How to earn a spot as Feral in Legion?

[teddabear]

I am referring to Legion.

Feral has issues in WoD but Legion is shaping up to be an all-time low.

[Saltysquidoon]

I don't get the point of this thread, it's swings and roundabouts. Feral was the top melee spec in Soo, world first nef was cheesed with feral. We're (feral is my primary alt) still the 3rd highest melee dps in another end of expansion 14 month patch, it could always be much much worse .

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

As long as you out perform the people fighting for the same spot as you it doesn't matter. However pretty much all melee hybrids suffer from lack of diversity, which is a very bad thing when you're competing with Warriors, Rogues and DKs who all have multiple specs to work with. Ferals might be good for ST but you dont always want that, plus there's many other classes that can do that- like Arcane Mage.

[Lucrece]

As long as you out perform the people fighting for the same spot as you it doesn't matter. However pretty much all melee hybrids suffer from lack of diversity, which is a very bad thing when you're competing with Warriors, Rogues and DKs who all have multiple specs to work with. Ferals might be good for ST but you dont always want that, plus there's many other classes that can do that- like Arcane Mage.

And rogues got subtlety which kicks feral's ass on single target as well.

[Saltysquidoon]

And rogues got subtlety which kicks feral's ass on single target as well.

Yeah but it's not a zero sum game; if class forums are to be believe every raid is sub rogues, arcane mages, disc priests and prot warrior/blood dk (for grasp).
Like I said in my last post feral was the king of the last expansion's 14 month drought patch, sure they aren't this time but they're not even bad. I mean honestly at this point if you have mythic on farm and you're just cleaving down the world sure feral suffers but you aren't going to get dropped from farm and if you're still progressing your guild is casual enough not to drop you just for being feral.
So the easy answer is don't be bad and you'll have a spot.

[teddabear]

Yeah but it's not a zero sum game; if class forums are to be believe every raid is sub rogues, arcane mages, disc priests and prot warrior/blood dk (for grasp).
Like I said in my last post feral was the king of the last expansion's 14 month drought patch, sure they aren't this time but they're not even bad. I mean honestly at this point if you have mythic on farm and you're just cleaving down the world sure feral suffers but you aren't going to get dropped from farm and if you're still progressing your guild is casual enough not to drop you just for being feral.
So the easy answer is don't be bad and you'll have a spot.

This is not accurate. Many top Ferals had to switch classes, specs or sit in HFC. Also Feral was nowhere near the King of SoO, that was Warlocks, it wasn't even close. Also a lot of the top Feral parses in SoO were using little known exploits that Blizzard didn't bother to patch.

[Lucrece]

Yeah but it's not a zero sum game; if class forums are to be believe every raid is sub rogues, arcane mages, disc priests and prot warrior/blood dk (for grasp).
Like I said in my last post feral was the king of the last expansion's 14 month drought patch, sure they aren't this time but they're not even bad. I mean honestly at this point if you have mythic on farm and you're just cleaving down the world sure feral suffers but you aren't going to get dropped from farm and if you're still progressing your guild is casual enough not to drop you just for being feral.
So the easy answer is don't be bad and you'll have a spot.

When I was doing challenge modes, the difference between my shaman getting invited and my feral was night and day. I intend to also do the mythic dungeon keystones for artifact appearance unlocks, so it DOES concern me that feral aoe is still shit because mythic dungeons in legion are all about that.

[Dadaya2000]

This is not accurate. Many top Ferals had to switch classes, specs or sit in HFC. Also Feral was nowhere near the King of SoO, that was Warlocks, it wasn't even close. Also a lot of the top Feral parses in SoO were using little known exploits that Blizzard didn't bother to patch.

I'm familiar with many of these "top SoO" feral parsers, but had no idea they were exploiting, care to shed some light on this? Just for my own curiosity.


