[Feral] Legion Discussion

[Oranguto]

When using BT and SR, your primary damage sources become Rake and Rip. Everything you do, is to make sure you have the strongest version possible of those running at any given time, without letting them fall off. This creates a scenario where you have to maintain a buff (Savage Roar) and Bloodtalon'd Rake/Rip on a finite resource (Energy). Since you want to spend your Bloodtalon charges on Rip/Rake, you either want to HT on either 4 or 5 combo points, so that you can be ready to snapshop your bleeds/refresh SR without wasting resources.

This is typically where you're "pooling"; you're monitoring your energy so you don't cap, and you're monitoring your bleeds so that you don't apply them before Pandemic takes effect. Resources are scarce playing this setup, which is why proper management of them is vital in order to play it effectively.

So basically, this is only truly a case if you aren't playing a talent setup revolving around Bite? From that point I suppose as long as your dots are ticking at the highest buff they can that's all that really matters? Is this looking like the case for the first raid tier for Legion? I'm just surprised Bite is barely used in this spec for how cool it is to use. Kind of a shame.

[Menubrea]

So basically, this is only truly a case if you aren't playing a talent setup revolving around Bite? From that point I suppose as long as your dots are ticking at the highest buff they can that's all that really matters? Is this looking like the case for the first raid tier for Legion? I'm just surprised Bite is barely used in this spec for how cool it is to use. Kind of a shame.

Using Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds and Bloodtalons, Ferocious Bite more or less becomes a noob-trap. Outside of rare occasions, you won't have room to weave one in, and even then the overall DPS increase is going to be marginal since Bite does so poor damage for its opportunity cost, which is also why SR so greatly outperform SotF.

You get to use your excess combo points on a significant increase to all damage, rather than having more excess energy to dump into Shred and Ferocious Tickle, which are both pretty poor currently.

[Deleted]

Using Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds and Bloodtalons, Ferocious Bite more or less becomes a noob-trap. Outside of rare occasions, you won't have room to weave one in, and even then the overall DPS increase is going to be marginal since Bite does so poor damage for its opportunity cost, which is also why SR so greatly outperform SotF.

You get to use your excess combo points on a significant increase to all damage, rather than having more excess energy to dump into Shred and Ferocious Tickle, which are both pretty poor currently.

Can't agree on this, even currently with Seed of Creation you can push 2-4 FB inside Rip window with Jagged Wounds.
Rake lasts 10 sec with jagged wounds, Rip 16 sec. This gives you 6-7 GCD windows before Rae reaplication and about 10-11 GCD windows before Rip reapplication. So you will easily have 1-2 FB even on early gear you will do between Rake/Rip refresh.

The talent that auto refreshes Rip with FB is kinda weak compared to Jagged Wounds because simply Rake deals so much damage.

The thing that Ferals doesn't highlight is Cleave/AoE. Why nobody is screaming about it ? There is so weak AOE for ferals and 0 cleave that is is just sad.

They could do two things:

Talent Tier 15:
Predator: Shrade hits another target within 8 yards ( still generates only 1 CB)
Talent Tier 90: Sabertooth: FB refreshes RiP and spreads RiP and Rake on all targets within 8 yards.
or Make Jagged Wounds spread RiP / Rake plus Tick faster.
or Make a talent that Rake apply to all mobs in 8 yard range.

Boom! Feral suddenly fixed, you have cleave and you have AoE.

Also Open Wounds should simply do what Soul Capacitor is doing now a PPM proc that stores dmg and erupts in 5-8 yards with 100^ of stored DMG.

Which of changes i suggest here would be bad ?

[Menubrea]

Can't agree on this, even currently with Seed of Creation you can push 2-4 FB inside Rip window with Jagged Wounds.
Rake lasts 10 sec with jagged wounds, Rip 16 sec. This gives you 6-7 GCD windows before Rae reaplication and about 10-11 GCD windows before Rip reapplication. So you will easily have 1-2 FB even on early gear you will do between Rake/Rip refresh.

Even now? Seed of Creation and set bonuses is what makes room for more FB's into the rotation, take that away and you're not going to get anywhere near as many. Your estimate of 1-2 FB's between Rip refresh is incredibly optimistic.

Looking at this log from two veteran Ferals, they are getting 2 and 4 FB's respectively over the duration of the fight compared to 7 Rips. By your estimate, their FB number should be between 7-14, which it clearly is not. The damage contribution is minimal, and the importance of maintaining your bleeds/SR should come as a priority as a novice Feral Druid.

[Deleted]

Even now? Seed of Creation and set bonuses is what makes room for more FB's into the rotation, take that away and you're not going to get anywhere near as many. Your estimate of 1-2 FB's between Rip refresh is incredibly optimistic.

