Feral game play changes

Classes Druid
1

So everyone got their wish and Bloodtalons is being revamped…into the meticulous scheming talent more or less. Use 3 different combo point generating abilities to gain a stack of Bloodtalons.

So now for single target we have to throw in some AoE moves in order to gain a stack of Bloodtalons yeah? Rake, Shred, Shred, Thrash/Swipe,<Bite/Rip>…why? And for AoE, same thing. Thrash, Swipe, Swipe, Swipe…Rake/Shred, <Bite/Rip>.

With the wild fleshrending azerite trait it makes sense now, but those won’t be there going into SL…so why change?

Disclaimer: not that big of a deal to BrS talent players, but I liked my AoE Rip

And also AoE: Swipe and BrS capped at 5? I haven’t really checked into other classes but I’m going to assume this is throughout all the classes? They broke their own game introducing their M+ tournament runs where they stacked the best AoE classes and just spammed everything down that way, so now they’re punishing people and giving an aoe cap to slow things down to fix their own problem?

Normally I wouldn’t have an issue with this…but even outside of the M+ world, I love gathering up as much as I can as Guardian/Feral and just going crazy. ughhh…gotta increase their time played metric some more eh?

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong, and if so, great! Wouldn’t mind someone pointing me in the right direction. Took off shortly after BfA season 2 went live and I’ve loved my Feral/Guardian Druid and I’ll roll with the punches and relearn them and continue on with them…but…little venting does good.

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2

Yea most classes aoe cap is now at 5, with a few exceptions, Primal Wrath being one of them.

All of the rest you said is pretty much spot on; Using Thrash on single target sucks. Would be nice if it did more damage on single target or increased bleed damage.

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3

This part isn’t so bad. I think of using thrash in ST as a loss leader to get bigger rewards out of shred and wfr.

What REALLY sucks is having to use shred or rake in aoe. What the heck are they thinking with that?

Also, having to choose between forgoing BT or wasting CP and energy pooling during an ability called “Berserk”? Really?

4

We won’t have WfR in Shadowlands though. So that’s what I was trying to get at. That bonus won’t apply. So we’re having to use Thrash (id rather use Swipe, more damage and lower energy cost) to proc BT.

Using Rake as an opener for AoE isn’t so bad. With the current BT, or now former I guess, I’d get 2 Rakes stealth with BT up, thrash, swipe Primal Wrath, continue with Swipes into Bites or refresh Primal Wrath if needed.

But now we’re having to (in the case of Thrash), use nearly twice the amount of energy as Shred, for half the damage, just to proc BT…ewww

Edit: Using Rake in AoE situations to proc BT isn’t nearly as bad as using Thrash in ST situations…Rake at least puts out decent damage per energy spent. Whereas Thrash on ST… :nauseated_face:

5

The WFR effect, where thrash causes your other ST rotation to improve, isn’t going away. It is changing shape.

The new iteration is the taste for blood potency conduit where your bites scale with additional bleeds on the target. I have no idea where the math comes out on this yet, but the concept of thrash empowering an ST ability is alive and well.

EDIT: also, I do NOT use both of my opening BT charges on rakes. I use one on a rake, or thrash if 4+ targets, and the apply a BT-empowered PW asap.

6

I’m just coming back, can you give me the link to this. I’d be thrilled if WfR got baked into the natural game play

7

WFR is not coming back. He’s talking about the conduit that makes your FB deal 3% more damage for every bleed you have on the target, which, at the current level of scaling in SL is still kind of crap tbh.

8

Ohhh. Okay, it makes a lot more sense now. But 40 energy still isn’t worth a 3% increase to FB. A whopping 6% overall with a crit. Meh at best lol

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10

3% is the rank 1 version of the potency conduit. As the expansion goes on and you upgrade your conduits, the current datamined rank 15 conduit is 7.2% on wowhead.

I don’t know how long it will take to get there, but it’s not gonna be just 3%.

Also remember that your thrash will scale with haste and mastery while your shred wont, so the difference will close over time.

