‘Leader of the pack is now available in all pve instances’
‘Treants are now available to cast under balance affinity’
Boom. #Blizzard I just fixed all ferals problems. I am available for further discussions to fix class balance.
Not even joking.
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While it wouldn’t fix all of Feral’s issues, utility such as Treants and LotP would be invaluable.
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You are hired!
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Unpopular opinion, but I don’t think Feral’s desirability has anything to do with its toolkit and everything to do with community perception and meta. With AoE RIP and some decent corruptions, Feral damage is certainly viable for the level of keys most players are running - and you have decent survivability / self-healing, two stun options, combat rez, innervate, soothe and great mobility.
The community’s aversion to Feral is sociological / psychological / meta and not really, fairly rooted in reality. If a group wants to take a braindead Outlaw rogue 10 ilvls below you then that’s their loss, and inflating Feral’s already fairly impressive toolkit isn’t going to change that.
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Feral does have a good tool kit already for sure.
But I cant tell you how many times I’ve heard.
“You don’t have treants” as a reason for not taking feral.
Nevermind in bursting weeks, we can run Resto affin to splash heals and help keep people alive.
Tank gets unexpectedly flattened by a trash pack - swap to bear and kite that mess while you drop a brez on em.
Sanguine weeks, bring typhoon to knock the trash out of puddles.
Plenty more moments of opportunity that I can’t think of, because it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet.
The only down side to some of these things is we lose out on a pretty intricate rotation by doing so, and our damage will tank very shortly if we have to break out to do any of those things.
Still better than extra deaths etc. in my opinion though.
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Feral does not have Innervate.
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The rotation is easily fixable without bloodtalons. I’d recommend Moment of Clarity for M+ runs. It’ll improve your dps significantly.
Aside from that though, I agree with everything you said.
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Most of that utility you mentioned you can’t really use while maintaining decent dps, which is the problem with feral. We can soothe, sure, which is helpful in some areas, but to stun you have to give up chunk of dps, to combat res you have to give up a chunk of dps, we don’t have an innervate, and sure we are mobile, but every other class does all of those things better.
I hate talking poorly of feral as it’s always been my favorite spec, but jeebus. There’s reasons why people are rerolling, and to some sure it’s because they don’t get it. But when I play feral in my comp, literally all I’m bringing to the table is a typhoon and some pretty nasty aoe damage.
I love running with a feral Druid, as long as I have the basic utility already covered with the group comp. It does fantastic damage.
Also worth note; a skilled feral will typically be better than a similarly evaluated rogue/dh, just because they aren’t getting carried by their spec.
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I generally ran last season ppally / feral / havoc / ww or fury usually pending who was on / rdruid. I swapped to rogue simply because we couldn’t barely get past timing 13’s because rogue’s are so good. Now swap that feral for an outlaw and I’m doing similar damage in aoe, my single target is better, AND I got shroud + 4 different ways to interrupt? Makes my feral hard to play. After struggling in a wm 12 this morning I’m almost contemplating gearing up my priest or even dusting off my balance set for weeks like this but I’ve yet this season beg to play feral and that’s always been MY spec.
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I meant more it is more difficult for a feral to get score, so for the feral to be so dedicated as to push with it they will have a slightly higher player skill level than a similarly rated FoTM class.
This of course doesn’t matter if your group doesn’t have at least one aoe stun and other such mandatory utility.
The solution is simple, take an affliction warlock in your group so you always look good.
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My experience is runing 11-14 keys, so that’s where I am speaking from. The biggest advantage that Ferals can bring to a M+ comp (especially this season) that no one talks about is Remove Corruption being castable in cat form (plus it has an 8 sec CD. This means that we can dispel poisons and curses that are prevalent in a lot of dungeons, as well as the Mal’thir obelisk – speaking of which we can also shapeshift out of diseases or any other effects that slow us, which will remove it completely.
Feral damage is great for keys, and as someone above already mentioned it has more to do with community perception of Feral as opposed to what we are actually capable of. However, I will say that a skilled player playing Feral would probably do a lot more damage if playing an outlaw rogue, or fire mage for that matter.
TLDR: Use Remove Corruption, Soothe, Typhoon, and Hibernate/Root (especially on Bolstering week as the tank can pull small adds that bolster a stronger add away.)
I do ok in M+ but I am still learning to be a better player and not really doing High M+, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count much. I acknowledge that. But once I get my play level up, seems like we are fine. For me it’s a LTP problem.
The main issue was already stated above. It is community perception which was created by Blizzard’s continuous failure to properly balance out classes at expansion launch. Right now Feral is in a good place, but it took 2 patches to get them there, and by then the damage was done. We can only hope that Blizzard can show better competence in the next Expansion.
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Is what makes balance so strong and is one of if not the only thing that makes them worth bringing. Moreover it doesn’t make sense for feral to have trees because at that point then you may as well give them to resto and bear. Trees makes balance unique and plays to their utility strength they bring.
So many people forget that bears and cats have access to this now. I got reactions of genuine surprise when I started cleansing ALL THE THINGS this season.
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gasp. Only reason balance is brought? I’m very rarely declined and generally
Do top dmg every key. Trees I only bring for necro week.
By the way what do you guys consider amazing aoe or good dps when you talk about feral? I’ve been experimenting with both, ifc not crazy optimized because I’m main balance after all but I struggle to do more than 45k ish overall. 45-50 is my limit. I can pull over 60 with boomy though.
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If you only bring trees for necrotic week you are doing it wrong. It’s the best talent for m+ overall especially for high keys
A quick glance of wowlogs shows ferals upwards of 60-70k.
Iv personally seen the 55+ range when the affix allows for it, and you certainly out gear me.
What are you running with as far as talents? Your armory shows sabertooth, incarnation, brutal slash and feral frenzy. You’ll never see high numbers running m+ with those talents.