Blizzard: We hear what players think, we will consider and improve
Then Feral didn’t have any changes and new ideas at all, stuck in deformed and morbid high damage bite and low bleeding DPS ratio and pathetic AOE damage and endless waiting for the idling of energy
If you haven’t played version 10, you can predict this situation in advance
hey i really don’t know if this is a joke or i’m going to call myself a prophet?? lol
Forgot to mention OH~ There is also a talent tree that is criticized
What would make me feel a lot better about the Feral talent tree is if we were to get a blue post talking about the problems with it and what the plans for it moving forward are. As it is, it feels like Ferals have given a lot of feedback as I haven’t seen a single Feral who is happy with the layout, but there’s no indication that the feedback is being noticed given that there are no changes and no acknowledgement from Blizzard despite us being one of the first talent trees revealed.
I don’t want to believe that being an unpopular spec, Blizzard simply never notices us because we can’t muster the same volume as for instance the Hunters or the DKs, but I don’t have a lot of evidence to the contrary. I’d rather not spend another alpha cycle screaming into the void only for Ferals to receive no acknowledgement of our issues while watching Blizzard interact with other specs all the while. Regular communication updates would go a long way both towards alleviating that feeling as well as sharing insight as to the direction Blizzard wants to take Feral in DF, which the talent tree does not make clear. Frankly I think every class should receive regular blue posts during the dev cycle to let players of every class know that they’re being heard and what the movement on their class looks like.
Sudden Ambush? Not a PVP conduit. Only issue with that specifically is it costs 3 points.
The actual issue with what’s before PW is the fact they’ve removed Rakes stealth bonus from the base ability and decided to make us pay 2 talent points for it.
Furor isn’t going to pan out. If someone finds a good use for it, it’s going to get nerfed because it will be too good (but only in a specific scenario or to a specific build). Maybe Bear tanks run away from pulls in M+ as they are dying, shift out to human and sit there for 15 sec, then shift to bear and get 8 free ironfur casts at the start of each pull?
Just replace Furor with one of the form-centric shadowlands legendaries:
every minute, you get 10s of HotW for shifting into a form
OR
every 45 sec you cast a spell based on form
10sec HOTW every 1 min when switching to a non-spec role/form, sounds like it could be useful.
Rdruid with bad dps could get a proper burst window with convoke, heal/dps actually gets a 10 sec window of survivability with bear, and guardian can actually find room for some dps in small windows.
Blessing of Elune and Blessing of An’she feels so underwhelming. Just a passive that extends the duration for 3 seconds?.
Come on give us something juicier, maybe an ability that if you obtain certain conditions let us extend or shorter the duration of Lunar/Solar eclipse at will with certain cap. There is no way that this talents are useful, both talents feel more like you are giving up something instead of receiving.
Improved barkskin can be taken at lvl 10 but barkskin is a lvl 24 spell… 
Speaking on PVP, Resto tree really feel pruned. ugh looks disappointing
They should rename these tree’s from Talent Tree to Spell Tree. On paper it looks cool and in-depth at first but in reality all they did is take our spell book, throw in a box and then poured it out on a table then connected the spells with lines.
They are definitely on to something with this much needed change but I am highly skeptical that they get this figured out until at least 10.3 of the expansion. Basically we are buying “How to train your Dragon” as a distraction to the superscription based beta we will be in for the next year. 11.0 will fix it.
Thoughts about the Feral Druid talent tree.
Feral Feedback
Sabertooth: instead of Fb ionreasing the duration of rip i would to see if that can increase the baseline damage on rip by %.
Brutal Slash: this ability needs to be 1. Its own ability without replacing Swipe 2. Remove the charges from it.
Berserk: Build a Berserk feels bad and the talents are all spread out, suggestion Berserk: Relentlessness and Berserk: Jungle Stalker combined into one talent and the Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
Incarnation: Avatar of Ashmane: no one will chose that talent over Convoke of the Spirits for a 10 sec increased cooldown on Berserk.
Sudden Ambush: does the same exact thing as Berserk: Jungle Stalker without the cooldown, this talent needs to be reduced to 1 point if any or replaced with another talent.
Infected Wounds & Predatory Swiftness: they need to be BASELINE, having to choose them as talents makes 0 sense.
Adaptive Swarm and Unbridled Swarm: combined into 1 talent or at least make Unbridled Swarm a 1 point talent.
Bloodtalons & Feral Frenzy: they are way too deep in the talent tree, i would like to see them separated and moved up to the middle of the tree. Maybe instead of (Infected Wounds & Predatory Swiftness).
