We will have to wait and see exactly what changes we have in store. Part of me is hoping that the reason why the description was so breif is because the gameplay change is so substansial that it will be covered when we see how the full kit hits the Alpha. I just want some people to keep things in mind about changes.
Feral has been a underwhelming assasination rogue for so long now, i have no clue why people are trying so hard to keep it the way it presently is. If you don’t accept changes it will forever be an unwanted spec with extremely low representation. Everyone wants to defend blood talons, being energy starved (i don’t understand how this is an enjoyable aspect), snapshotted bleeds… yet all ive seen on forums when people aren’t complaining about new expansion changes is how feral is bad and just go play rogue. Everyone for some reason comes out of the woodwork when they make feral changes talking about how much they love the playstyle and whats the spec identity, when for everyone else the identity is always an underpreforming, overcomplicated, undesirable spec to bring in almost every scenario.
1) Blood Talons
this was only a thing since 6.0.1… why are people up in arms everytime they talk about changing this how its the most essential part for the spec feel. Everyone except the few vocal minorities hate it, and makes the spec impossible to balance in a good way with the way it works, which il go into detail on point 2.
2) Snapshots -
Why the hell do you care so much about this? Literally all it does is makes the spec needlessly unforgiving and convoluted, were the only DOT class still maintaining this “feature”. Instead of rip doing 200 damage per second, and rake doing 50… instead you have that as an artificial baseline, which they have to balance stupidly low because the expectation is your lining up your tigers fury, maintaining savage roar, and getting your blood talons on everything you’re applying these abilities on, to enourmously increase the damage which is what they actually balance balance around.
The defense is “i want to be rewarded for excecuting this”. So what your expectation is… blizzard will balance the spec for the baseline… then if you nail the execution you will be rewarded with 50% higher numbers… but it been shown again, and again expansion and patch that its not the case, and i can undertand why. They aren’t going to make us numerically overpowered just because were the most convoluted and hard to execute rotation.
Also…Why do you WANT to do all this extra fluff to increase Rip from 200 damage to 350, when Sin rogues just press a button to do 350 damage ruptures. You are basically begging to be gimped relative other dps spec median balance numbers.
3) Energy starvation (not wanting to be a spammy spec).
I see everyone anytime they have buffed momment of clarity or talked about increasing energy regeneration whine about not wanting to be a spammy spec. I don’t understand this. You don’t necessarily have to be a fury warrior APM to just have enough energy to apply your bleeds and not be terrified to use your combo points on something other than rip. Its also part of the reason that our AOE is very questionable, because throwing away energy on swipes is very unfavourable since we dont get more energy regen per DoTed target like rogues or do great aoe.
My point is… i see these same 3 key arguements and painpoints every time changes are brought up and “spec identity” but almost ALL of the things your fighting to keep are actually things that hurt our spec and viability. What IS feral good at? were told even by blizzard were not supposed to be good at AOE. In cleave fights due to whats listed above is pointlessly challenging to keep on par with other DOT classes that just press a non cd resourceless button for refreshes. Then even our single target is a overly convoluted assasination rogue. Lets stop making the “bleed” fanatasy being dollar assasination rogues… let them actually make feral not a overly convoluted mess. No one cares if you can manage all your resources and pool them perfectly in a pull… especially not all the groups that will continue to decline us because weve always been a meme spec for tryhard elitists that bring literally nothing to groups, that other similar DOT classes can offer with more consistancy and tools.