Giving feral an active AoE stun, which is already carried by monks and demon hunters, wouldn’t help at all because it doesn’t address the problem of bringing nothing not already brought by a superior choice. I’m not sure how 5% crit and free healing generation is “worthless”, given it was enough to give ferals places in a raid despite sucking in, say, TBC. Regardless, it was but an example of something that a raid organizer would look at and say “Yeah, that’s right, we can bring a feral for that”. There’s a very big difference between wanting to be the best dps and wanting to be considered.
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Plenty of Ferals raiding right now without it, including myself. I wasn’t saying it’s totally worthless, it’s just not interesting. It forces groups to bring specific specs or classes just for that buff.
To be honest, I don’t think things like the monk and DH passive should exist. I would rather see these classes getting an active CD similar to what say Hunters (Aspect of the Fox) & Mages (Spell Power CD) had in WoD. They took these sorts of abilities away from those classes but, they were far more interesting than any passive will ever be.
We should be pushing for more active play, not another stupid passive.
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When raids require 20 people and recruitment is a pain in the pants, any spec will make raids, sure. I raid as feral too. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t likely prefer if I was bringing myself on a different spec or class at times. I’d be very surprised if you haven’t been asked “So, can you play moonkin for…(this encounter, this tier, etc).” It’s mainly an issue at the very, very top end, but the problem is that leaks down to lower tiers.
I won’t argue that passives are boring, but I don’t see them going away any time soon.
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For PvE, It really depends on your traits, talents choices, and skill with bleed management. Im personally running 3 stacks of jungle fury and the Predator talent. If you can boil in one Rip trait (cant recall the name), you’ll be tearing up the AoE dps meters with the Primal Wrath talent. Im running 1st place in dps in almost all M+ runs.
For PvP, from the little amount of research I did, it looks like you want to shoot for huge Ferocious Bite hits. So youll want a ton of Mastery and traits that sport mastery.
No, I see his posts. And I don’t agree with a lot of what he says. But let him go down that road by himself. Following up with insulting posts helps no one and only contributes to the general chaos. If you don’t like what he says and feel he won’t engage you in an actual conversation, then skip his posts. There are a few posters who I treat this way and my life is much better for it and the forums don’t need to be cluttered with our personal animus toward each other. Trust me, if you are thinking it, then there are others thinking it too. It doesn’t have to be put down in text anymore once you make your point and everyone realizes a middle ground will never be achieved. Just move on.
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For those debating sabertooth vs predator, there is an interesting explaination of the subject on the Dreamgrove website today. To sum up what they said, for M+ in general it is personal preference because overall clear times will be similar. Lost aoe dmg is made up for on st, and visa versa. To min max, you could change which you use based on which dungeon, weekly affixes, or your group’s comp because those things will favor one over the other. Sorry to disappoint those wanting a definitive this is always best winner but I think this is an example of beautifully executed balance (shhh lets not mention Lunar Inspiration).
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There’s enough pros and cons to pred and sbt in m+ that both are worth considering. i’ve seen top ferals run both.
personally i’m a big fan of pred and bt.
TBH it’s just too much work to do basically the same damage as a Survival Hunter…
Okay, so I finally got an opportunity to run a few dungeons as feral with some guildies who were willing to endure the torture with me. I haven’t main’ed DPS in YEARS, so I’m a total noob. It’s important that you know that. First DPS role in a dungeon in literally 10 years, so I had nothing but theoretical understanding of the spec and nothing but target dummy rotation practice to go on.
I was in there with 395 gear (a 370 weapon, sadly).
Traits:
1x Gushing Lacerations
3x Wild Fleshrending
2x Jungle Fury
Other relatively useful things…I used the best I had available on the gear I got.
My UI - ElvUI with a full complement of auras and helps to keep me remembering what to do. I also have a dot focus mod to help me determine snapshots on the bleeds. I’ve used it with great success on target dummies, but as we all know…the real thing is quite different.
In my first dungeon (Waycrest 10), I was so disoriented by all the movement that was necessary (I’ve healed since Wrath, so being in melee range and dodging things constantly - not to mention that it’s explosive week)…I couldn’t form any opinions.
