What does feral need?

Classes Druid
21

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.
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22

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.

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23

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.

24

In torghast when I got it as an anima power. lol
It was actually pretty fun paired with PW.
but yeah…

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25

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.

26

AoE AoE AoE AoE…

  • Lunar Inspiration modified
    with Sunfire or instead of Moonfire.
  • AoE Rake
    e.g. Thrash with Scent of Blood deal Rake dot.
  • Aggressive effect on left two 35 level line
    Mighty Bash with strong single damage.
    Mass Entanglement deal damage when Immunity/Interrupt/End the effect.
  • Feral Frenzy now AoE
    Damage can be divided into multiple hits, but there is a big bonus for the number of hits.

Well, I think it’s too late to talk about it now.
Expect 10.0

27

We have access to both of these. LI + Owlweaving. And believe it or not, at 4+ targets, Sunfire > Stealthed Rake. While you’re waiting for energy, reapply Sunfire again.

Eh, I’m perfectly okay with the idea of manually spreading Rake, seeing as Rake is already a pretty high DPE ability. I’d rather they take Guardians Thrash (higher upfront damage + DoT) and have it come with an 8-10-12 second cool down.

Another honorable mention: PW baseline, AoE Rake in it’s place (usable once every 30 seconds). I’d be okay with that.

It’s actually fairly balanced. You’ve got a strong single target stun, that can be coupled with Maim. Or you’ve got a large AoE root susceptible to breaking with damage (but large CC cover), and your choice of burst every 5 minutes at the cost of CC

Aside from simply wanting more damage just because…why are we adding damage components to these? Not entirely knocking the idea, just trying to understand.

So like another mini Convoke? You’d have a lot of upset Ferals (who pvp) if this fired off on anything and everything within melee range (like Convoke does).

28

I’m leveling a feral atm and I agree that berserk is pretty wack for a 3min cd

29

I wish they’d revert, or add, the 50% every cost to it so we could spam abilities and feel like we were actually going Berserk again

30

‘cough’ cat eye ‘cough’

huh?

You hear something?

31

Feral needs some better burst CDs, they need to just remove or merge some abilities and fix some of the terrible talent trees for single target damage. Brutal slash tier in my opinion is a terrible talent tier and needs a full rework with different abilities.

3s wise ferals are just a bit too squishy, i think it would help if feral did more damage in bear form like it use to, so you are basically a arms w arriors with a D stance but in a different form with different abilties.

I actually would kind of like being able to s wap into bear to do like a maul attack every minute or so then swap out into feral, kind of feels more druid like to me to swap in and out of different animal forms during combat.

32

Lol that only does me good until my energy is depleted, which is currently the same issue i have not using Cat Eye :wink:

It would be different if it had a proc chance to restore 100 Energy though :slight_smile: That’d be fun

It just needs CD’s in general lol but i 100% agree

33

That’s what predator does tho.

With Moc and cat eye, your energy pool is practically doubled, so no more energy is wasted from back to back predator procs.

For pure ST its definitely front end loaded and fizzles out afterwards. But in open world and m+, you don’t have energy problems during berserk, or ever for that matter.

34

Fair enough! But I like the big Bites. I’m not sure I could walk away from that, even for a smoother playstyle lol

It may change a bit too with the 2 piece and being able to use Berserk more often. Currently using Berserk to energy depletion (usually both BT charges), into a Convoke, into another energy depletion doesn’t feel as bad any more.

The 1 minute Convoke helps out considerably.

35

Also. Don’t forget that the bigger energy pool is only half of cat eye’s power.

It also grants 30% energy back for each omen proc, which (Paired with MoC) is a lot.

36

Didn’t it use to only be 25%?

37

I dont know. Its 30 now though :slight_smile:

Just checked. Yeah, I guess it was. Changed back in 9.0.5

38

in addition into a huge rework i think a pounce type of execute would be nice to have

39

Feral needs burst aoe for m+. Our current dmg needs to be shifted out of FB or just straight up buff thrash bleed damage heavily and swipe damage heavily. This seems like more tuning than blizzard would like to do at the end of an xpac tho, so a short term solution would be buff the crap out of the tier set so that we can compete in aoe damage. Other classes are doing 50%+ more damage than us in m+ currently.

40

I disagree. I actually like feral being one of few DPS specs that don’t have CD-oriented, burst damage profile. I’m tired off all dps being about CD burst and miss steady damage profiles like assassin, feral, shadow, and affliction used to be.

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