How to earn a spot as Feral in Legion?

[gardner]

Regarding the "How to earn a spot as feral in legion", well i can tell you how i did it till now.
I have been playing feral since WotLK, always feral, nothing else. I was and i am now in a mythic guild that has cleared all the content. I was never sat because i am a good raider and that is what matters most. You need to do your job very good as a raider, always strive to do your best regarding tactics and your dps. If your guild leaders arent a bunch of idiots they will see your value as a player and not just as the class you play and they will give you a permanent spot even as a feral.
And if the guild your in is not a top 20 world guild that competes for worlds 1st it doesnt matter really what class you play.Yes it may help the progression if you stack certain classes and cheezz certain mechanics but it is by no means a must.

[Speedlance]

One problem blizzard has is that they don't nerf classes and buff others frequent enough. So classes that scale good will dominate the last tier very hard.

[teddabear]

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?

I agree with this but it was even more ridiculous to post anecdotal evidence or 1 persons experience in Beta 5 man's.

To your point Feral is so bad in so many areas that the only way to make them desirable in a raid is to extremely overtune their single target damage. I hope everybody realizes this will never happen.

And if the guild your in is not a top 20 world guild that competes for worlds 1st it doesnt matter really what class you play.Yes it may help the progression if you stack certain classes and cheezz certain mechanics but it is by no means a must.

This is a popular fallacy propagated by Blizzard. Lower end Mythic guilds are far more likely to bench specs with poor toolkits. The top guilds are able to overcome those shortcomings with perfect execution.

[Metuere]

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


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

I specifically said their AoE is terrible and you link me logs for mythic dungeons, which are AoE centred. How useful?

After looking through the Nighthold logs, I didn't find many ferals at all even (about 7 or 8 of them total over the whole page) and they had a variance of over 50k dps between eachother. For example, one only had about 130k dps, while 2 others have 195-200k+ dps on the same fight. Such a small and varying data set isn't enough to claim they're doing 60% of other classes dps.

[teddabear]

I specifically said their AoE is terrible and you link me logs for mythic dungeons, which are AoE centred. How useful?

After looking through the Nighthold logs, I didn't find many ferals at all even (about 7 or 8 of them total over the whole page) and they had a variance of over 50k dps between eachother. For example, one only had about 130k dps, while 2 others have 195-200k+ dps on the same fight. Such a small and varying data set isn't enough to claim they're doing 60% of other classes dps.

You probably also saw specs doing 320k. 60% of 320k is 200k. I agree Ferals are extremely rare. Why do you think that is? The bigger issue is Feral is bad at everything. Even if they were topping charts on some fights they still wouldn't be desirable.

[Metuere]

You probably also saw specs doing 320k. 60% of 320k is 200k. I agree Ferals are extremely rare. Why do you think that is? The bigger issue is Feral is bad at everything. Even if they were topping charts on some fights they still wouldn't be desirable.

Even given that some specs are performing super high like demon hunters...
1. Tuning isn't finished yet, and as the patch notes showed today feral tuning is being done. Numbers are far from final and we won't know for sure until the pre-patch.
2. Out of all the specs I saw in the logs, feral wasn't "60% of most specs", it was only under maybe 6 or 7 specs out of the 36 total specs. I'm not sure that means "most specs".
3. Again, those super high numbers are likely because of AoE, and given the damage that Eye Beam was doing before this current build, I'm in no way surprised that demon hunters were so high.
4. Feral isn't "bad at everything", I'm not calling you bad, but a feral that knows what they're doing can easily be an asset to any team with off-healing and movement speed buffs.

[Lucrece]

Even given that some specs are performing super high like demon hunters...
1. Tuning isn't finished yet, and as the patch notes showed today feral tuning is being done. Numbers are far from final and we won't know for sure until the pre-patch.
2. Out of all the specs I saw in the logs, feral wasn't "60% of most specs", it was only under maybe 6 or 7 specs out of the 36 total specs. I'm not sure that means "most specs".
3. Again, those super high numbers are likely because of AoE, and given the damage that Eye Beam was doing before this current build, I'm in no way surprised that demon hunters were so high.
4. Feral isn't "bad at everything", I'm not calling you bad, but a feral that knows what they're doing can easily be an asset to any team with off-healing and movement speed buffs.

