Burst AOE
Strong 2 target cleave
A 2 min CD and buff to Berserk (or a complete rework/scrap)
Damage shifted out of FB and into Shred/DOTs (helps with #2)
2 Likes
Instant clone
2 Likes
Now we’re talking.
I’d also second the more bleed damage. Feral feels unique with its bleeds. I say make our bleeds actually matter. But then for mythics idk. Give us a talent to give us some burst aoe. Like actually good aoe burst.
Within the confines of the current system?
1.) More utility (innervate, trees, Rebirth from cat form maybe even instant cast with Predatory Swiftness)
2.) More AoE damage.
3.) Better talent balance.
The hard part is to decide HOW MUCH of the above we need and how it’s implemented. I stopped caring about PvP long ago (PvP balance has been a joke since beta) so the issues this would create within that environment are inconsequential as far as I’m concerned but I get that some people would care.
For a more comprehensive solution though, I think there needs to be a reanalysis of WHAT talents are and do as well as how the relative balance of dps between classes is decided. Other than utility that completely negates raid mechanics, a dps class brings dps to a raid. There’s zero reason for there to be a 50%+ spread in performance. This means either that raids need to be redesigned from the ground up to limit or negate impact of some specs having more dps or there needs to be some better parity in what classes can do. The goal should still be “bring the player, not the class” and that can’t happen when the disparity is so large that it can be measured in ‘the equivalent of bringing extra players’.
Edit: Excluding PvP due to being its own beast; this applies to all forms of endgame content that have a performance component. If M+ remains a focus for content and player retention; then its balance also needs to be prioritized.
3 Likes
An ability like warrior’s Whirlwind/Sweeping Strikes or rogues Blade Furry or survival Multi-Shot/Beast Cleave where we can use an ability and then decide if we want to AoE Ferocious Bite, Rake, Shred, or Rip. This would allow us to AoE burst on quick dying targets with FB or apply AoE rip to longer living targets. This would keep the class engaging and simplify bloat by removing the need for thrash, swipe, brutal slash, and primal wrath.
Make our finishers cost zero, or reduced, energy -or- let our white swings generate energy. Making our white swings matter would make our down time more valuable so the need to owl-weave wouldn’t be necessary (something that the dev’s said they didn’t like for normal dps rotations at the beginning of this expac while we beta tested their convoke).
Utility as in a reason to be OK bringing a feral over other high profile classes like rogues. We “thought” we were going to get some form of symbiosis back and that would solve this issue immediately as it allowed us to sym a hunter for misdirect, rogue for immunity, etc etc.
Rework our stat weights - there are better ways to make Feral easier for the masses to play other than gutting our bleed damage and propping up crit to the point it covers mistakes.
Remove the nerf’s to bezerk/incarnation that has happened for the last 3 expansions. Reduce the energy cost and increase the combo point generation - a 3 min cd should allow us during that time to feel spammy enough that it felt worth using.
Simply buff’ing the upfront damage of wrath or primal wrath wouldn’t work - Ion already said he does not like classes (he was specifically talking about feral’s thrash) having to use AoE abilities on single target rotations (not that Ion can remember what he said yesterday but…). Buffing up front damage to the point of really making a difference would only serve to remove Rip (costs the same as primal wrath) and rake (only costs 5 less energy than Thrash) from our single target rotation. People who understand math and can read our mastery tool tip would already know this.
EDIT: BTW - all of the previous posters and these ideas were given in the last 3 Alpha’s/Beta’s of the last 3 expansions…
Tell me you don’t know how to play feral without telling me you don’t know how to play feral.
Like….wow.
WOW!!!
I’m almost speechless.
If one dot deals more damage than the other, that’s not a reason to stop using the other dots. They can all be applied and deal damage at the same time.
You understand this right???
(Clearly not)
/facepalm.
The only damage plateau the direct damage from thrash has its its DPE vs shred. Which, currently…. is light years away from ever reaching that point.
Hypothetically speaking though, say we were to buff thrash’s damage beyond shred. All they would need to do is give thrash a cooldown (12-15 sec).
Simple.
This prevents the situation that arose in early MoP where Rake’s direct damage was greater than shred and we just spammed rake.
