To see this topic as a highlight for Retribution Paladins and not Ferals is comically bad. I find Ret pally to be one of the easiest mixed cleave/single target classes there is.
I’ve seen that Warlocks are getting attention to this as well.
As it stands with the Feral tree, Hybrid (ST/AoE hybrid) builds do not look feasible. This has long been the case for Ferals, forced into ST, then finally given AoE viability, but at the cost of ST viability. I am not among the Alpha testers, so I can’t speak to how Feral is playing in that, but I can speak to the current state in Dragonflight and look at the talent trees and see nothing has changed to the general look of things.
Will we be in the same boat? Devs, are you considering the ability to have flexible builds, particularly for M+ for Ferals?
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I actually think that our AoE and single-target will actually come closer together in TWW despite the Feral tree not changing all that much. The main reason comes from slowing down Feral’s energy generation.
Let’s start with the assumption that no matter how we deal damage, Feral will be tuned to do a similar amount of damage to everyone else. That means when we have less energy and therefore Bite less, our bleeds need to do more to compensate. How does Feral mainly do AoE? By putting bleeds on everything through Primal Wrath and Double-Clawed Rake. (In live we also have a lot of Tear Open Wounds but that’s going away.) A lot of the talents that make our AoE better will do so by buffing our bleeds and buffed up bleeds will help our single target in TWW more than in Dragonflight where our single target is all about the fattest and most frequent Bites.
On top of that, both of our hero talent trees have a pretty good amount of AoE damage baked in so no matter which one we take, there’s a decent amount of AoE damage there. Hard to say what the ST/AoE balance for each hero talent tree will be at this juncture though.
Ultimately, I don’t think Feral will need to change that many talents to swap between single target and AoE. The talent that puts a debuff on a single target is gone so that’s one fewer required ST talent and the only real required AoE talents are Primal Wrath and Double-Clawed Rake, both of which are pretty cheap to get. With how much bleed talents will buff both our single target and AoE, I think we’ll actually be pretty alright.
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Ret probably has 5x more players than Feral (which is probably one of the least played dps specs), so it’s unsurprising that Feral gets neglected while Ret doesn’t
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And the sole reason for that is the global cooldown from shapeshifting making the spec feel clunky.
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Yes, the 5% of the feral population that has to deal with shapeshifting on a regular basis is the “sole” reason lol
For me its because Balance is just so much more effective at pulling an entire zone and then casting starfall. The increased range is a bonus.
Im a Resto main, so i only go dps when im questing or doing open world content. As much as i love the class fantasy of Feral, it just cant compete with starfall going brrr.
Boomkins also get survivability with armor, slows, and treants that can tank the mobs i just pulled while i aoe them down.
Not to mention that most weapons do not swap intellect to agility (at least for pvp), so id need two weapons if I wanted to do feral.
I honestly think one of two changes need to happen to make Feral more fluid.
A: Fluid form is removed and shapeshifting in general is removed off the GCD. The ability to shapeshift out of roots/stuns is still tied to a GCD though to prevent it from being too op.
B: Soothe is made baseline and Fluid form takes its spot, so that all druid specs can easily access it. Skull bash and frenzied rejuvenation should be added to the list of abilities.
They’ve removed TOW so you don’t need to spend as many points in AOE talents. Plus some damage profile adjustments and so on, wouldn’t be concerned tbh should improve a lot.
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