Feral Needs... help

First off, I want to say feral isn’t “damaged” or “unplayable” as some hyperbolic forum posters have claimed, but I will say: Feral Needs Some Help.

The basic gameplay combo (Rake, Shred, Rip, Shred, Ferocious Bite) is too slow for M+. By the time your damage is rolling on something, it’s mostly dead. I played affliction lock (Kearcha if you want to armory me) for season 1 until I gave up and went Blood DK (Kaircha).

We could hem and haw all day about damage vs utility, and (as someone who played feral through the hybrid tax days) I’m kinda used to being shunted into other specs to do anything meaningful.

That said, I think there should be a rework of how feral works in general. Nothing “omg new class” level, but some QOL things. You can look at my M+ toons (Kaearcha, Kaercha, Kearcha, Kaircha, Kiercha) and see I play a wide variety of toons, all running 10s or so. I’ve gone up to 13-14 on easier key weeks. I like the variety of it. But now, I’m back onto my original main, this Druid, and I’m narrowing focus. My backstory aside, I just wanted to make everyone aware of my viewpoint.

In my own, humble opinion, I believe feral druids fall down in 3 areas that, should they be addressed, would make them more fun to play, and as an avid mythic+ player, more fun to play with.

Damage Distribution:
I’d like to see a set of talents/spells that frontloads more damage to feral. Instead of having a finisher that applies a long DOT, have Rip do damage up front and have the dot linger. I’d like to see swipe apply rake, and remove thrash, essentially combining those. The new AOE bleed finisher is a good change, but still kinda slow getting that damage up, but it could be buffed so that, on a 12 second Reaping Wave Feral AOE could be 80% of a DH damage instead of 20%. Lastly, maybe change the Mastery so that damaging abilities do more damage the more a target is bleeding (the inverse of the resto Druid mastery, basically). This would allow a talent divergence between punchy damage and dot management playstyles.

M+ Utility:
The inevitable comparison to rogues when looking at feral druids makes our lack of shroud so much more highlighted. Druids have a lot of personal utility (bear form, predatory swiftness, high movement speed) but really our only group utility is Rebirth. It’s great utility, don’t get me wrong, but with DKs and Resto druids being the Meta right now, and having a cap on battle rezes in dungeons, kinda muted it. Shroud is just too good at the moment. Treants, too. Especially on necrotic weeks and this seasons Reaping affix. Some group utility geared towed m+ would be great. Maybe a knockoff shroud is just too “on the nose”, but allowing feral to talent treants would be a good change, or making bash AOE or cone would be a good start.

Complexity:
Lastly , the complexity of playing a feral Druid is kind of daunting. Anyone can pick up a demo lock or a fury warrior, read the abilities, and perform in the 80th percentile (or better) for damage. Feral has always had a lot of complexity in its kit, but weaving in predatory swiftness procs just takes the cake for insane changes. I gotta heal to do damage? Tigers fury being such a short and repeatable part of the rotation is weird too. I like optional complexity (speccing into extra dots or maintenance buffs like Savage Roar) but they should at least make sense. I’d like these short cool downs to feel more impactful and fun to hit, and to be optional talents.

I feel like these changes would go a long way towards making feral Druid more fun to play and at the same time close the gap a bit between ferals and the Meta classes without upsetting the balance of the world.

Thank you for reading.

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Nice post. I agree with you. I love playing feral, However I find it more frustrating than rewarding. Where is the reward for all the complexity? Still being sub par dps. Especially AOE, you need a DH or outlaw rogue in m+ just to take up the AOE slack.

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i cant play my feral without getting depressed and question my life choices, we need buffs please god activision dont let us down more

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Very much agree, there have been gameplay issues for a while now, and it’s absolutely a case of Feral’s design not suiting the content available in a M+ environment.

Your suggestions have nailed it, and I do think significant changes would be extremely good for the spec.

Having a seperate Trash and Swipe is a bit ridiculous. While I’m usually not in favour of pruning, this is a case where they could easily be simplified.

There was a good idea behind Primal Wrath with the initial impact, with a dot to follow. But know it could be improved further.

Feral need it’s Eye Beam and Fists of Fury. A baseline rotational ability that allows burst AoE, while also keeping our niche in bleed.

I wouldn’t be too unhappy if Feral was redesigned for 9.0 at this point :metal:

Edit to add that sharing all utility between all Druid specs would go a long way in helping the class in a whole.

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Good idea.

