Also it was a blanket nerf to all Rip/Rake damage, which includes offspec (specifically Resto) catweaving. Did that really need to be reigned in so hard?
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The nerf to FF is also a joke, that ability was never scary in DF.
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The problem with feral if any at all, is how easy it is to do very high pressure with aoe, all they had to do was reduce the effectiveness of primal wrath in pvp combat. In their current form they are A tier at best, play full on dampening rot comps, or mortal strike class and training healers. Train a feral and they lose a lot of dmg sitting in bear, this is the main downside of the spec atm compared to things like UhDK Ret Havoc whos defensive cooldowns are also offensive cooldowns. Nerfing our ST AND Aoe by nearly 25% is literally baffling. Not to mention cyclone dr’ing with many of the classes feral liked to run with in the past and feeling terrible to slot into.
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You guys are disappointing me lol.
They absolutely did not. Feral’s spread damage and ease of application was a cut above everyone else.
…? No they don’t. You mean solo shuffle? Even at higher rating in that, that’s not true. Not to mention like every 2.5 minutes you have Incarn back up anyway to boost it.
Both of these would make rip’s damage go down, which now it already is. Upside is maintaining the ease of application means the bite procs from rip ticks are still going to be super prevalent.
With the introduction of ms and Joe free it is to apply, feral has been able to play with almost anything. I hate disagree. You see ferals with warriors, hunters, dks, dh, spriest, mage, locks, etc.
Indeed it is.
Except the “clowns” were basing this off the servers that already had those changes and the TR and the tier sets. Tier alone is a massive buff for feral. Do you have 4 piece tier for pvp?
I mean it hit for over 100k in about 4s. Decent amount of burst to add on to the bleeds already happening 
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Which would… lower rip damage. Why would you prefer they gut your application over damage tuning? And sir if you think feral was anything but S you’re cracked lol.
No, feral isn’t boomy. Abuse your run speed and instant roots and get out of the fights.
…? Like what? Ferals don’t even use cyclone really anymore.
Idk man, i dont think you pvp at all if thats your opinion sry, feral does run clone in some cases, ferals aoe was overtuned, aka primal wrath, this nerf applies to both st and aoe. Feral already has one of the lowest sustained st in the game, pvp and pve. Also not really here to argue where feral ranks, i think you’re smoking that good good as well if you think this is a good change, sry, but you just dont know what you’re talking about.
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quote me as much as you want, you’re just wrong though sry…
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I mean honestly man, c’mon lol. Look, I’m all for reducing the rio. Applied solely by primal wrath. I’ve not tried a pure ST build in pvp yet but I’m guessing it still would do alright. The tier offsets a chunk of these adjustments and though it is still a net loss… it needed to be. Feral was wicked strong man.
Was feral ~30% better than everything else though? That is not indicated in the rankings. As one example, here are the ranges in rating for top 10 RSS mdps:
FDK: 2908-2627
UDK: 3138-2960
Havoc: 3192-3011
Feral: 3135-2898
Surv: 3034-2672
WW: 3117-2983
Ret: 3122-2911
Asn: 3024-2833
Outlaw: 2878-2347
Subt: 2809-2592
Enh: 2923-2565
Arms: 2964-2741
Fury: 2657-2447
Obv DH already got nerfed. UDK and Ret nerfs coming on Tue also, but the feral nerfs seem disproportionate. 10-15% would’ve been more reasonable.
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That data has nothing to do with anything man.
Equal numbers of players of equal skill are not trying to push RSS in the same capacity where individual spec strength and damage are the sole factor in winning.
Ferals have never been a popular spec. They’re also notoriously difficult to play; at least more so than many other melee. And while the addition of MS helped them greatly, they don’t fit into literally any comp seemlessly nor have innate tankiness like a dh or dk.
I don’t think they needed the frenzy nerf but their damage as a whole was bonkers. The AWC showcased how many professional players opted to play one and the success that it had.
They also have a very good tier set and not every spec does. Blizz has shown to revert changes or tweak them at a future time. Wait to see how this plays out.
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It’s the ratings for top 10 players in the U.S. for each mdps spec in RSS, not just representation data though. When you’re sampling the very top then overall representation isn’t as much of a factor because it’s more about what the best players in the world can do with the spec. What the data shows is that feral isn’t blowing everything else out of the water. You can look at 3v3 rankings and it indicates the same thing.
One day worth of AWC isn’t exactly a more reliable metric. Maybe Blizzard saw numbers during testing that justified a 28% nerf to bleeds, but we’ve seen many times before just how fallacious the PTR is for assessing balance. This is why they should’ve just rolled out the original 10.0.5 nerfs and then made adjustments accordingly.
