After many years of hope, we can still wait till 9.1 or 9.2 … Or 10.1 10.2 at this point. Meheh
Perception issues are based on the reality that the spec is harder to play and perform well at than other specs.
The melee preference has been due to:
- No target caps, except a couple of specs.
- Interrupts and disrupts being vital, as i’m sure you’re aware.
- Being able to perform their rotations on the move.
- Groups often having at least one physical damage buff (warrior or monk tanks).
And it has been a massive preference. A couple of ranged specs took off in S4, most notably hunter and mage. But we have to remember it was mostly due to ridiculous secondaries with corruption.
There are some dungeons that are a nightmare with 2 ranged interrupts.
You can look up the stats over the entire xpac. Melee was hugely favored.
This looks to flip completely on its head in SL. But there are many things that prove extremely frustrating about playing ranged in m+. There’s very often things to dodge which impact on ranged dps much more than melee.
Mob spell damage has also been a poor mans tuning dial for Blizz. What sort of kicks you have, absolutely governs your pull size in most BFA dungeons. So it’ll be interesting how it all pans out.
The only time this happens is when you have a mythic skilled player that gets into a random pug because the logs don’t reflect this meter destroying fantasy. Of course, any mythic skilled player is going to do the same with any class when he joins a pug. Skill level matters, so let’s look at the high keys and see how feral is doing… And here is where you can prove Ion is full of bull. Nubkeks had a chart in a recent video showing melee dps viability in high-end mythic, Feral 3 or 4 keys before 3/4 of the other melee specs do. Only Suv and Frost Dk appear to be worse.
Hard agree. The reality is, they’ll do far better on other specs.
There’s a couple of ferals I play with who do great dps. If anyone keeps up with them, they’re doing very well.
Does that mean feral is good? Hell no, it just means they’re great players. They know it and those who play with them know it. The next feral who applies is still going to get declined, because the odds are very low that they’re in the same league.
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A fallacy argument. Your not dealing with the question feral by itself you are doing the, “Well about about XXX” argument. There are many other things that fall into the monk issue.
You’re implying the perception is false when in reality its at most exaggerated. But the fundamental perception of feral lacking isn’t false at all.
You provide no utility that a boomkin couldn’t provide. You’re damage profile is worse as well. You’re in a highly competitive spot being compared to rogues/unholy dk/dh for things like m+.
As some said melee was preferred but thats not because melee is automatically better. Actually quite a few things feed into what is meta or not. And with SL and things like storming affix alongside target caps mainly on melee will further push the meta towards ranged. Outside of high interrupt priorities requiring frequent interrupts… and even then if resto shaman becomes meta that further lowers the need for additional melee interrupts.
Now back to feral. You have all these negatives before ever touching the fact the actual skill of the player has a higher ceiling and a lower floor than most. Thats a bad combination. You being able to be top dps in your group does nothing to change these facts nor disprove them.
Its actually just showing this chasm between bad/average feral to optimal ferals. Now obviously you can do it. But expecting perception to change and act like you’re just as good to bring as a rogue is just not true and isn’t going to happen. Play what you want but realize your anecdotal experiences mean little in the face of these facts. Without something of value feral will struggle in its perception and acceptance.
Edit: To be clear i enjoyed playing feral. I’m just not going to let my bias for the spec to cause me to become disillusioned to its credible flaws.
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Well said.
I happen to like that the rotation is relatively complicated. It is juat super weird that there isn’t a numerical reward for that though.
EDIT:
OR!
And I’m going to beat the LotP drum again for good measure now.
If, hypothetically, feral brought a powerful raid buff like lotp and continued to do the damage it does now, a good feral player that can make the rotation work and can keep up on the meters would be a welcome addition.
I would be fine with that too.
I think I speak for most of us when I say that topping meters is not necessarily as important to us as having a raid spot for good ferals.
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It wouldn’t be a welcome addition though. It would just become another mandatory one.
Just like DH is for the magic dmg buff, monk is for the phys dmg buff, mage is for the int buff, etc.
It’s a sledgehammer of a solution that would see a feral in every competitive raid group, but do nothing to fix the specs issues outside of that.
We need more group and raid flexibility, not less. Shadowlands was a chance for them to further work on this. And what’d they do? Double down on it with now mandatory bloodlust classes and 5% difference between things like having a mage versus no mage. (Was only 3% previously, with a scroll).
