage, something we have historically been extremely poor at handling.
Blood-Spattered, in theory, provides funnel to the spec-- that being our Single-Target damage increases with the presence of more adds. With current tuning, the cost of using Primal Wrath twice as often as Rip is more damage lost than Blood-Spattered would give. Blood-Spattered also requires a high uptime of additional targets, since its value in single-target is meager, and 10t is very rare in raid-- though this is just a tuning thing. I think reducing the target count where it gains its maximum value would go a long way to making this more accessible in Raid.
These changes do make our cooldowns a bit more flexible in raid however, since we can now choose to have cooldowns every minute, 90s or 2minutes. Though it is a bit unfortunate that we are forced to talent into Berserk: Heart of the Lion. Sure-- on live we almost always selected it anyway, but sometimes it was worth spending the point elsewhere, giving us 3minute cds. (or what would be 2:30 cds now). It would be nice if there was a choice node on Heart of the Lion that did something else.
For M+, the above talents are even better, but I am a bit concerned about where that will leave our single-target damage. On live servers, this was mitigated by the pure strength of Adaptive Swarm and the minor loss in single target that Unbridled represented. The replacement talents confer zero benefit in single target unless the boss has adds are adds are chained into it (to benefit from Hunger for Battle/Blood-Spattered). Some Feral Druids already feel their single-target is lackluster on liveâ so this will likely need addressing at some point in the alpha-beta cycle.
Another concern ferals have for m+ is the natural desyncing of Tigerâs Fury and Berserk due to downtime between pulls. Since berserk is very strong, it is a common strategy to send tigers fury even when not actively in combat in order to Berserk as soon as its available. Perhaps this is an area that can be explored as a replacement for Pantherâs Guile.
other stuff not specifically requested for
- Sudden Ambush
So the new version of Sudden Ambush makes our next shred rake or swipe critically strike. These spells are currently pretty weak, and we also gain critical strike from talents-- namely Lycaraâs Teachings and Strike for the Heart-- 21% crit by itself. Sudden Ambush would devalue crit even more, whilst also not tuned competitively enough with auto-crit alone. Our crit rate could be converted to something else (ie crit damage). Another alternative is maybe Multi-Strike, as long as it wouldnt affect Rake snapshot.
- Focused Frenzy
Pretty cool talent, 30 seconds lines it up with tigerâs fury. This was well received when it was a portion of the tier set bonus back in Amirdrassil. Though it needs to be more than just 15 seconds off. Effectively, this node is half of Feral Frenzyâs value plus whatever little you get from the better alignment. If we assume all the points are similar in value to each other, this means Focused Frenzy will be worse by default.
- Apex / Convoke in regards to being able to trigger Unseen Predator
For whatever reason, on alpha, Apex triggers Unseen Predator but Convoke Bites do not. This is inconsistent with how these two spells were treated in regards to benefits in the past. ie: Saber Jaws doesnt apply to either, but Taste for Blood applies to both.
- Swipe (and Shred too for that matter)
Swipe is currently very weak, and just received additional nerfs going into Alpha. With the removal of Brutal Slash, the concern is that Rip/Bite are going to be a an excessively large portion of our damage. This isnât an issue with Rip and Bite, builders in general just need buffed.
- Lunar Inspiration
I believe this got overly-hit by the stat squish, as it is doing much less damage relative to the rest of the kit than before.
- Icon redundancies
Dreadful Bleeding/Rip/Rip and Tear all have the same icon. (this is even partially corrected by rip and tear stealing Veinripperâs icon for its debuff, funnily enough)
Apex Predatorâs Craving and Rampant Ferocity share an icon.
Ripâs âbleedingâ effect when it is buffed by Tigerâs Fury looks very similar to Primal Wrath.
Savage Fury shares an icon with Killing Strikes
Ferocious Bite, Taste for Blood and Blood-Spattered all share the same icon.
Raging Fury, Killing instincts and Hunger for Battle share an icon.
Wild Slashes, Claw Rampage and Grievous Wounds share an icon.
Ruthless Aggression and Feral Frenzy share an icon.
Tigers Fury and Carnivorous Instinct share an icon.
Incarn and Ashamaneâs share an icon-- Sometimes this can confuse people into thinking they have incarn talented when they actually have Convoke.
Entangling Vortex and Ursolâs Vortex have duplicate icons.
- Unseen Predator encourages this cooldown pattern â rake rip feral frenzy bite shred convoke. The Shred is the â2ndâ combo point builder after rip in this case. Making it the first doesnt help, because if you Feral Frenzy, then you cant bite and then convoke while fully buffing convoke. Convoke itself cannot trigger Unseen Predator so you canât rely on that either. This is because Unseen Predator buff only lasts for 5 seconds but convoke lasts for 4. This is weird and unintuitive.
Iâm sure there is more to say but wanted to get something down early in the cycle.