Looking at this log from two veteran Ferals, they are getting 2 and 4 FB's respectively over the duration of the fight compared to 7 Rips. By your estimate, their FB number should be between 7-14, which it clearly is not. The damage contribution is minimal, and the importance of maintaining your bleeds/SR should come as a priority as a novice Feral Druid.

Yeah i might be over optimistic because of the set bonus. I think that FB could be removed from the game entirely making reapplication of Rip adding a layer of Rip damage. Something like Doom has for warlocks. My Problem with Current feral is 0 Cleave and almost not existing AoE. I was just asked by GM og my Guild to reroll to another melee class is this will continue to be the state of feral. Not so fun anymore.

[Kraineth]

My Problem with Current feral is 0 Cleave and almost not existing AoE.

Neither of these are realistically problems for feral. With Rake/Rip being as powerful as they are, multidotting is just fine for cleave. And brutal slash makes us instantly good on fights where aoe matters.

If you want to claim that you were asked to reroll, you should provide some proof.

[Deleted]

Is brutal slash even good for Archimonde mythic right now ? But Rip/rake would hit like a Softball without BT. Its the last Boss we have to progress in WoD and im still not sure what to use.

Edit: Is the BoA better than Seed ?

[teddabear]

Neither of these are realistically problems for feral. With Rake/Rip being as powerful as they are, multidotting is just fine for cleave. And brutal slash makes us instantly good on fights where aoe matters.

If you want to claim that you were asked to reroll, you should provide some proof.

AoE seems quite weak to me.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8/#boss=1778

[Meanshield]

Feral is atrocious now. I cant even compete on fights like Xhul anymore. I'm doing 50% less damage than I did before the patch and im barely doing 75k singletarget with 738 ilvl.

I've lost complete faith in Blizzard and the handling of this spec. Before you could compete with other classes due to superior singletarget, now you're just worthless.

Damage aside, this just isnt fun anymore.

[decimo]

Feral is atrocious now. I cant even compete on fights like Xhul anymore. I'm doing 50% less damage than I did before the patch and im barely doing 75k singletarget with 738 ilvl.

I've lost complete faith in Blizzard and the handling of this spec. Before you could compete with other classes due to superior singletarget, now you're just worthless.

Damage aside, this just isnt fun anymore.

Game isn't balanced for level 100, you're missing artifact weapon + traits

[Meanshield]

Game isn't balanced for level 100, you're missing artifact weapon + traits

We still gotta play the game for another 4weeks, and right now, its beyond bonkers.

[Deleted]

We still gotta play the game for another 4weeks, and right now, its beyond bonkers.

if you can't do 75k singletarget dmg at 738 - blizzard is not to blame

[Tidezen]

Back in the day, what I would call "the glory days" of feral (WotLK), we were good because A) we could tunnel a boss-type target very well, and B) our AoE was amazing. Even though it was just 1 button for AoE, it was a fucking good button. Add in Berserk, and it was a monumentally good button.

Back in those days, we could cleave pretty well by multi-dotting two targets. Not many fights where that was necessary, but we could at least do it.

And that is three of the four tools that a DPS needs to have in order to be relevant. The last is single target adds that need to die RIGHT NOW, which we were never all that great at, but it's okay, since we brought the other DPS things to the table, as well as our utility--great movement and brezzes. Maybe off-tanking for a few moments if needed.

And back then, it was the "fuckin' JOHN MADDEN" rotation--keeping up Mangle debuff, Rake, Rip, Savage Roar, and weaving in Ferocious bites when possible. Four timers to keep track of, all with different durations, not including trinkets.


I didn't mind that, back then...in fact I even enjoyed it somewhat...yeah, you had to work harder for your damage, but the damage was there, waiting to be had, and reaching it was a great feeling.

But bosses these days are only very rarely tunnel bosses--if a boss is a tank-and-spank fight, then it's usually just a gear-check battle, nothing all that interesting. Something like Patchwerk is not a question of "how well can you do your spec," but more "what Ilevel is your raid?"

As someone who has lead raids in the past, I don't care about that. What I care about, when I'm looking at potential DPSers, is how well they think. How well they can switch targets, how fast they can recognize a threat and burn it down. As a raid leader, I don't want people who linger on their targets, padding their own personal meters, taking their time to switch to another target or AoE targets. That extra damage on a boss is nice, sure, in the long run...but that's only good when we've already got it on farm mode. For progression, when an add pops, it needs to die ASAP. When a swarm of adds pop, they need to die, like yesterday. When a damage window opens on a boss for ten/twenty seconds, every DPSer in the raid had better be taking full advantage of that short window, and nothing else.

Feral is one of the last specs I would choose for that.

Combo points being on the player rather than the target does help a lot, for sure...but having a ten or more seconds ramp-up time for full damage is not acceptable, in any situation, not these days. Not when other classes/specs can do it in half the time.

IF we had clearly superior single-target AND clearly superior AOE or cleave, then it would be possible. But we don't have either of those things.

