Thank you for posting this. I main feral and I just want it to be fun again.
I donât think itâs the 0 CD specificallyâthough that may be part of it.
I think the issue is simpler: CC spells contributing to damage are frustrating to play and to play against.
Itâs like if every Fear made a Warlockâs next Chaos Bolt fire out a second Chaos Bolt. Suddenly, Warlocks are spamming Fear all game, even on grounding totems and triple DRâd immune targets because it means huge damage.
Or if every Polymorph made the Mageâs next Ice Lance also fire off a free Glacial Spike or Ray of Frost.
It just completely changes the priorities of the game/matchup. Suddenly, we go from Cyclone/Fear/Polymorph being used to set up or peel to those spells being spammed incessantly because they make bigger damage numbers. And instead of tracking or knowing when you have to kick a Cyclone/Fear/Polymorph because your team is off DRs or has no trinkets or canât line, now you have to kick or stop pretty much every one of them, regardless of whether the CC was going to be effective, because it means that the Feral/Warlock/Mage are about to have massive burst damage.
CC should be CC and damage should be damage. (Note: this applies slightly less to stuns, because stuns are most typically used on kill targets, but probably still applies enough).
This applies to defensives as wellâwhich is why Iâm not happy about the Rogue Hero Talent that is making Feint grant combo points and give a damage taken and parry debuff to your enemy. Imagine if you used Barkskin because it put an extra bleed on your opponent, itâs such a nonsensical design.
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This is somewhat true with them getting a vers buff when they sheep with Shepard
In addition to Wild Attunement being an issue there was an excellent thread in the druid forums that addressed what I think is a bigger problem - how bad the Druid general talent tree is. Canât remember the name but itâs worth a read if youâre a druid.
6 Likes
Fundamentally disagree with your perspective and I donât think youâve made a clear case, or adequately represented existing designs.
These are still spammable CC. You didnât mention one CC with a cooldown.
Rogueâs Internal Bleeding (on Kidney Shot) does damage. Rogues also deal more damage to stunned targets, and Cheap Shot technically has no cooldown. Similarly, Paladins (can) do more damage into stunned targets. Holy Priestâs Chastise does damage. Evokerâs Deep Breath does damage, particularly Devastation. Mageâs Dragonâs Breath and Blast Wave do damage. Warriorâs Shockwave and Championâs Spear do damage. Demon Hunterâs Chaos Nova does damage (and can provide healing).
Imagine if Barkskin applied Thorns on yourself. Doesnât seem unreasonable.
Demon Hunterâs Immolation Aura does that. Monkâs Touch of Karma does that. Ret Paladinâs Shield of Vengeance is similarly a defensive that does damage.
Your absolutist perspective reduces game complexity that makes the game interesting.
What if we said CC should be CC, not breakable on damage? Or all CC should be breakable on damage? Or no CC should make you immune to damage, or healing?
Stuns are for dealing damage into. Those are strongly linked to CC is for damage. Killing in Stuns is a pillar of PvP.
Incapacitates break instantly on damage, those are clearly âpureâ CC.
Disorients can take⌠some damage. Maybe more than some lately. They blur the line.
Now Cyclone is a Disorient that prevents damage (and healing). Thatâs a pretty cool and unique form of CC. Should we ban that because itâs not pure? What if it were given a cooldown to make it like a Stun, but instead of doing damage to that target, you did damage to another target? Itâs a pretty unique mechanic and makes Druids as a class similar to Rogues, but different.
Iâm not saying Wild Attunement needs to stay in the game. But it is an interesting design space and shouldnât be categorically avoided.
Youâre welcome to disagree, but Iâd ask that you be more genuine with your quotes and interpretations.
Let me say what I mean in another way: when you use a CC or a defensive, I think you should primarily care about the CC or the defensive. As I said â and as you left out of your quote â this likely applies less to stuns because stuns are most typically used to enable damage on the stunned target.
If Feint becomes part of a Rogueâs rotation because of the Trickster Hero Tree talent, I think thatâs bad design. Just like I think it would be bad design if Barkskin had a rotational bleed attached to it. Barkskin applying Thorns is different â yes, Thorns does damage, but it does it in a defensive way, just like Touch of Karma and Shield of Vengeance, as you point out. You wouldnât just send these cooldowns because they offered damage, they are a further deterrent for taking damage.
