I’m not sure Bloodtalons should be baseline. If the discussion around Bloodtalons has taught us anything it’s that there’s plenty of Feral players who are not a fan of the style of play that Bloodtalons forces you into. I don’t think it’s something that should be mandatory, and I say that as someone who is so attached to Bloodtalons that this change is causing me to reconsider my main for Shadowlands.
No Bloodtalons should remain an optional choice for people who don’t want it. But the flip side is that it should remain available for those that do. Moment of Clarity is perfectly viable and not very far behind optimal Bloodtalons play in terms of DPS. Destroying Bloodtalons has no affect on the people who don’t like Bloodtalons positive or negative and completely destroys the playstyle of the people who do like it.
7 Likes
Possible Change for Sabertooth:
Given some people do like the Sabertooth playstyle I believe a middle ground can be found in addition to fixing the ‘problem” with Blood Talons.
What if instead of always extending Rip as the talent does now it was capped/reverted to being an execute? Allowing Sabertooth to only work sub 25-20% but retaining it’s function of extending rip with an increased bite damage.
This would allow Bloodtalons to work as intended for most of the encounter and also allows for the ‘bite’ playstle to remain in spirit.
9 Likes
I’ll pop in and say this, I’ve mained feral since vanilla. I’ve played a Druid exclusively my whole wow life except a month ago where I made my first alt ever. Bfa was another first for me because I actually swapped to boomy just for a change of pace. Had no idea if that would be a good or bad call.
Now I’ve been missing feral a little now and play it casually to mess around. Arenas and pvp got me into this game but I’ve gotten into M+ and mythic raiding as of late. Needless to say, I keep finding myself missing MoP feral. I sold arena carries back then and could literally get full bleeds up and watch them die. Of course every single person didn’t have tons of self heals like they do now and such but… point being I miss being heavily bleed oriented. If they’re going to take our SI away… nerf our healing and make me feel squishy… then reward me for going in. Hit and run… like a cat. Get in, stun, bleed, and get out. Kite. Be the fastest spec while running. Let me be squishy but heal. Let my bleeds hurt. I don’t wanna spam bite and pretend I’m a warrior duking it out.
I just wish they’d make ferals less combat rogue styled and bring back how they used to feel.
24 Likes
Maybe make it baseline but put a talent in its place that changes bloodtalons to something else then. That way you could go BT+MoC or whatever else happens to be in that row in SL.
3 Likes
This is probably the most accurate succinct post I’ve seen addressing the concerns most common to all feral players looking at these changes.
Please don’t let it go to waste by ignoring high quality feed back representative of a focused community
Any response to this will go far to reinforcing the belief in what appears to be a paradigm shift on Blizzards regard of their players.
18 Likes
I physically can’t agree with OP any more - all their points are spot on.
I can understand how some people don’t enjoy playing with BT as it, and that it we were already told it was getting some sort of change, but not like this. I’d love to go back to bleeds being priority damage, and retain the ability to snapshot dots on the targets, but with the new iteration of BT, we need at least 5 global cd’s just to get buffed rip on a target (Unless I’m am mistaken, I don’t have alpha access). Not only does that feel bad, but it also means that if there are multiple targets up, or without the use of Sabertooth in it’s current state, we would then have to repeat that throughout the fight.
The removal of SI is another major issue - wasn’t this expansion supposed to be unprunning? And yet here we are, losing our only actual defensive in favour of barkskin on an already squishy class. Without considering the benefit of a shorter but stronger defensive (Avoiding burst in mythic encounters, or surviving long enough to brez a tank in M+), Barkskin is just straight up worse. Barkskin is 20% for 12s compared to 50% for 6s from current SI. You also have 2 charges of SI at the start of an encounter, so you can use them back to back for 12s if you really need it.
The final issue that I can’t stress enough is feral spec utility. Previously, only shamans and tank/feral druids have access to an AoE movespeed buff. I don’t particuly care that all druids have it available to them, I’m all for seeing more druids in action anyway 
. Despite this, what we gain in comparison is honestly quite disheartening. Cyclone is cool and all, but i’m not entirely sure of the practical application in PvE content (Someone with more experience on this can feel free to correct me), apart from trolling in world content. Will it be viable form of hard CC for M+ to block bolstering? If not, then what? Obviously it’s a godsend for pvp, but AFAIK we won’t be able to use Predatory Swiftness to instant cast it. Also having to choose between Ursol’s vortex and Typhoon is another choice i’m not looking forward, simply because of how desirable those are in M+.
I’m remaining hopeful that with enough of us speaking up against changes like this, we can avoid another BfA launch for feral.
12 Likes
When Shadowlands was released as the “de-pruning” expansion, I was expecting feral to gain 2-6 utilities on top of our current stampeding roar. This is because feral already is neglected and gimped because of our lack of utility RIGHT NOW. The promise of baseline vortex was a change I was happy with. Realistically, feral will never see it because the range from boomkin affinity + the typhoon from boomkin utility is the much better choice. Cyclone and barkskin are good starts, but barkskin won’t count with the removal of SI. Cyclone is equivalent to DHs imprison for dealing with mobs your party may struggles with. Good for PVP also. It’s a welcome change,
In my opinion, Feral should be competitive with Balance in terms of utility. Balance brings unique utility, and now has our only BFA unique utility (stampeding roar — which isn’t entirely unique to begin with since guardian has it in BFA) while we did not receive their Innervate or treants. Feral should at least have mighty bash baseline without the reduction in stun seconds. It is a sad day when the only thing developers could think to make as a affinity utility for taking feral affinity on the other druid specs was Maim.
