So I saw this topic being talked about a little in the Dragonflight beta Druid forums but I don’t have access to those forums so here I am.
I wanted to discuss a little bit about Owlweaving and whether or not Feral Druids want it to be a supported playstyle going forward. For those that don’t know, Owlweaving refers to when you are out of energy and would otherwise have nothing else to do with your GCDs, so you quickly swap to Moonkin Form and fire off a Sunfire (or a Starsurge during HotW) so that the otherwise empty GCD does some extra damage.
Now personally, I haven’t seen very many Ferals who love this playstyle. I also fall into that camp. But we all do it because not doing it would be to give up on free damage. But I have seen some Ferals who enjoy it, so I wanted to briefly look at the reasons to like it vs. the reasons to dislike it.
Pros:
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It’s fun to utilize multiple forms as part of your damage rotation.
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It’s fun to have more active GCDs.
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It’s fun to have a damage option when you are disconnected from the boss.
Cons:
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Cat has a hard-set GCD of 1.0s, Moonkin does not. This means that Owlweaving windows can feel jarring as you swap between two different GCD speeds.
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Many people enjoy energy-based classes specifically because they alternate between periods of high activity and periods of low activity. With Owlweaving, you no longer have any period of low activity.
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A little more of a fluffy theming reason, but cat is 4 fite, not moonfaire spam. If we wanted to be a laser chicken, we’d have picked Balance.
Personally, I would love it if Owlweaving was not the optimal way to play the class, so far going into DF, all signs point to it continuing to be the best way to play Feral. Now I am sympathetic to the idea that owlweaving provides stronger class fantasy, that even though we specialize in cat-form fighting, we still have other core parts of the Druid toolkit that we can use in our battles. But for me at least, the playstyle of an energy class outweighs this. I am not willing to sacrifice the entire defined playstyle of an energy-based class in order to owlweave. However I do want to preserve the ability to use our Moonkin form in Feral spec, because I like that last pro bullet point of having a ranged option when I am forced to disconnect from the boss. But I would prefer it if that was the ONLY time Moonkin form was useful as opposed to a regular part of my melee roation.
Now I’m not sure what change should be made in order to break owlweaving that preserves the aspect about it that I like, and I’m also aware that if I simply refuse to owlweave at all, I will do less damage but not THAT much less damage and at the level I play at it won’t be the end of the world. But I think that especially with DF refocusing so much on class identity and class toolkits that now might be a good time to have this conversation. So I’d like to hear other Druids’ thoughts regardless of whether you like owlwevaing or hate it.