Feral Druid NEEDS ST buff [Discussion]

In mythic + , we’re pretty viable right now due to our AOE burst and convoke windows (thank you Blizzard). But, in raid, where damage tends to ramp up due to longer kill times… we’re looking very bad. Balance druid right now is pretty lackluster, but feral druid is performing abysmally, especially considering we’re a melee specialization (in a raid tier that favours ranged DPS) with a high learning curve. I have opened this thread for other feral druids to discuss potential buffs that would fix the problem, and their own thoughts on this issue. :slight_smile:

4 Likes

I’m sorry, what? The log data for raid doesn’t support this conclusion at all.

Feral druid is middle of the pack for overall damage in mythic and normal raid, though we do lag behind in heroic albeit still much better than balance.

However, this take about ST damage is completely out to lunch when we look at damage to bosses. Feral druid is 4th in damage to bosses in mythic raid, 7th in heroic raid, and 11th in normal raid.

Frankly, if you are struggling to keep up with ST damage in raid as a feral druid, you are either doing something wrong or undergeared compared to the people you’re comparing yourself against.

4 Likes

So I did a quick check as well just for the 1st boss, mythic, all melee dps (not all specs though) and Feral was looking a bit on the lower end, but nothing egregious. Also, that is nothing new for Feral as it is usually on the lower end of dps (probably partly due to having a higher skill cap than most other classes, IMO)

I don’t have time to check other bosses but I’d trust Dwelknarr, he’s a solid poster!

Appreciate the endorsement. I didn’t look boss by boss, just overall damage for the whole raid at 95th percentile then damage to bosses for the whole raid at 95th percentile. I’m sure the bosses with short lived adds and/or spread out are pretty bad for us, but the single boss adds we pump. Like nearly every tier since the middle of BFA.

I’m not a very good Feral, but I felt like my ST was crap while trying to make Bloodtalons work - the meta choice for Feral. Ironically, when I gave up and went for the less DPS but infinitely easier Lion’s Strength option, I could focus twice as much on just making sure my dots didn’t fall off and my DPS shot up nearly 15-20% on average.

The blood talons max DPS build is extremely unforgiving, and if you fail to proc blood talons (or proc blood talons too much without using the exact right abilities and clip dots), your DPS plummets. Whereas Lion’s Strength is only a little behind a perfectly played Bloodtalons build.

If you think your ST is crap, try using the Icy Veins meta build for Wild Stalker, but running Lion’s Strength instead of Bloodtalons and drop Brutal Slash for Wild Slashes, since you no longer need another combo point generator to feed Bloodtalons.

Once i get better at Feral, I’ll try Bloodtalons again, but for now, it was a huge buff for me.

2 Likes

Bloodtalons has been around for a very long time in some form of talent or another, and the people that play with it have been so used to it that NOT taking bloodtalons feels awkward.

Practice your rotation with brutal slash, rake, thrash with OoC procs and shred while never pressing the same button twice - you’ll notice that bloodtalons is extremely easy to proc. Druids have more problems being energy starved than procc’ing combo points so haste and crit are more important with current tier being tire to Apex procs.

My single target is generally alright and cleave is pretty solid in a raid setting. I haven’t managed to get a good overall in M+ yet. Always feels like the timing is off when I try to space out cds to keep the damage flowing.
Meanwhile I grab my monk and roll my face on the keyboard to do damage. :woman_shrugging:

I do get that it’s easy to proc - but as someone who just picked up Druid for the first time since Cata, it is a lot to keep track of - at all times:

4 dot Durations.
Blood Talons Procs.
Energy Bar (dbly important running BloodTalons, since even if you get your rotation right, if you run out of energy and it takes longer than 4s, it doesn’t proc).
Combo Points.
2 very Short Cooldown Abilities with Snapshot mechanics (so the order you do these is very important - if you accidently Rip before hitting these, you’re doing so much less DPS): Tiger’s Fury and Adaptive Swarm.

This is before worrying about the things every other class does like 2 major offensive cooldowns, developing muscle memory and being cognoscente of boss/fight mechanics.

When I do finally get muscle memory for Druid and can track the dots almost subconsciously (probably by middle of the season), I will gradually experiment with working Bloodtalons back in… but getting them out and being able to hit whatever ability I need to hit without worrying about order or energy (to the same degree) has helped a lot.