I donât know where you got that I have an absolutist perspective â again, you left it out of your quote of my post, but I literally qualified my statement, specifically regarding how stuns are different, immediately afterwards â and I canât say I understand where youâre going with any of these questions. My issue is not with Cyclone. It is with attaching Feral Frenzy to Cyclone. This has led to a situation where our damage is tuned around a CC ability, which is frustrating both to play and to play against, which is the main thrust of Axtinâs post.
Maybe thereâs a middle ground where they can buff our baseline damage a little and make Wild Attunement only apply from a Maim after a successful Cyclone cast â but even in that instance, I think itâs too many steps. Iâd much rather have Cyclone be the CC that it is â useful for peels and set ups â and have our baseline damage buffed fully to where it should be, not suffocated because weâre propped up by a talent that converts our CC into damage.
4 Likes
From your own words.
So then you donât even agree with your own statement that CC should be CC and damage should be damage?
This is why I said your case isnât clear, and went on to demonstrate how there is already nuance to abilities in the game and there is no broad âthis type of ability shall behave in this sort of way, always.â
Iâm not sure why youâve let yourself be conditioned by Stuns only, and give no allowance to any other type of CC to have diverse implementations.
So then weâre not even disagreeing that CC should provide damage, only the magnitude of it.
I agree Feral is suffocated by Wild Attunement in its current implementation and needs its power restructured.
The point on which we disagree: I donât see anything wrong with CC engaging damage cooldowns. Thatâs typically what you want to be doing anyway, if you can.
I recognize that the highest skill expression is to independently and cognizantly use each skill at the appropriate time. But that doesnât mean no spec should ever combine two ability effects.
I know itâs hard to advocate for a concept that, implemented poorly, ruined your spec. But that doesnât mean all ideas like it should be abandoned.
I think Wild Attunement can be revised and implemented in a compelling way, without consuming and destroying the entire spec.
Taking aside Feral Druid for a moment, and into the world of pure hypothetical, imagine a PvP talent for Warrior that increased Storm Bolt cooldown to 60/75/90 seconds but also applied Colossus Smash (damage and/or debuff) to the target. Something interesting and different that might be favored by certain compositions, or draw certain styles of player to a spec.
Returning to my original suggestion, to implement a cooldown on Wild Attunement / Cyclone. Perhaps a PvP talent that increases Cyclone cooldown to 20/30/40 seconds but provides the Feral Frenzy effect would not be unwarranted I think. Or as you say, WA applies only on Maim. Leave the option to pick up Cyclone alone without a PvP talent for its own merit.
I donât mean to say that these are valid implementations, but I believe that they are valid design approaches.
itâs hard to believe you have no awareness of how offputtingly smarmy this post is
Perhaps excessive, but I wanted to be complete in my response. It is sincere, however.
Itâs difficult to write in an emotionally captivating and relatable way when disagreeing. I think few people do it well, particularly on subjects that have significant personal stake, and itâs a valuable skill.
Iâm trusting an audience worth reaching can view the arguments objectively.
I mean this sincerely: I feel like you might not understand what I mean when I say that I qualified my statement.
From the Oxford Dictionary:
Qualification
- A statement or assertion that makes another less absolute. âThis important qualification needs to be remembered when interpreting the results.â
This is why I was confused that you think I have an âabsolutist perspective,â because I explicitly offered a qualification. A qualification does not mean that I disagree with myself. It means that what Iâm saying is not an absoluteâand I think it only makes my âcase unclearâ if the reader is thinking only in absolutes.
I am imagining it, and I strongly dislike it. Your options are between less CC (because you will Storm Bolt less often due to the longer cooldown) or less damage (because you will not be getting the free Colossus Smash). And I imagine it will feel pretty bad when you find yourself choosing this talent and then having to Storm Bolt to peel or extend a CC chain on the healer, because the circumstances happen to call for it during the match.
Again, I still have an issue with this because Iâm not sure any amount of CC cooldown increase in exchange for a fairly significant damage cooldown given for free is going to come without nerfs to overall damage.