11

Can I still get a link for this :slight_smile: because I have no idea what this conduit thing you’re talking about is lol. Again, not saying you’re wrong or that I don’t believe you. Just wanna read up on it so I can understand better.

Ive got 70% mastery about (68%?) and Thrash, even on a pack of mobs, is hitting like a wet noodle. Shred still get the 15% damage bonus for hitting a target affected by a bleed?

And so while Thrash will increase with increased Mastery over time, yes; Shreds damage will also increase with each point of Agility as well. So Shred > Thrash still.

But I do get what you’re saying. It’s just gonna suck that it’ll take 18 months for that gap to close enough to be “okay” :slight_smile:

12

Here, play with this.

h ttps://shadowlands.wowhead.com/soulbind-calc/night-fae/korayn/druid

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13

From a single target perspective, comparing the new BT to previous interactions (ie, old BY and WFR), at a very basic level the gameplay is the same:

Cast a not important / relevant / dps ability now to get an improvement later.

This can be seen as:

  1. Old BT: Cast Regrowth to empower other abilities
  2. WFR: Cast Thrash now to empower Shred
  3. New BT: Cast some 3rd “other” ability now to empower upcoming finishers.

At a fundamental level, new BT is functionally the same as the mechanics we’ve already been dealing with. I don’t see this being a detriment to our rotation in the slightest. For ST, you don’t even need to take Swipe. Just talent into Brutal Slash and get a 3rd ability that is relevant to single target.

For AoE obviously it’s a bit different since most of the time we are spamming Swipe, but tab targeting to get a 2nd Rake out, at least in a longer fight where it can do damage, shouldn’t be an issue.

14

Sort of . . . you’re not completely right or wrong here. The difference is that the “irrelevant” ability under the old BT system didn’t cost energy, didn’t overcap CP, and had a super high skill ceiling where you could use it to heal injured allies if you have the wherewithal.

My biggest beef with the new BT is the interaction with Zerk.

I did a couple of easier keys last night and had some fun helping the healer out with my heal procs.

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15

  1. could be set up before a pull/fight. Can’t do that any more. Granted you can gain up to 2 stacks so you can carry them over from a previous into a new pack/boss.

  2. WrF boosted Shred and Swipe for the entire duration of Thrash. However many you could get out of that. Casting Thrash was actually a DPS gain in that sense. Was worth the 40 energy.

  3. Only affects Bite and Rip now. I’m sure it’ll apply to Primal Wrath’s rip bleed damage, but not the upfront damage. Was nice being able to boost an opener. Specifically Rake out of stealth.

Biggest difference is, you need to cast that third “irrelevant” ability within 4 seconds. It’s not longer cast Thrash once every 12 seconds and just go through Rake and Shreds into a bite. It’s every round of combo points before a finisher now. Rake is needing to be refreshed every round and so is Thrash/Swipe. No more 5cp of Shred into FB.

And AoE, you’re right. It’s not so bad to tab target a new mob to apply Rake between the Thrashes/Swipes.

But as far as ST goes. It completely changes the entire dynamic of how Feral currently operates.

And not everyone plays BrS. It being capped at 5 really isn’t that big of an issue since no one is going to be pulling more than 5 at a time now anyway, but PW isn’t capped. And BrS is no longer affected by BT whereas PW is. So to me, PW > BrS edges out ahead as far as AoE is concerned.

16

Again, with what I said BS would be in a ST situation. In any other situation, you could look at it as AoE and do what I said about tab Raking.

Going into an expansion, Feral is more than likely going to be slow again. For their rotation it will probably be similar APM and require pooling which probably won’t impact the ability to cast 3 builders within that window. Also, BT effects two finishers if that isn’t clear, so it will only be every other round of CP generation you will need to cast a 3rd builder.

EDIT: Other stuff I just remembered to build on that point: I remember at least earlier on having to re-apply Rake pretty consistently every build rotation (ie, other time I had to build 5 CPs). This will in the end line up anyway with BT effecting two finishers. TF also for the most part lines up closely with every other time you want to cast your finishers anyway, so that can be timed well with needing the extra energy every couple of times you look to re-apply BT. In the end for a standard rotation, everything should line up closely with each other.

