Good evening, I’m a player who’s played the Feral Spec for Druid’s since the launch of the game. While this alone gives me no real backing as to ‘how to improve’ the class, this isn’t solely about improving the class spec. Rather this is about improving the class spec fantasy.
Feral, and Guardian both deserve their own unique mechanics. Guardian was meant to be a kind of warrior tank, which is why it uses Rage. Feral on other hand uses Energy and combo points. I personally believe these resource systems have nothing to do with the class fantasy.
I’ll start with Feral since I believe it will achieve a greater class fantasy by dispensing with the Energy and Combo point system. Replaced with a new system called Ferocity and Clarity.
Ferocity isn’t a constantly charging energy, rather, the usually combo-generating attacks generate Ferocity. Ferocity can be accumulated up to 300, and then spent on the usual combo-spending abilities like Ferocious Bite or Rip. Clarity utilizes the Omen of Clarity, clear-casting state, to offer additional Ferocity when attacking with a Ferocity generating attack. Clarity accumulates like Combo charges, but these are gained passively over time and by chance with Omen of Clarity. Maybe there could be a tie-in with Crit or Haste to gain more of these charges. Consuming Clarity grants additional Ferocity.
This is similar to combo points in that spending Ferocity at 100 for the normal damaging effect, or store the Ferocity for a longer-lasting or more damaging effect. Spenders only use Ferocity.
The generators themselves can then have cooldowns or charges attached to them, which somewhat limit their use. Depending on the situation, a player may choose a generator with a longer cooldown to gain the Ferocity needed for their spender ability as an immediate use, or may pool up Ferocity for a more devastating attack, or longer Rip duration – or using talent options to maintain their bleed duration despite expending the larger Ferocity pool.
The goal here is not to majorly change how Feral plays, rather to deepen the fantasy. Part of that is giving Feral and Guardian Druids a unique way to interface with their abilities. Which means decoupling their resources from the classes they were originally modeling.
As for Guardians, I think it might be interesting to tie the idea of Tenacity into their resource system. Tenacity as a resource would actually act more like Energy, except, generators cause Tenacity to build faster, rather than like Rage, which is acquired in bulk, Tenacity also auto-generates, however, attacks cause Tenacity to generate faster. This can also have an additional haste element, where haste can affect these generators. Also, because these are numbers generated over time, Crit can also be applied to Tenacity generators, meaning that more crit could be useful for generating Tenacity . Tenacity is needed for spenders, which deal more damage, making gearing choices a bit more interesting.
This means that Guardians will always be maxed out on Tenacity at the start of a fight, and the Feral would always start with zero Ferocity but maximum Clarity.
Anyway, the point of this post is not really to upset how Feral and Guardian Druids play their class dramatically, but rather to elicit the desire for deeper specialization fantasy even within the space of the specialization’s resource management.
Anyway, these are just some ideas, but really I’d love to see resources looked at as way to deepen all class specializations. It does add to the fantasy of playing a particular class specialization.