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.