Bear weaving filled down time while you couldn’t use kitty abilities because energy. The new rotation fills that time with actual kitty abilities which further enhances by adding that many more combo points to play with. Which makes the dynamic of when can i fit in FB that much more interesting.
Yes, and this was not only interesting, it took a lot of skill to use effectively.
Being able to smash FB more doesn’t feel as interesting. This is an overall loss to the class, even if it results in more dps. If I wanted a simple rotation that didn’t take as much skill to execute well, I’d have picked literally any other option.
Flower-weaving needed to go, bear-weaving didn’t. What’s done is done though, RIP to probably the most compelling playstyle WoW has ever seen, classic and retail alike.
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Well said. WOTLK feral (the original WOTLK) had one of the best rotations of any tab target mmo ever due to its fluidity.
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Racially motivated
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The rotation isn’t simple, you just actually use kitty abilities all the time. You still have to manage your energy and combo points and timers properly(which was always the real challenge). Bear form didn’t really add anything it was literally just filler when you had nothing else to do.
Feral now has a better option 
one which over all feels good when playing but doesn’t really change complexity.
Well, irrespective what I would like to have seen was an increased reward for Bearweavers - a damage buff for clever play. The problem with it before was that it didn’t feel as rewarding as it should have - in my view.
I was in favour of a small buff to Feral before but I think this buff is nonsense to be honest. They went the wrong way and went too far. I know that’s not a popular view - but it’s my opinion.
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Yeah you got to level 80 in tbc 
Does my level offend you?
I agree. The hardest specs should do the top dps
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Where they are right now on the damage meters is about where feral was in original Wrath. The problem imo is that plus brez resetting every boss fight is too much, and they should make it so brez doesn’t reset its cd.
seriously I got ferocious bited for 9k in a bg with 800 resil… lol i was like lol
It didn’t feel rewarding because it was a gimmick to fill in energy pooling downtime. That has nothing to do with the output, it just didn’t feel like a good part of the rotation.
Lot’s of stealth warriors are mad and replying here… I feel your pain but there’s nothing wrong to have another melee fighting in the meters.
Honestly I want Ferals. They provide good buffs for me. The issue is that the buff was too much and removed reward for effort homogenizing Feral game play - which I think is bad for the game as a whole.
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I agree, but also, at this point who cares? Buffs weren’t necessary, but now they’re making them, so now anything goes. I could have accepted Ret as an isolated one-off for the reasons they gave at the time, but feral didn’t fit those reasons at all. I think no matter what class you play, if you’re performing at the bottom half of the rankings, you can probably expect some kind of buff now.
Given all the negative changes they’ve made at this point if they want to improve the experience of some poor performing specs I’ll take it.
I think it has to do with representation. Rets were so bad that they were getting declined invites just for being ret. Feral is the same way. Most raids would skip a feral because they just weren’t worth bringing over a class that does nearly double their dps.
Rets have just as much (if not more) utility than ferals do. When it gets to the point where your spec isn’t being brought because of how badly they perform, a change of some sort is in order. Maybe it was a little much, but a change was needed nonetheless.
I can’t speak for rets, but I don’t know if that was true for feral. I often saw a lot of guilds looking for ferals… I wonder if it was for the crit buff and general utility they brought? I’m not sure why over a boomie though, just that it was.
Anyway, all I’m saying is, this isn’t a one-off thing. I think we can expect more buffs in the future now. So while feral is perhaps doing better than expected, maybe we should wait until the dust settles. It’s conceivable that we will be near the bottom again once the buffs go out… and especially as the phases progress.
Anything I thought I could expect is kinda out the window now.
Haha like I said…
I mean if you look at the number of people parsing there’s a lot more people playing rets(and boomies) than feral. Does that change if they stay a top melee dps? Maybe, but it didn’t in the past.
Ret has always been (and always will be) a WOTLK favorite. No matter how bad they are, people are going to play them. Boomie is so popular because their AoE dps is insane and single target is solid. Handful of people are playing feral. Most dont because the skill ceiling is high and its not rewarding at all.
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