Feral Druid talent tree ideas?

Classes Druid
1

[-] Needs change.
[=] Needs no change.
[+] Doing fine.

Tier 15

  • Predator [=] This is a solid talent that works in sync amazingly with Primal Wrath later in our talent tree. It shines when there are multiple targets for you to cleave with your AoE as it extends your TF duration.

  • Sabertooth [-] Sabertooth is too powerful. The +1s added to Rip on the current beta is still too strong and kills the bleed fantasy of Feral Druids.

  • Lunar Inspiration [=] Solid talent choice but doesn’t see much play due to Sabertooth. Having a ranged, spammable DoT effect is amazing especially in PvP content. This talent also used to feel AMAZING with the old BT.

Tier 30

  • Tiger Dash [-] Dead Talent. I don’t see why anybody would take this over Wild Charge because its just a faster dash with a shorter cooldown.
  • Renewal [-] Dead Talent. Feral healing is alright and there’s literally no reason for anybody to take it.
  • Wild Charge [+] Needs no change. Honestly I believe Wild Charge could be baseline and devs could delete the entire Lv.30 row and turn it into something more interesting.

Tier 45

  • Balance Affinity [=] It’s alright for nothing more than the increased range of your spells, 1st choice if im doing PvE content such as raiding and m+. If you’re down for the challenge go for it but boomy-weaving is super clunky and I hate it, would not recommend.
  • Gaurdian Affinity [=] The damage reduction and FR healing is amazing, I love bear affinity but there’s no point in a raid to take it. Good for m+ if you struggle with survivability.
  • Restoration Affinity [+] Healing. Healing is always great. If im not in Balance Affinity im in Restoration Affinity.
  • ADDITIONAL COMMENT To be honest having these affinities as baseline would be amazing to have again. Pruning them in the first place didn’t make sense to me and I can’t even remember why they did that.

Tier 60

  • Mighty Bash [-] Devs nerfed it in SL which was just plain mean. It was a solid talent choice how it was and didn’t need to be nerfed. Buff it back to a 5s and I won’t complain.
  • Mass Entanglement [=] Very situational but still a solid talent choice. Works in PvP if you really want to sacrifice your stun to root something like Unh pets.
  • Typhoon [+] Solid talent choice for PvE as it offers mass cc, but it’s being removed from the feral talent tree in SL. Will be replaced with HotW and added to the Balance Affinity kit.
  • Heart of the Wild(SL) [-] HotW is out of place on this row, it feels super clunky with a 5minute cd just for improved affinities.
    For Balance Affinity. Ought to only be used if you plan on boomy-weaving. I’m not sure if you do more damage with this + HotW or not but it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
    For Gaurdian Affinity. Very situational, clunky and plain out bad in my opinion. There’s no use besides you plan on using this defensively in the very slim chance your tank dies so you have to cat-tank. In addition to that, you lose damage for being in Bear form.
    For Restoration Affinity. Again, losing dmg trying to heal. Resto affinity is already strong. I could only see this useable in PvP because the heals are stupid crazy but its not really worth it with that 5min cd? Yikes.

Tier 75

  • Soul of the Forest [=] As a spec that suffers with energy regeneration, the extra damage and +5 energy is amazing and helps our rotation. To be honest, it could use a buff to reward us with more energy. Clearly the goat of the row.
  • Savage Roar [-] Walking the fine line of dead talent. SotF gives +5 for every 5cp spent while SR costs you 25 energy AND 5cp. Taking this doesn’t work with SBT either, any time spent not spamming bites already takes away from our sub-par damage.
  • Incarnation: King of the Jungle [-] Simply doesn’t compete with SotF, even with the changes to Berserk built into it. It only gives you that 20% less energy cost. It needs something more than cheaper cp builders to make this worth taking.

Tier 90

  • Scent of Blood [-] Dead talent. It’s useless and so is thrash.
  • Brutal Slash [=] Solid talent choice with decent burst damage, would normally take this in boss fights for raids.
  • Primal Wrath [+] Go-to PvE talent for that AoE cleave. Im not sure if it’s still uncapped in SL.

