That helps raise your io. But thats not the main filter people use. Higher io just gets you attention. What People are looking for is runs completed.
Getting a 15 today is easy. You can even buy one or have friends carry. I completed a 17 the other day a with one guy wearing greens.
Like you said… it’s knowing the mechanics and pathing. It’s too late in the season/expac for me to waste my time on people who don’t know the dungeon.
Less than 5 runs completed = hard pass.
Not class.
I haven’t officially mainswapped yet, but I switched to my destro lock for our last couple of prog raids and I got higher in pvp ranking as hpal than I did as resto, so it’s heading in that direction.
Not having an attachment to any class other than druid is both liberating and a little confusing. I am waiting for a clearer consensus on what is going to be meta in SL before committing to something.
My regular groups have stopped mythic prog and Rio pushes and I have been taking full advantage of the XP buff, heirlooms, and rested XP to rotate a bunch of alts and level almost entirely through dungeons.
I got my DH and DK to 120 and am messing around with warrior (prot and fury), disc priest, shammy (resto and ele) and I gotta say that I LOVE fury warrior. I kinda wish I had just been playing warrior since launch.
Reading Chaunt’s post.
I can agree that seeing me get High Purple/Orange parses and then look at logs to see other classes in the blues with more dps than myself. Does make me think its time to swap into something else.
I love my Feral and perform well, but that talent might be better spent on another dps spec. Going into SL are you thinking the same, or are you going to stick Feral out?
Goodness, it’s like a job interview. At the same time, it sounds useful/fun, and I can see why players are using it to save themselves the hassle of headache groups.
And, I kinda feel like buckling down and getting into that this time around. 2 years ago RL was more crunch-mode than it is now. I might actually have time to enjoy trying harder this xpac.
I would happily stay feral if there was a solid reason to bring it to raids, even if the damage on the spec itself was lackluster.
It’s one of the reasons I (and so many others) have been clamoring for LotP to come back to Feral/Guardian. Monks currently do B-tier dps and DHs are expected to be about the same, but there will still be one of each for their raid buffs. (You can get the same buff from a tank, but you’re probably not running a brew/veng tanking combo, so there’s room for at least one of these melee dps specs in a stacked comp.) Giving LotP back to feral/guardian would put them in the same boat as these other classes.
LotP would give me a straight-faced reason to feel like my feral was improving the group’s overall chance of success and I would continue maining feral, but, as of right now . . . sadly no.
TLDR: WTB LotP, Blizzard. Such an easy fix!
Edit to clarify: I would also be perfectly happy playing guardian if that was a good raid tank and brought LotP. It just seems like guardian is also bad.
It’s a great tool.
The only negative feedback you generally hear from it are those who don’t want to put in the effort and simultaneously expect red carpet treatment to every pug they apply for.
Rather than accept their own shortcomings, they place blame on others.
You seam to have the right attitude though. Not to sound cliche, but the only thing holding you back is yourself. So as long as you’re aware of that fact. You’ll do fine 
What Tical says about Rio above is generally true, in a vacuum.
But (in the interest of keeping us on topic) you can also expect a functional handicap for playing a non-meta spec. Given the choice between a meta toon and a non-meta toon applying the same group at the same time with the same gear and the same Rio, the group will choose the meta spec more often.
How often that impacts you personally is a matter of luck, but you’re living a fantasy if you don’t acknowledge that it absolutely does happen on a regular basis.
You can expect to have an easier time finding pugs with resto (they really are great at M+ healing), a harder time finding pugs as guardian (guardians are meh but tanks are in demand), and beating your head against a wall as boomie or kitty.
I wasn’t on the LoTP train but with such an easy fix to bring a Fearl/Guardian I’m now on board.
Sadly with monk and DH that mean 3 of the maybe 5 ish melee spots are secured and leaves a really really really cookie cutter raid team.
I’m sure Blizz doesn’t want that.
I did however think of a buff that could be used, making Savage Roar provide a vers buff to X players around the Feral for X seconds based on how many combo points were used.
That would allow for the more skilled ferals to provide more of a buff to the team, while also not be “must bring feral”
As I look towards more of a M raid scene its sadly hard for me to justified a Feral spot. I love the spec and will always have one around, but as I’ve said its time to find a class that fits more of the M raid scenes. Also performs well in M+.
Waiting for SL pre patch to see how things feel before I make a decision just yet.
If they didn’t want cookie cutter, they would make all of the specs bring equivalent value and let player preference be the guide. But that’s not the case. Raid buffs and clear top-dps classes ensure that there absolutely IS an “best” comp. Just look at how raids were stacked in 8.3 with mages, locks, and demon hunters with the token class for some of the key raid buffs.
