Feral rotational degeneracys

Classes Druid
1

Saber Jaws and Apex-cancelaura

Currently, when you have Saber Jaws and Apex both talented, it is a dps gain to cancel Apex Predator’s Craving during Berserk. The reason for this is due to Saber Jaws not buffing Apex bites. This is particularly an issue during Berserk where you have more energy to spend (convoke/incarnation/just used tigers fury) and have multiple ferocious bite multipliers (berserk, taste for blood, claw rampage/ravage). This is true in AoE as well, even with Rampant Ferocity talented (which saber jaws also doesnt buff)

possible solutions

  1. make apex not cancellable
  2. have saber jaws buff apex (even if by a partial amount)
  3. buff rampant ferocity (though this would only fix in AoE)

The first solution works, though it will feel bad to continuously trigger Apex during cooldowns while Saber Jaws is talented.

The second solution draws the concern of Saber Jaws being talented locking in Apex with it. This shouldn’t be much of an issue though with partial benefit (which can be lowered if necessary)

The last solution works by making Apex procs stronger, incentivizing more bites over stronger ones. And since rampant isn’t buffed by Saber Jaws, the amount required is significantly lower than buffing Ferocious Bite directly. It also doesn’t buff single target at all, which is the only place Apex isn’t required currently. Issue being we would still cancel Apex in single target.

Thrashing Claws in AoE

The purpose of this talent seems to be to reduce the amount of buttons to track as a Feral Druid, however that design goal fails in AoE, where you still want to cast thrash over shred to proc bloodtalons.

(some) of the possible solutions

  1. make thrashing claws count towards bloodtalons
  2. when thrashing claws is triggered, make it where your character thrashes (do not have it count for bloodtalons) instead of just applying the debuff to targets hit with shred/swipe
  3. have thrashing claws replace thrash entirely

The issue with the first solution is it may become the way to play, since it allows you to proc bloodtalons very easily in AoE, particularly during Berserk, where that is strained more.

The second solution is better in my opinion, as it makes casting shred over clipping thrash a better choice to trigger bloodtalons (a more intuitive gameplay loop). Main concern is Wild Slashes, which buffs thrash by 40%.

Coiled to Spring

This talent, in general, encourages over capping combo points. This is notably seen during berserk where we intentionally go up to 9 combo points due to this talent. That does appear to be the design goal though, so maybe this doesn’t really belong here.

6 Likes
2

i was wondering why ferals during world first not speccing apex, because apex is always better than CI. well unless you have saber jaw specced like you said.

ps: just noticed from a post below that apex not getting benefits from other stuff(?)
which explains terrible boss damage in m+ (personal experience)

small tweak here goes long way here blizzard /prayge

3

Feral truly is the king of “this sounds like it should work, but blizzard has decided it shouldn’t and does not document this interaction in game.”

4

I agree with this message :+1:

5

This gives a level of intention that I’m not sure we can really apply. I think it’s more that Blizzard doesn’t give enough attention to feral to warrant fixing these kinds of problems.