Recent Feral Buffs & Possible Adjustments (Glyph?) - UPDATED 4/10 -

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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With the recent buff to Feral and the record of logs now pouring in, I think it’s safe to assume the suggested 5-10% margin on higher percentile parses are more than intended, and so much higher on lower percentile parses (as assumed by devs in their original post stating so) who never employed ‘bearweaving’ or ‘flowerweaving’ methods.

This buff also elevated the ability to snap massive AoE into shorter bursts on demand, in what otherwise would have been up to Clearcasting rng procs or the use of Gift of the Wild in a 25-man settings at a much more staggered rate due to longer and more GCDs.

The problem being: It seems too much of a buff.

With the looming risk of such a nice quality of life change being reverted, how about instead tuning it up slightly while hitting the bullet points of the original intent:

  • Allocation of Bearweaving / Flowerweaving DPS into Mono-cat playstyle
  • Accessibility, ease, and appeal to the broader audience
  • No benefit to PvP interactions

A more simple solution: The Glyph

A new glyph could be added that increases the cooldown of Faerie Fire (Feral) to 10 seconds from 6 seconds or however much is necessary. It could also reduced the damage done in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by X amount in exchange. This would be a fair trade that would buff cat mono play and dissuade Bearweaving altogether, at a choice.

It would also replace an existing meta glyph, further nerfing (somewhat) to adjust for this change to Feral.

Such a glyph could read as:

Faerie Fire (Feral) is now a 10 second cooldown but always triggers Omen of Clarity. Unusable on all player entities. Damage done while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form reduced by 10%.

-UPDATE AS OF 4/10-

Naturalist talent has been halved in what seems a stealth nerf, which reduces physical damage done by 5%.

Not only does this nerf PvE but it has a negative impact on tanking and pvp. A boundary that should not have been overstepped while a more elegant solution so obviously exists. Tune the original change to Faerie Fire (Feral) …

-UPDATED AGAIN-

They’ve rolled back the change to Naturalist but we retain the threat modifier and ability to proc Clearcasting off Gift of the Wild, no further changes planned for Feral.

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are you really complaining about being buffed too much

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Hahahaha . I thought I have seen it all in these forums . Man is really complaining about being buffed .

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Should at the very least has been made as a glyph in the first place just to reduce the DPS gain from the loss of another glyph.

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I do agree. The loss of a typical glyph we use prior to this change, that activates the current state of this buff in the first place, would have been a nice place to tune and a missed opportunity to do so.

The change is very nice, I’ve never felt more fluid as Feral but I think the damage is too much and I worry that is also the general census so instead of going backwards I’d like to go forward with the devs outlook on things in WotLK Classic.

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Yeah, it would also have been more in line with the change they made to ret, especially considering the feral change was meant to remove flowerweaving and reduce the impact of bearweaving and not necessarily increase the damage so much.

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Mans got on his level 50 retail druid for his first post about feral on the classic forums

But yes I agree, feral buff is way over the top, they were already outperforming buffed ret on a majority of encounters in Ulduar.

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Feral seems to be upper middle dps now, I don’t see a problem with this.

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They are top 4 on practically every fight while providing raid with innervate, rebirth, 5% crit, faerie fire, bleed debuff, and group heal.
I think it’s fair to say it’s just a little too much.

They also have better scaling than most classes, which will lead to absurd numbers in ToC and ICC.

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On some fights they do good on other fights they’re well below, which averages out to upper middle.

As for scaling we’ll see how this plays out since obviously this is a new change and we can’t refer to original wrath. And since it varies highly based on fight as noted above…

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Aside from Kologarn, which shouldn’t exactly count due to the nature of the fight, Hodir, which even warcraft logs removed from the Allstars because of how skewed it was, and Veizax, where every melee gets shafted… Nah, feral are at the tippy top on all fights.
They’ll be top in ToC too with this change with the exception of mage on Jaraxxus.

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he’s concerned, and rightfully so based on Blizzard’s track record, about what is going to happen later on when they get better gear out of TOGC/ICC and start scaling even further that blizzard will not stop at just reverting these buffs but will instead nerf them harder.

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Right. This is more in-line with my reasoning and why I wanted to make a post.

The change is good and something I thoroughly enjoy but it’s easy to see the direction it’s going via logs now, and will probably do so at a greater rate with higher ilevels and more weeks of use.

I want the change to stick without much alterations, but be tuned accordingly.

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He’s complaining because if you’re overbuffed you can be overnerfed as well in response.

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Ferals are fine as is. It hasnt even been a week, the data pool is so low. And based on dps charts on warcraft log in the last day, balance looks good.
Anyone asking for changes with this small sample based on anecdotal evidence, this soon after a change was made, is entirely without credit and shouldnt be taken seriously.

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Yeah your opinion is biased. I’ve played enough groups already to see feral druids have climbed ridiculously high. I’ll go out on a limb and say their buff is in the realm of a 15-20% dps increase in aggregate.

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Heh it’s been what 2 days since the change/raid resets? Be interesting to see how it looks after the weekend and we have more logs from people who aren’t going in and one shotting hardmodes right after the reset.

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Why do you care if we are low, middle or high end of the dps scale? Im genuinely curious how this impacts your enjoyment of the game. The change is generally received as positive by the feral community. Look at the number of logs recorded of feral druids and compare that to let’s say ret in phase 2. Feral is by far an underrepresented spec by a long shot. We got a buff and are now doing more dps and helping your raid if you have one. I don’t see why people are getting mad about one class of spec that has legitimately suffered since Classic launch to now have a fun and exciting moment. There aren’t many Ferals but we love our spec, and we’re just happy to raid and help out where we can.

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Oh wow, a buff to feral druids is received as positive by the feral community?

Colour me shocked.

Warriors are irate because druids were buffed so that both of their dps specs are now above both of warriors’ dps specs.

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Why do you care where other classes are relative to yourself? Do you not enjoy playing warrior ? Warriors have been gods in Classic and mid to late TBC with scaling. And yes it may take a while but you will scale into TOC and ICC.

Where has feral been in terms of performance in vanilla/tbc? At the very bottom.

This isn’t an issue with feral getting buffed, it’s the mentality you assign to seeing a dps meter.

I’ve played feral Druid since vanilla classic launch because I enjoy the class and spec. Doing extra damage is just an added bonus.

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