Looking for an alt now that I’ve finished levelling Affliction Lock. How is feral? Is it back to being a bleed spec? I prefer rot playstyles, so I really loved Feral when it was bleed central. Will it be taken in random pugs m+ and raids?
Thanks for the assistance <3
i wouldnt trust any answer someone gives till next week when we get m+ and tuning for things will have happen/will happen. things will change
Yes, feral is back to being a heavy bleed build out of necessity due to Blizzard greatly reducing the available energy on hand for the spec. The Druid of the Claw hero tree shifts some of the damage back into Ferocious Bite like we’ve had over the past few expansions, but the core rotation still revolves around snapshotting beefy DoTs. The Wildstalker hero tree leans into the bleed play style and is looking to be more performant in PVE at this point, though has slightly less defensive capabilities.
Like Steinerr mentioned in the first response, we have no idea what will get taken to M+ or raid until those elements are released and any tuning is performed. It seems very unlikely Blizzard will completely revert the spec design away from bleeds mid-expansion, so I am pretty confident the first section will remain correct. But what will be brought to PUGs is up in the air.
What I can say is that mark of the wild is a very good cooldown in raid, so the druid class will find a place in most raids. Resto druid is looking to be meh at best for raid. While guardian is looking to be a decent option, a lot of raids will take the first tanks they can get their hands on and fill in the gaps later. There will be raids that bring a DPS druid for mark of the wild, and barring major tuning changes, it’s looking like feral will be a better option until the balance rework in 11.0.5.
Mark of the wild is also good in M+, but with only 5 characters, some buffs always have to be left off the roster. Then even for the groups that want to prioritize mark of the wild, resto druid is looking to be pretty strong yet again. I think feral druid is going to perform fine and any group leader that makes any attempt at being objective would be willing to bring one to the table if one of the best gear/rating options available to them is a kitty, but it won’t be a must-have by any stretch. It is worth remembering that even when feral had a 100% pickrate in MDI in DF S1, it was still a break the meta spec that season. Short of it being overpowered for several seasons in a row to break a stigma, M+ groups that are beholden to the high end meta likely aren’t going to really prioritize a feral druid.
Id you like rot playstyle wild stalker with all the bleed bonuses you can get in the trees is absolutely this. I use the free bite talent and absolutely melt through mobs. At the moment, for me, it really feels like a melee aflection as my attention is focused on my 4 or 5 dots on targets and not how fast and big of bites I can do.
As others said - M+ is starting soon so balancing may change but right now it’s fun!.
The Hero Talents are boring and no one want random brust damage. They should have done for feral, Druid of the Flame and Druid of the Nightmare. Instead they gave us boring Hero talents and slow agonizing slow rotation. Nothing has changed. The Hero talents compared to other classes is a joke. The devs really missed the mark on this one. I was hoping th next patch they will fix our talent trees. But they gave no indication that they are even listening to all of our concerns. The Devs completely ignored the Beta discussions. Druids got the short end of the stick again. I am very unhappy playing my druid. Once again it is now boring.
I actually quite enjoyed Wildstalker on beta as a passive way to make what we already do better (stuff doesn’t live long enough in heroic dungeons for it to shine; I’m sure it will be better with raid and M+). I do agree Druid of the Claw could have been something better.
in pve its great dont get me wrong just dont try to pvp as a cat youll have to be in bear almost the whole time if you dont want to instantly die.
The horrors of the spec changes they did in Legion makes me hope they never do that again.
I personally find the current hero talents to be boring and annoying. The fact they are both just rng and do not make any noticeable changes to game play just doesn’t work for me.
I am not certain there is much they can do to make the hero talents more fun without redoing them from scratch.
I agree that having two essentially passive hero talent trees isn’t great and which we had a more active option for Druid of the Claw. With that said, I actually do think having a passive option for one of the trees is a good idea. With just how varied the level of skill, commitment, and desires the WoW player base is, giving the option for a set-and-forget hero talent tree makes a lot of sense. While I think there could be a bit more interaction with Wildstalker, having a passive over-time effects become better as the hero tree for both feral and resto is something I genuinely think is a good strategy. I just wish Druid of the Claw had much more interactivity for those who want a hero tree that changes things up in a significant way.
