I am. We already have tons of buttons, so emphasizing the existing ones makes more sense to me over adding new ones.
This of course does not apply to group utility, which we still have basically none of.
2 Likes
Is it though? Feral has been through this before, as have nearly all dot dps specs.
If Feral is good single target dps with bleeds then:
- It will need to stick to the boss. Due to the nature of bleeds and feral energy regen, target switching has always been very hurtful to their dps.
OR - If feral can get enough energy regen to multidot, then you end up with a monster the moment you can dot up multiple targets (aff, boomkin, shadow when their dots were more impressive). Affliction has had alot of damage returned to their dots this alpha/beta, so maybe this will be allowed and multiple dot stacking fights will simply be few and far between, but it does tend to get dot specs nerfed.
But yea, to make a feral bleed spec work, Blizzard either needs to make Feral damage so high that leaving them on a boss is always best (good luck with that) or make fights difficult to allow for multidotting (good luck with that too).
Iād love to be a bleed monster (ahem on my bearā¦) but I feel like there has to be some way to focus it on āTHEā target you are trying to dps while providing some way of dealing with adds that allow the feral to play like other dps.
3 Likes
Except the energy regen is no longer a problem since weāll always have MoC in every build and potentially either CeC or Tigerās Eye (at least based on the current pathing, which may change) on top of Predator.
Plus, if damage emphasis has indeed been swapped from Bite to bleeds that actually encourages target switching and Draught is dead.
This is only a concern if their stance on multi-dotting is the same as it was coming into Shadowlands. Thereās no evidence that this is the case, and lots of evidence that theyāve backed away from the previous anti multi-dot stance.
Iām not saying that being curious about how bleed tuning is actually going to work is bad, but Iām at least a little willing to see what happens first.
In the class tree, my fondest wish is to see the idea of Heart of the Wild as a cooldown die an unlamented death.
HotW should be an always-on passive capstone.
Being able to swap to a Wish version of another spec isnāt going to upset the balance apple cart. You wonāt have any of the talents or mastery, you wonāt have the full toolkit of your offspec form- non-guardian bears donāt have Maul, non-feral cats donāt have PWrath, etc. It wonāt make you any better at your mainspec role, and it wonāt offer even 50% of the capability of a mainspec of what youāre shifting into.
But it does deliver hard on the class fantasy of playing a hybridās hybrid. My favorite moments of playing a druid are in messy runs with guildies, either while weāre learning new content or too deep in our cups playing around, when stuff hits the fan and you can save the day with your druid tricks, whether thatās going bear and taunt swapping for a tank struggling with a stacking mechanic or popping out to pick up some offhealing after a healer drops.
So even if it isnāt the best min-max-meta choice, Iād skip another class capstone in a heartbeat if it meant being a capable generalist all the time, not just in 45 second windows every 5 minutes.
4 Likes
Looking back at the class tree. Two big things I think Iād like to see.
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Move Improved Frenzied Regeneration down a line and have it connect to Thick Hides
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Maybe have Skull Bash replaced with Killer Instinct so itās easier to get
Personally think the tree would benefit a lot if it got the DK treatment and talents had more connection lines. Tireless Pursuit sounds like something that should be in the center of the tree.
I would love HotW being an always passive bonus, I never batted an eye at this talent when I first started playing Druid.
Would be a worthy capstone imo. Everytime I mess with the tree I have no desire in touching any of the last talents.
2 Likes
All the capstones are underwhelming in the class tree to be honest.
Furor is either near useless or over powered in the case of balance with no real middle ground. Some rework needs to be done here maybe it auto casts a spell on shapeshift to lessen the burden from shapeshiftās global cooldown or is just replaced by a new resource spell entirely (i vote a form of omen of clarity back for all specs)
Heart has to long a cooldown and should either be a toned down passive or maybe a 1 minute that last 10 seconds if its gonna keep the current %. Passive auras and lack of off spec spells really limits the hybrid potential and 45 seconds (where you arent doing your assigned role) isnt worth the 5 minutes.
Nature vigil is the least offensive but the fact that it only works one way based on spec while also only proccing on single target means for the investment; itll likely only be used by resto on tyrannical bosses and maybe balance trying to help progression pushes since they can get it easily. It should work both ways all the time.
Really none of them feel like capstones when compared to other classesā abom limb or signet of tormented kings or temporal warp.
3 Likes
Bleeds have always been the absolute worst part of feral and maintaining them has never been anything more than busy work.
