Shadowlands Feral Concerns and Problems

SUBJECT NO.1

Main priority is BT along with rework on SBT to completely remove the refresh.
“Talents should enhance a spec" which is the complete opposite of what it does, but I’m assuming we all know what we mean by that. Making the core mechanic of a spec something you generally only need to think about once is not ideal in terms of spec design. I wholeheartedly think that it needs to be removed or heavily reworked.

The change to BT isn’t surprising considered there was talk about changing it back in start of the expansion but it didn’t get resolved there

The change itself looks like it has potential. Feels good with a big damage-buff to rip and it encourages people to properly pool. Furthermore not spending 1 second on the BT gcd, while also freeing PS procs up to use as you please without losing damage.

This does obviously require that the energy flow supports this and doesn’t get inflated within a patch or two which I hope will be kept in mente.

The downside to the new BT is it’s completely negated by sabertooth outside of aoe. Basically you’re going to use berserk, tiger’s fury, bleed target and spam bite to keep rip up for the entire fight without ever paying mind to the snapshot or the rip which makes the talent feel very pointless in itself.

This is not a new concern with sabertooth. Just yet again a time where its issues become apparent. It removes a large portion of what is defined as core gameplay for feral. Blizzard does recognize feral as a snapshotting class that deals damage with bleeds and bites. Sabertooth removes the main bleed from the equation and a large chunk of the snapshotting. New BT is just harder hit by this.

SUBJECT NO.2

Removal of SI from Feral’s toolkit.
Survival Instincts is an ability we’ve had since feral turned into its own pure dps spec. It’s considered a core ability in our toolbox and now it’s getting pruned for barkskin which we had TOGETHER with SI in the past. It’s one of our core abilities that everybody uses and enjoys. Especially the later implemented 2 charge system is really fun and gives you the option for aggressive playstyle during boss fights, m+ and pvp instead of having to go bear form and pray healers bother with you. The lack of SI makes us become a glass cannon without ammunition which really isn’t what we want. We want our defensives.

Basically our bearform is what boomies have passively from high armor in boomie form without the loss of damage from having to shift into bear form.

This will also be a problem in m+ and raid where you have to leave your dps form unlike boomies to mitigate the damage.

It feels like a really poor choice to remove SI while talking about de-pruning specs.

The biggest issue of removing SI is not just one person’s bad reaction. We are talking about the whole Feral community! As much as we understand that a new expansion brings changes and unifies every bit to have consistency across the whole system is logical! We agree with the way the blizzard devs changed some things. Removal of SI though is a stab in the wound we already have from the perception of the community about feral which is mocking the spec’s viability outside of guild runs. With the hand on the heart, the removal of SI from Feral needs to be reverted. It is our own unique defensive as a melee DPS spec.

Overall this change will make it harder for us to get into pugs as a spec that might bring the damage but have to be carried by the healer to even survive incoming damage. This also brings us to what we bring to the group utility wise.

SUBJECT NO.3

Class-wide Utility
As Ferals we feel quite happy that this change will give the other specs the fun of using Stampeding Roar, which at some point can be proven useful on any type of content.

As much as we appreciate this action that was taken by Blizzard to make those changes and implement them across the whole class, there are some points where Feral feels and looks like a lackluster.

Ursols was promised as class wide utility from start. Do that. Right now feral have no personal utility to be brought for in groups. It’s so bad that you had to put maim on the feral affinity to even have SOMETHING. No boomie, resto or bear is ever going to take the affinity for that.

One can wonder why boomie that has several unique utilities got typhoon just so they could give THAT to other specs through their affinity. Could have been treants instead and have given feral the typhoon for their affinity which would have made far more sense. Instead our “utility” is now going to be maim?
What’s the point of de-pruning us when we don’t actually feel the de-pruning here? We have lost symbiosis, leader of the pack, ursols, fairy fire, treants, nature’s vigil, tranquility and innervate over time. There’s a lot of options to give some of this back in a de-pruning.

