Since 2008. Ive been a feral druid. The ups and downs, the buffs and the nerfs. I was there.
Savage roar used to be baseline back in wrath making feral one of the most if not the hardest spec to master. But if you were good at feral, you were good.
My voice is meaningless…i get that, ive watched feral become simplistic over the years, rake shred and rip and ferocious bite being our only single target kit… use some bleed trackers or weakauras and you are pretty much set on the spec.
I miss old school feral but that is gone gone. Came back in dragonflight only to find out savage roar was removed…yet again and deep down? I know its gone for good. Atleast rogue has slice and dice…for now.
Im sick and tired of people wanting simple specs, classes who cant even play optimally until you have 1-3 buttons to press.
A bit late to the party there aren’t we mate?
You do realize that Wrath of the Lich King Classic (when SR was introduced) is out right now right?
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Welcome back. I miss Savage Roar as well. The best kept secret about SR is how much it would increase your white damage (melee). With this season’s 4-piece being melee based, I really thought they would surprise us and bring back SR at some point.
Also, they took away Feral’s ability to Eclipse in Boomkin form which was previously lots of fun. Of course, not really big dam, just fun.
Too bad you don’t PVP because lots of great work was put into the Cyclone ecosystem which add a new dynamic to Feral PVP.
I miss the sound of it.
Was like getting a good strike in 10 pin bowling.
I’ll admit that the addition of Savage Roar was the main contributor to me dropping feral and picking up balance. I’m just not a fan of maintenance buffs like Savage Roar and Slice and Dice.
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As someone who mostly does group content as Resto and often does outdoor content as Feral…I don’t miss it at all.
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Nobody liked savage roar, which is why it was removed. I’ve never seen a spell get more changes than that one. There was literally a glyph to make it passive and it was overwhelmingly chosen.
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Savage Roar was popular in PVP. It was actively being used in PVP when it was removed from the game. It was not a dead talent. However, the PVE ferals hate it because they don’t want the complexity/disruption for such minimal payout. In contrast, feral PVP using SR could get you instant procs with 1 to 5 combo points. For ranged fighting (i.e. kitty moonfire) this was quite powerful. If they did bring it back, they would need to buff regrowth again to make the instants worth it (though roots is pretty OP for instants too so just bring it back 
).
I am one of the PVE ferals that did not care for SR. I won’t speak for other ferals, but it just felt bad to press because there was no apparent impact from hitting the button. As a CD or builder this would be fine, but as a spender on a spec whose builders are already pathetically weak by design, reaching the payoff part of the combo to press a button that gave me a buff I only noticed in log review after the fact just didn’t feel good. Shadowlands Roll the Bones is actually what caused me to give up playing my Outlaw Rogue despite liking the spec more generally; sure the randomness of RtB was a big factor as well that SR didn’t have to contend with, but the same feelings of having a finisher that brings no wow factor existed. Since they made RtB just a CD in Dragonflight, the spec feels a LOT better to play for me.
I would be fine with SR if it were a choice node with a competitive option next to it or if pressing it felt like a finisher. But as something that costs an entire cycle to get and simply makes you do more damage that you can’t really appreciate in the moment for pressing the same buttons in the same order, it just feels like a chore rather than an ability I want to be pressing.
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After thinking about it, maybe it should be a PVP-only choice. Although, in PVE they could add features like making it buff Nature’s Vigil or something to make it attractive. It would have to be significant though or just wouldn’t be worth it (at least for PVE).
I liked savage roar but honestly, I’m not sad it’s gone.
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New blood talons to me is more clunky than the “heal” to get them.
I would like to see another rework to it and or removed.
Savage Roar was fun back in the day, but again “simplistic”
I’m sure there are ways SR could be changed to make it more exciting to hit. It’s just when it’s nothing but a damage amp that is a prerequisite to dealing damage it doesn’t feel good. It’s the same reason Blizzard moved most CDs to be off the GCD at the start of shadowlands; players hated spending the first 10 seconds of every pull doing nothing but applying buff after buff incurring the GCD cost every time before actually being able to start a rotation. To be sure SR was better in that at least our builders do something along the way, but being better than something miserable in no way makes it good.
Blood talons is a lot better since they made it 3 charges, though I will agree it’s still a bit clunky. I do find I rarely have to keep tabs on it to refresh with 3 charges outside of incarn because I’m usually needing to reapply DoTs before all 3 charges are used up anyway. Though I do understand how it’s frustrating not to always have it in incarn or big AOE packs with lots of Apex procs.
However, I vehemently disagree with needing to regrowth to proc blood talons for two reasons. First, it made zero thematic sense that we had to consume a GCD on a heal spell to amp our damage. Second, it forced us to consume our predatory swiftness charge on a regrowth which prevented us from using it on roots; while not common, there are times like on Harlan Sweete in Freehold when having instant roots is very useful and being prevented from using PS for the roots greatly limited our capabilities.
The other thing to consider is that Lion’s Strength is pretty good for being totally passive. I mind complex or clunky things less when there is a close enough alternative that strips most or all the complexity away.
I do nothing but PVP, and Savage Roar is finally what made me switch from Feral to Resto in Mists of Pandaria and never look back.
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It was totally optional but lots of fun in big BGs. You could just sit back and kitty moonfire then Savage Roar. Each combo point was a chance for an instant (5 points guaranteed).
Ive been druiding since WoW was a thing and I don’t miss it. It always had the stink of rogues about it.
I could see it coming back as an optional talent, but good luck not making players feel pressured to take it at least in pve.
Maintenance buffs like SR and Slice n Dice should die and stay dead imo.
It’s an “empty” button press. You hit it, get no direct feedback in the form of damage, it just slightly buffs your damage at the cost of valuable combo points. Bake it into rotation abilities similar to current Brewmaster stagger buff. Otherwise buff the class damage and kill the pointless feeling buttons imo.
I would like to see Feral go either DoT heavy or direct damage heavy. The awkward split between needing all your dots rolling and also getting your bites in for the majority of your damage has been feeling meh for years. I actually really enjoyed the first part of DF when rip and primal wrath were the base damage in our kit. I may be one of the few, but having that bleed damage back felt good to me.
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I have to agree with you there.
I have benched my feral druid for good and now maining a fury warrior.
I fet to get the legendary which has not been seen since ICC back in 2008.
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Personally I think the way Feral is now is more fun than it has ever been. I couldn’t stand the spinning plates style of maintenance buffs/debuffs and always feeling energy starved. But this is just the opinion of a rogue / Moonkin main going back to 2004. Never mained Feral so I could be in the minority.