Feralâs baseline damage is smothered by nerfs that accompanied Wild Attunement, so it might skew our hypothetical evaluations if we think about Feral. So letâs say itâs Balance who gets this hypothetical talent: âCycloneâs cooldown is increased to 30 seconds, but your next Starsurge will also call down a Full Moon on the target.â I donât know what these abilities tend to hit for on average, but I have a feeling they hit for enough that it would be ridiculous for Blizzard to let Starsurge and Full Moon stay at their current power while such a talent exists. So the choice becomes: do less CC so that I can do more damage, or do more CC but at the cost of doing less damage.
As things stand right now, I donât see how this concept of tying CC to damage can be implemented in a meaningful way that wonât result in damage nerfs or CC nerfs. As a result, it really seems to me that the answer is to keep them separate.
And to build on what I have said before, stuns innately doing damage or allowing someone to do more damage to the stunned target is different, largely because it is the main category of CC used on the kill target. With that said, I would not want a talent, for instance, that makes Maim also cast Feral Frenzy for exactly the same reasons Iâve stated aboveâI see no situation in which this would be allowed through without compensatory nerfs, leading to a situation where we have to choose between less damage or less CC.
2 Likes
Axtin, I think they read your post and they were doing some testingâŚ
- Wild Attunement no longer activates when Cyclone is cast on an immune target.
Kind of odd, donât you think?
While this is probably how Wild Attunement should have worked the whole time, it feels even worse now â and it feels this way strictly because our damage is 100% reliant on landing Cyclones. Weâre still tuned around spamming Cyclones and getting all the free Feral Frenzies, but now that we can juke kicks and still get stopped by Glimpse, Grounding Totem, Cloak of Shadows⌠weâre not getting that same spam â which is fine, healthier for the game even â but it means weâre doing significantly less damage. Unnerf Rip and Rake. Maybe even buff Adaptive Swarm a bit.
5 Likes
Thatâs weird that they do
this specifically. Rogue/Priest donât have it, but my DK does. I really didnât care b/c Unholy plays well and still has good damage (the un nerfed damage was great) so I thought that the choice made some sense.
Iâm on the fence with this. On one hand if the spec functions and has interesting choices then I donât care too much. If the tree is PITA then itâs a massive problem.
Honestly I think they should remove the pathing totally unless itâs a very strong talent or a capstone. The trees used to be gated by points way more than path, now itâs path more than points which can create imbalance when youâve had 1/2 of the specs totally reworked from launch.
regen buff was just ridic⌠we still die at first every game because our DEFENSE sucks -regen is for recovering - aka heal.
its pure joke now. every single game they train feral 24/7 from start to finish, even when you are in bear with SI and barkskin up. no matter what, you just die and cant do anything because our bleeds are nerfed so hard. that dump cyclone talent and the bite spec is a big big failure. just give ferals a 6sec clone , instant , in form - but dispelable. give us a 90% wall and give us back critimunity during barkskin.
Okay, this is just insane in the OTHER direction XD
1 Like
we had way more defense than that in mop: might of ursoc (+30% maxhp that doenst go lost after +heal), hotw +tranq, natur vigil, symbiosis (bubble /dispers), displacer beast (choice over charge).
its not insane. feral is still one of the last spec that has NO IMMUNITY to some sort of dmg. feral def got nerfed and nerfed but we gained nothing, even shapeshift and our âsuper mobilityâ is nowdays avarage at best.
anyone else worried about what theyâre putting in the euros water or âŚ?
4 Likes
So racist? CongratulationsâŚ.
Idk how you read that and say racist
I know , itâs hard to understand. But as soon as you realize that other classes have almost exactly those sort of cdsâŚ
Hunter : turtle (would Be our improved wall)
Pet sac : would be our barkskin
Trap: would be our cyclone
Still mad?
The fact that feral had access to instant clone (woltk/cata) is forgotten by many.
But hey keep being toxic instead of having ideas and a conversation about what needs to be improved to help feral to be part of the game. Watch awc games 2024 where cassidy getting trained to the ground and have to sit bear 95% of the game. Fun for everyone but feral Players