No one has ever in the history of feral, ever gone āWOW LOOK AT THOSE TWO SICK BACK TO BACK RIP AND RAKE BLEED CRITS I BETTER SCREEN CAP THIS AND SHOW MY FRIENDS!!!1!ā
Literally not once. Bleeds suck, they are just as unfun to maintain as Savage Roar and Slice and Dice have been.
Also, a player would have to have literal brain damage to waste a talent point on 3% DR from regrowth. Look up the definition of ānothing burgerā, because that waste of a talent fits the bill.
Also, why are there so many X% damage to Y ability talents in the tree? Just bake that nonsense into the abilities since they are going to be required picks and give us something actually fun and interesting to choose from.
Just my two cents. Wonāt be playing feral if this is how it goes live. I want to ferociously bite the life out of my victims, not play melee affliction that has to generate combo points to put up dots in order to watch someone slowly die.
2 Likes
In mop you had rip ( or rake- cant remember) with 1mio Crit ticks (garrosh hc) with rune of reorganisation trinket. That was rly fun to Play. You still weave in some bite.
That trinket would be a cool talent:/
Greets -meow
1 Like
And now I have hope again. Letās go. The tree and Feral as a whole still has various problems, but acknowledging how the spec is supposed to play is a good step in the right direction.
Tuning Feralās bleeds to be strong is extremely important to how the spec plays. Otherwise it can become a lopsided mess where bleeds become an afterthought and your performance can simply come down to how many times Convoke procced Ferocious Bite and if they crit or not. You couldāve thrown a few hundred percent buff onto Thrash this expansion and it wouldnāt have been overpowered. Adaptive Swarm and Draught together gave 80% increased damage over time, throw in some haste, and that still wasnāt enough to make Necrolord Feral viable single target. From live to prepatch, Feralās dots all need an extremely large numbers buff before the spec will start to play properly. If it hasnāt already been done on beta just slap a 100% buff on all of Feralās dots so we can do some proper testing then fine tune it later.
Itās good that some talents got heavily buffed, and while some of the new talents are cool, others are boring. I thought Blizzard wanted to avoid WotLK era passives that did nothing for gameplay? I did note that some other specs have basic passives as well. Regardless, I donāt think Feralās complex enough anymore to justify talents that donāt modify gameplay at least a little.
Protective Growth ā Nooneās going to spec into that willingly. 3% dr for the spec that self heals itself a lot and has solid defensive options already. Additionally it discourages you from using it to heal yourself back up, which will be a lot more healed than mitigated. It also punishes you for not healing others, which is often the best use for a Predatorās Swiftness proc. You also get it way before you get Predatorās Swiftness (if you get it) so nooneās going to make use of it until they get PS. Protective Growth is also in the centre top of the tree which should be for core abilities of the spec, which this isnāt. Buff, redesign it, or remove it because in my opinion itās too weak it itās current state.
Tireless Energy ā It definitely needed a dps increasing component to it, but maybe just tying the max energy to either Predator or Cat Eye Curio would be a better option. Something that actually results in you overcapping energy, because 4% extra haste wonāt. Feral gets so little energy regen from just Haste, but the extra auto attacks granting more omen of clarity procs is noticable.
Sabretooth ā Love the redesign, but maybe the buff will need to be longer depending on how often we get to bite. The uptime on this buff will be high during Berserk which will help the cooldown be stronger. This is the sort of synergy interactions a lot of Ferals have been asking for.
Piercing Claws ā Pretty bland, doesnāt do a lot and feels like filler. Maybe change it to be like the Feral Power artifact trait that increased the critical strike chance of Shred. That would at least change the way we play a little by giving more finishers in single target, although extending it to Swipe would be better.
Double-Clawed Rake ā Good, more reason to press dots and bleed cleave during AoE. Any chance we could get Twin Moons on the opposite side of the tree for Lunar Inspiration?
Sudden Ambush ā It really needed the buff. Being able to get stealth rake in combat was really strong for Necrolord Ferals in Shadowlands, and it also helps to devalue the strength of Shadowmeld in raid so Alliance players arenāt completely stuck as Night Elf.
Dreadful Bleeding ā Super boring. Dots need a buff and itās good that itās a part of gameplay again, but a small flat buff is bland. Do something else to buff dots.
Tear Open Wounds ā Spamming Primal Wrath early just for the initial damage felt like a lot of ticking damage that was wasted and this talent remedies that.
Ferocious Frenzy ā I think using Bite to hit multiple targets feels really video gamey. Like youāre biting one target but that somehow also nibbles everything nearby? Itāll be good for Apex builds, but Sabretooth already encourages us to Bite in AoE (assuming Sabretooth si a buff to the player and not a debuff to the enemy).