Tier 100

  • Moment of Clarity [=] Pretty decent but I wouldn’t take it over BT or FF. Kind of clunky since I believe the procs are completely off RNG. The +30 energy is nice though.
  • Blood Talents(reworked) [-] Not a fan of the new change, it’s super clunky and painful to use sometimes. I could formerly use BT with cp builders and maim but I can no longer do that. In addition to this, having to use 3 different cp builders seems like an “interesting” change but that means we have to cast thrash. It’s a useless dot effect that costs 40 energy and ticks for nothing. Lastly the fact that BT is still our only real talent choice for this this row. It’s sad really.
  • Feral Frenzy [+] I love this talent! 25 Energy cost, quick bleed effect, hits like a truck and the 45s cd isnt too bad. All I want is for it to be able to compete with BT!
    ADDITIONAL COMMENT Would be kind of sexy if FF was baseline… Just saying.

Final Words… The Feral Druid fantasy is interesting, engaging and unique but playing this class requires the most effort of all the melee classes and specializations in it’s current state to perform well. The spec is fun, but unrewarding even with BiS, sims and corruptions (in live). Raiding and M+ content for this spec is like trying to eat at the adults table for dinner but you’re always seated at the kids table. Being benched and asked to play something else or simply kicked from a group has been the Feral Druid experience.

I’ve been playing this class for years, Feral druids can be so much more than the stigma surrounding the them. All we need is change.

(Had to repost because I accidentally posted an unfinished draft, lol.)

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Very well said, that was honestly an enjoyable read. I agree the work required is up there for a melee spec.

What are your thoughts on raid utility, and number tuning for the actual bleeds? I think bleeds being pitiful kills the dot fantasy.

I wish we had an excute type move. Something along the lines of deal x dmg + x% for every bleed you have in the target if they are at x% health.

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To answer your question on Primal Wrath, its uncapped. It’s worth noting Thrash is also uncapped.

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Yes everything this tauren said. de loa of cats bless you mon.

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As for raid utility I think feral druids can benefit from LotP being baseline like everybody on the forums is begging for. In addition to that the changes to stampeding roar NEED to be reverted. It was unique to Feral/Bear for so long and they’re making it baseline for no reason at all, it’s just a plain old mean change.

Utility changes would be: Leader of the Pack, Stampeding Roar and a new raid-utility ability. This new ability would have to be exclusive to Ferals or to Feral/Bear.

As for the execute, we used to have one. It was built into Ferocious Bite me thinks, lol. It got pruned, but i’d like to see it return. In addition to that, if affinities become baseline again and that talent row could become bleed modifiers.

Circling back to the first quote here…

They could alternatively turn Sabertooth into a talent that consumes all currently applied DoT effects and increases the damage of Ferocious Bite instead of an infinite rip. Imo I think it’d solve the bite spam problem because you’d be choosing between your snapshotted bleeds or an empowered bite.

Example tooltip –

  • Sabertooth 35 Energy - Instant cast - 25s or 30s CD.
    Consumes all currently applied bleed effects and casts Ferocious Bite for the equivalent of 5 Combo Points plus the remaining damage of your bleed effects.
  • Sabertooth would increase in damage the stronger your bleeds are, so snapshotted bleeds would deal more damage via the talent.

I feel like the Sabertooth change above would get the bleed playstyle back to its former glory. The rotation would look like this: (Opener) Rake, Shred, Brutal Slash x3, Rip, Tigers Fury, Sabertooth.

If a bleed modifier talent row were to be introduced, Jagged Wounds would have to come back and be better than it was before. Increasing the tick damage of weak bleeds isn’t gonna cut it, but if bleeds were buffed by % it’d make a big difference. I don’t know what would be an appropriate % to buff bleeds by! Sorry.

But anyways, they could do so much more with the talent tree than what we have. It’s so sad to see.

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love this! great post man.

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Maybe for Tier 90 they should delete Scent of Blood and bring back Shadow Thrash from Legion as an alternative AE option.

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IDK if I’d take that over Brutal/Primal but I like that it’s not Scent of Blood!

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I never understand why they didnt give wild charge baseline in all spec. If they put it baseline then the 30 tier row could be interresting.

I liked the idea of affinity, i just don’t like how it works right now.

Heart of the wild … I hate it. I wake up at night just to hate it. I’ll never take a talent that as 5 min cd and especially not if i can add a stun or a mass root.

I never liked savage roar, always look like a bad mecanic to me.

Does anybody really plays with scent of blood…

I never liked any of the blood talent version, always felt clunky.

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Commenting from pvp only perspective:

I disagree about the strength of this talent, at least in pvp. The 5s added to a rip is not powerful at all in pvp, this is mainly taken for the FB bonus damage. I’d love to take LI, but they’d need to make our bleeds hit really hard in pvp so that we become more bleed oriented.

