Feral - Where is the utility?

Classes Druid
1

Hello, Shadowlands saw many classes change from spec specific utility to class utility. Druid had this same occurrence; however, Feral was left with literally nothing.

I pose the Developers to answer one very simple question - What unique utility does a Feral offer to a group?

The answer is none. Some people may quickly say “you have X Y Z”, but they are missing the fact that every other druid spec has everything Feral offers AND MORE. This and more is the bigger problem in all of this as it leaves Feral to be the odd one out and quite literally offer nothing unique to the group. So Blizzards whole narrative about being happy you brought X class or spec falls massively short with Feral.
Let me break down everything Feral has, and I’ll quickly touch on the other Druid specs too.

Feral Group Utility:

  • Stampeding Roar: This ability is not unique to Feral as it is now a class wide ability. Other classes/specs also offer semi similar things and Shamans have Wind Rush totem. So, not unique to Feral or even Druids.

  • Mass Entangle: A talent option open to all Druids and other classes (shaman) have same utility.

  • Bash: A ST stun. This is a Druid wide talen and available to so many specs (not even baseline for Feral lol).

  • Heart of the Wild: Super fun talent, but available to all druids to perform the same utility. This is definitely unique to only Druids, but is also a talent /shrug.

  • Affinities: This goes in line with HotW. Fun and unique Druid utility. Nothing specific for Feral. However, this does bring in abilities gained. I will get into this shortly.

  • Maim: ST Stun, finisher. This is a finisher that requires combo points. Basically a Rogues Kidney shot.

  • Cyclone: More so a PvP ability, but does have use in M+. Again, Druid wide and DH also has very similar ability.

  • Brez: Druid wide ability that feral needs to get out of form for (really not ideal). All druids have and DKs have.

  • Soothe: Druid wide and several other specs also have. Newly added Rogues too (they needed more group utility though, clearly).

  • Cure Curse/Poison: Druid wide and other specs can cleanse these too.

That’s it! There is no Anti-Magic Zone, Group buffs, Shrouds, Portals, Health Stones, Innervates, Windfury, % increase to X damage, etc. Nada. Lets get into why the above may seem solid, but really is not enough at all. Lets look at Balance, Resto, and Guardian.

Balance has AE silence, Treeants, Typhoon, and Innervate. All as additional utility. Feral gains access to Typhoon only via Affinity. This enables Balance druids to do Vortex (from resto affinity) + Typhoon baseline, which is great in M+. Treeants peel for tanks and is fantastic. AE silence is great. To top it off, nice healer utility in Raids, PvP, and M+ in innervate. Rounds balance off nicely with so much added utility.

Resto has Innervate and Vortex baseline. Granted this is lesser than Balance here, but Resto is very strong and viable for many different reasons outside of having even more utility than they already have. They offer all the core utility. Innervate is great for raids even outside of themselves. Typhoon (From balance affinity) + Vortex is also very strong in keys. Something Feral has no ability to do.

Guardian has an AE disorient. Guardian is really in the same boat as Feral; however, at least an AE disorient is valuable baseline over a ST stun. Regardless, I fully admit Guardian is in the same exact boat as Feral.

As you can see, Blizzard is viewing Maim as Ferals “unique” ability since its attached to our affinity for the other specs. But is a ST stun really that unique? How do we not at least have Bash baseline and that the affinity option? That’s what happened for Balance with Typhoon. How is Innervate not baseline for Feral and Guardian too?

Solutions:
There are a couple routes to go. Simply putting Innervate baseline would help. This doesn’t fix everything because feral still has nothing unique, but at least Druids are closer aligned in all the utility they offer. Balance and Resto still win out, but at least its closer. People suggest Leader of the Pack being baseline for Feral. I can understand this, and I’d obviously support it, but being a mandatory pick doesn’t really solve all that much. An ability similar to the old Natures vigil would be cool (its similar to priest utility to group heal off damage), but you can also have Predatory Swiftness’s regrowth be a group wide Regrowth when used (not raid wide)- this stops Feral from having to target party members to spot heal if they wanted to use it in M+. Heck, even leaving the Crit portion of Leader of the Pack as a PvP talent and leaving it as a baseline Group buff of every Crit heals. Point is, there are options.

Again, I ask the Devs. What unique group utility does Feral bring? Why feel good about having a Feral in your group? They don’t offer anything another class or another Druid spec doesn’t offer plus more.

6 Likes
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Decent post, but I want to point out one thing. All of this is situational.

Like you wouldn’t need to brings trees if the tank isn’t going to need help, for a quick example.

One thing I want to bring to light is that every time this gets brought up it’s “what can feral offer that another Druid cannot”. And I get that. But I think more needs to be looked in at from the perspective of “what can feral offer as a melee spot”

Lots of group compositions aren’t going to want 2-3 ranged, and not every group is already going to have a Druid amongst them. So then the question is “what does a Feral bring to this/the/a melee spot.