Maybe you’re right and it won’t break the spec, but nearly 30% to primary dps profile seems extreme. I don’t like the possibility of forcing ferals back into conjoke, bite-based builds, or clone bots. Would prefer to not go back to the days where deep wounds was stronger than rake and rip, or where you could sneeze on a feral and it would die.
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I know what the data is but there’s issues with it.
This already is only theoretically true IF the best feral players were trying to max out; but they’re not. RSS is not taken seriously by very many people. For instance the best player on that list is actually #10 because he probably just does it on his off time and the arguable best feral US isn’t anywhere to be found. RSS is an infinitely worse data source than 3’s or tourneys. Look at Rudar for instance. Boomy is horrendous and he’s still nearing 3k in RSS.
I think you’re focusing on these leaderboards too much man. Feral being 20% too strong for the meta doesn’t make 20% more ferals appear or make the ferals that are there 20% higher or something. That’s not how it works. In some egregious instances specs can obviously be carried super hard by bad tuning and appear everywhere but those classes are usually popular AND easy to play AND fit into any comp well on top of the tuning being ludicrous. Like dhs or wars. No matter how strong individual specs are there are still counter comps and other strong specs.
It’s not perfect but it’s infinitely more reliable than RSS leaderboards. The best players in the world trying their best with counter comps and map choices and the best gear against nothing but the best players still picked feral a significant amount and won. There’s a reason.
Ebola was getting every cd in the game in like the first 20s. Was unreal.
All I’m saying is let the chips fall. A lot of sweeping changes happened. Many specs were adjusted, not just feral. Trinket changes, tier is coming, etc. Let’s see how it all plays out and we can re-evaluate. I understand not wanting to see nerfs in any capacity but I think feral is going to be just fine viability wise. Maybe not literally anyone can run around and spam PW to win but that’s okay.
You guys dont seem to understand, the problem with feral was how easy it is to apply aoe rip and how good its dmg was, it was so good in fact that you would play rot comps full bleed entire enemy teams forgo cc opportunities to do max aoe dmg. The issue is PRIMAL WRATH, not Rake and Rip, and yes games do not last more than 2 minutes in most cases, even at the highest rating, watch the most recent tourney even.
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We understand man. It’s a simple concept.
Yes primal wrath makes applying rip easy. But here’s the scoop. Say you nerf primal wrath’s rip. The end result is less aoe, the same result these nerfs being.
“But wait, now ST is nerfed too!”
ST would use an entirely differently build. Like multiple talent point differences. I for one hit very hard bites on the regular in my full honor gear feral. Like 60-70k. I didn’t take the increased bite dmg based on bleeds, I didn’t take any increased tigers fury, I didn’t have reduced energy cost for more bites, nothing. Have you made a strict ST build? Do you know it would be lackluster with the new talents and changes?
I did. I even just recapped all EU feral games. The first set lasted about 2 min each time but that team was way out performing the other. In the finals against two good teams, besides the very first fluke game, they were 4+ minutes, 3+, 3:30, and another 3+. Not that it matters anyway. Incarn gives you 30s. 25% if a 2 min game and it’s up shortly after 2 min passes anyway. Irrelevant.
rip getting a 23% nerf wtih brutal slash getting 50% nerf its a lil overkill
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Isn’t brutal slash and that just getting its power transferred to base instead of empowered or something though…?
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If the brunt of the tuning was aimed at reducing the power of Primal Wrath cleave builds, I would’ve liked to see them actually target primal wrath. My understanding is that the single target build was slightly above the power threshold in pvp as well though.
I guess with them nerfing things the way that they did, it would be cool for Shred to catch a buff. PvP or not, saying that ability tickles would be talking too highly of the ability.
What are you even saying man, ofc that matters? When you are keeping rake on 2 targets and brainlessly primal wrathing pets and spamming fb procs almost insta killing people. The issue is PRIMAL WRATH, lets me say it again, not our ST dmg. The set bonus doesnt even have high uptime in most cases bc you need to FB to buff crits, and its a 5s buff.
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They just did that bc they added a new node that actually increases swipe dmg by 100% as well in feral tree, it pretty much just makes rdroods dmg a little lower in m+ and its another thing we have to spec if we want to play Brs
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it will only have high uptime vs pet teams, and only in their burst windows as well ie uhdk demo locks, and honestly fair enough, i like that fact that theres some counter pressure for pressing a button that make up almost 50% of their dmg and only costs a few globals to set up. You really should think twice before you give ferals free fb procs. Either way they could nerf the proc rate too on pets or something, would be a fine nerf too. Hitting our ST when its already sub par though, idc what anyone says its a joke.
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This Flapz dude is a troll that for some reason hates feral, every topic about druid he’s trashing the spec, don’t feed the trolls.
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