The whole movement speed thing is pointless now that they gave enhancement shamans windwalk totem. Since for some retarded reason they made Stampeding Roar melee range, they function effectively the same, and an enhancement shaman brings Stormlash to boot, and in the case of 5 mans Heroism aqnd one of the stronger melee aoe/cleave kits.

[teddabear]

Well excluding AoE, cleave, target switching, burst, survivability, utility, raid CD, talents, scaling and their artifact Feral is in pretty good shape.

[RayenDark]

Just ignore Teddy-He hasn't said anything positive about Feral (here or on fluid druid) for years.

[Rivin]

The whole movement speed thing is pointless now that they gave enhancement shamans windwalk totem. Since for some retarded reason they made Stampeding Roar melee range, they function effectively the same, and an enhancement shaman brings Stormlash to boot, and in the case of 5 mans Heroism aqnd one of the stronger melee aoe/cleave kits.

Stormlash doesn't do anything significant though. It's a standard passive damaging ability, like any other, except that it happens to come from another party member instead of the shaman himself. It's not extra damage like the old Stormlash Totem was.

[Will]

I earned my spot by not sucking. Basically we're a progressive mythic guild but we're semi-casual, so we don't give a **** about min-maxing the best possible comp. We would never turn around and say to a feral 'go rogue or go home'. Heck we have a BM hunter in our prog team, that's how flexible we are in letting people play what THEY want to play, not what's "best" for performance.

[Deleted]

Earning the spot ? Not that hard.
Seeing others playing other specs, don't sweating and doing 30% more than u ? Kinda hard.
And then telling your raid leader why your dmg on adds is so low coz of ferals bad burst, bad bleeds, bad target switching, bad energy regeneration, mediocore mobility...
Well... no, thank you, I'll play something else.

[Will]

Ferals aren't anywhere near as bad as you make them sound, Shedarion. Single target, we're strong. For most fights we're perfectly strong. Burst AoE is our main weakness but our sustained cleave is pretty good though. Our mobility is fantastic and definitely not mediocre. Sometimes I wonder if we're playing the same damn spec as each other.

[Lucrece]

Ferals aren't anywhere near as bad as you make them sound, Shedarion. Single target, we're strong. For most fights we're perfectly strong. Burst AoE is our main weakness but our sustained cleave is pretty good though. Our mobility is fantastic and definitely not mediocre. Sometimes I wonder if we're playing the same damn spec as each other.

Burst AoE is pretty much key to mythic+keystone dungeons or challenge modes, and several raid fights.

Which is a pretty shitty weakness to have.

They just need to have Brutal Slash not replace swipe, and just replace Trash by making it spread your Rip and Rake to nearby targets on a 25-30 sec cd.

Or they could just replace savage roar with a talent that makes your swipe spread Rake onto nearby targets and boosts the damage of Swipe on targets with bleeds by 40% or makes swipe a 100% crit chance on bleeding targets.

[Saltysquidoon]

Burst AoE is pretty much key to mythic+keystone dungeons or challenge modes, and several raid fights.

Fixing feral's shitty aoe aside, most of the raid fights I've seen this tier have either one target or oneish adds at a time not everything is a massive aoe fest like HFC.

[Seikusa]

You need to do your job very good as a raider, always strive to do your best regarding tactics and your dps. If your guild leaders arent a bunch of idiots they will see your value as a player and not just as the class you play and they will give you a permanent spot even as a feral.

This Argument works only if rogues/warrior/dks wont do the same stuff.
But they are also striving for the same thing. And each of their strives make up more ground then a ferals strives does.

[david0925]

This kind of argument has always existed since vanilla and there really is no good answer for both sides honestly.

For people saying "just play well". I agree with you, a competent player playing a non-OP class is probably better than a bad player playing an OP class (sometimes), but the competent player will be even better playing the OP class/spec. And if you are very steadfast about playing a sub-optimal class/spec, you're holding back your guild's potential in your own way even if you are pulling your weight or overperforming.