Infected Wounds ā It definitely needed something to justify taking it for damage.
Raging Fury ā A lot of people enjoyed Behemoth legendary from Legion, and itās good to see it return even if it is a bit nerfed at the moment. Extending Tigerās Fury was good gameplay and rewarded direct damage builds with a longer 15% damage buff.
Frantic Momentum ā The RNG of it will probably frustrate players. You might get a string of lucky procs, or you might get nothing which is something Ferals didnt like about Ashamaneās Rip in Legion. Itās uptime will increase as the expansion goes on and we get more gear and can put out more finishers, but weāll also have more haste so the difference between having it active and not will be lowered.
Berserk: Heart of the Lion ā Itās currently 0.7 seconds reduction per combo point on Live, and Frenzyband is an additional 0.3 seconds per. With the latter being removed, thatās an effective halving of how powerful the effect is in raid. If Feral moves away from Bitespam, (and weāll have worse gear at the start of an expansion), how little reduction is that actually going to give?
Berserk: Frenzy ā Losing the cooldown reduction is fine, just it has to be strong enough on itās own still.
Wild Slashes ā Does this need to exist? Itās a basic passive talent. Brutal Slash isnāt in the way of a portion of the tree now and is entirely optional, which is what we asked for. I donāt see how pairing it with a weak passive makes much difference.
Bite Force ā Does this need to exist as well? Another basic passive talent with no gameplay. New Bloodtalons isnāt complex, it just requires not spamming buttons as soon as you have the energy. Could just add a second or two to the proc window of Bloodtalons to make it more forgiving if thatās the problem.
Veinripper ā I donāt hate it, but itās also kind of boring. Anti-synergy with what Circle tries to accomplish. Itād be nice for fights where having constant uptime is hard, or for PvP, or if you want more Bite spam.
Rip and Tear ā This looks amazing for AoE. Weāll be spamming Primal Wrath to keep it up in AoE while weaving in Bites to proc the new Sabretooth. This legitimately looks like fun.
Ashamaneās Guidance ā The problem with having a proc like this on an energy class is that we might have a full energy bar to spend and then get to use Tigerās Fury afterwards, or weāll have nothing and maybe get to make use of one or two attacks. The most useful part of this would be the stealth Rake snapshot, but we already have Sudden Ambush for that.
Not everyone is going to mourn Savage Roar being deleted, but there are definitely those that will. Iād have to play Feral on beta to see if I think that removing it is the right call because I am worried itāll lead to monotonous Bite spam again. I agree however that with the watering down of snapshotting over the years, Savage Roar has lost itās place in our rotation and lacked meaningful gameplay. I want to see Savage Roar return in some form. The idea of a large, angry feline roaring at the thing it is about to slaughter is peak Feral class fantasy. In Catacylsm Savage Roar buffed auto attacks, which was boring but the idea could extended to interact with auto attacks somehow. Make autos apply an ignite style bleed when Roar is up for example. Another idea is to make Roar apply a debuff to nearby enemies that interacted with our other abilities. A Roar redesign doesnāt have to be a DPS increasing button either. Could make Savage Roar an AoE fear, which would give Feral access to a much needed AoE crowd control as part of itās baseline kit. Savage Roar could also be used as a mechanism to apply a raid buff.
Itās good that Draught is dead, it punished you for target swapping and became useless on any fight with more than one target that needed to be hit for more than a few seconds. It was a boring passive for Feral that often made the spec feel worse to play.
I canāt help but feel that the tree seems like a bit of a mess, that things were just placed without much thought. Thereās talents that you would want for single target fights that are gated behind multiple AoE talents, so youād never actually take them because the cost is too high. Itās good that we have AoE options now, but I feel like they get in the way of the tree a bit. Then thereās also oddities like being able to spec into Heart of the Lion, which reduces Berserkās cooldown without speccing into anything that actually increases Berserkās damage output. Incarnation can also be taken without speccing into any Berserk nodes. You can spec into Moment of Clarity without speccing into Omen of Clarity, which Moment improves (but because the tree is so limited, you have to take it to get to 20).
