Feral Talent Concerns

Hey, I’m a bit disappointed that ferals have so many mandatory talents/noncompetitive options.

I preferred the previous style of feral with more slow and deliberate choices compared with the current meta of spamming as many ferocious bites as possible, with bleeds being sort of a secondary concern.

I think the problem lies with a couple talents. Namely, Sabertooth and Savage Roar. Also Brutal Slash to a lesser degree.

I’ll cover each one individually.

Sabertooth’s issue is that it is insanely strong for a talent. It does way too much and completely blows the other two options out of the water in every scenario. I think that pretty much covers it. Predator is a fun talent, but it’s basically never worth using because Sabertooth is so strong. I don’t like the design of Lunar Inspiration either, so I’d personally like to see it scrapped. I understand that some people like it though. I’d like to see some scenario in which each talent gets used SOME of the time though.

Savage Roar’s issue is that it’s too weak. The gameplay involved with it is fine, and it would add a small amount of complexity/maintenance to the rotation that I definitely prefer over the current FB spamming. Please buff SR to be competitive with Soul of the Forest. This is an extremely easy and minor change and I don’t understand why it can’t be made via a hotfix.

Brutal Slash’s problem for me, is that it’s boring and it’s a single target DPS increase. That means any time there’s no sustained AoE on the fight, I have to take this annoying charge based talent. I’d personally prefer that all the talents on this row are single target neutral and you take whichever one is ideal per encounter, but I really just want to take AoE rip and never choose another talent, because AoE rip is really awesome.

We’ve overhauled feral’s talents several times now and we’re still having the same issue with being stuck with one ideal spec. It would be cool to see more iteration on it.

5 Likes

whoops, here’s my druid.

It is extremely strong, and this was pointed out in PTR testing. It killed Predator and LI ever being a thing.

Savage Roar has a problem. It’s is an old, out-dated, maintenance buff that just adds to the plates you have to spin. It should go baseline and receive some additional form of utility (Be a great place to put on something like “While Savage Roar is active the Target of your attacks receives X% additional damage from all attacks.” or some such. Would truly turn Feral into that single target specialist.) or just be eliminated entirely and replaced by another option.

I have no issue with Brutal Slash. It is good for short-lived adds or as a burst of ST dps to be dumped during your TF window. Primal Wrath fills that longer lived add slot. So, if your raid is good at killing targets like the Spirits of Gold on Opulence then you want Brutal Slash. If your raid sucks, you want Primal Wrath.

Honestly, the first row of talents needs some addressing. But that’s really the only place where I see a REAL issue with being forced into choosing something. Savage Roar is just old, only gives another plate to spin, and needs to go or be moved baseline with additional utility.

3 Likes

Remove savage roar.

15 Likes

I love kat/bear druids but I understand why alot of ppl swapped to the caster specs. My most major gripe with feral talents is their is no switch up in our rotations. There’s no talent that gives us the ability to play differently. Bt? Press a button b4 a button you’ve been pressing since lvl 10. MoC? Do more of what youve been doing. BS? Heres a new button to press. PW? You know that thing youve been doing since lvl 10, here, lets make that quicker.

Happy St.patty Day and a bump for FERAL buff in PVE , PVP

The design of savage roar (and inquisition for paladins, and slice n dice for rogue) is archaic and should be removed. In the case of Inq it should have stayed gone. Slice n Dice is okay now as its purpose is to actually simplify Outlaw gameplay (it replaces roll the bones)

But in the case of Savage Roar, it just complicates an already complicated rotation (if you are taking the optimal rotation of using Bloodtalons) by adding one more thing to monitor.

Bloodtalons for the same reason is bad design in my opinion. I’m playing a DPS spec. I shouldnt have to use a heal to get optimal throughput.

I dont care if its instant cast. I dont care if it doesnt take me out of form. It takes up too much attention trying to optimize this ability by making sure I dont regrowth too early and miss out on a FB, or regrowth before every Rip to make sure I get a buffed bleed. God forbid my shred crits and I end up over capping CP because then I’m going to end up wasting a BT proc.

I dont mind the idea of a buff that causes my next ability to do extra damage that requires some kind of active monitoring. But it shouldn’t be tied to Regrowth. I’m not playing feral because I want to be an off healer. I want this heal out of my DPS rotation.

3 Likes

Athough I am a huge advocate for complicated rotations as it allows for a sort of ‘agency’ in the spec I can’t agree enough on the blood talons thing.
THINK ABOUT IT
What, in the living hell does me using a heal on myself do to empower my abilities? I always thought pred. was like a leveling tool to help ferals top off in between mobs, and now its a overly important damage buff. Im confused, do warriors still use victory rush as a dps cd?

