cant because then my rips off the target and thats a waste to.
blizzard doesnt know what they want to do with feral…they never did. if your point is your wrong then sure im proving it. like i said if im wasting 3/4 ravage procs because i have to do dot uptime what even is the point of having ravage.
i dont count those procs when i say 3/4 of my procs get wasted because theres nothing that can be done about that. it feels disgusting to watch a ravage proc timer go down to 0 because i had to reapply my rip and then build up combo points to try and get ravage because using it at 1 or 2 combo points is a waste of both.
So then it does go against the philosophy of having to prioritise and choose. If its just a “it’ll be there when i get around to it”, it doesnt fit the theme theyre going for.
Theres a blue post talking about the changes with feral and why it is the way it is now…lol
I think part of my consternation is being colored by the M+ team I run with, that includes two ret paladins - which does a good job of putting Feral’s deficiencies in sharp relief.
They can have wings on almost every pull if not every pull
They can battle res without having to shapeshift and interrupt what they are doing
They wear plate and take less damage overall
They can bubble and stay in dangerous effects to continue to dps
Their “at range” damage is higher than my “at range” damage (meaning I can watch my dps go down relative to theirs when I’m not able to hit something even if I have all my bleeds snapshotted and ticking on something)
They have better overall sustain because of the way their cooldowns work
Their damage scales better with Aug
I could probably keep going, but you get the idea.
then by this logic we agree that blizzard doesnt know what they want to do with feral and there philosophy for feral.
not really. ive played around with doing it and it comes up as a dps loss when i do it under 3. under 3 and i might as well reup my rip or just bite at 5
its unfair to compare feral to other melee especially ret. ret just feels better overall to play than feral. like you said being able to have wings up every pull if not every other pull is major compared to feral with has berserk on a 2m cooldown. fights where i use a defensive on my druid i just ignore on my pally cause the dmg just isnt as bad. i love being able to stand next to the evoker and do my melee rotation compared to having my druids head inside the mob just to hit. it feels like ret has a dev that atleast cares about the spec compared to feral which has nobody
Sure, what I was trying to say is that even if Ravage changed to not have a duration (or a long enough duration that we’d have to be asleep to not be able to use it), there would still be some Ravage procs that go to waste because of overwriting. Just trying to point out that we still wouldn’t get the value of every possible Ravage proc to help keep the power level in check.
Sure, and there are definitely issues with feral compared to many other specs. Nothing in my responses should be taken to mean feral is perfect.
I just don’t subscribe to the idea that snapshotting is the reason for these issues and that the spec would be better without snapshotting. Your entire list, outside of the augmentation scaling bullet, aren’t related to snapshotting and could be fixed without touching the snapshotting mechanic at all.
And then even if the spec would be better without snapshotting, there would need to be something to replace it because feral is quite bland if we remove snapshotting from the equation.
No. They have explicitly stated they want you to have to consider your options and the outcome of the action you choose.
If youve got a Ravage sitting there at all times that wont decay and its just free for when you have nothing else to use/do, theres no thought process to it. Because then it turns into the snapshot effect of DF…there was nothing to it because TF had nearly 100% uptime.
Which is why they changed it and expressed why they want it this way. They dont want things to be a 100% passive “buff”
losing it to overwriting doesnt feel bad compared to having a harder hitting bite just get wasted and lose the extra damage. i would rather this happen than what happens now. imo a 10% increase to energy regen and something done with ravage would go such a massively long way. i still enjoy the spec and have fun playing it even if i have to remember to take advantage of the pandemic window since theres no tigers fury reset anymore.
i mean im sure people could come up with something to replace it. i never really enjoyed snapshotting but it would feel weird without it.
replace ravage in that sentence with bite and were pretty much where feral is. if i have no dots to replace then i bite but if i have ravage up i can bite harder. as it stands i dont use ravage. its value is to low to justify its use 3/4 of the time as it means i lose my rip. thats not a choice either thats like saying you chose to dps in the fight rather than stand there. choosing means having 2 options not having 1 option you have to do and 1 option that is wrong nearly every time
But youre not complaining about Bite and its casts per minute. Because its not the same thing
Look at it more like:
TF is to Rip what Ravage is to Bite
Theyre buff windows to a specific ability (for this example).
Now youve got to decide which one is going to yield better results, and if you screwed up, what is it going to take to make it up down the road
And this is where that planning ahead comes into play. Using a 5 point Ravage and having Rip fall off for X amount of seconds, or hit Rip in the pandemic window and lose out on Ravage. Different scenarios will yield different answers.
Yep I’m with you. I was trying to give more ammunition for why it shouldn’t be too good if Ravage had an unlimited duration.
Personally I think snapshotting for feral is one of the best spec-defining mechanics in the game (at least when feral is energy-capped and has less than 100% TF uptime).
It provides a clear avenue for skill expression. Players that manage the snapshot better will perform better in most cases.
It creates an environment where it is correct at times to allow a DoT to expire rather than always extend in pandemic. This helps the DoTs feel more impactful in the moment rather than just where they show up on Details.
It supports the fantasy of being a cat. Cats hunt (and my extension, play) in short bursts followed by downtime. Snapshotting creates predictable windows of high activity followed by low activity.
With all that said, and as much as I personally like snapshotting, the biggest gripe I had with feral over the past few expansions before TWW is that a spec built on an unimpactful snapshot mechanic has an identity crisis. While selfishly I’m happy Blizzard solved the identity crisis by slowing the spec back down, it was such a problem for me that I would have accepted a replacement of snapshotting to something that fit with a bite-spamming GCD-locked playstyle instead.
So i know we discussed the same thing on Guardian side and you’re not a fan of the playstyle, but im gonna shoot the same idea.
To have Ravage be a permanent buff until used, make it so every 5th Bite is a Ravage. It gets to keep the same power since youre not allowing RNG to fire off 3 back to back.
Apex procs count towards the 4 Bite requirement and now you can plan on holding or using that 5th Bite/Ravage as you see fit
I like this better than I do on the Guardian side of things. My concern with tying it to Guardian is there are actually things you can press in the meantime. Using Raze because you’re holding onto a Ravage isn’t going to submarine your DPS like choosing not to Ravage as a cat at full CP when your bleeds are already rolling. Having every X bite be a Ravage would be fine since as it stands today, no feral is holding a Ravage for the right moment anyway. Nor would we if the buff were random but permanent as I suggested. We’d just get that nice bonus when it is available.
but im not wasting a tf. even if i mess up a rip im not messing up a tf since it effects everything. so at its worse its still not the same.
yea either you rip in pandemic or you do less dps. thats still not a choice.
make ravage its own button and allow it to proc off various things like it does now but not as often. rather than have it replace bite and be combo based just make it a hard hitting proc. not saying your idea is bad just another idea as a option. i wouldnt mind yours being implemented