Yeah I suspect feral feedback is going to be split based on when someone first picked up feral. Players who enjoyed it back before BFA are likely to be the players who like it now, while players who picked it up/enjoyed it most from BFA through DF are likely not as happy with it. Game design wise, Blizzard did need to change something about feral; snapshotting does not work as a core mechanic with unlimited energy and 100% Tiger’s Fury uptime. Selfishly I’m happy Blizzard chose to slow the spec down, but I would have understood if they replaced snapshotting with something else instead.
I am enjoying feral, but balance druid is just bad in every way.
From mobility, defensives, class tree, ramp up times, boring rotation, terrible CC\stuns (cyclone is good but terrible snares\stuns), bad knockback, bad interrupt, no execute, no anti heal. Dead end
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Druid has always been in the back seat as far as I can remember. I wasn’t hoping it got buffed, I just like to play druid because I enjoy feral so much. Cat form needs more survivability options. Regrowth after hitting Ferocious Bite or others won’t do.
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I thought we were supposed to get a buff today? I feel weaker in 580 this week than I did in 570 last week.
I haven’t jumped on yet properly, only checked Vault, I was going to ask has the Buffs made us feel better…
TBH it might have just been a bad fight but I really don’t feel like I should have been having that tough a time from a single non-elite summoned by a world boss that looked like it was supposed to be an AoE fodder.
250k non-crit, normal melee swings were a bit much, but our self heals being worthless and no other real defensive cooldowns probably didn’t help either.
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I’ve been playing since BC, and I know a lot of Ferals. I haven’t met a single one who was excited about TWW. The tree needs a rework, and the Hero talents are boring and don’t fit the lore or the fantasy. I’m hating my Feral Druid; its rotation is slow and painful. Too slow!
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Ferals are way too squishy!
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I admit my account is anecdotal, and I probably should have phrased my reply differently to reflect that, I apologize. I also know several old school ferals and not a single one is unhappy with the change of the pace of the spec. Perhaps we are in the minority amongst old-school feral players. But my response was accurate amongst the long time feral players I know.
100%. But it also needed a rework during all of DF. And prior to that we had exactly zero choice for 3 of our 4 power nodes and even 1 of our 3 utility nodes because those options were correct 100% of the time. Feral druid has needed an overhaul for a decade now, if not longer.
But even though it is far from perfect and needs work, doesn’t mean it isn’t a step in a direction I enjoy. The class tree has far fewer wasted nodes for feral and access to more of the utility than we had in DF. There are use cases where we would take every node in our spec tree, including both sides of nearly every choice node (not sure we’ll ever use Veinripper as current constituted).
Speaking for just myself here, having a pace I much prefer and a better talent situation than DF are both wins. I can certainly identify further improvements I’d like to see, but this is the most fun I’ve had both with spec building and gameplay in a while.
I’ll agree that both hero trees are less exciting than the hero talents from some other classes. But I’m not really sure how you can say they don’t fit the lore or fantasy.
Druid of the claw goes back to WC3 and was the entire lore reason for druids being able to turn into bear form in the first place with WoW. The basis behind shapeshifting falls back to this unit.
Wildstalker is less emblematic of the lore, but the concept behind how it functions is spot on. Feral has always been about bleeding enemies and then lying in wait; when WoW launched its only finisher was Rip. Having a hero talent that enhances this play style makes a lot of sense.
Whether you like either is purely subjective and I won’t try to convince you that you should like them. And certainly there could be options players like more that also fit the theme. I just don’t think it’s accurate to try to claim that neither hero talent option fits lore and fantasy-wise.
There was definitely a place for this pace to make a comeback for players who like it, rather than feral druid and sin rogue being very close gameplay wise. Snapshotting does not work as a mechanic on a fast spec, so at the bare minimum Blizzard needed to do something to either that mechanic or the pace of the spec to alleviate that identity crisis.
I do wish you were enjoying the pace more. Like I’ve said, for me and ferals I know, we’re having fun.
100%. Though I’m not sure what this has to do with the part you quoted…
I agree with your assessment of the feral druid class in the current state of the game. While I’ll adapt to the slower pace of play, I really enjoyed the fast-paced rotation of the previous version. My main issue with the feral druid class is that the random burst damage doesn’t feel good. Not being able to control your main hero talent is a big mistake. I’ve had cases where it didn’t proc, or it procs at the end of the battle. It feels very broken and not fun.
Yeah that part is definitely frustrating. There should be ways to control both Ravage and Vines beyond the interactions with Tiger’s Fury. And then if it is going to be tied to Tiger’s Fury, I have no idea how it would be overpowered to allow Tiger’s Fury to always trigger Ravage rather than just the first.
