[Feral] Legion Discussion

[Saracens]

I get that but there are a massive amount classes and specs to balance so Im sure its going to take time. Luckily there are a few more months for them to continue to iron things out

No doubt, and no one in their right mind could assume things will stay as they are. 4 months is a ton of time for them to tune and do what they need. Doesn't mean we have to like it though.

[MachoSasquatcho]

No doubt, and no one in their right mind could assume things will stay as they are. 4 months is a ton of time for them to tune and do what they need. Doesn't mean we have to like it though.

I feel you. I've currently returned to my old guild for mythic raiding as a WW Monk. I'm in the unique position of getting to pick what I want to play next xpac between WW, Feral, or Rogue and the alpha being in such flux delays my choice until I see how the balancing pans out

[teddabear]

You realize that internally they are always a few builds ahead of whats being tested right? No? Ok back to the sky falling.

How builds has it been since they did ANY work on Feral? Considering the spec is terrible right now they should be fixing all the huge issues so there is actually some time left to fix the rest. The amount of effort they have put into Feral is either hilarious or tragic depending on your point of view.

[Meanshield]

The Nerf to Rake & Rip is intense. I think its too much. Its hardly doing any damage in a 5minute duration on the training dummies, which I think is abhorant. Fact that Ferocious Bite is now our main source of damage feels both stupid and clunky, when Mastery buffs our bleeds.

Not having Savage Roar as a baseline, but now a talent, I cannot understand. Its like they want to us to be either really burst every 3minutes - or - do decent dmg, but have alot lower burst. Problem with picking Incarnation over Savage Roar will give us a really up-down effect on the damage meters.

Jagged Wounds is nice, as I dont like how Rip lasts so long on Live, and its more fun having to use it more often - atleast it makes for more interesting gameplay, instead of having to put in 3x FB's between every Rip. Sabertooth should also buff Savage Roar for it to be useful i'd say, and even Rake + possibly Thrash. I cant see it being worth the pick with just it giving Rip a slight increase in duration. Elune's Guidance looks on the face of it like dogshit to me, but after having played with a similar talent on a demolock I can see its appeal. However it requires massive management, and I can see us running into similar situations and we do with the HFC 4th set bonus, where we'll get combo points overlapping or not getting best use out of all of ones CPs.

Soul of the Forest is for those not able to get the best out of their actives. Its decent, but I dont like it.

LI and Predator are flavour picks, but ultimately Blood Scent will win over in any raid situation, as we cannot pool 30 energy to spam that Moonfire for add situations. A lower cost might make it a decent pick, but at 30/100energy its just too expensive imo.

Bloody Talons should be baseline and they should give us some new exciting ability that adds some flavour to the spec.

Some of the artifact passives are great, and give alot of bonus, however, Ashamane's Bite is just another CP-booster, on a 45(?)sec cooldown, feels clunky, doesnt add to the overall style of feral, and with bleeds being so terrible I dont see the bleed it does being anything but a insignificant booster.

My main concern is that with the removal of SR, Feral will be way too easy to play. Im not saying any spec should be hard, but, to get full effect out of it at the highest raiding level Feral is alot tougher than lets say Fury, Retri or MM. It feels alot like they spent more time on giving Feral/Guardian new exciting forms and not exciting specs to play with some real grit to it. And having to sacrifice singletarget dmg to do below-average AOE yet again feels like they've learned nothing from their past mistakes. If we pick talents suited for AOE, we'll suffer hard on singletarget, whereas other classes wont suffer as much.

I'm very disappointed with Blizzard in the wyay they've dealt with many classes, especially Warrior and Druid, and its like they've put way too much into the DH or ambience to actually give us fun classes to play. Feral will not get picked ahead of Rogue, Monk, DH for any situation other than the fact they can be a good offtank/healer due to the affinity-talents. Cant see ithappening at the highest level - which is sad, cuz its like HFC over all again.

Blood Talons should be baseline - Savage Roar should be baseline. Replace Blood Talons with a passive that gives a free starfall/moonfire/sunfire, anything really, on a low proc - If guardian can cast moonfire, why cant feral at a reasonable cost?

[Hivey]

New tuning patch has buffed Feral's Ferocious Bite, Rake and Rip scaling.