At the same time, an unhappy player not playing his preferred spec/class will not be as motivated and perform as well, so there is that.

[Deleted]

In my experience Ferals are far from being bad. Single target we have an incredible burst expecially if you Bloodtalons+Tiger's fury into Ashmane's Frenzy. Without offensive cds the damage is ok.

With 3 targets keeping Thrash and Rake up on everything (with Jagged wounds) worked pretty well in my testing.

Swipe is good with the Predator talent and if you know that at least one target is gonna die in the following 3-4 seconds, that way you can spam Tiger's Fury into Swipe again untill all targets die eventually, if played right you can get some pretty nice burst out of it but I agree than most of the time you don't feel like you have the tools to deal with a trash pack. Perhaps a energy reduction on swipe if hits 3+ targets or a aoe spender would make things a lot better. Brutal slash is great but the charges cooldown take way too long and you also have to give up on some great talents of that row.

The class is however extremely fun to play and rewarding from time to time, I can't speak about scaling or raid testing though.

[Arthael]

One of the things that seem to really work with Feral is the itemization and how incredibly well they synergize around the set bonus.

T19 Set: Shred and Swipe deals 8% more damage per bleed on the target; so at the base level, that is 24% damage boost to Shred (Rip, Rake, & Thrash).
Ashamane's Bite netting a shadowy duplicate of Rip & Ashamane's Frenzy bleed & Shadow Thrash ALSO add to the above.
Finally, there is a legendary item (if it makes it to live) which makes ferocious bite also refresh thrash and rake post 25% (in addition to Rip) - so post 25%, all you'll be doing is shred + FB (assuming of course you did snapshot all the bleeds properly prior to).

As expansion progresses and you are allowed more legendary slots, you can pick from: 3 stacks of predatory swiftness + 1 stack every 15s (yum bloodtalons), +100 maximum energy (so pool harder for more burst), critical hits have a 40% chance to trigger primal fury (more CPs), Thrash can stack up to 2 more times (so I assume that's 3 total - more shred damage).

Finally, for AoE: Thrash stacking to 3, +25% damage & radius (legendary), each target hit by thrash reduces swipe/brutal slash cost by 2s for 4s (artifact), brutal slash talent (it only costs 20 energy btw; swipe costs 45s), shadow thrash. I mean you can pool up for AoE and do some pretty hefty damage.

A good change for AoE could come from Ashamane's Frenzy affecting all targets infront of the cat.
I also feel removing Savage Roar and making it an AoE shenanigan will get much love from the cat community as a whole, as well as fix a gap.
As someone suggested earlier, perhaps Savage Roar can cause the DoTs on your active target to spread to all targets in an 8 yd radius with a 1 min CD.

I am loving the cat more and more as, beyond the gameplay itself, the items are quite well designed for it.
No other class has legendaries that really make as much of a difference as they do to Feral.

All that said, it will take someone with some exceptional knowledge of the spec to really pull it off in a raid setting at the mythic+ level (especially during progression) and stay relevant to all the other specs/classes out there where the foresight/investment required is much less.

*Note the Thrash legendary might be Guardian only.

[Rivin]

T19 Set: Shred and Swipe deals 8% more damage per bleed on the target; so at the base level, that is 24% damage boost to Shred (Rip, Rake, & Thrash).
Ashamane's Bite netting a shadowy duplicate of Rip & Ashamane's Frenzy bleed & Shadow Thrash ALSO add to the above.

Are you sure? They're not bleed effects.

Finally, there is a legendary item (if it makes it to live) which makes ferocious bite also refresh thrash and rake post 25% (in addition to Rip) - so post 25%, all you'll be doing is shred + FB (assuming of course you did snapshot all the bleeds properly prior to).

I don't see any such legendary.

Finally, for AoE: Thrash stacking to 3, +25% damage & radius (legendary), each target hit by thrash reduces swipe/brutal slash cost by 2s for 4s (artifact), brutal slash talent (it only costs 20 energy btw; swipe costs 45s), shadow thrash. I mean you can pool up for AoE and do some pretty hefty damage.

*Note the Thrash legendary might be Guardian only.

The Thrash stacking legendary is Guardian-only; the bonus damage and range is for both.