Not necessarily. If you read up on the changes going into Ferals talent changes, they’re passively increasing the damage of FBs via talents.
You can slow down the rotation and lower the amount of FBs in a given time by compensating and increasing FBs strength instead of returning to a full on bleed style.
Mind you, Feral’s playstyle during S1 is no different than S3. It’s still apply and maintain dots, PW spam in AoE and FB in <3 targets. The only reason it seemed like a “bleed heavy” style at the time was because the TIER SET increased our bleed damage in a small window after every finisher. And with the increased chance to crit on our builders, we were able to maintain that buffed window nearly 100% of the time (in AoE at least).
" * Primal Wrath energy cost increased to 30 (was 20) and damage increased by ~97% "
As of right now
They did no such thing, you just lost bleed damage bonus tier set for an umbrella damage bonus instead
im not suggesting there trying to delete feral so much as i have no faith in whoever works on the spec nore do i think they understand the spec while also not caring much. i think its more the blizzard standard of 1 step in the right direction and then a lunge backwards. nobody wants to be wrong about this more than me. i love feral and ive been playing it for roughly 18 years. i dont want us nore need us to be top dps ive always been happy with middle of the group but i do want it to feel fun at the very least and i dont think the slow playstyle will play fun
Really? I would have said that the latest dev notes on the Feral changes gave me the opposite impression. It may seem odd that I’m excited about what is ostensibly a series of nerfs to the spec, but the nerfs are there to emphasize Feral’s core identity and the way Blizzard describes that identity in the dev notes perfectly matches up with the way I’ve described Feral since I started getting good at it at the end of WoD.
Managing snapshots and energy have always been core pillars of Feral’s playstyle, but it’s hard for either of those to feel like a real part of the spec when energy is functionally infinite and Tiger’s Fury functionally has 100% uptime. If you’re ever at a point where Feral’s GCD imparts more restrictions on their tempo than their energy does, then you’re in the wrong spot. I would say we’re in that spot right now (many of my current raid logs show me with a wild 95% GCD uptime, which is insane for an energy spec. For comparison I’ve always been around an 80th percentile Feral player ever since Legion and back then I was getting uptime numbers closer to 80%.) so I think Blizzard’s proposed changes seem absolutely warranted. Much more so than if they proposed a bunch of changes to just make us go through the CP cycle as fast as possible.
Right there with you. Years of seeing how the tuning has been handled on Feral makes me very very skeptical that this change will come out well.
I totally expect cats to be bottom rung again until they get enough “data” to give some blanket 3% buff or whatever they toss at us.
I’d 100% LOVE to be wrong and we come out of the gate swinging and able to hang with the bursty melee specs, but I have serious doubts that it will happen that way.
I’m not even that twisted about the damage numbers honestly though. More the gameplay. For it to be a slow, low apm spec the dots will have to hit like a truck to feel any kind of decent. Even then, fighting energy starvation and spending time watching my cat swat at an enemy isn’t fun or engaging. Might as well be cc’d for a few seconds at a time
This is the pattern the last few expansions. They lean into a slower, bleed focused (supposedly) playstyle, realize that the game isnt built for that a few months in, then spend the rest of the expansion fixing feral by moving back to where they are now in DF.
Slow paced, over time damage is always going to lose to the majority of classes that do their max damage from button press one. They will never buff bleeds to be where they would need to be to be competitive. We are just going to go through this failure cycle yet again…
Mmm no its been the same the entire expansion. We may actually be slower now due to losing the extra Crit on our builders lowering our combo point genration.
This never happened lol
Our “focus” and playstyle hasnt changed this entire expansion. We’re playing the same way in season 3 as we did in season 1.
Ferocious Bite has maintained about 15% of all of our abilities used in both season 1 and season 3 and maintained about 20% of the overall damage
Agreed, S1 Feral was some of the most fun I had as Feral since Legion. S1 feral with Dire Fixation would have made it perfect. They should go back to that playstyle.
Given the long list of changes they have made to our spec tree throughout the expansion (not to mention the current tier set), I find that statement difficult to believe.