17

Correct. But can’t use BrS in a ST situation if you don’t play BrS is what I’m saying :wink:

I was able to log in and dink around a bit and this is absolutely true. From the way I had read it, I thought we’d only get 1 stack of BT that could stack up 2, meaning we’d need a third cp builder every round. But we get 2 stacks and as you mentioned, with how things fall/line up, we get to go into that second BT charge strictly Shreds into Bite which is nice.

And a little energy pooling is needed, but not horrible to account for once burning through 2 charges of BT. And Rake falls in like just about perfectly for being refreshed.

18

You definitely will be using Thrash on ST in SL, given both the conduit, and the fact Thrash scales with Mastery unlike Shred. It should do more than a Shred’s worth of damage over its full duration by the time you step foot into raid (don’t quote me on exactly when though).

Raking in AOE is fine, you’ll always have a priority target and given Swipe is 5 target capped, Rake will do comparable damage, especially as gear goes up (again, Mastery).

Main issue I have with new BT is it lowers Feral APM, and you lose the choice of when to use it and what abilities you want to use with the buffs. It really sucks, but what can ya do. I hope those who complained about ‘having to use a heal in your rotation’ enjoy the new alternative, sitting there white hitting for an extra second while your energy bar fills up.

1 Like
19

The loudest majority that didn’t like Blood Talons got their wish, and chances are the vast majority of them won’t even use the reworked Blood Talons because it’s still garbage.

The rest of us who actually preferred the old Blood Talons got the short end of the stick, so now we’re stuck trying to put it to use when it feels terrible.

Like… You complain about having to use a GCD on a healing spell to massively buff 2 abilites… Then you’re completely okay with casting 1-2 AoE abilities in a single-target scenario?

Thrash and Swipe do so little damage that it’s laughable, yet we’re forced to use them because the “loudest majority” who probably doesn’t even use Blood Talons (or really even play the class for that matter) didn’t like how Blood Talons was played and screamed until Blizzard changed it.

It makes zero sense to me.

Literally this. You’re spending what… Swipe / Thrash / Shred, 100 (?) energy to get a Blood Talons proc? What if I’m inside my Berserk window and I need to use 3 generators to proc my Blood Talons, and the first 2 crit so I’m at 5 CP’s when I use my 3rd (overcapping my CP’s by 2 combo points) just to get off a stronger bite when I could have pooled that same energy to bite instead?

Even then, if you’re not inside your berserk window, your TF is on CD, and you don’t have a proc of Omen, what do you do? You pool 85+ energy so you can get your 3 builders out in a 4 second window (which feels terrible) so you can re-pool 50(35) energy to get your “empowered” bite or rip off.

It immensely slows down the rotation, and I will gladly debate anyone who thought this was a good change for any reason at all.

Yes, Blood Talons was a bit clunky. The EASIEST solution would be to just take Regrowth off the GCD when you have a proc of Pred Swiftness. Wow, that’s an absolutely ridiculous concept. We have the tech for it, we use it for the Spriest proc of Mind Blast, why can’t we use that for Pred Swiftness and leave Blood Talons alone?

The wrong solution was to force us to use 3 different builders in 4 seconds to buff a spender that costs 50(35) energy.

That’s the end of my venting.

5 Likes
20

Yeah, this. The new iteration feels like a freaking punishment. It’s blizzard telling us to just drop this stupid spec.

To be fair, offhealing as feral is easier now thst the regrowth is decoupled from the timing of your finisher, but DAMN . . . . it feels awful to pool energy, but only for every other finisher, and then to also have to make the choice between clipping dots, using inefficient moves, overcapping on cp, or just not getting every finisher modified by BT.

It is a really, really clunky mechanic for a class that should feel smooth as butter.

1 Like
21

I think it’s really weird that if it weren’t for Wild Fleshrending, you want to use Brutal Slash for single target instead of Shred. Costs less energy, and it does more damage if not for Wild Fleshrending. Keep that in mind when lvling in SL’s everyone. Use your AoE talent tier for better single target.