I also want to point out that with World of Warcraft and its entire fundamental design behind the graphics engine and combat systems, is incompatible with the type of visceral ‘sword or claw striking the enemy in a believable way’ mechanics that some action RPGs do very well. Sorry, Blizzard, but that ship sailed a LONG time ago.
Your goal when making changes like this should NOT be to shoehorn in verisimilitude, but to increase the fun of playing the game. Reducing melee range across the board then creates situations where, in a dungeon, having three melee is even more of a liability than it is now. Three melee players (plus the tank) crowding into a group of pulled mobs with everyone’s abilities going off and flashing and covering up ground effects that could kill instantly is not ‘fun’ gameplay.
You, Blizzard, have made melee positioning extremely important. These changes put all melee in the same zone of danger around an enemy and creates crowding issues. It was much, much better when some melee could stagger that zone some.
Also, one last thought: It is extremely frustrating when I am not able to contribute dps because I can’t reach the mob.
9 Likes
Played feral off and on since WoD.
Feral rn feels so damned good. It is my favorite spec in the game currently.
The melee attack range being taken just… sounds terrible. Kinda makes me skeptical if I should sit it for TWW or not bc I don’t like boomy that much lol.
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I was playing my enhancement shaman a little this week, and with storming and all the swirlies and stuff to avoid in melee in Nokhud, man… that range felt extremely bad. If that’s how feral is going to feel, I don’t know man… I might have to rethink my favorite spec entirely. So sad.
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Yeah I mean it sucks but good luck getting them to revert a game-wide change intended for numerous classes just for Feral, will just leave the others questioning why they had theirs removed but not Feral.
Can’t even get the raid buff situation solved when there’s numerous classes involved. For example my guild with a Bear and DK tank, there’s minimum 5 mandatory raid buffs in melee, and 6 if Windwalker is good. Leaves me with basically one or so spots to compete for each tier where Feral has to be better than every other option, and that’s hoping raid leader/officers aren’t playing melee too for guaranteed spots.
Why I bring this up is any dev with common sense can see the extreme inequity by design, especially if you don’t have the ‘right’ tanks, but good luck to any dev trying to get other classes buffs pruned for what is game-wide change. They likely have no power to change things with buffs just like they won’t have power to save bonus range specifically for x spec. Got to have this crap buff system in specifically for Liquid/Echo to min-max (despite them hating it) and punish a tone of other players (wait 6-9 months for new content to gamble for your raid spot) and reward others (guaranteed spots because buff, in for every boss, no stress or gambling every tier, and prioritised loot/tier), and also punish lower guilds - see streams/logs of mid/low guilds sometimes missing a buff entirely cause harder for them to min-max comps or more common to have absentees.
Basically you either reroll, quit, or accept it and hope Feral is OP in other ways. They’ll listen to players on spec specific stuff but there’s no chance game-wide stuff like bonus melee range will change. Maybe if they didn’t add it to the most popular melee (Ret) last xpac it would have been fine to keep, but eventually too many classes had it and too much disparity between different melee. Funnily enough same patch they gave Paladin 2x raid buffs.
Sometimes you just get screwed because of other classes.
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And yet, for most of its rotation, Ret is keeping its increased range. Only Crusader Strike and melee autos are losing +3… the rest of its kit is basically greater than an Evoker.
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Yes and no.
Ferals AoE is a radius around the avatar
Shamans AoE is largely frontal cone in terms of melee abilities.
Given that, Feral is still going to feel better as you dont have to focus on a singular target and hope the splash damage hits, where with Feral you can still be hitting them even as youre running out of the pack.
Not so much with Enhance.
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I sure hope you’re right. Honestly, I’m shocked there’s not more feedback about it in the alpha forums.
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The feedback of the limited amount of people they invited to the alpha is pretty sketchy at best. They did not do a big alpha this time for whatever reason and the feedback shows.
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They are not really looking for feedback, it is more like take it or leave it approach they are using.
This change was introduced to a number of different melee specs. Without and increase to damage ( which they did NOT do) this is a nerf to a lot of melee abilities across a number of classes.
Range and mobility is going to be king.
Why can’t feral just be top Dps , for one expansion? Just one 
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Even one patch. We are desperate over here for any time in the sun.
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