I’d like to see a channeled, conal ability that applies a staking DoT to targets, similar to Kimbuls ability in conclave. The duration can be less than the cool down (or just put a cap on it), which would give that “on demand aoe burst” that is REQUIRED for the current M+ meta, and requires skill to use effectively.

Win, win, win.

That and treants and feral druids might be as popular as Havoc DH. Maybe.

Complexity is good if it makes sense and has a payoff. This current system does neither.

I think your suggestions are good for the most part. The one thing I would point out is that Rip has been around since Vanilla, and is kind of a core feral mechanic. Instead of moving more of the damage up front, they should just make it actually hurt. Feral has traditionally been a ST spec. I wouldn’t mind doing lackluster AOE damage if we got to destroy ST.

Also shifting needs to be taken off GCD. I will never forgive blizzard for that.

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The issue with that is similar to season 1 affliction lock (one of my other toons, Kearcha). Overall DPS is super important in an M+. Just being good at single target isn’t really Viable (capitalization on purpose).

I’m not asking for DH level AoE, but maybe some moonkin level AoE. Druid damage (especially the AoE damage) needs to be more punchy, and needs to be buffed a LOT to make the decision between a DH and a Druid actually a decision.

As a Druid main, who plays all specs vice resto, I feel ya. I main boomy this xpac but still keep feral and guardian sets on standby, albeit a few ilvl lower.

I would point out that I agree with the dude two posts above me; rip shouldn’t change. It just needs to hurt. Like MoP level hurt, or close to it. I think the only parts I disagree with the OP on are the rio upfront damage things. They already hooked us/you guys up in making rip deal the same damage and having CPs dictate duration instead of damage. You guys can apply a 1-2pt primal wrath and get your bleed up. Now maybe the radius could increase, maybe swipe applying rakes or something would be looked into, but I think rip/PW are fine to be honest.

Now I definitely feel you on the on demand burst aoe. Even as a boomy, I lack that too. Sure, if the enemies last a long time, I can get some solid sustain going. But I definitely can’t do what rogues, DHs, or mages do. Boomy aoe is slow to start as wel. Fury of elune can be decent but it’s no where near where it should be. I rarely if ever take it.

It really is such an easy fix, and it would work in both pvp AND pve. We were built squishy as hell, but with good cc and the ability to shift to bear for a little extra armor. But when we CC or go bear the damage drops off. Now that’s perfectly fine so long as RIP damage is ticking away and hitting hard… but it doesn’t.

All they have to do is buff RIP damage and I’d be perfectly content… for my playstyle. I know others have different complaints (on demand instant AOE burst etc) but this would solve everything for me. Right now it feels like they planned a major overhaul but just made half the changes.

How squishy is feral really? I wanted to play it over windwalker because I hate karma and feeling dead in the water when it’s used plus it’s easy to neutralize karma. Survival instincts seems so much better.

feral is too slow and energy costs too high (regen too slow). there’s far too much time standing around with thumbs in hineys waiting for the energy bar and doing white damage. if that’s the design - for you to have to press-press-press … wait 5 or 6 seconds … press-press-press, then the skills all need their damage output increased dramatically. but as is is just boring and we bring nothing to the table utility or cc or crowd control wise that would warrant bringing a kitty along for a raid of M

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I was about to come back again to the druid forums to complain about ferals, but then I saw this post. Purrfect, I’ll add my thoughts here.

I want to main feral. I want to feel GOOD about playing feral. Instead, it feels bad because I know why people don’t want ferals and there’s nothing I could do more if the community thinks ferals are bad.

1.A)
I’d like to see ferals get our crit buff back to all aspects of the game, not just a pvp talent. I cried when I saw it was a pvp talent and not for other gameplay. This buff could help bring us into m+ and increase our damage as well as group damage.

1.B and 2)
I like the idea of a finisher AoEr. Primal Wrath is awesome, I personally enjoy it, when mobs don’t die super crazy fast. But what I would like to see would be Brutal slash being turned into an AoE finisher.

For example, Swipe is great for constant AoE, but our spec is built on combo points and spending. I’ve been in situations where I just spam Swipe without using my combo points sometimes, just to keep up with other dps which is in no way fun. Instead, I’d like to see Thrash be morphed into a “Brutal Thrash”, allowing ferals to keep Swipe available for a combo build up.

“Brutal Thrash” - Brutally Thrashes your targets with intense rakes, applying rake to all targets.