[Exerionx]

New tuning patch has buffed Feral's Ferocious Bite, Rake and Rip scaling.

idk why, but I'm still scared for my spec for Legion release

[Deleted]

Because buffing numbers on our spells doesn't help with the ever present problem ferals have always had, bad aoe. I think Brutal Slash doesn't quite cut it with the way it works and it also doesn't really utilize bleeds, which is what feral is supposed to be about.

I'm also scared about them shifting our damage too much into direct damage, any word from a blue on that topic? Or Alpha tester experience, how are our bleeds doing in comparison to our direct damage?

[RayenDark]

Buff aren't what the spec needs- talent fixes and things like SR are what we need. Why are we forced to 'talent' for AoE? It replaces Swipe- what other spec has that problem? Most have some form of baseline AoE.

[Rivin]

Because buffing numbers on our spells doesn't help with the ever present problem ferals have always had, bad aoe. I think Brutal Slash doesn't quite cut it with the way it works and it also doesn't really utilize bleeds, which is what feral is supposed to be about.

Feral already has an AoE bleed. It's actually better for Brutal Slash to be direct damage. It gives Feral the option for burst AoE when needed, while Thrash already covers sustained AoE.

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Buff aren't what the spec needs- talent fixes and things like SR are what we need. Why are we forced to 'talent' for AoE? It replaces Swipe- what other spec has that problem? Most have some form of baseline AoE.

Feral has baseline AoE; the big problem right now is that Swipe is absolutely awful on live, necessitating the need for tabbing Rakes instead, which is mechanically awful gameplay. All they have to do to fix that is improve Swipe's damage (and make sure Brutal Slash is tuned high enough to be worth taking for burst AoE) without making any mechanical changes.

[RayenDark]

Feral already has an AoE bleed. It's actually better for Brutal Slash to be direct damage. It gives Feral the option for burst AoE when needed, while Thrash already covers sustained AoE.

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Feral has baseline AoE; the big problem right now is that Swipe is absolutely awful on live, necessitating the need for tabbing Rakes instead, which is mechanically awful gameplay. All they have to do to fix that is improve Swipe's damage (and make sure Brutal Slash is tuned high enough to be worth taking for burst AoE) without making any mechanical changes.

Taking Brutal Slash replaces Swipe, we don't get both. A warrior can take bladestorm and still keep their normal cleave. Thrash doesn't really cut it for short lived adds. We should have both like most dps classes.

Brutal Slash is also on a charge system-Swipe is not, removing a filler from our AoE Rotation.

Thrash->Slash->Wait-isn't good gameplay.

[Rivin]

Taking Brutal Slash replaces Swipe, we don't get both. A warrior can take bladestorm and still keep their normal cleave. Thrash doesn't really cut it for short lived adds. We should have both like most dps classes.

Brutal Slash is also on a charge system-Swipe is not, removing a filler from our AoE Rotation.

Thrash->Slash->Wait-isn't good gameplay.

For sustained AoE you won't want Brutal Slash. That's what Swipe is supposed to be for (it just needs to be tuned properly this time). Brutal Slash is for burst AoE. If you've used up all the charges (considering that it still costs 45 energy) the burst AoE phase is likely over. By the time another burst AoE phase comes up it should have regenerated all of its charges.

Bladestorm is an anomaly; you shouldn't point at warriors and say "Look at their burst AoE; we should have that!" because there's very few abilities remotely similar to it in function or power.

[RayenDark]

For sustained AoE you won't want Brutal Slash. That's what Swipe is supposed to be for (it just needs to be tuned properly this time). Brutal Slash is for burst AoE. If you've used up all the charges (considering that it still costs 45 energy) the burst AoE phase is likely over. By the time another burst AoE phase comes up it should have regenerated all of its charges.

Bladestorm is an anomaly; you shouldn't point at warriors and say "Look at their burst AoE; we should have that!" because there's very few abilities remotely similar to it in function or power.

History shows it won't be properly tuned because it gives CP and they want our AoE to be (Still) Thrash->Tab Rake. There is a *lot* of lack of clarity or explanations from the devs as to why changes aren't being made the late into "Alpha" (It's really beta-let's not kid ourselves). They are at the 'Tuning' stage (As per tweets and blue posts) yet Feral still needs baseline talent and mechanical help and changes.

