I have been wanted to throw some ideas out there to the potential Devs who might see this, and after the recent bug hotfixes to feral cat for the Berserk rune and other forums I’ve seen on Berserk, I thought it was time to give my own thoughts without adding on to other posts that usually go off topic. The Berserk rune reads:
“When activated, this ability causes your Mangle (Bear) ability to hit up to 3 targets and have no cooldown, and reduces the energy cost of all your Cat Form abilities by 50%. Lasts 15 sec. Requires Bear Form, Cat Form, or Dire Bear Form to activate.”
So right off the bat, Berserk is base-line great for feral cats. Nothing in the wording makes it hard to use or specific with ANOTHER rune. So then why was bear so tied down to only using the Mangle rune? While it’s a great idea and interesting play-style when using Mangle, Blizzard should have made it compatible with either other (hand) runes or easy/simple just like it is for Cat Form. So here were a few things I thought of that could be added or changed to make the rune more bear friendly since it’s the only option when fully in Bear form for the waist slot:
• Add Lacerate -
- to make Lacerate different from Mangle it could still only do single target damage but add 2 (or 3) stacks of the bleed instead of 1 (still capping at 5 bleeds stacks); “overpowered” option would be to do double the damage AND add 2 bleed stacks to a single target,
- Lacerate could be like Mangle and do cleave damage to up to 3 targets but not add the bleed on cleave to remain “balanced and fair” (too similar to the current Berserk Mangle),
- or Lacerate could cost zero rage. The bear can generate rage and use Lacerate for damage/threat, and if they do have too much rage they can spend it on Maul that’s not tied to the same global cooldown or other rage spending abilities that are and cost rage (or Frenzied Regeneration when they get it).
• Change Mangle to Maul - my thought on this was that if Blizzard didn’t want to add Lacerate to the Berserk rune making it a really lengthy rune description, then they could change Mangle to Maul BUT the catch would be they would have to change how Maul works. i.e., Maul would have to be on a global cooldown and not added to the next auto-attack. Or it might be fine to leave on the next auto-attack and cleave if the bear hopes and is relying on Wild Strikes/Windfury procs, but that’s adding a few “what if’s” or “you have to play this way” situations.
• Make Bear Form just like Cat Form - this is the most simple and boring option as far as “fun” play-styles go but if the rage cost of all Bear Form abilities (which would include Sunfire and Skull Bash now hotfix for cat) were reduced by 50%, it would be sweet and simple, and only help with rage generation and threat (to use more abilities to gain said threat).
I couldn’t think of a way to add the Sunfire glove rune as another option. In my own opinion, it’s already a kind of high rage costing ability for only single target, and if the target resists the Sunfire, you lose the 20 rage still. I didn’t really think of a way to make Sunfire work if it cleaved for the Berserk rune so for Sunfire it would only work with the last mentioned option, to reduce the rage cost of bear abilities.
Regardless of the other runes in the chest, legs, or feet options, and regardless of the play-style whether the bear player is solo, in dungeons or raids, these are just my own thoughts to helping one rune in one particular form work better and fit with all of the druid abilities and runes options without asking for crazy over-powered requests.