This is incorrect; both feral and balance are down the bottom with Augmentation evoker. Don’t know what list you are looking at. Druids; both feral and balance are severely underperforming in raid. If blizzard wants us down the bottom with Aug, then at-least give us our utility back and with better survival, perhaps we can use an ability to buff the team like Augmentation has…no? XD

I get that death knights are the king of survival in a raid, typically at about 89%.
Druids however are lacking at around 68% survival.

Soooo we get to be the lowest ST damage dealers in the game AND we get to be super squishy to boot. I used to pride myself for being king of single target, now monks are beating our ST specs in their AOE specs, someone explain that to me…

Kinda getting tired of seeing us at the bottom of the barrel.


I can confirm; Feral and Balance are doing fairly well in mythic plus aoe specs. Druid of the claw is in a good spot.
DOTC Ferals are an A+ and I can attest to that. I’m sometimes peaking around 8 - 10 million on trash! It’s really fun!
Balance is actually S tier too but I’m not too big on boomy so I cannot confirm the range from my own experience.

I’m actually getting picked for M+ pugs again!

No one is picking me for raid content right now though.

in a 25+ man team i usually sit in the top 10 mostly around 5-7 place, thats against dks pallys etc

1 Like

i believe your incorrect, am on a 25 man raid team atm, and i run in the top 10, mostly 5-7 place, and sometimes i am top 5 depending on RNG, survival just dont come down to class it comes down to the player skill of dodging mechanics, perhaps look at the PURE single target spec, for doing ST fights, then dotc for aoe, also STATS do matter, if you have low mastery and crit you wont do as much damage, right now with 4set in M+ am doing around 1.9-2.1m average cause of the 4set procs, are godly.
also in the past during BFA raid nya’lotha raid, we had another feral on the team, about 20ilvl higher then me, i came in and OUT DPS’D them by 2x the dps on ST and when it came to aoe fights, i was pumping out 4-6x their dps, depending on my procs.
BOTTOM line is it comes down to the player behind the character and class and their knowledge

As of right now, I don’t believe that this is the case?

In heroic right now, sure. I am performing quite decently. Yet, I am going to be looking for a more competitive team for mythic prog (… I don’t think the one I’m currently in has what it takes, but we’ll see).

But, I review statistics, and feral druid is ranked among the lowest 4 dps in mythic difficulty (can’t post links… but take a look at warcraft logs). With the new buffs coming to many specs above and below feral, including balance, I expect us to become lower on the meter, maybe even worse than arcane mage in it’s current state.

It might become next to impossible to prog mythic as feral in the current state.

it does, but when you’re apart of a mythic raiding team (aka. content that has a higher percentage of people taking full advantage of their class), we perform far worse than the vast majority of specs, even if we’re parsing at the 99th percentile.

That’s not ironic at all. People need to stop taking meta guides as Gospel. Yes BT is more damage - when executed correctly. But the difference isn’t that large and if you struggle to execute BT correctly that’s the entire reason LS exists in the first place.

Shhh be quiet. Feral is in a good place for the first time since LEGION. Let’s not curse it.

i got like 4/8 mythic, last tier, not on a hard core team, but i still compete for the top 5 spot during mythic prog

I checked the 2nd boss, mythic, most melee dps (because I have time, lol) and Feral was looking about middle of the pack, like usual.

Guardian Druid needs a ST buff too.

I linked the warcraft logs in my response. Feral has slipped in mythic overall since I posted, but has risen significantly in heroic and mythic boss damage.

Rather than telling me I’m wrong when posting data, why don’t you link the data you’re looking at which shows I’m wrong?

Feral is struggling in overall damage, which has basically always been the case save for DF S1. But in ST, AKA boss damage, it’s currently 9th.

Also one note is that the log data can change with each new log that’s posted. At the time I initially linked the logs, feral was in the positions I stated in the post.

Do you have to take adaptive swarm? I really like the 1 min convoke. Two mins feels like such a long time between convokes. Do we take the moonfire in feral form?

Same situation. I feel so energy starved like is this a normal feral thing? I’m sitting at 10% energy or less.