In my second dungeon (King’s Rest 9), I was able to pay closer attention, and I was finally able to fit my rotation in with the chaos. I had spikes of up to 36k but averaged around 10k through the dungeon.
That, my friends, is better than decent. I have no experience playing this way at all, and the second dungeon I did with my feral spec, I was able to do a little damage and start learning the rotation.
The third dungeon (Waycrest 11), I was much more comfortable, and I’m finally starting to see the pattern with what I currently have equipped and my “skill” level. I did a consistent 13-15kDPS with mixed AoE and single-target, but I spent a lot of time with noob stuff like tabbing past the explosive or not actually hitting the entire group because I was standing in the wrong place/too far away/etc.
With this limited anecdotal example, I can tell you that feral is not as bad as people say. If we get into the business of comparing feral to something else, maybe, but if you just take it on its face, a person who has no idea what she’s doing was able to go in and do comparable raw damage to the average DPS’er in a pugged mid-key.
I see numbers like the ones I was throwing up on my dps meters when I’m healing all the time. In the hands of someone who is comfortable with feral and knows how to play it properly, I have no doubt that feral is more than viable. I even did a few pulls as feral on alt night in heroic Daz (Conclave fight), and I was doing between 10k and 15k on a fight with tons of movement my first time out.
Feral is fine, y’all. Just my two pennies.
THIS, if anything, is the issue. The rotation for maximizing dps is punishing to learn/execute and very unforgiving if you mess up, even once. The other melee DPS rotations are so much easier. It’s not that feral can’t; it’s that feral is overly complicated, so it often doesn’t.
feral really isn’t that complicated once you sit down and read guides/practice. the most complex part of the spec is snapshotting, which takes some getting used to, but isn’t a hard concept to grasp.
there are more straightforward specs, sure, and feral is definitely at the harder end, but it’s not like you need years training in the mountains at the Feral Monastery to play it decently.
You are not wrong. But the key there is reading guides and practice. You need that muscle memory of what goes where in the rotation, and then you need the practical experience in fight situations where you learn how to react to changes in circumstance.
This goes for most specs, really. Part of what is missing in the game now is the expectation that players will make at least a small effort to learn the best ways to play their chosen avatar. Now, in the eyes of many, if you can’t do umpteendoodle bazzillionty dps right off the bat, the spec is trash and worthless. Unfortunately, the Devs are listening to this and designing the game around this philosophy. So, those classes who DO have the capability to do these things, or facilitate these things, have more value in most situations than classes who operate in a different manner.
Hey, we have a true blue tool assuming i am doing something i am not simply because they do not have an argument to stand on. If someone has said this before it just further proves that what i am saying is right. For the record i didnt “google” anyone’s comment i made the obvious observation, doesnt really take a brain really.
The rotation really isn’t that punishing. Keep rip and rake up with BT, ferocious bite at 5 CPs with BT. Keep thrash up if you have wild fleshrending traits. Dumb BrS charges during your TF window. Don’t let BrS cap otherwise.
It’s not as bad as it used to be, but messing up the snapshots can result in a LOT of lost dps over a fight.
Messing up any rotation results in a lot of lost dps over a fight.
idk about you guys but the hardest thing about feral is finding pugs. at 1300 lookin to find 14 and 15 keys and the amount of declines is hurtin my small kitten soul
This is true. Im at about 1270 io and I havn’t been accepted into a 15 once. Still the amount of people running keys that high is very small. I checked a few days ago and I think in all U.S. and Oceanic servers there are only something like 600 feral druids doing keys 15 +, compared to like 15k havok dh’s, 14k outlaw rogues, among others. I really would like to complete a 15 on time also for the artifact skin.
1370 feral druids, 25,590 hDH, 23,450 outlaw rogues, 10,050 Sin rogues, down it goes.
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Its stupid really, I’ve been having the same issues though on my mage.
Getting to do any mythic keys is an issue because community perception is so friggin garbage.
Like…bruh…perfectly capable of outperforming your garbage DPS you bring.
Skill makes up quite a bit.
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got up to 1360 in the day since writing that so hopefully this pace keeps up. I also wanna time a 15, hopefully by the end of this week or the next. My guild group doesnt really go past 12 so it looks like im pugging it.
I hope things look up for you as well my kitty brother
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