Not to say that i personally think LoTP is a good idea here. Nor FF since it ruins the fun of stealth for the opponent. Innervate is “just” for one person in the group

Give us something we actually can say “This is what we bring to the table to make life easier for you all”.Some form of group utility. Hell. Even giving Ursols to ALL specs would satisfy me as an overall nice CC toolbox despite us not bringing anything on our own.
It feels extremely unfair to not have anything useful in return while other specs sit happily on so many unique utility options.

SUBJECT NO.4

Berserk - Offensive cooldown?! Not really.
This topic is by far the most straight forward one. Berserk is not really worth being called an Offensive 3 min Cooldown ability. Out of the ordinary lowering cost of abilities and giving us some more energy room for pooling, there is nothing more. Weave in more shreds or brutal slashes? We can do that anyway during the whole fight, because there is no actual impact when Berserk is up. No damage modification whatsoever on a 20sec duration, whereas Incarn gives us straight up Stealth Rakes and Stealth Shreds for its full duration 30 second.

Feral has always been a spec with a quite good, sustained and stable damage throughout any content. An example would be back in WoD when there was a 15% buff through artifact talents which complemented Berserk to actually feel like a real cooldown to pop on burst windows.
We want to be clear that we don’t demand to be OP. We want this ability to have an actual reason for pressing it apart from the low cost of abilities and extra energy pool. We simply want it to feel better than what it does right now.

SUBJECT NO.5

Execute Range
Sub 20% execute was something we lost not long ago and it’s sorely missed. It wasn’t a big dps gain but it felt good and empowered us slightly for the endphase.
It was removed possibly due to buff Sabertooth as a talent? Maybe, but it’s something we miss having and we may be asking for miracles but could also be reverted. That would solve one of the many issues Sabertooth brought being a monotonous destroyer of Feral’s true identity as a spec.

Closing Statement
Bear in mind that we are passionate about this spec and wholeheartedly just want it to work. We have spent so many years playing it for the most part and we would appreciate the understanding from the Dev’s behalf on these 5 topics. The first 3 subjects are the most concerning ones and by far the most important! The latter 2 are preferences we would love to experience again.

We humbly thank you in advance for your consideration,

The Dreamgrove Discord,
Feral Discord Community.

214 Likes

I feel that this is extremely well said, Feral feels like an afterthought that someone didn’t really want to work on.
The changes really highlight that Blizzard doesn’t know what they want to do with the spec anymore at this point and I genuinely hope that they listen to us this time instead of ignoring the Feral community like they did in BFA.

If there is another expansion of Feral being bottom of the barrel and a literal laughing stock of the dps community I think it would be the nail in the coffin for a spec that has so much potential to be amazing. The number of Feral Druid mains is dwindling and I rarely ever see us anymore and it’s because of foolish decisions on Blizzard’s part.

I want Blizzard to stop looking at Feral like it’s a discount Assassination Rogue and officially make it it’s own spec, that has genuine value and can stand on it’s own two feet with a proud identity besides “LOL AM CAT”.

48 Likes

The Bloodtalons change to me is the make or break point. If it goes through as is I’m swapping to Rogue next expansion. I started Feral because it was the only place in the game to get the snapshot and management style of play I was looking for and the new change to BT obliterates that style. Both because Sabertooth means I never actually have to think about Bloodtalons ever again and because it makes applying Rake a simple affair since I never have to worry about snapshotting it, just cast it when it hits pandemic.

Bloodtalons needs to be something that we can manage and get wrong. I agree with decoupling it from PS and our utility spells since that is unintuitive and spending a GCD at 5 cp to do nothing kills your flow very easily. But the current change is not better. If I wanted a dumbed down rotation I’d pick Moment of Clarity. This change kills the spirit of Bloodtalons and it really shouldn’t.

On the utility standpoint, I don’t understand why Balance and Resto get all of Ferals utility + Innervate. Feral no longer has any unique utility over the other two and Feral and Guardian still suffer from the fact that half our utility spells shift us out of animal form, something that Balance and Resto don’t have to deal with. It’s getting annoying to be the meme Druid spec.

28 Likes

I agree that feral needs something unique it can bring to the table. Right now, looking at it from a raid leader’s point of view, there is literally no reason for feral to even exist. It’s just another melee dps in the vast swamp of melee dps with nothing special; it’s a Jack of all trades, master of none, with no advantage over any of the other melee specs it’s competing with.