It's very disheartening and frustrating. If some things don't shape up Feral's raid spot across the board for any semi-progressive guild (or better) will be gone.

[Rivin]

History shows it won't be properly tuned because it gives CP and they want our AoE to be (Still) Thrash->Tab Rake. There is a *lot* of lack of clarity or explanations from the devs as to why changes aren't being made the late into "Alpha" (It's really beta-let's not kid ourselves). They are at the 'Tuning' stage (As per tweets and blue posts) yet Feral still needs baseline talent and mechanical help and changes.

It's very disheartening and frustrating. If some things don't shape up Feral's raid spot across the board for any semi-progressive guild (or better) will be gone.

It was tuned a lot better before WoD. In WoD Blizzard decided they wanted to give each spec a niche (single-target, cleave, mass AoE, etc.), and Feral's was single-target, so they nerfed its AoE into the ground. In Legion Blizzard has said that they plan to loosen the focus on those niches, so Swipe should go back to being decent again.

What mechanical issues do you see that can't be fixed with proper tuning?

[huth]

History shows

History also showed WoW expansions always being announced at BlizzCon, Beta starting with far less than we currently have in alpha and all kinds of other stuff that doesn't apply this time. History makes a poor guide.

[RayenDark]

It was tuned a lot better before WoD. In WoD Blizzard decided they wanted to give each spec a niche (single-target, cleave, mass AoE, etc.), and Feral's was single-target, so they nerfed its AoE into the ground. In Legion Blizzard has said that they plan to loosen the focus on those niches, so Swipe should go back to being decent again.

What mechanical issues do you see that can't be fixed with proper tuning?

We can start with haste being garbage for us still. That's not a tuning issue.

[Rivin]

We can start with haste being garbage for us still. That's not a tuning issue.

Yeah, well, the alpha testers already had the haste discussion with the devs, and the devs seem pretty dead-set on their own fix for it, whether we like it or not, so debating it seems kinda pointless now. *shrugs*

Speaking of which, does anyone know if haste reduces the recharge time on Brutal Slash? Seems like it should under the new haste system.

[ShmooDude]

I think we're pretty well screwed due to this:

At this point, class mechanics are firm, but not necessarily set in stone yet.
[Artifact] Mechanics are firm at this point, but not necessarily set in stone.

We had exactly one mechanical change and that was Open Wounds going from something interesting but that had problems, to something that's boring but works. The fact that these most recent builds have basically said they're done with mechanics means we aren't getting any of our mechanical problems fixed. Thus for Feral to be a good spec, it needs to be overturned but they'll never do that intentionally.

I'm still gonna play feral, but I wouldn't be surprised if our mythic population takes a huge nosedive more so than already seen this expansion. From HM to HFC feral has dropped in relative mythic representation by almost half (from 3.3% to 2.1% several months ago to 2.0% now). In other words, ferals are being used almost half as often as in HM, so a huge portion of mythic ferals either quit or rerolled.

[RayenDark]

I'm somewhat worried as well. While I think I'm to stubborn (and passionate about my spec) to leave Feral. I do know that my Alt (rogue) may see more raid time than my kitty if things stay the way they are.

[Mursy]

Sad to see this is one of the specs with the least amount and discussion. Guess that has to do with there just being nothing to talk about with such little changes to feral.

[Ultramad]

Well I think the lack of discussion is both good and bad for Feral. The good is that we aren't up in arms about the complete and utter broken state of things, because they're not. Feral has the same weaknesses it had(more or less) that it does on live. The rotation is very similar. So those aren't things I can get very upset about because I've played with them considerably already and can play with them.

The bad is that those weaknesses might end up more prevalent this expansion. We're going to be doing more small-group scenario content with Mythic+. If we bring a feral in there, and it's all burn things down quickly, ferals are going to have a tough go of it. But personally I'm still just excited to be a jungle/wood/nightmare/ghost kitty.

The damage overall isn't going to be bad, at least it isn't wholly bad right now and we've only just begun tuning. I fully expect rip and rake damage to go up a bit more over shred/fb because they're a bit too close for everyone's liking right now.