Am already seeing groups waiting for a lust class, and I always want one too. 15% drums is a joke compared to how much better lust is.
Thankfully they still allow engi bres, was looking like they were going to double-down on that too. Otherwise every group was going to have 2 spots totally locked down for lust and bres, on top of whatever the meta was making people look for.
It’s like blizz don’t understand that the meta basically forces enough restrictions. They need to be doing what they can to add choices, not further restricting.
In summary, i’d rather keep seeing no ferals and them all getting declined when they do appear, instead of HAVING to find a feral. Crit is too strong, as it affects both melee and spell dmg.
Give it to feral, guardian, and survival hunter.
Nerf it by 50% and leave the remaining 50% locked behind the pvp talent.
Easy.
But it sadly doesn’t fix the issue that is Feral. Everyone is saying bring back LotP (and I’m on board with it personally), but how does it go about “fixing” the issues that Feral has?
Such as Could someone give me an honest to god review of feral? - #16 by Chaunt-stormrage
Feral has multiple issues. One of its issues is that it is underplayed, which contributes to a lack of logs, a lack of player interest, a lack of dev interest, and a lack of awareness of the value of the spec among the general populace.
Using the blunt instrument that is “a cool raid buff” helps but doesn’t eliminate those issues.
Is it perfect? No. Clearly.
Is it good? Yeah, it certainly moves the needle in the right direction.
Is it easy for Blizzard to do? Yeah. Score there too. The code for the talent is still right there in the game.
Your other post in the other thread is a bit more involved. I might have a few minutes after dinner to point-for-point with you on that.
I don’t want it as guardian or any hunter spec. These group/raid buffs are simply not good for the game.
They need to focus on spec core mechanics, damage profiles and numbers tuning.
Not add bandaid solutions to increase representation of specs nobody wants when they consider those 3 things about them.
Classes that get hammered day in and day out by the mainstream media (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) will be perceived as bad by most of the young people out there. They are just waiting to be told what to believe.
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That’s nice that you believe that. But Blizzard doesn’t seem to. So let’s play by the rules we have, yeah?
Utility buffs are a thing. They were a thing in vanilla, and they were a thing in WoW’s literal and spiritual predecessors. If you wanna go down the rabbit hole of pure homogenization, let’s just go for a straight class-less system or a 4-class system like OG D&D. Fighter, thief, priest, mage. GG. Nothing else needs to exist.
I agree that Blizzard has dropped the ball on all of the things you say they should focus on. But unique buffs are a decent way to build in a buffer to give players of unpopular specs a way to justify their presence in the meta.
That’s simply a 1 on, 1 off solution though. Sure, hi feral, welcome. Someone else gets kicked off the bus though with the “unique buff” (braindead) way of doing things. The next lowest dps spec that doesn’t bring a buff or the right damage profile. It’s just shifting the problem, not solving it. How you can’t see that is beyond me.
Blizzard doesn’t agree with that way of doing things either. Which is why mark of the wild, LoTP, windfury, might, kings, salv and countless others have been removed or changed from being buffs. Because the disco style buff party doesn’t work in 20 man raids. And even if it did, nobody wants to deal with it.
Unique utility is fine, because it’s situational and is rarely mandatory. But unique dmg buffs are simply poorly thought out and are thinking from 10+ years ago.
But, yes, then they go and do dumb crap like the monk and dh dmg buffs.
I can see an argument for the buffs we have left, being spread far and wide so that most comps will have the majority of them. And yes, this would include LoTP if several classes had it.
But it’s a weaker argument than removing the lot of them and then focusing on balancing the game (which would be easier without having to account for buff stacking).
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No, it’s not. I’ve explained why more times than I care to explain, but whatever, dude. It’s over. SL is out today. I’m going to have better stuff to do than hang out on these forums.
Bye now.
It’s been over for some time. Your logic doesn’t stack up and neither the theorycrafters or community reps agree on thinking like yours that simply shifts problems around.
While I agree there should be focus on core mechanics having a “unique” benefit from bringing a spec is pretty essential. If you don’t have such a benefit then you need to be near the top of the DPS curve or you’re garbage when it comes to perspective. Feral is right near the bottom… now someone has to be at the bottom, there is just no way around that. However if the spec at the bottom has something unique and good that it brings to the raid? It’ll still be picked and valued.
Just give feral solar beam.