I feel like almost there’s very little feral pvp talk in here. Figured it’s about time to start a discussion. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on Shadowlands changes for Feral Pvp - please stay on topic. 
Not much to talk about…dont think there is anything called feral pvp in this game.
Might be a good time to vote with the wallet, and take a break from the game until they implement feral pvp.
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Cynical. There’s R1 ferals. Feral is still strong, it’s just harder than other classes. Nothing wrong with that.
So on topic, my first issue is losing SI. Sure, getting BS is awesome and stubs were always our biggest fear, but SI allowed a unique option to use it aggressively or defensively and was far stronger. Sometimes BS alone won’t save you from anything.
Secondly, the possible clunky-ness of new BT could be problematic. Overlapping take duration with rip… too many uncertainties to ascertain at the moment.
Lastly, my last thing is if memory serves they said regrowth‘a initial heal was buffed significantly if it was already active on someone. With how often we use that, it’d a nice heal buff which will feel good. That an affinities giving us an extra cc or peel option. That’ll feel great too.
On WoWhead it reads that the initial heal buff on Regrowth is only available in Resto spec
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Oh crap. That’s really saddening 
I just wish hybrid heals were more impactful 
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Feral is guaranteed to get dumpstered even harder if they go through with replacing Survival Instincts with Barkskin. It would be nice to see a middle ground such as having 1 charge of Survival Instincts along with Barkskin to alleviate the stress of dying because you didn’t pre-bear a stun, but also not making feral absurdly unkillable with 2 SI + skin
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It’s only alpha so far not too worried but so far dont like losing MI and new bloodtalons change seems weird
Alpha is the most likely to be changed making it the most critical time to put our inputs in such as bloodtalons changes being awful, losing survival instincts to be awful along with gaining nothing else making feral pretty bottom tier melee if this is what releases. Just think of any other melee and their burst/defensives cant think of any that are even close to bottom tier.
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They are giving all specs Iron Fur though, so they might be thinking that bearform is going to be our defensive “cooldown”. Like in in vanilla. Not sure if all specs also get FR?
Agreed. This concerns me too. I like being able to Skin during a stun, though. I missed that a lot from previous expansions.
I remember advocating so hard for this back in the day. 
Ironfur sounds great. Maybe they’re wanting us to go bear a lot more as defensive. We still don’t have much anti caster protection, though. Do we?
Problem with Iron Fur is that it takes rage and on top of double shifting from bear to cat take another multiple gcd’s. So youre talking at least 4 gcds just to use iron fur, so unless theyre going to buff our damage in general to compensate for this extremely poor defensive it won’t be worth in most cases especially since most damage in pvp or alot even in raid isnt physical. We still need to recognize that our now defensive is so far behind the pack for melee dps its extremely disheartening with other leather wearers having 3 or more defensives vs ours. Not to mention plate wearers on top of their defensives.
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As someone stated above, I believe Blizzard wants us to use Bear form as our primary means of defense. Before when we would SI and continue to fight back, it feels like they want us to instead go to bear form and begin stacking Ironfurs until it’s safe to come back out.
One concern I have is that, while Boomkins have already been doing this for the past expansion or two, they have talents that provide extra defense (Ironfeather Armor and Celestial Guardian) on top of Moonkin form itself giving +125% armor. Ferals on the other hand currently only have the Heart of the Wild talent which provides 15% more max health in bear form. Even within our class and looking between specs, Feral seems lacking in defensores.
Other melee should be compared to feral as well. Rogue having magic immunity, evasion, feint, cheat death. I could list out each class/spec and it would continue to look as if we have barely 1/4 defensives as other classes/specs at this point.
And not to mention rogues have a spec that does shadow dmg, DH does shadow dmg, DK does frost/shadow dmg?, paladins do holy dmg, all caster do some magic dmg…armor as a defensive cd is pretty much worthless in raids, m+ and pvp.
Only place it works is in solo pve really, and than only against melee mobs.
Good points. Feral defense abilities need to be buffed.
I think this is a perfect opportunity (for Feral only) to no longer have a gcd on form shifting, like we had before.
If they want us to use our forms then let us do so without restriction.
Edit:::
I think the following are a must have for feral pvpcats viability:
-no more gcd on any form shifting
-skin buffed to 40% feral only
-play dead returned as a feral only ability (from old symbiosis)
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Long post, coming in hot!
Even though I’m admittedly awful at Feral, I can still objectively see that there’s some odd issues that pertain to Feral specifically when compared to other classes and specs, and that’s something that should be changed/updated.
First off, Feral has less defensives than other Leather classes and certainly less than most other classes in general. Monk has Touch of Karma, Fortifying Brew and I would argue better mobility. DH has Blur, Darkness and I would argue better mobility (not to mention noticeable self heals through Leech). Rogues have Evasion, Cloak, Feint, Crimson Vial, etc.
