For those who don’t know, P8 items were datamined today including a druid staff with the following effect: “Remaining in Cat Form for 5 seconds, causes your Energy Regeneration to increase by 100%, and the damage of your Ferocious Bite to increase by 100%.”
As someone who’s played feral DPS through 2019 classic and since SoD launch, I have to say I absolutely hate this. Powershifting is the core identity of the classic feral playstyle. It’s an interesting use of game mechanics, rewards skilled players and feels incredibly satisfying to pull off well. Everyone on the druid class discord are upset with this, as well as the new tier set bonuses that seem to support it. Please reconsider this design so as not to alienate the many ferals that chose this class because of powershifting and the skill cap/playstyle it entails.
20 Likes
They built up the class around it just to absolutely trash it completely is what I don’t understand.
8 Likes
Additionally, even ignoring powershifting, this is just bad design. Feral druids regularly pop out of form for other reasons: To pop consumes, to innervate or battle rez, to bear charge, etc.
Punishing them heavily for doing so is just dumb.
10 Likes
ST tier bonus, Wolfshead, Trance Stone, that terrible Shifter trinket from BWL, even a talent that reducing our shift costs. Why all that to suddenly encourage Feral sitting in Cat and watching the energy bar slowly fill up like Rogues?
Peeps can call shifting gimmicky all they want but it’s what makes the spec fun to most Ferals and sets themselves apart from others who can’t be bothered to learn. At the very least make it an alternative playstyle for Feral.
9 Likes
ya not poping out for no vate or a ress and loseing the gdc of that cast plus going back to catform plus having to wait 5sec for my eng gains to start back up… To much time wasted
8 Likes
Absolutely wild they went from the conscious decision of wolfshead trophies, to this… Who was crying about powershifting so hard that they are now headed in this direction? Learning powershifting (while fun and intuitive) is really not more difficult than mastering any other rotation, but now they’re taking it away and rather than improving our gameplay, are making it more braindead. They already lessened the gap between powershifters and non-powershifters with the bonuses from T3 and how much of our damage relies on mindlessly raking, but now this? This is not fun. Let’s keep things fun ffs.
6 Likes
Even the Druid Discord renamed the Cat subchannel to ‘sod-feline-rogue’.
3 Likes
100% this. I wouldn’t even mind if they gave an option to raise the bottom for people who hate powershifiting, but to completely disincentivize any shifting while dpsing is a terrible gameplay idea.
4 Likes
I’m sadly swapping to Undead Pally if Pshifting is removed. Such a crazy blunder.
They leaned into anti-shifting ideas early on and I thought the dev learned that we liked it, weird to see such a turn around for a fundamental aspect of the class in P8 of all things.
You’d think they’d at most just add a competitve one thats easier but slightly worse for non-shifters, not straight up make the easy rotation better.
Hoping Balor’s napkin math was wrong on it
4 Likes
Hot-take incoming: I don’t like power shifting. I dropped off my Druid because it’s not a gameplay loop I cared about spending the time to try to master. I wanted to main bear and then flex to cat as needed but the demands of cat were too much for me to care.
6 Likes
I avoided cat for years because of it and didn’t like it at first, tbh after like 2 raids I’ve been hooked sense.
Also with a macro it doesn’t feel like anything weird, it feels like tigersfury but no cooldown and add a GCD. It’s like playing a Rogue with unlimited energy. 
5 Likes
SoD feral is the first time I’ve been able to play an energy/CP class - I didn’t start playing wow until late Wrath. I’ve always found them unplayable because you spend so much time waiting for energy to come back to be able to press your buttons.
I was dubious of powershifting going into sod and really just wanted to tank, but ended up playing cat phase 1 and refusing to go back because it was so much fun. Powershifting makes cat feel completely unique, and put energy use completely in the player’s hand. And it’s popular - it’s why so many ferals play classic wow specifically. It’s unique to any other class, and it really felt as though the devs were leaning into it - and classic feral gameplay in general. Wolfshead Trophy enchant, ACP/catnip, fixing wildstrikes so we didn’t grief our raid by shifting.
It has genuinely been to most fun I have had playing a class in 15 years playing wow, and I have felt when I have been good at it and performed well, and I have felt when I have been bad at it and performed badly.