On topic though. I have been Feral/Resto since the day I started raiding back in Karazhan. My raid spots were always maintained through building my relationships with the guild. While that may make me a better fit over someone else because I synergize better with the guild, whenever one of my guilds has fallen apart, it becomes quickly apparent that it was the primary factor of me remaining in the main roster. Signing up for new guilds was often arduous, and usually just met with ambivalence. Even at the times where I was in the cutting edge, moving from one newly deceased top 5 (server) progression guild to another meant I had to tread very carefully. The first few weeks would determine my place in the guild pecking order.

The majority of the time I could earn my keep simply by not dying. This would put me in the top 5 DPS much of the time. However, on progression fights, most of the time I was sitting initially, regardless of how skillful I was seen. Many encounters require quick changes to short lived, high priority targets, feral has, does, and will fail here (yes, you can do some min-maxing by pooling energy, but even with the best RNG you didn't make the cut compared to others). I haven't seen our faults get patched up for Legion. I hesitate to speculate much about where we will be, since I also do not have Legion beta access, so I can't comment on the state of feral personally, but I know that even when feral was lauded as "top dps" as some posters would say, I have never, ever, seen more than one feral in guild raids.

Currently, I can parse well, and impress, but if it continues like this, we'll still be the first one looked at to be replaced on fights where swapping to quickly neutralize a target is essential, where invincibility cooldowns are favorable, where single target dps is unimportant. All other things being equal - player skill, reliability, etc - I'd much rather bring another spec to raid than a feral druid. Rogues, likely being the class most would say are closest to feral, are a melee class with better ability to survive, and immunity, and comparable damage in single target, currently with better burst, and better at switching targets.

We would be favored in situations where either up time on the boss is limited, without the boss being immune, or when there are 2-3 (optimally 2) simultaneous targets for much of an encounter.


All this being said, apart from bringing a specific class to counter a specific mechanic or set of mechanics, feral has an equal opportunity to participate in a raid, provided you aren't attempting to race to the finish, and are just simply enjoying the content.


Sorry I'm a little wordy.
tl;dr Play like you would any other class and you can find a spot. Though be prepared to defend your worth as you are an easy(easier?) sit target by design.

[Saltysquidoon]

This is not accurate. Many top Ferals had to switch classes, specs or sit in HFC. Also Feral was nowhere near the King of SoO, that was Warlocks, it wasn't even close. Also a lot of the top Feral parses in SoO were using little known exploits that Blizzard didn't bother to patch.

I was referring to my first post when I said they were kings of melee (which they were) and melee specs never beat the top ranged spec for obvious reasons. Besides feral was 'exploiting' SoO the same way sub is 'exploiting' HFC cheesing fights around short fight timers, buff stacking and being overgeared.
Did HFC generally suck for a class that tunnels with bad aoe? Yes it did, does that mean every raid boss from now till the end of time will have lots of target switching and aoe requirements no it doesn't. I'm not going to post spoilers here but there are more then a few single target only with 100% uptime bosses in legion already.

Like I said it's swings and roundabouts, last time Feral was boss hog, this time Feral dropped to between average to above average (and lets be real here feral might have been bad on progression because mechanics but the damage is still there). Literally every class except mage has highs and lows that's just how the patch game goes.

[teddabear]

Some are smart use of mechanics, some I would classify as a bug. Off the top of my head 2 examples would be Paragons and Protectors. On Paragons Feral could get an extra 59% damage from the Scorpion with SR, NV and HotW. On Protectors it was possible to extend Rip indefinitely. Obviously with snapshotting that is very powerful. Earlier in MoP it was possible to extend Rip with Ursol's Vortex but Blizzard did fix that. Even using those I would't consider Feral the best melee by a long shot, especially in Mythic. Target switching, AoE and burst AoE were very important and Feral was quite bad at those. That left 2 bosses in SoO where you didn't need your raid to carry you through one or more aspects of the fight, Malkorak and Thok. This hasn't been a single target DPS game for many years plus in WoD Feral has been mediocre at single target while still being terrible at add fights.

[Lucrece]

We've always been an inferior rogue with ramp up.

