It seems like we’re the only spec with no AoE or cleave options. Our combo spenders suck, with rake doing more damage than 5 combo rip, ferocious bite spends all of our energy while doing less damage than shred. The new runes in phase 2 make us a cooldown based class. We pop berserk and tiger’s fury, have 15 seconds of fun, then it’s back to being a utility spec. All I wanted was thrash so that I could contribute to clearing trash rather than being in the corner single targeting a straggling mob while the group gets to use their cool runes to AoE everything down.
Also, feral tanks still struggle, as swipe doesn’t scale, and we are lacking in threat compared to other tanking specs. We also have to choose between wild strikes and a tanking rune, which isn’t a nice decision to have to make.
Every time I get in a dungeon group now I feel bad. Mobs dont live long enough for my “damage” finishers. The only finisher I can use thats worth it is Savage Roar - which feels awful because its one of the worst abilities Blizzard ever introduced for ferals in the game (a fun ability isnt something you have to press just to get up to the regular damage everyone else already does). Everyone else is cleaving/AOEing so I feel like Im dragging people down. Its just depressing.
Feral Tanks are the worst spec in the game now. They are still worse then Vanilla/ no runes specs.
It would also be something new. I also think if Savage Roar needs to exist it shouldnt have an energy cost. Its already so punishing to use up combo points on it, I also use energy? The Energy that trickles in so slow I can barely ever use a finisher?
Man, it sure does sound like it sucks to be a Feral dps, I’d hate to think the class has even worse specs with less utility…
Not having an AoE ability at all does suck, as does the state of finishers of what you say is true.
Really sad about some of the development of SoD, it seems to suffer the same fate as other WoW titles where there appears to be inequality and thought given across the classes.
Mangle + Lacerate on the same rune slot is another great example of just lack of thought, as is the fact balance greats runes light Dreamstate which essentially wastes a rune slot to provide QoL benefits given baseline to other classes.
yeah its trash. Blizzard has no idea on what to do for feral, the runes are awful, its bad in pvp, its bad in pve, berserk is the only useful rune this entire phase.
Give us something defensive at least, getting bodied in 1 hit is 0 fun. 17% total mitgation from armor and dodge at 40, absolute joke.
Feral Druid has been my main since BC. I love the class. Favorite class in any MMO. This SOD version though when compared to everyone else… Im thinking of rerolling to a rogue or shaman. Either that or just quitting the season all together.
P1 was a good start for feral cat (bear was dumpster tier) with hope for the future - outside savage roar. P2 is a nosedive when you see what all the other classes do. You are literally just in a group so the melee have a good time and parse.
Its horrible, KoTJ is crap, SI is a meme, and we get basically nothing else. Mid PvE dps, and prolly the worst pvp spec in the game… inb4 40 BiS pvp specced ferals lose to 34s in greens in pvp. 17% total mitigation @40… come on bro.
Feral is a middle of the pack spec or worse, with a lot of parse cheese and a dedicated player base.
That is indeed wild, but I question where you would make that assumption from.
From a layman’s perspective Feral has active scaling on Rake, has access to Mangle, Savage Roar, Tiger’s Fury rune to make the ability both usable and a great cd, Windfury (with interactions on both melee and abilities. Also pretty sure this was also fixed for Omen), pretty sure they also made it so weapon damage applies to feral form melee attacks, and they also get a far superior Manual Crowd Pummeller from Gnomer.
I can absolutely understand that it feels worse to play with builders out performing spenders and in general reliance on burst windows and snapshotting, but as to performance I find it very difficult to understand how it could actually be worse than vanilla feral.
Again this is from the perspective of someone on the outside with little familiarity of the spec itself, so if you would be able to inform me I would love to know the nuances that do impact it in that way and cause it to be worse.
So rake beating a 5cp finisher in damage is bad, magle got nerfed so its generally not great, but now you might have to press one for bleeds, since shred our normal pve button got buffed. Its complicating an already complicated rotation.
Why is vanilla feral better? WHH, 60 energy on demand @40. You can do your entire shred rotation insead of cobbling together whatever it is we have now.
Fair, I figured a lot was to do more with how it feels to play mechanically. But yes of course WHH is definitely a big loss to performance, not sure if it out does the throughput increases, but it definitely overall had a much better flow to the rotation.
Thanks for the clarification
My guildmaster linked the data for class DPS this phase. Feral druid is 3rd worst DPS, after melee hunter and frost mage. My DPS did feel meh in Gnomeregan, and although I have King of the Jungle now, I don’t imagine it’ll make much of a difference, as other classes still have their own runes missing as well.