It’s really unfortunate that a lot of the talent trees are ‘do what you were doing before, but the numbers are higher’. At least on guardian, druid of the claw just turns maul into…Raze. We already have Raze, we don’t really need a second one. I will admit the big numbers feel super fun, especially during incarn, but it’s yet another ‘nothing really changes’. I think blizzard is getting closer to making hero specs that actually change things up, but they’re just not quite there yet 
THAT said, I’m thrilled that druid of the claw has the shapeshifting thingy that lets you cat weave while tanking without imploding. I’m seriously considering maining guardian just for that, as it’s something I’ve wanted since CATaclysm (heh), though I’m not sure if it’ll work in higher end content where that armor and health reduction might be much more impactful.
Yeah for cat, Ferocious Bite turns into Ravage, but does nothing to change how we actually play. We don’t prioritize hitting Ravage when it procs beyond when we would normally press Bite. I suppose in solo/delve content we might be able to hit a low-CP Ravage to kill a target, but in an actual rotation setting like raid or dungeon, we’ll never do that. The primary value from Druid of the Claw for feral is the reverse of what you mentioned for bear - it’s sturdier to pop into bear form to let our bleeds tick while getting okay output from bear form during that time.
That is true. If one of them changed the gameplay more, i would have no issues. Oh well, I cannot say I am surprised by the weak design. Precedence has been set several expansions in a row now.
Yeah, I’m just happy snapshotting matters again with feral returning to its methodical roots. I know such play style isn’t for everyone, especially those who picked up the spec in recent expansions. But as someone who enjoyed the spec most when it was energy capped, I’m having a good time with it, despite the gaps in much of the design in general.
None of the hero talents for any specs truly change the game play. It’s not like you’re getting a mage out there with hero talents that revolve around melee play all of a sudden.
The range is killing me. Having to have my face right on something to attack or interact isnt great. Also AOEing and missing stuff all the time is also not great. I thought Id get used to it but no, it always feels really bad.
Though at least there’s a hero talent to let you keep 80% of your bear form health and armor and combined with fluid form really helps when fighting other melee.
edit And I don’t like that ravage is mostly a random proc. Yes you can get a hero talent to give you a guaranteed ravage, one time in combat, but compared to say my shadow priest where I can use the equivalent hero ability every 30 seconds on demand. Plus ravage doesn’t even do any extra damage in PvP except for a bit of a bleed so it doesn’t even feel very good to get in PvP.
Would be better if it gave you a ravage every time you use Tiger’s Fury instead of just the first time.
I dunno, it always felt like feral druids just lack those high impact buttons that many other classes get. We get berserk baseline which is nice, but a 2 minute cooldown. Convoke if you talent into it which is good but for PvP hard to pull off. And feral frenzy tickles people for 10% of their health.
Compared with my shadow priest who can do 2+ million damage in PvP with a single button on a 30 second cooldown, in addition to all kinds of other procs and such that are going off all the time.
Finding Feral deeply frustrating in the new raid. Not having fun with it at all, which makes me super sad. Feels like I’m fighting my class as much as I am the mobs and the bosses.
And… it feels bad to see Paladins and BM hunters pulling ahead. Again.
And you know what their response is going to be to that “ Well, you should play a hunter or a paladin then”
I truly hope they fix feral, be it more defences or giving us our trickster mobility back. I miss the days where other classes just couldn’t catch us. We’ve been ground to a halt by all the other classes passive slows, and abilities that we simply have no counters for. Not even shifting, can help us out of those situations.
No not at all Doubling down on Snapshotting makes me sad
Honestly Feral Frenzy has never really been a damage powerhouse on its own. Its value has almost always come from the 5CP without energy expenditure and the times our set bonuses were tied to it. It has never done much damage on its own compared to other 30 - 45 second cooldowns.
Blizzard did need to address snapshotting, though. Snapshotting just doesn’t work as a mechanic when we have unlimited energy and our primary buff that impacts snapshotting has 100% uptime. Either it’s a major mechanic of a spec that has limited resources to reward proper play or it needs to be reworked/removed completely. My admittedly biased opinion is that I like having it in the game and am glad it plays a major role in TWW. But if the choices were either keep it as a half-in/half-out mechanic or remove it, I would have definitely preferred they remove it and put something else in its place.