Hey all, I’ve seen a lot of feedback on various sites/videos stating that Feral is the most fun it’s been in years.
I’m far from an experienced Feral player; in fact, Shadowlands was the first time I really even tried the spec and only as a character for my alt-keystone group. I did start to enjoy the spec once I got the hang of it, but I never raided with it and never pushed above a 14-15 in M+.
I was looking through the DF talent tree trying to figure out what makes the spec so fun right now, and the only thing that really caught my eye was the Tear Open Wounds talent, which does look really nice for M+.
I’m sure there’s a lot more there that isn’t obvious to an inexperienced Feral who’s just looking at the tree. Can someone shed some light on what you’re enjoying about the DF iteration of the spec?
Feral has always been a fun spec.
The problem was the payoff.
Before, you had to work hard to produce middle of the pack damage, While demon hunters push 3 buttons and top meters.
#FeelsBad
Now our damage is where it should be, and we are rewarded for our hard work.
#FeelsGood
An experienced feral can easily dominate the pack now, and that’s got a lot of people excited to play feral again.
As for DF play style……
The biggest change is being able to have everything together.
Brutal slash with primal wrath? That’s Wild!
Sabertooth and predator. Amazing!
Moc, blood talons, circle, Apex…. We have it all!
We’re no longer forced to choose between powerful talents. The old talent trees crippled us. Now, we are free!
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Compared to a lot of other specs, Feral felt pretty dated compared to a lot of specs and had a lot of issues.
-Late Legion shifted Feral away from its DoT play style, which many of the OG Feral players liked. It did make the play style significantly easier, but all our damage was focused on Ferocious Bites and direct damage.
-AoE was lacking for a very long time. Primal Wrath didn’t exist until 8.1. I don’t know the exact math, but I think late BfA Swipe did almost as much, if not more, damage than Primal Wrath direct damage (not sure on the math though, can’t remember / didn’t pay attention).
-We were still a very single target focused spec, but we’re frequently outclassed by other specs in that aspect. Shadow Priests, Rogues, Warlocks, Mages, etc could frequently out dps us on single target during many tiers. Adding even 1 more mob to a fight made us tank compared to other specs.
-We were almost a 1-to-1 comparison to Assassination Rogues. We were both a DoT bleed (and poisons for Rogues) spec that had abilities that did almost the exact same thing (Garrote = Rake, Rupture = Rip, Envenom = Bite, Primal Wrath = Crimson Tempest, Mutilate = Shred). People felt that Feral was sharing the exact same design space that Sin does.
-Feral felt outclassed by Balance Druid in most areas, since one is melee and the other is ranged. Nothing Feral did differently could overcome that range benefit.
Dragonflight fixes basically all the gripes that we had in the past:
-Finally back to a bleed focused play style. Everything is about our Rip and Rake.
-Feral has better AoE capabilities and the insane synergy between our talents to support that.
-We’re still going to be a single target powerhouse on top of our new AoE capabilities. Lots of talents to buff our phat bleeds.
-Finally have distinct play style differences compared to Sin Rogue. Some baseline similarities, but our talents better allow us to distinguish ourselves from one another.
-Feral getting so much better in AoE and cleave lets us actually compete with Boomy (and Boomy is also super weak right now).
In general we feel like a modern spec and have the talents and abilities to reflect that, compared to how dated we felt from the past few expansions.
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I agree…I’ve already enjoyed feral and found it fun to play.
And then you find out that even Psybear the +36 Feral player is dropping Feral because they nerfed our AoE in SEVEN DIFFERENT WAYS in one week before launch. RIP, but not literally, because it got nerfed.