Rogues have better defensives, better raid utility, 3 DPS specs, and all of their DPS specs are mostly frontloaded damage that doesn't seriously suffer from target switches.

They were moving feral to a similar spot of placing more emphasis on shred and ferocious bites, and idiots started crying that the feral theme is bleeds.

Well, newsflash, bleeds fucking suck. They're like warlock/spriest/boomkin dots that take far more resources and time to apply. I don't understand why anybody would want us to be so bleed focused.

[Vaerys]

We've always been an inferior rogue with ramp up.

Rogues have better defensives, better raid utility, 3 DPS specs, and all of their DPS specs are mostly frontloaded damage that doesn't seriously suffer from target switches.

They were moving feral to a similar spot of placing more emphasis on shred and ferocious bites, and idiots started crying that the feral theme is bleeds.

Well, newsflash, bleeds fucking suck. They're like warlock/spriest/boomkin dots that take far more resources and time to apply. I don't understand why anybody would want us to be so bleed focused.

They could easily make ferals effective in both situations, when there is time for bleeds, and when there is not.

One good thing about bleeds is they keep doing their thing when you have to run around to deal with mechanics, but its awful when it happens at the moment when we need to apply something long-lasting.

Bullshit like having to refresh Rip right when Iron Reaver takes off, or we get sent to Gorefiend's belly, or we have to run out with a debuff like Gorefiend, Iskar, or Xhul, that blows.

They could (and should) fix the cleave problem by improving Thrash damage and/or making Swipe a lot cheaper.

[zulkaa]

Shred and use blood talons properly

[teddabear]

Shred and use blood talons properly

I assume you are referring to Feral being so massively dumbed down by Blizzard that all you have to do in Legion is Shred and occasionally use Rip and the DPS difference between a World class players and an Uber noob will be less than the RNG.


Wonderful design.

[Lucrece]

I assume you are referring to Feral being so massively dumbed down by Blizzard that all you have to do in Legion is Shred and occasionally use Rip and the DPS difference between a World class players and an Uber noob will be less than the RNG.


Wonderful design.

Why are you so obsessed with how others do? Play the game and stop deriving value from where you stand relative to other people (or rather, gaining enjoyment from feeling better than others at a videogame).

[Metuere]

It's funny reading the amount of doom and gloom about feral in legion, when my experience playing the class on the beta is far from bad. Yeah we still have terrible AoE, but I'm having no problems with burst or sustained DPS in dungeons. Infact I was easily outdoing other dps (mages, demon hunters from what I remember) in the dungeons I did while they were level 110 and I was only 103-107. Maybe they were just bad at their classes, but feral is far from "the worst melee dps" if you know what you're doing.

[teddabear]

It's funny reading the amount of doom and gloom about feral in legion, when my experience playing the class on the beta is far from bad. Yeah we still have terrible AoE, but I'm having no problems with burst or sustained DPS in dungeons. Infact I was easily outdoing other dps (mages, demon hunters from what I remember) in the dungeons I did while they were level 110 and I was only 103-107. Maybe they were just bad at their classes, but feral is far from "the worst melee dps" if you know what you're doing.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/all/9/all


Feral is doing about 60% as much DPS as most other specs.

[gardner]

Why are you bringing in DPS numbers for feral? How much DPS feral does when Blizzard is nowhere near done with any of the numbers tuning is worthless. Its still 3 months to release, looking at how feral dps is now is totally pointless. DO you really think they would keep those numbers?

[hulkgor]

Be a good player?

[Deleted]

Those who have been playing Feral in a main progression raid and have finished Mythic, how did you earn your spot and not become overshadowed by Rogues, DKs, and other melee? How did you make yourself part of the group and earn your spot? What do Ferals bring in a group that makes them worth bringing? It seems like their playstyle is one dimensional in that it's best for ST and maybe cleave, so why bring them?

Exactly what others have said. Be good. Like, wouldnt it be sad to get raidspot only because what your class does, not because of your skill as a player?