Druid class tree needs some major reconsideration in the top area.
It is not fun to pick up a bunch of dead “flavor” points that no other class has to deal with.
Balance druid will never have a reason to pop into bear form to swipe, thrash, and ironfur. Feral druid is never going to pop in moonkin form and start hammering starfires.
The healing points are probably a bit less awful because swapping to caster form doesn’t cost a GCD.
These points are not the same as something like a DPS death knight taking Death Strike. Death strike still has its uses for dps to instantly react to a situation.
I think the class tree is suffering from the idea of hybridizing too much. While its a good idea and very fun in practice on classic; talents mattered less back then and it wasn’t really about on the fly switching as much as it is now.
Switching to bear to save the raid was great but most of the hybrid stuff was full time with gear being the deciding factor. For leveling and dungeons (most of the old school classic experience) a feral druid could be a full time healer as long as they had a good intellect set, and a resto could tank with a good set of defense/agil gear.
The spot hybridizing was really only for raids and that moment of switching to save a wipe is just what more people remember because it’s what felt best.
That design doesn’t work as well now because even with a full talent set from the neutral tree or affinities and heart: you can’t live through more than a few swings from a raid boss with how hard they hit and how many auras tanks have; Keys need a full healer because mp5 is gone, intellect doesn’t increase mana pools and you can’t stop to wait for mana in a key with timers;
Form switching for damage was good when resource balancing mattered but balance won’t oom and use catform while it regens mana; feral has a decent set of dps tools (tuning aside) and no more powershifting/wolfshead, so balance spells are only good when you’re forced to range for extended periods of time.
The class tree should be tweaked to represent the more modern form of druid that’s pretty much always 1 form and just switches to soak a hit, top off a group, or push out an extra swipe between rejuvs.
Shorter heart of the wild cooldown/duration or nerfed but passive, more powerful temporary shapeshifts, Move the neutral useful utility up and towards the center where everyone can get it without wasting points on things we won’t use.
TL;DR the class tree is suffering from the idea of old school hybridization creating a lot of bloat and blocking off useful spells while the newer class trees don’t have this problem. The choices should be between which spell i want/need for the content, not which offspec spell i won’t use blocks a good one. Druids having 4 specs doesn’t help but that can be fixed by making the early tree points universally usable and specializing into specs as we go down, the opposite of what it is now.
I agree very much with your whole post except this:
Berserk is up for 20 secs every 3 min. Sudden Ambush is to give big Rake snapshots or buffed Shreds outside of Zerk. Reduce the total points yeah, and maybe even move things around, but no to deleteo.
I don’t think people who never played necro/kyrian in PVE realise how strong it makes Rake on the damage metres, or how nice regular extra CP Shreds feel. It is a good all rounder talent, and fun to play.
Rake needs love too, especially after losing BT snapshots, with Sudden Ambush it gets even stronger ones.
Just because NF had 3 better conduits to pair with Convoke, doesn’t mean its bad. Will depend on tuning etc of course.
Tired of the misconceptions about it tbh.
That said if you want synergy within Berserk, it could be changed to also make the next Shred/Rake cost no energy. Sort of like how the Assass Ambush proc thing also makes it free.
Personally I don’t care if it’s partially wasted during first Zerk, so long as its tuned around that. But making the proc free would be a very simple away around this. The buff also lasts quite a while so any proc in the 2nd half of Zerk can be used after too.
I hope Blizzard adds us to the Thorns general tree as it would be more interesting than… having Furor.
PS: How strange that almost no Rdruid has said anything in this post or in the DF comments of classes XD
I could see it being good defensively. Pop into bear and spam iron fur/frenzied regen. Could also see some use if you like owl weaving.
The talent seems best used for whoever shapeshifts a lot, such as PvPers and some resto druids.
Someone mentioned Balance…can shift to normal form and get 4 sec of free starsurges. With some haste (hero) that will be 3x free starsurges every 15 sec.
Will be over the top and get nerfed and ruin Furor for other specs.
I need some updates to the talent trees…so I can mess around with various builds ^^
Idea to possible fix the “Brutal Slash” problem for Feral. Make it a choice node with Primal Wrath. So you would select Primal Wrath or Brutal Slash (similar to live) where Primal Wrath currently is and give us a new ability/talent leading into Survival Instincts.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/feedback-druids/1279517/20
check this post out, give a like for some traction.
All that does is fix the BS/Swipe problem which could be fixed by simply making them coexist anyway (which would be better imo). Plus, Survival Instincts needs to be moved to somewhere more accessible anyway (honestly could even go on the class tree).