I am certain there are many other problems with Feral Druid in PvP in addition to the Druid class/spec/talents as a whole, but I would start the discussion with the immediate question of why our maximum health is so low at maximum PvP item level 489? I’m currently at 971k health (1200k health in Bear Form) and it seems incredibly low compared to almost every other spec I come across in PvP.
I’m having quite a hard time in Solo Shuffle and 2v2 because I have the lowest health pool on the team compared to others of the same PvP item level. Even while in Bear Form, I barely have 1200k health. Meanwhile, every other class and spec I see at maximum gear level has over 1100k health easily, on top of whatever defensives they might possess.
My experience with Solo Shuffle can be summarized in the scenario below
Get a 1-round or 2-round victory early on before being hard tunneled by whoever is on the enemy team and lose all remaining rounds from being killed. Occasionally, get a 4-round or 5-round win for the match if you are left uncontested, or simply go 3-3 because members of your team die first.
Usually this is from surprising someone with just how much damage Ferocious Bite can do, which can catch someone completely unprepared before they have time to pop defensives or death-save abilities. Once everyone realizes that you can do incredibly high burst damage, you become the #1 priority to hard tunnel and kill because they see you with below 1000k health. If they catch you with a solid chain of Stuns and high damage while in Cat Form or Caster Form (especially while trying to Cyclone someone), your only defensive is Barkskin and you can very easily die before activating any defensive (Renewal, Survival Instincts, Heart of the Wild) or even switching to Bear Form. It’s also very easy once in Bear Form and with said defensives active, that you might still die anyway due to poor health, if your healer doesn’t use some last-minute ability to save you (Life Cocoon, Void Shift, Guardian Spirit, etc.). This has resulted in numerous matches resulting in going 1-5 or 2-4 from being hard tunneled and forced to spend the majority of round in Bear Form. I’ve found it incredibly difficult to even try and trigger a Precognition since most will choose to simply stun me out of the cast instead of interrupt it, and most are smart enough to assume the first Cyclone cast is a bait anyway and will kick the second without fail.
Even while popping all of my defensives, whoever is on the enemy team has no incentive to switch to another target. Bear Form in PvP was recently hotfixed to provide 45% less bonus armor (175% currently, down from 220%), on top of numerous PvP armor balancing that I feel should have been communicated as to why the changes were made and/or held off until the start of Season 4.
Feral druid and boomy are the two squishiest and most killed specs in the game.
This is partly because cyclone is the best CC in the game and it’s important to stop them from casting it and partly because they have no meaningful survivability without it.
It creates an un-fun playstyle both for and against the druids where if you can cast and rotate clones you win and if you cant, you explode into a vaporized cloud of red mist to a particularly aggressive fart from a sparrow.
I think that every druid and non-druid player would like a nerf to clone and a buff to boomy/feral survivability.
I will say that I more commonly lose in the manner described when a Demon Hunter is involved. And yes, it’s usually one of those that hard tunnels me simply because they can and it’s fairly easily to just melt as Feral against that.
I’ve even had a few simply activate Death from Above and kill me with the Fel Lance casts that deal 8% max health in damage to me.
Feral I feel like is an extreme version of ww monk right now. They are insanely squishy and liable to get nuked, but also can ctrl alt delete someone in a stun.
I don’t mind there being an incentive to cast Cyclone in the form of Wild Attunement for Feral. Matches are fairly successful when I can actually Cyclone people, but it’s never from protecting myself via Precognition. It’s always while other people are crowd controlled.
I still manage to get people asking me why my health is so low at max gear level.
The first thing anyone looks at in Solo Shuffle is how much max HP you have, assuming you’re not geared enough. I had someone just in a match say I didn’t have enough gear, until I told him I was already 489 BiS. There is no more gear (except 2 pieces I have to wait on Catalyst charges for, which even still don’t put me at 1 mil health baseline)
Ive been 3600 in solo shuffle and never had anyone ask that ever o.O
Ya, druid will only have like 980kish or something without fort, but you have bear form for a stun go that would otherwise 100-0 you. The max hp has really nothing to do with why druid is squishy.
Also, check pvp has you at 488, so you gotta be missing something somewhere… perhaps a crafted piece? It still wont put you above 1mil hp unless you enchant watcher’s loam on boots, but stam really isnt an issue.
It’s 100% the 4 piece tier set and Wild Attunement pvp talent. You can’t leave them open, because they will melt you if you do, all while CC’ing everyone. It’s a terrible design because it double dips - they get a massive dps boost and a CC off. Imagine if everytime a mage lands polymorph they get 5 seconds of combust or resets Ray of Frost.
Remove Wild Attunement, and give them a second charge of SI, bring back the bleed build over massive bites, and see what happens.
Ya thats obviously very strong for the reasons you mentioned, but youre kinda quoting me out of context. Obviously wild attunement is insanely strong offensively, but the part you quoted was in relation to feral/boomy having the highest death rates out of any class in arena.
You have to stop clone and they’re also squishy so you can kinda dedicate everything to stopping them and you can just win.
Idk about bleeds vs bites, that always goes back and forth with half the community preferring one over the other.
I think everyone is in favor of nerfing clone and not having druids be paperweights, though.
Simple solution is to make the instant cast regrowth on yourself heal for substantially more than 70k so you can still die when caught out, but it’s active healing and not something passive like 45s frenzied regen.
If they made it so it only healed decently on themselves and not their team mates it wouldn’t make them oppressive off healers for their comps.