If they want LotP to feel meaningful but not mandatory, and thereby give players a reason to bring a feral but leave options open, they could just bring down the crit percentage from 5% to 3%. It’s still worth bringing, but it’s a toss-up if another class can out-perform the feral by a huge margin.
It gives the raid leader an incentive to find that purple/orange parsing feral druid and give them a spot, but it doesn’t kill the raid if that person doesn’t exist.
It boggles the mind that they are willing to give two other melee hybrids the same deal, but druid, the class where this exact concept was first introduced back in vanilla, is left out in the cold.
Based off my own experience, those groups who “acknowledge” there’s a meta typically don’t even understand why. They are naive. The reasons a certain class became meta played largely around play styles and techniques in which your average pugs don’t even utilze.
What works in MDI doesn’t typically work in regular M+, and is largely dependent on pulling large packs, proper cd usage and number pumps that you just don’t see in pugs.
Unholy death knights in S1 for example. Their damage was entirely dependent on aoe and pulling bosses with trash, otherwise their dps plummeted.
That didn’t stop kids from trying though. Pulling one pack at a time…
drinking and resting between pulls… “nah bro, this is meta.”
Don’t believe the Hype.
My experience with the types of pugs was generally toxic and usually ended with someone breaking the key mid run.
You’re better off without them.
Your not wrong in your point here Tical.
Some folks try to emulate the “meta” and don’t even come close. Feral Stigma sadly comes from people trying it out, not having a clue how it works and proclaiming its “bad”
Don’t get me wrong its a “harder” spec to pull off but it sure can pump numbers if you know what your doing.
That said, Feral is also lacking a lot of utility across its own class and against other melee that are in the game. Thus edging it out when you build a raid team. I’m often told the only utility that matters is an immunity, sure that is subject for the content but that one alone gets used more than most.
Stop asking for LotP to fix Feral/Guardian. It’s not happening.
The rule these days for raid buffs/debuffs is that they are class abilities, not spec abilities. This is also likely the reason that Stampeding Roar was made a class ability in SL. (Even though it isn’t a raid buff strictly speaking, it’s close enough that they felt the rule should apply.)
No. It’s a reasonable request.
WW/Brew share physical damage buff
Havoc/Veng share magic damage buff
Warriors have their AP buff
Treating the physical druids specs as one class for this purpose is completely consistent with the existing theme, especially since the casting druid specs both get innervate, based presumably on similar logic.
It’s not a great solution, but it’s a good compromise.
MW gets Mystic Touch as well. So in all three of those examples, every spec in the class gets the buff/debuff.
No, it’s completely inconsistent with how other raid buffs/debuffs are handled. Innervate is different because it’s a single-target buff, not a raid buff. Since single-target buffs stack with each other, they are allowed to be spec-specific.
I guess you’re right about fistweaving applying mystic touch, but this arbitrary rule against giving feral/guardian a unique raid buff distinct from balance/resto just isn’t compelling.
Druid is already an exceptional class because it is the only class that has specs for all four roles (which makes it a balance nightmare, i imagine). Treating feral/guardian differently, especially in light of their history as just one spec won’t break the game but will make people happy and improve the popularity of two under-played specs.
Besodes, there are other general rules that have exceptions in the name of class identity and fun.
There is only one healer with an interupt, for example.
There is only one class that can equip any (non-glaive) weapon.
There is only one class that can double jump.
Etc.
Duuuuuuude. You’re really reaching trying claim that a daze is the same as an interrupt and a movement ability on a cooldown is the same as an actual action-game-like double jump.
I worry for your mental health. Seriously.
I can jump, then jump again. What is that if not a double jump?
Last I checked, Daze will interrupt. Sooooo… resto druids can interrupt every 15 sec.
Why u mad?
Not mad. Literally concerned that you can’t tell the difference between an ability that is off gcd and spell locks and ability that costs 2 gcds, doesn’t spell lock, moves you someplace you may not want to be, is subject to diminishing returns, and doesn’t work on bosses or elites scaled above player level.
IDK if i’d call it an interrupt. I never thought of using it in that way tho, so I really want to try it out.
I do juggle stuff like incap roar, typhoon, warstomp, to buy those seconds until a real spell lock is back off CD, but it’s not quite the same.
EDIT I just read that it doesn’t interrupt a spell, but it can put you behind them which will effectively mess with a player having to spin to face you before the spellcast completes