Add to that the sad fact that it has access to a ranged dps spec with the exact same utility, plus the added benefit of being ranged, and that makes it even more difficult to not simply ask, “why don’t you play that instead?”

33 Likes

Really good post, i agree with every point made, its really depressing seeing specs get old stuff back while we get stuff removed,not to mention the zero effort to balance our terrible talent row.

I really hope we get some changes but after how ion just brushed the spec aside in the interview im not getting too hopeful, i guess its another xpac of feral being the joke spec

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Which interview was this? You have me worried now.

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I’m more concerned with class utility.
Blizzard NEED to give leader of the pack back to to feral for group utility.

Or…

Or give ferals treants with balance affinity.

A shroud or similar effect.

X3 types of Roars for the party
Roar of heroism /blood-lust - weaker version of lust, 15% haste and 15% mastery for 15 sec, 5min CD
Roar of sacrifice - all party members take 20% reduced physical damage for 8 seconds, costs 10% hps
Roar of might - Increases attack power by 25% for 10 seconds

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Couldnt find the clip so heres the interview on YT:https://youtu.be/bp044blwDsQ
It’s on the first minute

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Thanks for taking the time and telling us about this, if you guys, backed up by us basic ferals, can keep on this topic during the alpha and beta we CAN make a good change I think. Do you feel we should push for 3 major things? ie/ dont stop talking about keeping SI, beef RIP damage, and make berserk half decent? (even a 20% damage buff to berserk is great AND that STILL PALES IN COMPARISON TO ANY OTHER CLASS

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Well we have slightly faster run - oh wait rogue have 2 separate skills to passively buff move speed, PLUS a sprint. A plain rogue can match feral speed without even having to spec it, which is completely ridiculous.

We have heals - oh wait rogue and hunter have stronger heals.

We have a good defensive - oh wait, rogue and hunters have more and stronger defences Which are not getting removed in SL

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German interview, talked about straightforward and powerful changes for like all other classes, when it came to feral he said “no more major changes for feral” cause they obviously have no idea what to do with it

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Yep providing feedback for feral is virtually pointless. It truly seems like they dont even read it. So few play feral that ther will be next to no feedback for feral as well.

You can look at the alpha comments and its pretty much all balance

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Excellent post that enumerates all of the biggest problems we have currently. There’s little I would add to it.

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great post agree with everything

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not sure why posted with alt chat

and btw they removed survival instinct can we talk about this?

6 Likes

This post hits the main points that I’ve seen brought up in the feral community.

Feral shouldn’t be designed to be a discount rogue or a Demon Hunter with a finisher, it should be a spec that is focused around managing powerful bleeds. The path we keep getting pushed down is direct damage and less bleed management. Talents that change play style are interesting in theory, but when in application they reduce the spec into spamming 1 finisher and eclipsing talents on the same tier or negating other talent tiers and we end up with degenerate rotations, it shouldn’t be the strongest talent.

The removal of Survival Instincts and the lack of group utility makes me wonder what the intent of feral is. We bring a combat resurrection, but so do the other Druid specs, Warlocks, Death Knights and Engineers. We don’t bring a specific raid buff or target debuff. I understand that not every group that is doing a raid has to min/max, especially for none Hall of Fame level guilds, but that doesn’t and will not stop a vast majority of groups that form from thinking they need to tick off the “Must Have” List that will be established once class changes are finished: ‘Do we have a Priest, Mage, Warrior for Raid buffs? Do we have a Monk and Demon Hunter for target debuff? Do we have a Warlock for Health Stone, Gateway, and Rez? Do we have Enhance Shaman for Windfury Totem?’ (Assuming all this stays in game). Feral will be passed over to the whatever spots are left, in favor of classes that bring something else on top of just damage.

What will make feral feel like feral? I guess I can play Boomkin with utility in raid and AFK in town as feral for fulfillment.

30 Likes

Re-posting this here since the other thread de-rallied into madness.

