Feral Druid Talent Trees

Classes Druid
21

Feral has the lowest number of choice talents as well as nodes overall on their tree out of the Druid specs, so there’s definitely space to add things. I went through and looked at our old borrowed power. Here’s a list of things that could be brought back from previous iterations of Feral, changed if needed and placed on the trees.

Incessant Hunter - Rip damage has a X% chance to grant 3 Energy.
Wild Fleshrending – Shred deals X additional damage, and Brutal Slash / Swipe deal Y additional damage to enemies suffering from your Thrash.
Ashamane’s Rip - Your combo point generators against targets bleeding from your Rip have a 10% chance to awaken the Spirit of Ashamane, which inflicts a Shadowy duplicate of that Rip on the target. (On Beta it procced from Bites)
Jungle Fury - Tiger’s Fury increases your Critical Strike by X and lasts 12/17 seconds.
Mangle (Cat) - Mangle the target for X damage and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from bleed effects for 1 min. Awards 1 combo point. (Could make it one target only to be used as priority target damage)
Chatoyant Signet - Increases your Energy regeneration by 5% and maximum Energy by 100 while in Cat Form
Ailuro Pouncers - Gain 1 stack of Predatory Swiftness every 15 sec. Additionally, Predatory Swiftness now stacks up to 3 times.
The Wildshaper’s Clutch - Critical damage from your Bleeds have a 40% chance to trigger Primal Fury.
Behemoth Headdress - Finishing moves extend the duration of Tiger’s Fury by 0.5 sec per combo point spent.
Luffa Wrappings - Increases the damage and radius of Thrash by 75%.
Feral Power - Increases the critical strike chance of Shred by 5/10/15%.
Hardened Roots - Your Bleed damage will no longer cancel Entangling Roots early.
Shadow Thrash - Thrash has a 25% chance to release part of Ashamane’s soul, causing all nearby enemies to take Shadow damage over 2 sec.
Not a talent or anything, but Emerald Nightmare Feral had really low resource generation and crazy good dots. Maybe do something to bring that gameplay back. -50% energy regen and gain, +25% dot damage?

9 Likes
22

Easy Sabertooth solution here, could change the secondary effect to this instead of the Rip extend. Then it’d also be more relevant sharing a choice node with Predator, while fixing how awful Sabertooth is gameplay wise.

1 Like
23

Like

10/char

24

Another reason for the Feral tree not being as interesting is that a lot of our core kit is on the Druid tree. Other specs generally have two or three core abilities or talents on the class tree that enable the spec. Feral has Rake, Thrash, Rip, Swipe and Primal Fury. Most of the other specs shown so far get core parts of their spec at the top of the trees, meanwhile Feral gets passive rank portions of abilities split up amongst multiple talents as the top of their tree. Having so much on the class tree is fine, and should stay as it currently is to enable catweaving for other specs. It would be nicer if Feral had stronger talents at the top of the tree, however. One suggestion is moving Primal Wrath and Brutal Slash to within that top part of the tree for easy access to better AoE while levelling.

1 Like
25

So I had the luxury of being given early access (now publicly released) to a program that allows the creation of custom talent trees, among other talent-tree related things. I tried making some mockups myself and asking others for feedback of what they thought should be changed, and here’s a few of the iterations I made. https://i.imgur.com/u2RljjE.png

All of them try to put things in more logical and flowing locations to make the choices more impactful, while cleaning up the top of the tree. Obviously things can still be changed/removed/added, but it’s designed to be a general improvement. It also adds a choice for a shorter Convoke/Incarn CD or a stronger Convoke/Incarn. They all put Sickle back onto the tree. Improved Rake is the stealth Rake stuff plus Infected Wounds. Improved Shred is the stealth Shred stuff. The uppermost Berserk is always Jungle Stalker since it synergises well with the stealth passives.

The extra talents are;

0/2 Thrash icon - Luffa Wrappings. More Thrash damage.

Bottom leftmost Berserk - Sickle of the Lion. Heavy AoE Bleed.

Bottom Right choice with Tiger’s Fury icon - Behemoth Headdress. Extends Tiger’s Fury’s duration per combo point spent.

0/2 Centremost Shred icon - Wild Fleshrending. Builders do more damage according to the number of the Feral’s bleeds on the target.

0/2 Rip icon - Incessant Hunter - Gives energy per Rip tick (an earlier tier set was triggered by all bleeds).

Iteration #1 stays similar to the Blizzard mockup in terms of layout but moves a lot of things around. Some stuff moved up to the top of the tree to give stronger options early on, while putting Brutal Slash off to the side so it won’t replace Swipe and cause issues in AoE. It does essentially enforce a choice between PW or SR to get access to the cooldowns though which is a problem. Having PW and SI to get to Convoke/Incarn means you get meaningful utility that are easily accessible without giving the cooldowns away for free. It also gives a pretty nice route to pick up Sickle and Frenzyband with relevant traits along the way.

Iteration #2 is similar to the Frost and Unholy trees in that the middle portions are entirely separated. The left portion is is dot focused, the centre is cooldowns, the right is direct damage. The outer columns of the tree have nodes that gives more resources if wanted. The tree also has PW and BrS at the top as non-mandatory choices which makes it extremely easy to get AoE as a Feral druid for levelling, while also having them not in the way for when we don’t need or want them. The tree also has easy access to choices on extra energy as well as how you want to modify your dots.