I do agree that our class fantasy isn’t being fulfilled. Our preferred pvp playstyle is still dishing out big bites. The FB bonus dmg on ST is too good to pass up. :frowning:

WC needs to be baseline. Renewal feels weird if they intended to have this as a mobility tier. Though, if their intention is different talents work for different things, it’s currently working as intended. For e.g. Balance pvp’s best talent right now for arena is Renewal because of it’s synergy with Celestial Guardian and Guardian Affinity.

Is perfect. Nothing wrong with it, I think.

Hotw is amazing but the cd is nuts. Seems more like a gimmicky 2v2 thing. We’re most likely still going Bash for 3s if we’re playing with a Mage or Surv hunter. I’m seriously thinking of going Bash + Hotw leggo for general pvp.

Agreed that SR is dead. But I don’t want it back unless we have the rest of the Wotlk toolkit. They really need to make this work with 0 cp for a lower duration.

Sotf is too good in pvp for the FB dmg and energy smoothing out. Incarn seems bad with the Zerk buff, but I’m not complaining cos I prefer Sotf.

No comment. BrS still the only pvp option :frowning:
Be surprised if they leave PW uncapped (here’s hoping they forget, lol)

Kinda unsure about this tier. Right now I’m still leaning on FF and the BFA talent spec for dishing out those back to back bites. I actually would love for BT to work if our Rip hit hard enough because I’d ditch ST and take LI.

What would you put in place of it ?

For pvp I think we need a Rip buff. I’m mostly happy with the rest.

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Wild Charge baseline, Play Dead brought back in its place. Always annoyed me how we have no vanish alternative; a big cat should be able to escape combat.

Saber turned into an execute-only effect. Lunar Inspiration buffed. Savage Roar reworked (but still a finisher).

These few things and I’ll never consider rerolling again.

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Ooh yes! I loved getting this from Symbiosis.

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I pvp as well, I totally get where you’re coming from. This is such a valid point, Feral druid bleeds are so weak that we can’t even benefit from the extended rip duration because they tick for practically nothing. The only real benefit of the talent PvP wise is the +20% bite damage.

Yeah but they used to be baseline, why waste an entire talent row on what used to be apart of our base kit? It doesn’t make sense to me. Not that i’m super dissatisfied though! it’s fine but I wish it were more.

The talent row is used to modify the damage of our bleeds and cp spenders so we could replace it with something new that gives us just that effect. I feel like an empowered Jagged Wounds would be fitting there?

An example of a new talent.
Exsanguinated Wounds
20 Energy - Instant cast - 20s CD
Your currently applied bleed effects causes your target to bleed out rapidly. Your bleed effects to tick % faster and increases the damage by % of your attack power.
Or
Exsanguinate
20 Energy - Instant Cast - 20s CD
Your currently applied bleed effects causes your target to bleed out rapidly. Your target is more susceptible to all physical damage you do by %.

100% Agree! Would be nice to have a buff to all of our damaging abilities.

I completely forgot Play Dead was even a spell for us, boy do I miss it. It’s been such a long time, but don’t Night Elf druids already have this built into their kit as a racial? If our mobility row is reworked it could become a talent.

Yeah I don’t see myself ever taking it out side of PvP content. It doesn’t fit in that talent row at ALL and the cd is just too long. CC or improved affinity? I know which one im picking, lol.

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Yes and no, shadowmeld won’t work on raid bosses, but that’s hardly a reason to not have Play Dead anyway; Rogues and Hunters can still be NE, and not every Druid is NE.

Play Dead would play so well, by creating opportunities for us to restealth, to avoid incoming projectiles, and utility of being able to rez a group after a wipe (something Rogues and Hunters can’t do without engineering).

Oh and being able to safely BREZ a tank in combat by dropping aggro then rezzing.

I really think it would fill so many gaps in Feral’s toolkit.

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I really like this idea.
The second they give us something like this the Rogues would be up in arms that we’re stepping into their territory of stealthy good-times and call out for nerfs to the foul cats who dared to trespass further upon their sacred vanish.

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Typical crybaby rogues. It’s modeled after feign death so it’s not even their territory.

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I like the examples of the specific scenarios that you could utilize the ability in. Would be an interesting addition to the nonexistent feral utility if it was actually implemented into the game! Tbh all devs have to do is look at the feral forums and they could probably rework it in a day, lol.

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