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I don’t think it would be over powering, but it being a buffed version of Apex, I think it’s meant to follow the RNG aspect.
Suppose to make you feel good about seeing it become available instead of it being another cooldown you’re supposed to line up.
Now before when we had infinite energy, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but with our reduced energy regen and snapshotting priority, I don’t know if we’d always be in a position to use, or even want to use Ravage, and then it drops off before we hit an area where we can use it.
Of course this is all just off the top of my head from seeing some people talk about not having the energy to use it before it wears off. /shrug
Sure, and those are all valid concerns. But honestly the fact that there’s any duration on Ravage is also very odd to me. It’s not like we can stack multiple charges to wind up with some epic flurry of Ravages in a row. If it’s going to be a random effect, just let it stay up until I hit the button or drop combat.
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I agree with that. I dont know the raid fights well yet and ive only played around with 5-6 different hero talents so far so im not sure how it compares with other classes hero talents or how it would affect things or if the devs wanted to make it so you didnt bank it a specific part in a fight coming up.
But now that im saying this, its no different than holding CDs to align for a burst phase. Which as we just discussed may go against their design philosophy of the ability and they prefer having that timer to encourage a use or lose situation
Yeah maybe, though even then it would still be head scratching to me given its power level. Ravage is nice but it’s unlikely to ever be the difference between getting through a given mechanic or not if you decided to hold it. The wasted additional procs you can’t get while hanging onto Ravage would almost always, if not always, be more of a detriment than those cases where you choose to hold onto a Ravage proc for a specific upcoming situation for more than 15 seconds.
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Yeah. Im all for changing it to every time TF fires off to be honest.
And some new change for Guardian while we’re at it. The whole “first Mangle upon entering combat”…sir…sir…i am in combat from the first trash pack, until the boss. I get 1 deterministic Ravage to use?
Make it every 5th? Mangle maybe. Lines up with TF on the 30 second mark (haste depending)
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Could be tied to barkskin for bear? I am always a bit leery when a trigger is every X something. Reforestation on the resto side is great when it’s just a nifty little bonus from time to time; but when you absolutely need to have tree for an upcoming mechanic, being forced to use Swiftmend at specific times can cause problems since that’s one of the only 2 oh crap buttons resto druid has at its disposal.
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Well its a little different than Resto seeing as we already have access to Raze/Maul, and Ravage just turns Maul into Raze with the same Rage cost and benefits. Just a tad stronger. So it wouldnt detrimental
I can only speak on the state of Resto Druid…How can you take a spec going into a new xpac and instead of really do anything new. All you really do is force Kitty weaving and gut Swarm and flourish as a viable choice.
They could have kept Resto as it was and it would be more viable yet not meta which is fine. I find groups in 30 seconds on my Resto SHAMAN but struggle to find anything above a 4 with Resto Druid because the HPS just doesnt compete. Its not enough that “well other resto druids are doing just fine” Yes premade groups everything goes but im about that pug life and Resto druid is not fun to try and do mythics. Now you throw in a Tank shortage and this is snowballing
Let’s just face it and call out the core issue.
Something about the core pacing of the game has made the Druid kit feel out of date.
The Druid cooldowns just all feel horrible compared to other classes – particularly for Balance, and especially in PvP.
Right now, Boomy suffers in Arena, Feral in large BGs, and to an extent – both in raids. Resto could also use help.
WHAT do all Druid specs have in common?
Answer: Too large a reliance on DPS/HPS-over-time effects, that are easily dispelled, and large ramp-up requirements to start making maximizing use of cooldown potential.
It might scale better in some Epic BG or a few PvE scenarios… but it just doesn’t fit most content anymore.
Things often die too fast to even warrant DoTing now in some cases, and that is DESPITE changes to make them more required.
I don’t think any tuning can solve this… not until the vision changes, and the class trees and the spec mechanics are updated to reflect a more wholesome design – promoting agency, competency and accessibility. (e.g. Should be able to try and cast without just flopping in arena… or using utility in raid without feeling like you’ve lost all burst opportunity and can’t recover).
I, for Balance, don’t want to be a glass cannon. If I wanted that, I’d have played Mage (which right now has better mobility, utility, recovery AND singe target burst). I far prefer how Boomy felt in Legion and the first half of BfA - a slower rotation with more agency and ‘weight’ to the spells, and more durability to be able to practice our crowd control and utility, which are our strengths as a hybrid class in all forms of game content.
We need a feedback-driven, communication-based re-work opportunity EARLY into the development cycle for Midnight 12.0. Not a “oops, let’s move some talents and not address all the clunkiness” 2 weeks prior to launch as with TWW.
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