And in that situation, they bring their entire toolkit with them. Then the real question is, going back to situational, what do you need/seek?

Now this is speaking strictly for the M+ scene. In raids I feel like my could definitely use a raid utility thingie or two.

PS - mouseover macro Regrowth so you don’t have to “select” party members to use Pred Swiftness. Stay on target and keep DPS’ing :slight_smile:

1 Like
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I think it’s fair to complain that Balance gets trees and innervate but Feral has to share stampede. Trees are just so incredibly strong for M+. The best class utility should not be isolated into a single spec, either share it with all the specs or keep each specs utility their own.

As a Rogue I’d love to see a Feral-specific Shroud (Pass without Trace, anyone?), but under no conditions would I want to see Balance or Resto have that type of access. I think giving Ferals Shroud, keeping innervate on Balance and opening up trees to all druids would be incredible. Tree cd may need to be different on other specs though.

Complaining that rogues have Shiv is pretty weak sauce. Shiv is a 25sec cooldown which is more than double the Soothe cd and Bears (who are often Feral players) are the only tanks in the game that can self-deal with enraged mobs which are very common in SL dungeons. Druids are the Soothe king and that already matters this expac. Nerfing shiv will not help Feral, it will help Hunters, Balance and Resto. I fully expect my guild tanks to be taking my Feral specifically for Soothe now that they’ve had their butts handed to them a few times by Gorgens.

Feral in particular is doing great on the Nathria rankings, and I expect that with battlerez, soothe, convoke+HotW, ursols, Feral having uncapped AOE on some important abilities, it will not be surprising to see them in M+ (but without trees, they will always be more rare than Balance). Remember that Feral AOE far surpasses just about all other melee besides DK’s at the moment. It will take a few weeks for people to realize what’s in the Feral kit, but those who know it would already take a Feral if they could find one.

4 Likes
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Good post but to nitpick…
Any serious Resto doesn’t pick Balance affinity for keys.
Feral affinity to pump. If the key is high enough to be worried about survival then Guardian affinity.
I wish we hadn’t lost Typhoon baseline because it was great fun w/vortex.

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According to Sims, as the expansion moves along and gear fleshes out, Balance is appearing to be the go to DPS affinity for Resto.

I don’t think it’s much better than Feral as far as numbers go, but you know everyone is a min/max’er now and will take the extra 150dps and complain they don’t like the play style of it :wink:

Losing Tyhphoon did suck though. I had a blast with Typhoon + Vortex as a bear in BfA

1 Like
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I have 2+ stuns depending on race, I have multiple roots (root and vortex), I can sleep adds on pulls, I can put in decent off heals, I can tank if the tank drops and we need to kite out the last few mobs etc.

The utility of the spec is in the skill of the player to use all of those tools correctly - IMO. Like, look at rogue - stun, sap, blind…? Weak sauce.

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What? HotW and Balance affinity is huge DPS with convoke, especially since your stacking haste and mastery so your damage is all the better.

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i hope Devs see this

1 Like
9

This is the way.

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I am not debating the fact that feral is useful. We have utility, but I think you misread the post. Unique utility. Everything you’ve stated majority of other melee spots can also do. However, majority of the other melee provide something unique on top of that as well. While feral does not.

I’m not making a post to complain about feral being bad. I’m actually quite happy overall. The pain point is I cannot even give my healer an innervate to help or a typhoon + vortex that other druids can offer. It doesn’t have to be either of those, but it would feel nice to have a little something to provide. We used to have stampeding roar, but alas that’s all druids now.

My friends can be happy that me the player is in the group, but there is never a “yay feral druid” moment.

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I’m still hoping that Druids will get OG Faerie Fire back.

1 Like
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Ooooo what’s the macro for this?

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Agreed with OP. Feral has zero unique utility. We could argue for Lotp to be baseline for the umpteenth time … :roll_eyes:

Also this:

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Honestly? I’d like feral to get leader of the pack back as baseline, not a pvp talent.

1 Like
15

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, help, nodead] Regrowth

You can add modifiers to it if you like as well, but that’s the basic one.

2 Likes
16

Give us back Mark of the Wild…

1 Like
17

Can you make it to be a mouseover of the actually character rather than the portraits?

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Mouse over works for both portrait and avatar. It’s just usually a lot easier to use the portrait since they’re stationary and can just refer to muscle memory with jt

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I just made these for most of my range spells / heals and it is absolutely amazing. Mad I didn’t do this sooner.

Adds a much easier usage to resto affin.

1 Like
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Aggressión - doesn’t believe in ferals. he thinks they’re trash.