I absolutely do not understand why, after putting so much work into developing the spec, making it genuinely fun, and fostering a playerbase of it that has stuck with it through all of sod, to design a set bonus that completely and utterly undoes everything you have done to the spec so far. We’ve been shred bots in the past. It was the weakest the spec has felt. We still stuck with it and were given a dot-focused, make sure you keep everything spinning version that displays who has put the time in, while still being perfectly accessible to people just learning the spec. (and WAY more accessible than classic feral will ever be) It still keeps the same kind of tempo as other dot-focused classes, just with player-controlled resource management.
This is truly disappointing, and I do not understand blowing up all the work put in to craft a genuinely fun class to just turn it into another version of rogue. Or, honestly, every other version of feral out there that is available to play right now outside of anniversary. This is the one place where feral is accessible, good, AND has powershifting. Let us continue to enjoy this.
9 Likes
Then don’t. With the current T3 set bonuses you can do passable DPS for a flex OS without it. This doesn’t seem like a cogent argument for taking it away from people who do enjoy it and making them play a lobotomized version of the spec they love.
3 Likes
Echoing the sentiment in this thread, removing powershifting would be a great shame. It’s a fun, rewarding rotation that is not difficult to learn but does have nuance to it that lets players be competitive against each other.
Removing it would reduce us to waiting for energy, reducing total APM and in general removing the reason a lot of people are playing this version of feral.
I find it pretty strange and disappointing that after 7 phases of supporting it, making specific items and tier bonuses to encourage it, it’s now looking like it’s being dropped and designed away from. The feral community doesn’t want that, we want to keep powershifting. Please reconsider
6 Likes
This isn’t the SoD devs’ first rodeo with starting up something unique for Druids and then quietly burning it down.
Looking at you, RestoKin!
2 Likes
I mean, the same could be said about those complaining about the change next phase yeah? Just don’t use the weapon and still powershift lol your DPS will be “passable” but they’d be playing the class fantasy that you’ve envisioned for yourself.
I personally thing powershifting in itself is terrible game design, but that’s why I don’t play feral druid. I have my bear tank without a feral OS because I refuse to powershift lol boomkin OS hype.
3 Likes
You have the choice of making an active decision giving yourself 60 energy or staring at a bar waiting it to fill. Why is the former poor game design? I still choose to drive a manual transmission over an automatic because it’s engaging and amusing.
Sounds like retail Feral would be more your thing.
2 Likes
The person I replied to was talking about occasionally playing feral DPS as an offspec. I and everyone else who hates this change are mainspec DPS. We’re willing to put in maximum effort for maximum possible DPS. Why would we choose more effort for less DPS, given the option? We’d just be trolling our raid group.
Hard disagree here, I think powershifting is an example of great emergent gameplay from vanilla. A handful of unrelated items from across the game being used in conjunction with one another, combined with an incredibly unique ability rotation, turning an unplayable spec from a hybrid class into something at least somewhat relevant. I love it because it wasn’t even really intentionally “designed”, it was just something players figured out they could do, and it turned out to be very fun. In SoD they’ve done a great job of turning that beloved play-style into something a little more polished, but still the same fundamentally. I don’t understand why now, after 7 phases, they’re deciding to just scrap that entirely and go with something else, leaving everyone who likes this play-style out in the cold.
2 Likes
I mean yea, these new set bonuses completely kill the powershifting rotation that has defined our gameplay since sod’s beginning. The 2pc bonus and new feral staff in particular, shifts us toward passive energy regeneration no different to rogues. I mean powershifting has always been the heart of feral’s playstyle, and taking that away just makes it dull like muti rogue right now. There’s so many ideas for set bonuses without killing our general rotation, like making Ravage an execute ability when the target is below 25% health, usable without stealth and at half the energy cost. Or, since most classes are getting AoE-focused set bonuses, let Swipe spread Rake to all enemies hit.
5 Likes
Honestly my problem isn’t just that they’re changing powershifting, it is that playing with their new playstyle you will be PUNISHED for doing any kind of shifting what so ever. Tossing out an innervate isn’t just a global lost now, it’s a global plus 5 seconds every time you shift to get back to your normal DPS. At least with powershifting, it was just another shift like any other if you had to innervate, battle rez, use a potion, feral charge, etc.
8 Likes