After 30 minutes of hitting mobs as a feral tank druid. The Flame Wrath proc is no longer working.
It is a chance on hit effect meaning that Feral druid should be able to now take advantage of this weapon.
It has been overwhelmingly fun to use when farming dungeons with my guild.
Please consider fixing this as it literally changes the game for feral druids.
This is not a bug.
Chance On Hit effects need you to hit with the weapon in order to have a chance to trigger the effect. This is why melee weapons with Chance on Hit do not proc off of Bow/ranged attacks, because you aren’t using that melee weapon to do the hit - you’re using the ranged weapon.
Chance on Hit effects do NOT naturally work for Feral Druid in vanilla wow/SoD unless there is a hidden passive on the item that is added by hand.
Flame Wrath had that hidden passive in SoD.
That passive has now been removed from Flame Wrath today.
Flame Wrath was far too strong for Feral Druids because it did not have the normal drawbacks that it is supposed to have.
It is supposed to be a 2handed weapon that has a low proc chance, that is difficult to utilize correctly - because you want things attacking you when you have the reflective shield on, but it’s a 2hander - which for any class but Feral Druid, meant you were giving up a Shield to wield.
So it’s supposed to be rare when you see it, and it’s also supposed to come at a risk - because the reflect shield is on you and you’re wearing a two-hander, which means you aren’t wearing a shield. So it’s hard to make use of it in PvE without a lucky proc into a weapon swap for the classes that can use polearms AND that typically get attacked by monsters.
Feral Druids were essentially taking away all of the hard to utilize parts of the weapon, and just blasting with it.
It was procing off Swipe so multiple chances to proc it per global.
It was not coming at the same cost as not using a Shield for a tank class.
It was not a hard to get things to attack you as a Feral Bear Druid (e.g. a ret paladin procs the effect in PvE, but nothing is attacking him. So the value of that proc is hard to utilize and get reflect damage from).
So this has been changed and no longer works while in forms.
It was way too strong with no downside except you didn’t get Feral AP and some stats, vs. what you usually experience as someone using this weapon - which is, it makes them way squishier, unlikely to live in PvE, and hard to proc.
Sorry for the fun-detected on this one, but it was WAY too strong. Especially with the 1 to 1 spell power ratio and how that could affect future solo farms.
this seems incredibly disconnected with the complete ethos with SoD.
We have Rogues who can tank
We have mages that can heal
We have hunters that can entrap entire raids for 10s + and have incredible AOE damage
Druids currently have the lowest damage of any classes - flamewrath - although incredibly powerful is 1 item, instead of inheriting an ICD or removing the scaling for AOE - was removed all together from a “SEASONAL” version of the game?
The draw back of this weapon is that its terrible in any single / duo target fights and it provides no FAP.
A reason to gimp future solo farms from a seasonal version of the game is wild - druids literally struggle to solo farm with / without flamewrath - yet hunters exist.
This is a very poor change.
I mentioned it, and we are aware of the drawback of the weapon for feral. The point is that it has LESS drawbacks than intended - not that it doesn’t have ANY for Druid.
ICD on proc rate wouldn’t solve all of the issues with how good an invisible passive makes this weapon.
It would prevent the nova spam, but not the reflect damage - which is where the scaling is with the 1.0 sp ratio on it.
You can also proc the weapon and swap it off so that also would need protections on it.
There are wacky things in SoD, and there are currently things like you mentioned that are strong. Just because strong things exist now doesn’t mean they won’t be reeled in just like this item.
Appreciate the examples, everything you mentioned is on our radar and not immune to being considered out of line. So it lines up with changing this item’s behavior.
The ethos of SoD from a design perspective is trying stuff, NOT letting everything that misses the mark always stay that way (sometimes it does due to other reasons).
This was tried.
This did not land where we wanted it to, and we do not feel comfortable with making an on the fly adjustment to this item today that fits it without potentially causing multiple revisits.
So the Feral Druid passive has been removed for now and may come back with restrictions that match the item budget and calculation for intended damage from situational vs. constant/reliable procs - because this was not situational, but constant.
Also, if Druids are indeed the worst dps like you mentioned - I don’t think making a blue item from BRD part of that solution is a good move.
I get losing something that can be built around and enhanced is jarring. Making a set for this item could be cool, but this behavior was never intended in this manner, sorry.
Hope I addressed all of your points.
Going to move on to other issues and revisit this if time allows.
Hey since we’re on the topic of Feral Druid, any chance we can allow bear and cat to use consumables in form? It’s really grief that we cannot but moonkins and demo warlocks can.
We also still cannot interact with literally anything in form. Is there a point to this? RP? It makes it very inconvenient.
Thank you for the detailed response. While I’m not personality happy about them, I do understand the issues you were attempting to mitigate.
Removing the 1:1 spell power scaling makes sense to me. But isn’t the same true for items like diamond flask?
The other proc was only “broken” on large pulls, and generally just put bears in line with other tanks at that level. So we had a way to be competitive, and now we are not. Again.
My biggest issue - please put things like this in the patch notes. You were clearly aware that this mattered to a portion of the player base and made the change. Some clarity there would have been appropriated.
Changes go out at different times than patch notes.
This was scheduled for being in today’s notes so you’ll see it there
Why does this need to be a hidden passive added to weapons? Why make the game inherently harder for feral druids?
So we just have to guess which weapon procs will work for us and which won’t, great idea. This should be stated on the item notes.
As a feral player I just don’t know how we keep getting screwed over so often.
instead of nerfing it and just lowering the proc you just make it not work in forms.
So insanely stupid. The dev team has shafted Bears all of SoD.
“So the Feral Druid passive has been removed for now and may come back with restrictions that match the item budget and calculation for intended damage from situational vs. constant/reliable procs - because this was not situational, but constant.”
That’s what we’re doing is nerfing it, but we wanted it removed for now in the mean time so it isn’t used/abused/or gotten used to more than it already had been.
The Feral Druid proc should be back on it some time tomorrow at the latest.
Would advise reading everything before you resort to frustrated attacks.
Thanks for the work you do. So 20 Years ago I made a Gnome Warrior, progression raided as a tank. Sod was my time to relive those memories, I am reliving the memories of poor communication knee jerk reactions and ninja over nerfs not even in the patch notes. After the treatment in P2 and P3 where I bring a Paladin/Warlock to OT all the raid adds for me while I can hardly hold threat one 1 target. I decided to move to Druid Tank I guess its the same bring a Paladin which has more utility, more mitigation as I have to run widlstrikes on Alliance, and way more area threat. Well I hope swipe gets more then 10% ap, and this polarm has +feral AP added to it to make up for all the Druids that spent hours to farm it, when its not even as broken as explosive trap. We didnt ask for Defence to give 4 AP we dont even parry or block… We just want to wear the same gear as Cat.
Blackhand Doomsaw not working either 
So I guess only Hand of Rag and Shadowstrike work now as on hit?
There are others that work besides those 2
flame wrath also works again and there’s like 4 others