Thereās also little horizontal mobility on the tree, and the left and right sides of the tree both require you to spec into a row 2 talent to be able to get talents on rows 2 through 9. It really constrains what you can do and since the right side has so many AoE talents, I feel like just avoiding it entirely if I am thinking about single target. The right side is gated behind Primal Wrath, which is an AoE talent that youād never use on single target since itād effectively be a worse Rip. If you do accidentally press it, youāve now overwritten the Rip that was on the boss with one that was probably weaker, actively making your damage output worse. You could make Primal Wrath apply itās own bleed, which also opens up the ability to put Rips on priority targets in AoE. Thatād greatly devalue all the tools from Shadowlands and Dragonflight that rely on everything having an active Rip, unless you changed them to also proc from Primal Wrathās own bleed. Regardless, Primal Wrath should be easily accessible at the top of the tree for levelling with, but it should be an optional thing slightly off to the side, and not a dead talent for anything that is effectively a single target fight. But then after that you have either Predator or Scent of Blood plus Double-Clawed Rake. The extra Tigerās Fury extension boosts more direct damage, but Scent of Blood is almost zero gain and Double-Clawed Rake is zero gain on single target. After that you have Ferocious Frenzy, does that also deal itās damage to the target you Ferocious Bite? Or is that another dead in single target AoE talent thatās in the way? With Predator you get something, but in some others you get no gain at all.
Having MoC not have any downward pathing from it also just kills a lot of momentum in the tree. Would it not be better to have Heart of the Lion and Frenzy Berserks come off of Berserk itself at some point in the tree?
The changes to the tree still donāt fix one of Feralās main problems which is a lack of reason to bring it to raid. The obvious solution is to give us Leader of the Pack again, changing it from the 5% crit to something else if necessary. With Savage Roar being removed, that could also be redesigned to be some sort of raid buff. You could give us Cat Mangle back and have it apply the physical damage taken debuff. You could give us Faerie Fire (Feral) back and let us apply the magic damage taken debuff. Everything we currently bring can all be be brought by other Druids or in some cases other classes. If Feralās damage isnāt overtuned, then we bring nothing to the raid group.
A minor thing is the naming of some of our talents and abilities are getting convoluted like Paladins and having Light and Holy in so many names. The names are starting to overlap with one another and itās getting confusing. We have three things completely unrelated to eachother that have the word Frenzy in them; Feral Frenzy, Berserk: Frenzy (formally Frenzyband) and now Ferocious Frenzy. Thatās ignoring Ravenous Frenzy thatās going away. Itās a similar problem with icons, with three talents using the old Claw icon. Perhaps consider trying to weave in the felines or Feral Druids from lore into the naming of the spec. Avatar of Ashamane is a good start, but giving it Ashamaneās Rip would be even better thematically. Also Kimbul cat form when?
Random thoughts at the end;
- Lunar Inspiration is really nice to have while levelling, Iād like to see earlier on in the tree. Baseline Feral has lacked an in-form ranged ability since Faerie Fire (Feral) got removed ages ago.
- Swipe not being buffed by Berserk might result in us using Shred instead of Swipe for AoE again for the extra combo point. Let Swipe give that extra combo point too. Having stronger Rakes will help to vary what buttons we press at least.
- I think a lot of people are going to struggle with base Adaptive Swarm uptime, especially if they take Circle of Life and Death with it. I didnāt mind it, but Iām also the one that did bulk of the Necrolord Feral raid theorycrafting. Consider making Unbridled Swarm a 1 point, 60% split to make it easier to manage.
- No new abilities, but I donāt think we need any new dps buttons either. An AoE CC, utility and/or raid buff is needed though to justify bringing us into groups.
- Weāll see how trading Sickle of the Lionās burst AoE for the sustain coming from Rip and Tear plus Tear Open Wounds plays out.
- I just donāt like the tree and would start again personally, so I did just that. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1000643076638900285/1016382242907496488/unknown.png
4 Likes
I havenāt kept up on all the Feral changes, but when I see a focus on bleeds the first thought to me is playing a class like Afflicition without Seed or Malefic Rupture and all your damage is effectively DoTs. By the time you get things up, the trash is dead and so is your damage, dead last behind the healer.
1 Like
yeah, thank GOD it is gone in itās current form. Absolute trash ability.
However I like your idea. Perhaps some version of Vendetta, where we roar at whatever is about to get effed in the A.
Some of us prefer to have gameplay that is about managing our energy carefully. I utterly hate cooldown based gameplay. It feels like the game is telling you when to press a button to get maximum dps.
There are so many specs that play differently in this game that just because you do not like oneās gameplay, you have to rip into it like it is what is ruining the game for everyone. I mean, you are posting on a rogue. They play differently from a feral and so, it is probably what you like.
