Knowing how Feral has been handled the last several years seeing this philosophy change for the spec has me wondering and frankly concerned about the outcome.
We already have crappy burst damage compared to a lot of specs. Slowing down the rotation and increasing the damage seems like it is going to be bleed focused, which I’m not against btw, but bites will probably take more of a back seat. Hopefully there is some adjustment to help Feral ramp pretty quick or tgis could seriously suck for faster paced content like M+.
It’s too early to tell, but if Blizz has taught me anything over the past nearly two decades, it’s to have a health portion of skepticism when they decide to make a change of this type or magnitude.
What are your thoughts?
12 Likes
My main concern with these changes is how feral will fare in casual, open-world content and questing. Predator’s ability to reset Tiger’s Fury when an enemy dies has always been a great tool for quickly killing open-world mobs, one by one, without waiting for energy to generate. I worry that it’s going to get a lot more painful and boring to quest as feral.
21 Likes
i cant see this not being a problem. sure i have no trust in blizzard and i probably have the least faith in waht ever dev is working on feral than probably every other feral player combined but this sounds like were gonna go back to spending our downtime with auto attack waiting for energy to just barely keep our bleeds up again
9 Likes
I might have a slightly different opinion but I was actually ecstatic about the energy changes. I’m not too concerned about damage numbers yet, damage tuning will normalize as we get closer to expansion release. What I care about is how the spec feels to play. Ironically, I don’t like Feral when it has too much energy.
The whole point of energy as a resource is that it sets a limit to your tempo. Energy specs are supposed to alternate between periods of low activity (usually some sort of setup) and periods of high activity (payoff). That’s why all energy specs have a 1.0s GCD, faster than every other spec in the game. They’re not intended to be able to maintain that tempo indefinitely. When energy is too plentiful, then Feral’s pace is determined not by their energy, but by their GCD. That’s bad since it means that energy as a resource and the management thereof is pointless. Constraints are what make resources interesting.
Feral in Dragonflight has had too much energy. Period. And Tiger’s Fury being functionally infinite means that there’s no longer any effort needed to manage snapshotting. So the two main pieces of skill expression in Feral - snapshotting and energy management - don’t matter. I’m thrilled to make those matter again.
10 Likes
We’re getting more upfront damage at the cost of a lower APM
Im assuming theyre expecting a bunch of make up damage to come from hero talents as well
RIP rampant ferocity
Lower energy generation will also make shifting/weaving feel better (if you go that route) as opposed to feel like you’re missing out because you didnt need the downtime because youre constantly at 80+ energy
3 Likes
Honestly as positive as I am about the changes, this really is the biggest loss. I liked Feral having a clear niche in funnel damage. That’s still sort of true with we still have apex predator’s craving… but I think if the reason they’re changing it is for the aforementioned clarity issue, then what they should have done is have Rampant stem from Apex and then only affect the free Bites granted by Apex. Now it’s still clear what finisher you’re supposed to use in what context and you still get the fun funnel whirlwind Bites of Rampant.
2 Likes
Well mind you, we still have Apex so we can still funnel. Even though it took a 16% nerf in proc rate
We did make up some damage by getting a 100% damage increase to Primal Wrath and a 187% increase to Brutal Slash (with hero talent modifiers and the jazz are we getting Legion sized BrS back!? Lol)
2 Likes
I’m probably one of few but I’d rather be a flurry of teeth and claws than sitting there pawing (auto attacking) an enemy waiting on the opportunity to actually use an attack. Meanwhile a Pally walks by and slams it in the face with judgement lol.
My tiny hope is that they make it something like Primal Wrath spam in early dragon flight where we were able to get our aoe rolling in just a few globals. Then again, they are slowing us down… so no spam. I just don’t see where this mess is coming from…
9 Likes
I wouldn’t mind that. I still expect the majority of our AoE damage to come from Rip given that energy pooling doesn’t stop bleeds from ticking. I even think that the Tiger’s Fury changes will make BrS more interesting. I remember the Legion days where you’d hold your BrS charges and then dump them all during your Tiger’s Fury window. But that only works if there is actually a Tiger’s Fury window rather than just removing the walls of the house altogether.