What Feral is looking to have for Shadowlands is Surival Instincts, Barkskin, and Bear Form. However, Bear Form essentially renders us useless in PvP. We can’t do any damage, our pressure plummets and then it’s very likely you will die. In addition to that, you have to use Survival Instincts preemptively in order to get maximum value out of it as it is not usable during a stun, only before or after. Now we have Barskin, which is a welcome addition but I would argue that Feral should be allowed to keep 2 charges of SI in addition to Barkskin. It will not make Druids OP, it would only allow us to be able to live long enough to be effective.
Furthermore, other specs of Druid have some amount of passives baked in that help with their survivability. Balance has Moonkin form for additional armor, and PvP talents that extend this further. Guardian has Bear Form with massive stamina increase as well as armor, and mastery that amplifies your health and healing taken. Resto admittedly doesn’t have much for passive damage reduction(correct me if I’m wrong) outside their usual utility and healing toolkit, but they don’t seem to have trouble surviving.
Enter Feral: who has nothing. No damage reduction in their preferred form, no health increase, less utility than its other specs, nada! I remember they used to have a talent in Wrath called Nurturing Instincts, which I think later got changed to Feline Swiftness which increased the amount of heals you received. Why not add that back in as a passive, or a PvP talent? Ideally, add it back as a permanent passive.
Next, it looks like Bloodtalons is getting a revamp and looking to promote some amount of snapshotting or increased bleed damage. My concern is, why add Thrash into the required rotation to proc this talent? From what I understood, you would really only use Thrash for the Wild Fleshrending trait, which increased your Shred/Brutal Slash damage (no idea what the preferred use in PvE would be). Well, Wild Fleshrending is now gone in Shadowlands but we’re still spending Energy using Thrash which hits for laughable damage. Being a DoT spec like Feral/Affliction/Shadow/Moonkin and seeing our dots typically hit for a shockingly low percentage of our target’s health is mind boggling to say the least.
I know it’s a little off topic but Affliction dots were hitting for around 1-3k at the beginning of the BFA Xpac against targets with 300k+ health. Please, someone, anyone…justify this to me!
While we’re on this train of thought, Masterful Instincts trait is now gone as well. I know this didn’t see much use in PvE but it was absolutely mandatory for PvP. Having that extra 30 sec window after Survival Instincts expired where you finally had a passive DR (around 20-25% Physical DR) and seriously boosted Mastery for your finishers was extremely valuable.
Also, why doesn’t Feral have Innervate? Just a thought, but why doesn’t Feral have Innervate? As a Boomkin, having Innervate for your healer in an arena match or in a long node fight in an RBG (back when people used to actually que for them) is incredibly useful and can often times determine the swing of a game.
Lastly, why are our talents arranged they way they are? I remember when Talent Trees went away and we got our new tier system, there were essentially different rows for different purposes. For example, Tier 15 would be for DPS, Tier 30 for Mobility, Tier 45 for CC, etc.
Why is Heart of the Wild on the same tier as Mighty Bash and Mass Roots? It’s not a CC ability, period, and is somehow placed on the CC row of talents for Druid in general, not just Feral. Furthermore, I would argue that no one will ever take this talent in PvP because you simply can’t give up Mighty Bash. It’s too useful and necessary for control and kill attempts. If you want to keep it in game, move it to another row and add another CC option on that row. My personal choice, move it to the last row to replace Feral Frenzy and make Feral Frenzy baseline.
While we’re at it, why is Renewal (a healing cooldown) on the same Tier as other mobility cooldowns. Tiger Dash and Wild Charge, and then Renewal which restores lost health. Again, makes zero sense to me.
In my personal opinion, I miss MoP days of PvP and I know the subscriber account then was higher than what it is now. It could be for many reasons, but it’s a fact that there were more people playing during those times compared to now. And I look to draw comparisons between the two and see what easy steps could be taken to promote healthy change. I don’t know how some of these things would interact with PvE and I’m not intending to step on anybody’s toes.
I, like most of you, have been playing this game for a long time and it’s a part of me (for better or worse, haha). I know what it has been, see what it has become and believe that it can be SO much more. This may be a last ditch effort before I finally decide to hang it up, which I don’t want to do. But I can’t justify paying for a train ticket that’s heading to a town I don’t want to visit. Luckily, I also believe that many of these things are capable of being fixed and are seemingly easy to do so.
Pheww, ok I feel better now…
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Excellent questions. Also, didn’t we lose SI completely?
As far as I know from the last Alpha build, no. We still have 1 charge. I’ve been keeping an eye on Wowhead’s front page for any updates coming through.
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The good:
- Baseline cyclone (frees up honor talent)
- Baseline barkskin
- Incap roar/ursol’s in arena could be very useful
- Destro locks are losing their 1 billion bfa haste
- No more engineering helmet randomly dispelling my Rip
The bad:
1.Bash nerf to 4 sec duration/1min cd
2. 2x survival instincts removed, (they should let us have at least 1 imo)
3. No signs of feral being “bleed based”
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Ok, so that’s kind of a relief.