Hi,
I am thinking levelling my feral again.
I liked playing it end legion - where they removed the req to play with bloodtalons , which I absolutely hate. And it didnt feel as braindead like other Melee e.g DH - it was just right for me.
Then quit in BFA - where bloodtalons are a thing again
Feral seem good in shadowlands and bloodtalons is still being used but the talent seems to have changed
Overall how difficult are they to play now?
You’ll find you have to do more to do the same dps other classes can do with less - if that makes sense.
Bit more difficult than it was in Legion. Bloodtalons is even more clunky than it was in BfA. But if you played it in Legion it shouldn’t take long to pick up again. It’s still not as brain dead as others
Games hard 4 feral
You’d be fine, toughest part is gearing like anything else.
BT exists, and it’s weirder to do, but it’s also not a requirement to play with.
FF actually isn’t terrible.
As others have said the new Bloodtalons is clunky as hell but is still the top DPS talent if you play it right. The other 2 are perfectly viable and make the class easier to play but it’s still a lot of work for admittedly just solid DPS, nothing insane but can definitely pull respectable numbers.
The specs biggest problem is it is extremely lacking in group utility. I consider myself a feral main for a while now and I geared it to 220 ilvl early on in SL, but have since fully swapped to Boomkin just because it’s so much better basically in every way right now. It does more overall damage on most Nathria fights and all of M+, has more utility and is a ranged dps in a heavily ranged meta.
Feral is not extremely lacking in group utility. It has a huge amount of utility, it’s just that Balance gets 2 more utility buttons than we do, and so people think that mean’s we’re bad at it.
A well played feral is more useful to a group than most other melee are capable of being.
Every single class has been simplified and stripped of any class identity
Other than typhoon(which Boomkin also has), what does Feral bring that let’s say a DK doesn’t? DK has brez, does much better burst AOE and solid single target damage plus AMS for pride and high magic damage encounters. Or a rogue with shroud+can cheese NW weapons to solo carry that dungeon. Or Enh shaman with earth ele/lust/WF totem. I am going to need some examples of this “feral utility” to back up your claims.
And this is coming from someone whose played Feral for years including all of BFA doing +15 keys with my guild. Feel free to look up my Warcraft logs, I did all of nathria as Feral and average 95+% parses, I still swapped because Feral just brings nothing unique to the table. When melee slots are already limited in 5 man content there’s no reason to bring one when a DK is better in every way.
Edit: I forgot to address the “2 extra utility buttons” that Boomkin has. Not only would 2 extra utility spells be nothing to write off, they in fact have more than 2. Boomkins have Typhoon PLUS Ursols (Feral can only have one or the other), they can off heal with HOTW, they have innervate for your healer, and have treants for your tank. That is significantly more than just 2 extra utility buttons and boomkins are brought for treants alone in higher keys, it’s just a bonus they also do way more AOE damage than feral does on top of having more utility.
Battle healing and burst off healing.
It’s PITA but if you play with heal bot or some other method to quickly asses and heal the group it can help especially on heal intensive affixes.
It’s not flashy and most people, even healers, wont know you’re doing it, they’ll just think the run was going smoother.
At the end of the day it’s up to you but you can use MoC instead and it’s a 2-4% DPS loss but it’s still fairly reasonable.
You could also go heavy on DoT’s with FF, circle legendary, and owlweaving. Unless you are trying to do mythic progression you shouldn’t have any issues.
Can’t speak to raid and PvP, but they have a lot of utility in M+, especially depending on the affixes.
We are able to Soothe which is extremely valuable on some trash pools and obviously on raging week.
We can remove curses and poisons which, again, is rather valuable depending on the dungeon you’re in and the comp of your group.
Hell, with this last raging week there were times I wanted to play a warrior so I didn’t have to constantly soothe and de-curse.
As far as I’m aware, a DK can’t do either of those things.
We are able to Soothe which is extremely valuable on some trash pools and obviously on raging week. We can remove curses and poisons which, again, is rather valuable depending on the dungeon you’re in and the comp of your group.