Another issue is certainly SI. SI should not have been removed. In a “de-pruning” expansion, no abilities theoretically should have been removed. If anything, they should have been reworked, but never removed. We’re already squishy. It’s ridiculous that we’re having our only claim to fame taken away— the usability of SI as an offensive way to play, as it has two charges currently feral can play aggressively at the risk of being vulnerable later. Without SI, we will be glass cannons. Boomkin and Restoration do not need SI as badly as feral does, which is why they do not have it in their toolkit. Boomkin’s survivability is already better than ours with their hefty armour.
Something needs to be done before the expansion goes live. At the moment, feral is in a pitiful state. Imagine having low utility to begin with, and gaining utility and still being half a spec. That’s feral. We need unique utility or, at least, the same utility as boomkin. We also need to retain our current iteration of SI, or at least have it put back in reworked — although having it reworked, in my mind, would feel as a serious misunderstanding over how feral currently operates.
19 Likes
Another issue is certainly SI. SI should not have been removed. In a “de-pruning” expansion, no abilities theoretically should have been removed.
I don’t completely agree about the end of that statement, but SI absolutely shouldn’t have been removed. I don’t know why they didn’t just keep SI and add on barkskin, lots of classes have major defensives and lesser defensives.
affinity utility for taking feral affinity on the other druid specs was Maim.
This one actually makes me laugh lol the other affinities get vortex/typhoon, instant, impactful cc; they give feral affinity something that takes at minimum 5 gcds to use. Where is the thought lmao
9 Likes
To get the full 5 sec stun u need 7 gcd’s…even worse.
Catform (1gcd)-> builder x5 (5 gcd’s) ->maim (1gcd). It is so bad lol.
It is truly worthless.
9 Likes
Pretty much agree with all points here. I wish I had SL alpha access so I could give feedback on the class. 
8 Likes
Well said, i completely agree.
4 Likes
Lynxx signed, Lynxx Approved!
All of the current issues and concerns well summarized from the Feral discord community.
While I do think there are several changes for all classes and specs still incoming based on feedback, the initial thought process and direction of these changes is a bit concerning first off.
While I absolutely agree that the BTs change being wrapped into damaging abilities is a fantastic change, the existence of Sabertooth with this change is very concerning. Sabertooth needs to be addressed and is not a good representation of a talent even for newer players.
10 Likes
I think a bit of the problem with finding out where to go with feral is that they dont really know what they want it to be. As in what is the origin/basis/start.
I think actually trying to figure out the feral fantasy would be a good place to start, because what is happening doesnt seem to be making sence for alot of us players. Wich is pretty obvious when feral is so little played but has the most posts on forums!
When they know what they want the feral fantasy to be, and can communicate it to us, i think it will be easier to get ideas for how they want it to play out and easier for us to accept the changes made.
8 Likes
I agree we really need to understand what the design intent is. I’m hopeful that our, ahem, uproar will coax some back and forth soon. In an ideal world right as soon as the work week starts again and Blizz is back in the office but all this is scarcely a few days old so who knows when the first response comes? At the very least I’m fairly confidant has seen our concerns by now.
4 Likes
I think this is part of the problem with the spec as well. I mean we have all of these bleeds in our kit, but they make up a small portion of our damage overall, with most of our damage going into Shred (builder) and Ferocious Bite (spender).
5 Likes
It was probably one of the most difficult versions of the spec to get new players into and a frantic plate spinning beautiful nightmare to play but early Legion will always be peak Feral to me. Back when we had Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds, Bloodtalons, and some people even ran Lunar Inspiration. You didn’t even put Bite on your bar in those days since you never had time to cast it. Rip was always your top ability. I miss those days, even if it was the most stressful time I ever had playing Ferals I think it was my favorite version of the class.
Hard to believe now but people called it Ferocious Nibble based on how bad it was. You never believe it seeing Bite do the majority of our damage today.
9 Likes
I didn’t really play Feral to much during those times, but weren’t we also complete trash in M+ at the time?
2 Likes
Oh absolutely. We weren’t allowed into M+ until the Legion rework that granted us Primal Fury. We didn’t have a lick of AoE to speak of even if we talented into Brutal Slash. (It was an AoE talent back then.) I’ve always been one to stick with Feral due to liking the play style rather than anything related to viability. That’s why that was my favorite version of Feral even though it was one of the lowest points in our competitive history. I’m fortunate that that was also the time I found my current guild, one that doesn’t really care about player performance so much. So I was able to get enough M+ runs done. But that love of the playstyle is also why I’m currently considering swapping to Rogue if these BT changes go live.
Speaking of, Primal Fury should really be baseline. Kinda sucks having no finisher to push in AoE.
10 Likes
We talking Primal Wrath? That was added in BFA? Primal Fury is the one that allows bonus CP from builder abilities that crit.
So many Primal names, it can be understandable to mix them up at times 
Absolutely love Primal Wrath, though I think something can be done for Scent of Blood on the same tier.
While I do respect that we shouldn’t be pruning further, Thrash doesn’t seem all that needed, and could possibly be rolled into that talent.
6 Likes
Would have been better off if they didn’t touch feral. Feels like devs don’t even play feral or just an alt so think everyone else will be happy with the changes if it suited them.
7 Likes