5 minutes ago you didn’t know what mastery did.
“iTs a ReLiC oF ThE pAsT”
Already have that.
Already have that too.
Sure it would.
Are you just bitter that I suggested it?
…. And yet they keep forcing us to use thrash.
If I wanted to feel like a warrior. I’ll play a warrior.
So….
Yup. Already covered that.
look you simpleton - if you buff the “up-front” damage like you want to the point it would do anything meaningful, it would replace its single target counterpart especially when they basically cost the same energy to cast. In other-words, if casting primal wrath did up front damage equal to or more than rip why would you cast rip considering they cost the same energy and that added bleed only serves to buff our FB from a conduit at this point.
Mastery was our bonus stat from vanilla because it was buffing our bleed damage - crit is our ‘go-to’ stat as it doubles the damage of FB which has been the way to play since the last patch of legion.
Get back to healing your m7’s on your resto and keep your feral ideas to yourself cause you don’t and have never played feral.
I’d say these and give them leader of the pack back baseline instead of it being a pvp talent.
1 Like
Not as long as Brutal Slash exists it wouldn’t. If, for the sake of argument BS did not exist as a talent on the same row the only danger is replacing the initial Rip cast since you would never re-cast it as it could never make up the damage you would otherwise be spending on a Bite.
1 Like
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, more raid/group buffs is not the answer. Especially required ones only available to a single spec.
3 Likes
Maybe so but it was a thing for feral since launch basically and I miss it. Wouldn’t hurt to have a dedicated raid spot for bringing crit. Would it fix the core issues? No but id still like it
If this was an ST raid encounter. You wouldn’t have PW. You should be using BrS. So. There’s that……
For M+, It’s actually very simple.
You ready?
Here it is.
Rip has a longer duration than PW.
/mic drop
You spent so much time complaining about the energy (it’s free tho, lol) and combo points that you forgot it’s biggest strength. It’s duration. 24 seconds.
Because of that long duration, on an ST encounter, even if I have access to PW with its hypothetically buffed direct damage, im not going to use it. Im going to bite.
Do you know how frustrating it is to have to explain BASIC FUNDAMENTALS of feral gameplay? These are the same kids who claim that the devs are clueless ones.
Christ.
Ya, and?
It buffs other things too.
We’ve been over this.
Also… Mastery didn’t exist until Cata, but that’s beside the point.
Why are you defending crit?
No one is arguing this.
Because the constant refresh of PW would be lower DPS than using 1 Rip followed by endless Bites.
1 Like
Picks up mic - longer rip isn’t use or cared about on quick dying trash mobs (especially with primal wrath). The primary reason to apply rip on single target is to buff FB - test it… I dare you - don’t use that conduit and don’t cast rip on a single target dummy vs using it. You’ve done no test or theory crafting so you don’t know what I’m talking about.
What he’s suggesting is that the instant up-front damage of wrath and primal wrath are buffed to the point that it fixes our AoE. It won’t work. By the time that even comes remotely close to fixing our AoE damage, the instant up-front damage on wrath and primal wrath would outweigh their single target counterparts. But, he’s clueless - has never played a feral and spouts off like an expert.
Rip itself isn’t the purpose of PW on “quick dying trash”. Which is why buffing the upfront damage of it PW would help with burst AoE. It doesn’t need to be increased exponentially. Just some.
Because it’s our best DPE ability and continues to do damage in the background while we front load with big Bites.
Incorrect. The conduit actually isn’t as strong as one thinks seeing as the DPE (bonus included) of Thrash isn’t worth it, especially since you don’t need Thrash to even trigger Bloodtalons. And if you’re not using Thrash, then you’re not optimizing the conduit and gimping yourself anyway.
The buff to FB from the conduit from adding Rip only buffs a 15k FB by 510 points. It’s not worth running that conduit in the terms that you’re trying to put it on:
Rip without conduit + FB > no rip + conduit + FB.
You can’t really be that clueless.
Conduit adds 3.4% (or 6.8% at 50 energy). Rip does 168%. You’d need 25 (conduit buffed at 6.8%) Bites to replace the damage of a single Rip.