I do not want feral to become rogue 2.0 again, like it did in WoD. Heck, rogues should lose the increased movement speed and stealth speed they took from feral. It used to be one of the differences between the specs, but it is not now.
Simple answer, play boomkin or another class if you do not like feral.
9 Likes
I think itās possible to disagree here without telling people to get out of the spec.
Bleed enjoyers are getting what they want here, and I am happy for them. Itās great. I think itās also reasonable to look out for support for the playstyle enjoyed by folks who like the immediate gratification of an 80k bite crit floating on the screen.
That said, I also think that the shift here isnāt as dire as a lot of people seem to think. There will be more bleed application and management than before, but for the bite enjoyers out there thereās still the option to focus on extending their duration with Veinripper and speeding up the energy/CP throughput with things like Catās Curiosity, Eye of Fearful Symmetry, and the various clearcasting talents. The Berserk window will still be mostly alternating shred and bite, with maybe one rip up front.
Will it be meta or optimal to build for bites? Waaaaaay too early to tell. I hope itās balanced, but in practice in M+ especially I could see it being competitive. As long as itās not so far out of the money as to be unusable, though, Iām game. Will it be harder and more to manage than SL live? You bet- but that cut both ways, it just means Iām that much more of a unicorn when I dumpster on the top of the meters. 
1 Like
Feral still has it just not the main tree.
Whoever took over the Feral tree and revamped it from the original Dragonflight treeā¦ I just want to say, thank you. Major improvement. Itās nice getting feedback finally!
3 Likes
I agree, the one who made at least one change to the feral gets my respects (and I hope they can improve it and give improvements to the Rdruid, Tank and Bommy).
PS: Thank you very much for considering changing the mastery of the druid healer, since it was practically the weakest among all for a long time (thanks to the fact that our hots did not last almost anything and it was not very flexible).
Another weird suggestion im making for the class trees. For most of the āwell designedā specs im noticing i usually have 4 or 5 extra points in the class tree that i just dont know what to do with and thus can put into whatever utility i want for the situation ie shamans.
For druids this isnt an option and i thi k its because so much of the core kit is put in the class tree because druids should have access to some of their off spec abilities as its part of the identity but just smashing the whole base kit in the first 10 levels would be equally unfair as a druid only thing.
So my idea is to just bring back affinities as a talent node. Probably second or third row so you can get then early while leveling or one middle row choice node between all 4 that auto selects when you choose a spec and splits into the more niche or powerful spells currently in the class tree.
For the later idea there would still be other acfinity nodes towards the bottom of each spec themed path so you could pick your sub spec near 50. Maybe even as a capstone since picking up an entire second spec is pretty powerful.
Tldr bring back affinities as a talent choice so we can clear the first 3 class talent rows of things each spec should have baseline and get more utility options earlier.
1 Like
Itās actually because we have 4 specs.
I honestly think the class tree should be 10 points per spec in the tree with 1 extra. This would mean that DH would get 21, Druid would get 41, and everyone else gets 31.
Iām afraid what that might result in is something like a 3pt node for that affinity, and what if I want to take Typhoon, but I still have to allocate 3 points for it to account for other Moonkin-oriented things that Iāll never use in Bear form. This use case is exactly what weāre advocating for trying to workaround now because itās just allocating points into useless things.
Personally, as I outlined above, base the number of talent points you get per class based on the number of specializations the class has for one, and that opens the door for Druid to feel significantly less rigid in point allocation and avoids DH being able to get comparably more class options compared to any other class in the game.
Dont think there are any multipoint choice nodes atm but i could see them screwing it up and doing that.
My idea more reworks the start of the class tree to look like the spec trees and the affinities themselves would just have the active attacks (swipe, starsurge,thrash ect), not the passives or utility locked to them. Those could stay seperate as they are but preferably higher in the tree.
1 start node that would be the affinity (auto assigned when you choose the spec) then branches off into the 4 spec focused nodes that start with the passives that the affinities use to give (speed range and DR) and remove corruption for resto.
They coulds then move the utility like typhoon innervate furor all higher as there wouldnt be multiple spec needed abilities clogging up the first 8 point investment. It would then just be about utility and some filler stats for the rest of the tree. Maybe some passives like the kitty crit combo points but thatd be about it for thourough put.
The second or even third affinity could be picked up then as a capstone when you reach the bottom of that specs line so you could still get a full offspec just towards the end of the leveling experience.
And just more cross connection points in total.
This was how I felt with the lock, I felt overwhelmed with decisions to where I wanna pick my talents meanwhile on Druid I donāt feel that way at all.