3.) I feel Vers and Mastery stats are splitting our damage. I understand Vers affects everything and mastery is just our bleeds. Maybe it’s time to look at these 2 stats and do a little testing on blizzard’s part if converting vers into mastery for ferals will help us or convert mastery into vers unless that’s just a stupid test idea.

Maybe changing mastery bleed damage into “having a bleed on a target will increase your damage by % based on mastery” could be looked at.

Also, as another note about mythic+ dungeons and ferals, since we don’t really bring any buffs to offer the party, I am now switching to leatherworking profession for the new profession tool, which is drums.

Ferals offer:
Brez - also done by all druid specs, locks, dk’s, and certain profession tools.
stealth - for solo use
Mighty Bash - many classes have a stun, and some classes like DH and shamans have an AoE stun.
Stampeding Roar - speed boost! Somewhat useful, but not needed.

What I’d like to see feral offer:
Crit buff!
Movement speed increase passive for group without x amount of yards (like monk buff).
Ferals having treants would be cool as a talent or something new like “call of the wild” which brings in other beasts to assist the feral like a pack leader or something.
Mark of the wild! (highly disappointed this is a PVP ONLY talent for RESTO only)

2 Likes

Here’s an idea.

If you use PW on a group of mobs that already have rip on them (you’ve probably already used PW on them) then instead of it reapplying rip it does extra damage instead. Maybe 2 or 3x the instant damage that it currently does? I wouldn’t mind it behaving this way for those times where there are tons of mobs and all you are doing is swipex5, PW, and by the time you get to PW again the rip is still at 8 or 9 seconds and ticking. So it will only reapply at say 5 seconds or less?

Edit: Love the Call of the Wild idea as basically a replacement for treants. Sure boomkin, you keep your trees. I’ll just summon some wolfs and bears.:bear::dog2:

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I also think Thrash is too weak.

And Omen of Clarity should be reverted back into its old way. I liked being able to use it on any feral attack ability, Rake, Rip, and Ferocious Bite.

I think it’s weird how Rip costs 20 energy points, Primal Wrath costs 20 EP, and Ferocious Bite 25 EP.

Meanwhile, Thrash costs 40 EP, Swipe costs 35 EP, Shred costs 40 EP, and Rake costs 35 EP.

I’ve never paid attention to the energy costs before, but wouldn’t it make more sense if the Combo Point Spenders actually costed more and the Combo Point Builders costed less???

OFC the numbers would be adjusted to have the combo builders do less damage, but having the combo spenders bring up our damage?

And the whole thing with Berserk is weird. It’s a 3 minute cooldown that ONLY reduces the cost of our abilities. There’s no damage increase to it. If you pick the Incarnation talent, it only increases the damage with rake and shred. Wouldn’t it be more powerful for it to affect all of our attack abilities?

Instead, we have to pick between Soul of the Forest that buffs our Combo Spenders or pick Incarnation, that buffs our Combo Builders. Why not just bake those two concepts in and see how feral plays out? I wouldn’t mind new, interesting talents :slight_smile:

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Or what if each new bleed on a target increased our damage done to that target by 10-15%?

Rake would add 10-15%
Rip would add 10-15%
Thrash would add 10-15%

So it could be a potential 30%-45% damage increase. :thinking:

edit:
Or maybe every target that thrash affects increases your swipe damage by 5%.

10 year Feral Druid veteran here, I’m no longer sure what could “fix” the spec. I’ve put in countless thought over the years and for the first time since I started playing. I walked away from it and have alt’d my Druid.

Currently playing Moonkin for a shot at doing some alt content with out suffering or reminding myself of the depressing state Feral is in.

2 Likes

That’s what I meant by my mastery suggestion.

Now I won’t deny that Ferals need some love, there’s a few things:

  1. Feral isn’t an APM spec right now. It’s about management. Like a good Rogue, build combo points wisely, pool energy for big damage periods. Press-press-press as fast as you can just to wait around means you’re not playing the spec properly.

  2. AoE damage: finish off the previous pack building combo points. Don’t blow 4 CP to take the last 5% oh that trash mobs health just because. Build them and save them. Pop Bt, Stealth, PW/Rake and then go to town. Play smarter, not harder :wink:

  3. Shifting needs to come off the GCD, agreed. This would make me happy lol

3.1) Rip is very underwhelming, even fully buffed, in ST situations. A nice fix (I’ve got no suggestions currently) would be great

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