2 Likes
It’ll still be PW spam. You’ll still get up and rolling in a few globals. Itll definitely feel different if you enjoy being able to have something to press every global, but it won’t take long to adjust to
1 Like
Well i guess i just won’t be playing druid at all.
Feral has high downtime which i despise.
Balance druid changes were horrible top to bottom.
Screw this class at this point, seriously. Druid is benched for TWW if this garbage goes through.
What i cannot believe is that someone got paid for this.
And i cannot believe that there might be a target audience for such a trash spec.
These changes are literally anti gameplay, anti fun.
Also, nothing screams cat like downtime. You know? One of the families with many of the top apex land predators that are extremely athletic and fast. What a JOKE. Yea bleed build with loads of downtime… CAT. Pathetic.
Oh but cats are ambush predators… Yea that’s why you have prowl genius, but when a cat is actually on the hunt, they are really freaking fast.
10 Likes
Did you just ignore everything else and just linked your little factoid?
Did you know that actually most carnivores sleep longer than usual?
Also sleeping doesn’t equal combat, genius. How many lions do you see that are not awake while fighting? Ill tell you which, the dead ones. If you’re gonna make that argument then might as well make sleeping an actual part of the feral druid rotation.
When felines actually fight they are really fast. But keep coping. Believe whatever you want though. I guess you’ll be sleeping too while playing feral just like the lion. Literal narcolepsy gameplay.
Druid is looking absolutely atrocious, both feral and balance. But especially balance.
I cannot believe someone got paid for this.
7 Likes
I can’t wait to try a slower, hard hitting feral spec. I never liked current tigers fury as it felt annoying as hell to press after every mob kill. feral druids are so cool but the current high apm is crazy.
4 Likes
I didnt start druids until BFA so im not sure how they were before, but they were pretty slow in BFA too.
They picked up a little in SL but you had to choose between Predator and infinite energy or Sabertooth with bigger Bites and windows of stronger Rips, and especially with Convoke.
Then DF spoiled us and gave us both. Ive enjoyed the spec speeding up with each expansion, but going back to a slower version isnt going to hurt my feelings
3 Likes
Vanilla feral felt horrible. Shadowland’s pace was also bad. DF actually made it fun again.
I’m worried that world content is gonna feel more miserable as cats are still squishy pulling groups to aoe down but at least when we had resetting tigers fury we never worried about energy.
6 Likes
I mean, if that’s the game we’re gonna play…
There’s two major hunting strategies in nature. Ambush predators and pursuit predators. Ambush predators stay hidden from their prey and use a single explosive moment to catch them unawares. Pursuit predators run down their prey until it’s exhausted and can’t continue the chase. One of the major differences between cats and dogs is that cats are ambush predators while dogs are pursuit predators.
Ambush predators bodies are built differently from pursuit predators. Ambush predators are capable of much faster and powerful explosive movement, but they can’t keep it up. Cheetahs are famously the fastest land animal in the world, but they can’t keep that pace for very long. Pursuit predators are slower, but they can go all day. (Semi-related tidbit, but human’s ability to sweat is both unique to them and also kind of OP in how much better it makes our endurance compared to our prey.) You know what that sounds like? Sounds like energy classes which have the fastest GCD in the game but can’t keep that pace going indefinitely. So they have to setup and wait until the prime moment to use their explosive power to maximum effect.
6 Likes
Yeah I’m thinking it’s going to be a matter of kiting stuff until it dies. While we are waiting for the energy pool after 4 globals the tougher mobs will still be smacking us constantly.
I may be proven wrong and it indeed doesn’t suck… but I’ve got a bad feeling we know how it’s going to turn out.
1 Like
You literally just go from class forum to class forum whining about specs. Grow up.
3 Likes
Youre over thinking it. We’re not getting weaker. Our power is still there. Open world stuff will still be dying in a round of combo points.
To put things into perspective: if we’re fighting an elite mob thats going to last 20-30 seconds we still have Apex proccing free Bites and energy return, clear casting procs, our strongest single target builder nearly tripling in damafe (BrS), we still have access to Tigers Fury, predatory swiftness procs for heals (not to mention increased survivability with druid of the claw talents).
The list goes on and on. Slower != Weaker
2 Likes