What has drastically changed in our playstyle? Aside from FF being forced on us in every build on all weeks as opposed to just Tyr weeks from S1, they playstyle and rotation and priorities are exactly the same.
We still want rake on as many targets as possible
We’re still spamming PW on 3-4+ targets
We still have damn near 100% uptime on TFs
The only thing that has really changed is the source of the damage due to tier sets
S1 tier increased our bleeds damage. But we played the same back then as we are now. Go and compare logs from s1 to s3, youll come to find the rotations and cpm of abilities being extremely similar
Just for completeness, there have been three other shifts in our priorities since DF launch due to set bonuses and changes in berserk; nothing major by any stretch, but definitely something that did change our priorities a touch:
When Blizzard nerfed Bloodtalons in S2, we went to Lion’s Strength for a lot of fights. This changed our builder priority to always hitting the “correct” builder rather than sometimes throwing in the wrong one for the situation to proc BT.
When Blizzard made Bloodtalons 3 charges, that brought us back to speccing BT and having some cycles of being able to only use the “correct” builder each time.
We’ve bounced between 4 and 5 combo points finishing depending on which set bonus and iteration of berserk/incarn.
Like I said, nothing that massively changes the overall goal of what we’re using and when, but definitely some changes in the moment-to-moment gameplay.
Changing talents isn’t the same as Blizz changing how the spec plays, don’t be daft. And to not look foolish you’re now trying to include playing around tier bonuses, like really???
Going from needing to squeeze a thrash refresh in single target to trigger bloodtalons every cycle to being able to shred the entire time is a change to the rotation. I’m not sure just how significant of a rotation change you require to call it changing the spec.
Kind of like frenzy that you mentioned? Are you telling me that if a spec has a different priority list because of a set bonus, that we shouldn’t consider that a change?
Agree I am playing WoLK classic and feral feels slow. Is so boring to wait till energy is full use abilities and mobs die before your bleed do anything sure we are good on boss but AoE trash is bad.
In m+ is about killing packs of mobs down not waiting for energy. This sit and wait game don’t do well in m+ or even in raids.
One main reason certain class are so good in m+ is their abiLities to brust AoE easily with little to no ramp time.
Even in WoLK ret pally and fury warrior feels more fun to play
Leveling in retail is a joke everything dies in seconds try doing level 70 killing elites boss in Emerald Dream. Not so easy as feral now they are making feral slower. Auto attacking while pooling energy is not fun
“We” did? Warcraft logs is showing 100% BT usage on the mythic fights.
In M+ it’s showing on average (including all key levels), that BT had about 85% usage for all dungeons
Not to mention we were still maintaining Thrash outside of BT on ST fights. So our play style didn’t change.
This also didn’t change our playstyle as we have been using FF in all 3 seasons as well.
Normally I agree with your assessments, but I think you’re a little off base on this one
With 1 charge of BT we frequently refreshed thrash even when it wasn’t in pandemic to trigger BT. When that bumped up to 3 charges, we didn’t have to do this every cycle anymore. I wasn’t trying to say we didn’t use thrash in ST, but I probably worded that poorly.
Yes, but we didn’t use FF in the same way in seasons 1 or 2. It was just a big ST hit and instant 5 CP every 45 seconds. With the set bonuses in season 3, we will hold it to align with CDs frequently.
But at the rate we generate combo points, even to use BT properly with 3 charges, we’re overwriting Thrashes. So whether it was every other round or every 3rd round, we’re still using Thrash outside pandemic windows.
Changes our damage profile a little (and a lot of our CD’s line up so it’s no different holding off a few seconds or for a burst window to fire off FF now than it was to make sure we had minimal CP generated before using FF in seasons 1 and 2).
Play style remains the same. A playstyle change would be like Balance moving away from DoTs and focusing more on Wrath/Starfire for damage. (Sorry, late night, mind is still foggy so trying to find a decent analogy for Feral is slipping my mind)
Primal Wrath energy cost increased to 30 (was 20) and damage increased by ~97% "