I’m a mythic raider with several cutting edge achievements, I enjoy M+ and the occasional arena match. I have been a Feral Druid since I started playing the game in early Cata. These are my reflections of the Feral Druid changes for Shadowlands.

Talent Tree:

Sabertooth:
This talent could use some addressing. Currently with Blood Talons selected you only use BT once during the fight since you can then refresh that rip the rest of the encounter length under ideal situations.

Scent of Blood:
This is another talent that could use some work. I haven’t found a use to take this talent since it’s been introduced alongside Primal Wrath.

Renewal:
Why is this still here? I’ve never taken this talent since it was introduced. It seems like a more interesting talent could be used to replace it. Maybe put the Heart of the Wild in its place and put a new talent where the Heart of the Wild currently is?

Regular Spells:

Bloodtalons:
I enjoyed the previous iterations of bloodtalons more. The healing to buff my next two abilities gave a nice flow to the rotation and rewarded taking a more complex rotation. However I understand not everyone enjoyed this playstyle. The current talent still feels bland.

Consider allowing it to instead increase bleed ticking speed to do more damage on a CD. Perhaps something along the lines of instantly finishing the duration ‘tick’ window. Think of it as turning our dots into an on demand nuke.

Example: I put Rake and Rip up on the target they start to tick for their durations (combo point depending of course) I press Bloodtalons and all of the Dot over time ticking is then converted to a burst of damage and the dots removed. Bloodtalons would go on CD and I would then reapply my bleeds and continue with the rotation as normal.

This would allow bleeds to feel impactful on a short lived target or on a target that ‘needs to die now’. It also allows for 2 distinctive types of gameplay between MoC, Bloodtalons and Feral Frenzy.

Brutal Slash:
I’m not quite sure why this was changed to cap at 5? We don’t use it for AoE, PW is the ‘default’ so BS is really a Single Target talent choice. Generally the cap doesn’t really do anything. I’ll be using swipe and primal wrath for AoE.

Removed Spells:

Survival Instincts:

Why was this removed? I feel even more like squishy tissue paper than I did in BFA. Feral needs a defensive cooldown barskin doesn’t cut it. Having finally been given barkskin back only to lose SI is not a fair trade off. Either allow us to have the weaker barkskin and SI or remove barkskin and give us access to SI. SI is a core ability in our kit.

Every other melee DPS has a strong defensive CD (a weak one as well, which is the role barskin fills) -we should as well.

Going into bear form we have no way to generate rage so I can’t pop Ironfur as a defense (which also only works on physical damage if I get hit by any other type I’m a sitting duck) and just bear form alone isn’t enough to survive some mechanics.

Things that might have been overlooked:

Stampeding Roar:

Currently the tooltip states this spell places me in bear form it should not. This should be able to be cast in cat form. Putting the feral druid in bear form makes no sense.

Lack of Raid Utility:

Currently feral (and bear) doesn’t bring anything to a raid environment that another druid spec doesn’t bring. We need some form of unique ability-be it leader of the pack or something new to warrant being brought to a raid environment.
You removed our ultity and gave it to everyone and we received nothing in return. It was already hard to get into a group before this change- I feel like it will almost be impossible now. Off healing/Affinities is/are not an acceptable raid utility unless I can cast them in cat form.

Other Notes:

Could we possibly see a change to Berserk? It’s a very underwhelming button to press in its current form. In BFA the difference between using it during an encounter or forgetting to was only about 2-3% of our DPS. It’s our major CD and it should feel impactful.

Cosmetic Glyphs/Toys: Could we possibly see something allow us to have access to the Claws of the Shivallah form be it a glyph or a toy similar to the Fandral’s seed pouch?

Final Thoughts:

I consider the above critical points that need to be addressed. For me BFA Feral druid was fine once Primal Wrath was added. I will always love my spec but I feel some things were missed/ looked over.

In the transition from BFA we needed a tad more raid utility and that was it. I feel like you have done a 180 from all the progress the spec had been making.If it ain’t broke don’t fix it kinda thing.

31 Likes

Great post

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If the main change for a spec in a expansion is a talent, then maybe said talent shouldn’t be a talent.

14 Likes