If only all of our AoE damage came in the form of up front damage…too bad for you though, it doesn’t.
1 Like
I dont even think you know what you’re talking about.
No one said it was?
I clearly stated Rip was used for ST
Weird, I thought it was to cause damage.
Rip is our higest DPE attack.
No need. We have logs.
Take this fight for example.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Jqpkw3f1xrP8L9Hb#fight=19&type=damage-done&source=47
Its average damage per cast was 52k
vs FB average of 40k.
The more you speak the more its painfully obvious that you dont know anything about feral.
Just stop.
Youre embarrassing yourself.
Youre talking to a legend!
Ok, for one… its Thrash, not Wrath.
Hard to argue semantics when you cant even get the spell name correct.
Second, Thrash can easily have its damage plateau pushed beyond shred or swipe and not render those spells obsolete by adding a cooldown. See: Guardian.
That simple change can also Buff berserk/incarn for feral AoE by having it remove said cooldown. See: Guardian
These arent new ideas. Its already implemented in game for bears.
It won’t work.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/byVd9aQ4mNAhfLKC#fight=2&type=damage-done
This is a crude example, but simple enough to prove a point.
In order for the feral here to make up for the 4.66m damage difference, His thrash and PW would have only needed to be buffed by 5k each. (4.66m divided by 941 hits of pw/thrash)
His average swipe = 5.9k
Average thrash = 1.9k
Suggested change = 6.6k
Average FB = 42k
Average PW-DD = 8.9k
Suggested change = 13.9k
- Thrash’s Direct damage is now comparable to Swipe, making it worth using again, and due to the proposed 12 sec CD, it doesn’t replace swipe.
- PW’s direct damage is still nowhere near FB’s damage, meaning its still numerically superior to use Rip/FB on ST.
1 Like
Feral needs a full rework imo. It always feels to me they want it to be a rogue but just bleeds on top of bleeds. which is fine, but the bleeds arent strong enough at times. I like the bleeds but i feel we should have more centered round it and talents that help ect. though this could just be me.
2 Likes
The most obvious answer is that Druid needs, or at least deserves, a rework of some very basic core concepts such as shapeshifting and managing of resources that have been dragged on through 18 years of changes and updated gameplay.
IE: Things like dropping all of your defenses, rage, and ironfur stacks to throw out a heal as a tank is bad because if something hits you, then you take more damage and need healing yourself. It’s counterintuitive and keeps Bear’s rotation simple and boring while actively discouraging you from using your more interesting abilities.
But to feral specifically: we still have a surfeit of dead talents, out of place talents, no baseline AOE finisher, and the need to make a choice between doing OK single target damage, or kind-of-OK AOE damage, while not excelling at either at the moment, and working harder than other classes that are better at both.
When’s the last time you took Scent of Blood? Never? Maybe once or twice to use on a training dummy before dropping it again?
You can usually make a niche argument for something. “Well… if we have X and Y and we are running Z then I guess it pulls slightly ahead.” but for some feral choices, like SOB, there is NO situation it comes out ahead.
The second thing is that there is no synergy between things. “Dots and make the Ferocious Bite hit at 50 energy” and that’s about it rotation-wise. It’s not like you fish for rotation changing procs, or have a need to pool energy for a grand moment, or really work around our lackluster cooldown.
Compare feral to something like Frost Deathknight. Frost pools resources for Breath, but if they choose to NOT take that, their playstyle is significantly changed. Frost has procs that determine which move they should apply next. Frost doesn’t have to worry about losing GCDs with something like changing form to do it’s battle-rez.
The only thing feral really got in the last… 3 expansions(?)… was a rework of Bloodtalons and even that is kind of a hard sell.
It is what it is. Feral, out of all the Druid specs, needs something akin to a rework, but I would say the class itself needs a full rework for QOL and mechanics.
In torghast when I got it as an anima power. lol
It was actually pretty fun paired with PW.
but yeah…
1 Like
The problem with feral druid is that you have to be an elitist jerk to play it well when so many players saw a cat and wanted to play a cat! It is way too complicated and fine-tuned for the people that want to play a cat.
From the get-go, this should have been an easy and fun spec to play and it is not.