Iteration #3 has the same upper third as Iteration #2 but differs in it’s merging of pathways in the centre and bottom thirds of the tree. For the centre, left side is again DoTs, right side is again direct damage, but this time the centre is resource focused. The left and right side also join back into the centre earlier to give access to more pathing options. Sickle and Frenzyband are put back on the sides of the tree so it’s harder to obtain all 4 Berserks plus Incarn. Feral Frenzy and Bloodtalons also got split up to give stronger options for each sub portion of the tree.

Iteration #4 is very similar to Iteration 3, but simply condenses the tree back into a 7 talent wide grid and moving two general use talent points into the upper third to keep symmetry.

Program used was WoW Talent Tree Manager

2 Likes
26

So we have to chose between Wild Charge and Tigers Dash? Also looks like Predatory Swiftness is gone… Lame

27

I also don’t like having to choose between Bloodtalons and Feral Frenzy. I was excited at the prospect of having all 3 talents on the current bottom row at once.

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For not feral druids the bonus from primal fury is currently locked behind heart of the wild, so it being lower in the tree and requiring a decent investment makes sense on every spec but feral.

With Primal fury an option Heart becomes more undesirable, losing the cooldown decrease conduit bringing it back to 5 minutes, and only giving a 30% damage increase is pretty lackluster.

29

The fact that an interrupt is ridiculous. Its literally something you need to have in every aspect of the game it shouldn’t even be a talent at all. I personally hate the talents the way they are set up its great if your resto or balance your choices are practically brain dead if your going feral good luck. You actually have to be creative since for some reason most of druids baseline cc/utility is down the opposite side of the tree behind buttons you will flat out never use. Where as balance and resto can get everything they want without wasting points until later on.

2 Likes
30

I wish Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane would add the current “Scythe” mechanic

Just looking at this talent effect is really weak, reducing energy consumption by 20%
not really attractive
At present, the M+ performance of the next 10 versions seems to be unsatisfactory.

Join the current “sickle” mechanism
Rake directly on all the monsters around seems like a good idea too?

1 Like
31

This is completely false. There are only a handful of encounters in Sepulcher where having an interrupt specifically is required for melee (Pantheon, Anduin (Mythic only), Lords of Dread kinda, Jailer kinda). There are a couple of others where the gap-closer component of Skull Bash specifically is nice (Lihivum (Mythic only), Halondrus, Jailer), but that is completely unrelated to the “interrupt” function.

As for dungeons, I can see you easily getting away without interrupts in ToP since you can also use stuns/disorients/knockbacks/any CC to stop everything you would otherwise need interrupts for (Necrotic Volley, Bone Spear, whatever the disease explosion is). You could probably also get away with it in HoA since the only critical interrupt is the curse, which you can decurse instead. Definitely less compelling than ToP, but probably still viable.

Definitely agree that you always want it in PvP though.

32

Not sure what you mean by the scythe mechanic, but I think incarnation has some pretty decent value only if you have the talents to make it good, at least from an AoE standpoint. Single target you would take Convoke instead.

For incarn, having a talent combination like Savage Roar, Brutal Slash (assuming it doesn’t overwrite Swipe), Primal Wrath, Berserk: Relentless, Berserk: Frenzy, and Circle of Life and Death should, in theory, net you some insane AoE damage.

33

I mean now 4 set bonus

Convoke the Spirits ? The way to guide in a combat position is really…not very interesting. I should describe it as stupid…? The game experience is really not very intuitive
This reminds me of a previous version of Warrior’s Slam, which required 1.5s to cast spells. I really don’t know how to describe that feeling, I just feel stupid.

Now the DPS of Bleeding DOT is too low
In terms of time, the benefits are really poor. Most of the AOE DPS now have the highest direct damage benefits (most professional specializations)
The assumption that Brutal Slash does not replace Swipe does not exist unless it is changed to a chance trigger mechanism

The theory you put forward needs to be based on the high quality of bleeding DOT before it can be established
In reality, the bleeding benefit is only to increase the DPS% of the bite.

34

Unconfirmed rumor here, but will greatly impact some of us if true.

I listened to a podcast with Guiltyas (guide writer for feral at wowhead) and he mentioned he’s hearing talks that Brutal Slash will still overwrite Swipe like it does now.

Nothing is confirmed at this point so I’m just speculating. Assuming that were true, that would completely change the rotation if playing anything on the right side of the tree. You’d be gimping yourself in M+ content at that point because of the nature of charged attacks.

Brutal Slash would need to be relocated to the side so its an opt-in option instead of a required option.

35

if you didnt want to take Brutal slash, you only lose out on Survival Instincts, Cats-eye Curio, Draught of Deep focus (or Apex Predator’s Carving), and Berserk : Frenzy

are any of those really significant losses ?

36

Yes

/10……

37

doesnt feel like it. SI is no impact, draught is no impact, frenzy is garbage (outside of possible tuning which could see it have useful, but current iteration is garbage)… curio and apex are the only two things possible.

apex would be the likliest thing to be actuallly useful. but once again, its up to tuning. easiest thing would be to switch draught/apex and adaptive.

38

I was thinking they’d have better value compared to the other side if the tree. At least for the content im interested in.

1 Like
39

Its possoble im undervaluing them, but im pretty meh on that sode of the tree. We wont really know until playtesting though.