5 Likes

having a free heal in our rotation, even if we mindlessly drop it on ourselves, is a heck of a lot better than if it were just a self-buff - I’d want to see something pretty interesting in return if they’re going to go swiping our regrowth procs.

The main complexity I see in timing the regrowth is do I pop it at 4cp because I’ll need to re-apply rake before I finish pooling for the next FB, or do I pop it at 5 and refresh rake after bite.

not following how you’re seeing wasted BT procs if shred crits on 4cp - wouldn’t you just use regrowth the same as if it didn’t crit?

Practically, it’s a nice little free heal - Thematically? it feels a little odd. Lore wise? I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard to spin - it’s magic after all :slight_smile:

but hey, if one little regrowth makes my kitty that much stronger - shifting into cat form after resto-healing a raid encounter should make the earth tremble

Thats thing! I’m not a caster! I am a strong independant cat!

1 Like

As it is, you get a bit of healing and it helps you survive environment damage during raids and M+. That’s always a good thing. Consider, if we lose Regrowth off the instant cast, we’ll no longer have a way to heal ourselves without popping out of form and incurring the loss of dps that results.

So, give us the ability to cast some things in form and I wouldn’t care, really. But I really don’t want to lose yet another layer of our surivability.

The thing is though in a pve scenario the heal is negligible. If you are in a situation where you are in desperate need of a free instant regrowth then there’s a lot more going wrong and that regrowth probably wont fix you.

In pvp its -decent- but due to the complications of a BT oriented rotation most ferals wont take it, and even if they did it still isnt a game breaking self heal. Ferals are so squishy when trained it really doesnt matter if you have a regrowth up or not. If you get caught in a kill set up and stunned. (Where you cant bear, or SI or barkskin because God forbid we get to use a defensive while stunned) that regrowth isnt going to save you.

In any case I dont see why we cant have clearcasting for regrowth/roots on top of getting a buff that increases damage on our next combo point spender.

Maybe something like Rets get where we get a buff on our next spender after using FB.

5 Likes

It’s not all about needing it NOW. It’s more of a maintenance heal. Just constantly works against the environment damage on fights.

Now, the way it used to be tuned, yeah it was great for that emergency healing. But it was deemed too strong and we got nerfed. As almost always happens to Ferals when they actually get something on the strong side.

Edit: Clearcasting used to work on many more things. But it was deemed too confusing for players to actually understand and manage to use on those abilities that benefited the most from it. So Blizzard removed options and it has become limited to what we have now. It’s the constant argument between the players who want meaningful gameplay and the ones that don’t want to have to learn anything “too complicated”.

Even as a maintenance heal its only meh. I dont understand how clearcasting can confuse anyone but I guess I’ve been playing awhile so I just know what to look for.

Regardless of how well the heal works, my original point still stands that trying to weave a heal into our dps rotation just feels clunky and thematically makes no sense.

I mean name one other dps spec that has to drop a heal before using their main ability.

3 Likes

Do you not spend the heal on other members of your party? I have a mouse-over macro to cast the free heal on low-health people nearby instead of always on myself. It’s not a trivial heal, it is not negligible, it makes a real difference. My heal is over 50k critical, that’s between 20-25% of people’s health.

The idiotic thing about the talents now is that the hard talents are the worst… In the first row for PvE, LI takes the most effort and skill to pull off correctly, but it’s the worst choice. Savage roar (like it or hate it) is the harder of all three, and it’s the least good.

can blizzard fix ferals terrible damage in PVP like srsly…

I would like a buff to bleed damage

2 Likes

Blood talons- now off the gcd. Causing your next two abilities used to have similar effect as old talent. Your talons actually drip blood. No need to heal. It’s clunky and stupid. Lol.

Savage roar- now a DPS cd changed to similar as demon hunters dead talent nemisis. Strike fear into your opponents by savage roar. They take a percentage amount of extra damage for so many seconds.

Yay Blizzard hire me. Fixed both talents and feral in 40 seconds on a Monday morning.

4 Likes

so, you want to lose a free heal and trade it in for… a visual effect? :slight_smile:

off the GCD might help a little during berserk but we generally have spare GCD’s in our rotation. Got anything more interesting than ‘dripping blood’?

Well I wasn’t saying replace the free heal. But regrowth doesn’t have to be the ability that interacts with “blood talons” is all. It could just be an ability on its own. It would just help with clunkiness is all and add to class fantasy.

4 Likes