Another season. Same story. Feral at or near the bottom in m+.
One example: dungeon sim for top feral compared to top havoc is over a 10% difference, and havoc brings 5% buff for group.
Feral not so bad it can’t clear high keys though, but there’s still no reason to invite one over other options (especially true for pugs).
Solution: Leader of the Pack
I re-subbed a couple weeks ago after taking a break, and I’d really like to play feral for m+ this season. I can deal with all the other crap going on with this game if feral were desired for m+ groups. I’d renew my sub just for that.
It’s irrelevant how good Feral is in M+. Community perception trumps reality.
And the Dungeon Slice sim is… an iffy method for determining DPS.
Feral needs some aoe help, but adding LotP isn’t going to be the fix. Because that will just make specs that are already doing better look even better when the feral is in the group, and all people will remember is the comparative dps.
Nobody remembers the roars, off healing, decursing, soothing, personal tankiness, and brezes at the end of the day.
Mostly agree, except buffs that affect overall dps are typically given precedence. LotP may not address our aoe deficiencies, but it would at least provide some rationale for inviting a feral instead of better options that not only do more dps but also increase the group’s overall dps.
If berserk affected AoE and we had LotP that would definitely do the trick.
Ferals Aoe is absolutely the worst aoe in the game even with the uncapped amount of targets its still worse then others. Not that uncapped is any good really since they made it to dangerous to actually get a benefit of your so called uncapped aoe in m+
is it that bad? I got back on mine a bit a gearing it a bit slowly ,aiming for mythic+ primarly so you’re saying I should not bother gearing it to perform in m+ since it’s garbage ?
I mean, for me right now, +18s are where I’m feeling like I’m stretching the limits of what I can do and feel like I’m still properly contributing. And I’m pretty far from even the best feral on my server in terms of M+
For most people, being able to do 15s is sufficient for happiness.
Also, for all Feral’s AOE has issues, Fateweaver is my top DPS fight right now (I don’t count Tarragrue) and that’s due to the AOE, so it’s not like we do less than ST the way WoD was.
I’ve been asking for Berserk to interact with Swipe/BrS for ages. That alone would go a long way, in my opinion and as far as M+ is concerned, of course. Having no real raid utility outside of a sprint available to all our specs is a topic for another discussion. Your big 3 min CD being close to irrelevant in AoE situations feels very bad when most specs have extremely high AoE burst on much shorter CD.
You could say Feral has okay sustained AoE, but where is that relevant at all? Burst AoE is king for M+ and, as far as i know, every single raid fight for this tier is a BrS fight.
With all that being said, for me, Feral feels a lot better than last season thanks to Celestial Spirits being a thing. I really think Feral is a couple tweaks away from being a real choice in M+.
I think we just need to accept a couple things off the front:
This expansion so far M+ dps is going to be 2 ranged and one fast interrupt for 10-18 keys.
This means every melee dps is competing for just one spot, AND against elemental shamans who are bonkers good right now.
There are 9 melee specs vs 6 ranged
The melee being taken 15 and up are DH, Warrior, Rogue, DK and Monk, in that order, with DK’s basically not even existing at the high end and Rogues slightly passing Warrior
Warrior and Monk are taken for burst AOE and physical DPS buff synergy
DH is taken for magic DPS buff synergy
Rogue is taken for shroud and sap
DK damage is not as good as the rest, and their primary utility, battle rez, is brought on meta Guardian and Moonkin specs.
So just by nature of being melee this expansion, getting selected to group is going to be hard.
Having a group buff like LOTP could make us very competitive in M+, but compounds the problem that group buffs make classes feel mandatory. Also remember that all warriors, DH’s and monks bring their group buff specifically because of the compounding buff problem, not just one spec. So the odds that blizzard will tie LOTP solely to Feral is basically non-existent. If Feral gets some great buff, chances are all the other Druid specs will, too.
Which to me, leaves us just one realistic option: Utility. Any one of these 3 would go a long way to putting us on the map:
Give us Rogue’s shroud. We’re imitation Rogues anyway, and having only one class with this crazy strong M+ utility is pretty limiting for group building. Pass Without Trace is very iconic for group stealth.
Stop keeping Druid utility Moonkin exclusive. Innervate and trees for all Druids. It’s infuriating how much this would do for the viability of all druids, including feral. And arguably moonkin would still be the most meta because they get typhoon baseline and sacrifice nothing taking Ursols vortex.
Some new unique utility. I am the least fan of this, because shroud, innervate and trees are known-quantities in terms of impact and desirability.
Shroud has the problem that Shroud is all rogues bring to the group as well. It’s just that shroud is so utterly busted and has been since Challenge Dungeons that at super high end, it starts pushing above all non-lust utility.
Granted, most people aren’t playing at that level, but the top end warps the mid-range meta because humans are herd animals.
We can’t have trees. There’s no point. There is literally nothing Feral can lose, that Bliz will let us lose, that we can take trees for. Boomy can take trees because their Row 1 talents are meh. Our non-LI Row Talents are both amazing.
The next 3 rows are Druid universal rows, and they won’t allow Feral to have something different. And then you’re up against losing SotF for Trees which is a no-go either.
Innervate we could (and should) get back. But Innervate is far more of a raid tool than an M+ tool. Mana management isn’t really much of a thing in M+ due to seasonal buffs and the ability to drink regularly.
I mean these are solvable problems. Moonkin affinity could get trees instead of typhoon and they could get a first row talent that didn’t suck.
Rogues are the least played class and Feral is often close to the least played spec. It’s not like one more non existent spec having shroud upends their barely existing class.
Assassination rogue is basically a feral but with all its issues fixed, it really feel a lot more complete as a spec, give it a try you gonna have a blast
They could give LotP to just feral and guardian (someone else also suggested surv hunter). It’d be better than nothing, and wouldn’t screw up our already restricted talents.
Our aoe is weak but our single target is very strong so during all the trash you may not be all that well but against targets that have lots of health or bosses you will shine. So its not like we are terrible our aoe is just lacking is all we are still significantly competitive.
I’ve yet to be trounced by any meta specs in ST. When I have been beat, and it’s not because I forgot and ran with Predator, it’s rarely by more than a few hundred.
Trounced in though AOE, definitely.
That said, the most blatant example I had recently was an HOA where the tank triple pulled a good chunk of the dungeon and I managed to scrape together about 10.5k dps overall.
The ele shaman in the group did 14.5k
I beat him on bosses by like 500 to 1000 dps which was most certainly not by the 40% I got smacked on overall due to AOE.
isn’t that what people say anyway?