Boomkin can do all of that and more, those aren’t unique to feral. Plus Hunter can soothe and R sham/WW monk can remove curses, both are more meta classes than feral, leaving a very niche poison dispel as the only unique benefit there, which again Boomkin can also do.
At this time I am not aware of any poisons that are lethal enough to bring a spec just for that alone, and if they are then AMS from DK is more useful as it covers the whole party where as Feral can only dispel one poison every 8 seconds, not exactly useful unless it’s a single target poison.
Again, Boomkin brings that and more because they can go Resto affinity + HOTW which provides much more healing than a Feral with Boomkin affinity (which is basically mandatory for the range increase on abilities). So it still comes down to why would you bring a Feral Druid as your one melee when you can bring a DK + Boomkin and have significantly more utility and damage.
You’re comparing Feral to everything. Have to restrict to melee vs melee since that’s what the original discussion was over
You’re comparing Feral to everything. Have to restrict to melee vs melee since that’s what the original discussion was over
There’s no reason to bring a melee besides a more frequent interrupt which even an Rsham brings at ranged, so it’s only fair to compare Feral to the overall meta right now. But even if we cherry pick melee only comparisons the only unique tool Feral offers over other melee is a Soothe and Poison dispel. That is a very niche utility that does not justify bringing a class alone in 14+ keys. And that’s assuming Ferals dps was on par with WW/Unholy DK which it is not.
Ferals biggest issue is Boomkin exists and is better in every metric except interrupt CD timers, and an AOE silence even on a minute CD is usually more useful than a single target 15 second interrupt.
Well if we do that, we may as well ignore everything outside of VDH, Boomkin, FMage, RSham, and MM Hunter, and Outlaw Rogue.
Why even bother having the other specs in the game if that’s how you’re going to look at it.
The question in question here is “what group utility does Feral bring in comparison to other melee”. Feral isn’t fighting ranged/tank/healing spots. Hell we’re not even talking about spots. We’re just talking about group utility brought by the melee spot
Edit: on a stand alone basis, Feral brings more “overall” (counting all utility) than any other melee spec.
If we get rid anything that’s shared between melee specs, (I haven’t sat down and ruled it all out), I think Feral still comes out ahead?
The question in question here is “what group utility does Feral bring in comparison to other melee”. Feral isn’t fighting ranged/tank/healing spots. Hell we’re not even talking about spots. We’re just talking about group utility brought by the melee spot
I already did the melee only comparison and they do not bring anything unique besides Typhoon and Soothe. Those alone are not enough of a reason to bring feral when WW also has a knockback and does better damage plus brings a physical damage buff. Soothe is only REALLY useful on 2 mobs out of 8 dungeons on non raging weeks and even then you can easily overcome not having a soothe. That is also ignoring the fact that MM Hunter is hugely popular for their excellent burst AOE and bring soothe+lust+immunity for soaking the numerous soaking mechanics that are present in SL. None of that can be said about Feral.
That being said why is cherry picking a melee only comparison fair? Give me one reason not to compare to the overall meta, it’s not like M+ has a hard requirement for one melee in the group. If you’re forming a group you can pick from every dps class in the game, no one has yet to give me a compelling reason why I would pick a feral Druid over any other melee, let alone the large amount of vastly superior ranged classes when you only have 3 dps spots to fill.
This is all coming from a long time Feral main, as I said feel free to check my Warcraft logs, I would love for Feral to have LotP or literally anything to set it apart from all the other melee, but the fact is it lacks any defining group utility and that has been the case for years now.
EDIT: I should say this is for M+. Feral is fine in raid where there is a lot more room for dps classes and their single target damage is great. But with 3 DPS slots in dungeons Feral is not competitive in a burst AOE meta.
It’s not really difficult. Spend some time on your UI and you’ll get the hang of it fast.
As far as meta goes, it works like this:
What Feral brings to a raid (and M+ I guess but that’s not endgame content for me) is among the highest single target burst in the game on a 2 minute CD. That’s very, very valuable. Whether or not you have a guaranteed melee spot comes down to if your group is stacking DKs, and if you have a Brewmaster tank (or Mistweaver in less likely circumstances).