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.