Dual-spec is gone, so now, it doesn't matter if you're a hybrid spec or not. I mean, it does matter, in a way, because if you're playing another DoT-based class like afflic-lock or sin-rogue, you can at least switch to something more bursty if the fight demands it. Ferals? Hah. Boomkin is not much better off.

The only other spec that is in our position is shadow priests, but they have a 3-GCD ramp-up time. Having played a shadow priest since WotLK, I feel their pain too. But that's not the point.

The point is, ferals HAVE to switch away from a DoT-heavy, ramp-up rotation in order to be relevant. That's just the way it is. No one cares about how much DPS you can do, if you can't do it on command.

It's not about complexity or the size of your e-peen, doing awesome rotations and uptime on all your bleeds and buffs, and feeling better about yourself because you did it. It's about whether you can kill an add in a short window, or many adds in a short window, or tunnel a boss in short window.

Every person here who wants more bleed damage is killing the spec. Every person who wants more complexity to the rotation...you, yes, you...you are killing the spec, and ensuring that feral will remain irrelevant for the next expansion pack and beyond, if you get your way.

Complexity itself isn't the problem, though. There's nothing wrong with complexity. I would love for us to remain one of the most complex specs to play in this game.

But not with being a spec that has insanely long ramp-up time, DoT-based damage, and awful AoE. I'd rather play a Ret pally, if that were the case.

[Menubrea]

Snip

Many points I agree with here. Having competitive single target doesn't mean much if your target swapping and AoE is awful. BrS makes burst AoE tolerable, but comes at the cost of single target damage. So unless our single target is much higher than most other specs running SR/JW/BT, I feel like we might end up being just being poor to average at everything, while having to play a much more complex rotation than our peers on top of it.

It's not even that DoT classes have to be poor at target swapping. Both Assassination and Affliction Warlocks have means to provide meaningful burst when it's needed through Exsanguinate, Vendetta and Unstable Affliction.

When you compare the new design of Assassination to Feral it just becomes so obvious where they put most of their attention in creating an interesting spec with good synergy between talents and mechanics. As Assassination tab DoTing is exciting because you're rewarded for it, the more bleeds you manage to maintain, the faster the spec becomes due to increased energy regeneration, and Alacrity if you're running that. There's no RNG to it, it just works. 100 % of the time. Meanwhile, as Feral, you tab Rake, and depending on your luck (RNG) with crits, OoC (RNG) or have Tiger's Fury available spend another decade just to put your Rip up, which I might add do a hell of a lot less damage than Rupture currently even with BT and SR (although Rip have mastery scaling). We have to take SotF and MoC just to be somewhat comparable in that department to what Assassination get by default. A lot could be helped by making either Predator or SotF baseline.

I realize this is the only source Assassination have for AoE, while we have alternatives in BrS, Swipe and Thrash. But I think I'd rather have solid single target, strong, rewarding cleave, some burst potential and shitty burst AoE over what we currently have. Which is not being particularly good at anything besides sustained single target, which you know, every other spec in the game is going to demand to provide anyway.

[Leyre]

So, fellow druis out there, how do you guys do it? how do you manage to keep the rotation up with jagged wounds? i cant even keep up the initial rake because the energy cost is so high and im strugling to keep everything up because the bleeds fall off so fast that i can barely cast a 1/2 points savage roar

[Tellof]

So, fellow druis out there, how do you guys do it? how do you manage to keep the rotation up with jagged wounds? i cant even keep up the initial rake because the energy cost is so high and im strugling to keep everything up because the bleeds fall off so fast that i can barely cast a 1/2 points savage roar

Can't know this for sure without logs, but if you're running Savage Roar you basically can't use Ferocious Bite outside of Berserk/Incarnation. If you're trying to weave those into your base rotation you're not going to be able to keep both Rip and Savage Roar up 100% and you'll probably be energy starved in the process because you're doing too much work.

With that said, Rake should be less of an issue because it only costs energy, not combo points. Are you generally pooling your energy where possible? This seems counter-intuitive but you have to remember that you only get passive energy regeneration and so you're only losing DPS here when your energy caps. For this reason, waiting is perfectly OK and a good time to assess your timers and plan your next move (Which is an aspect many Ferals love).

You should invest in some kind of Weak Aura or DoT tracker and watch Rake closely, and when you see it's got 5 seconds left hold off on any other actions and let your energy build up, then use your Rake.

Hope this helps!

[Leyre]

Can't know this for sure without logs, but if you're running Savage Roar you basically can't use Ferocious Bite outside of Berserk/Incarnation. If you're trying to weave those into your base rotation you're not going to be able to keep both Rip and Savage Roar up 100% and you'll probably be energy starved in the process because you're doing too much work.

With that said, Rake should be less of an issue because it only costs energy, not combo points. Are you generally pooling your energy where possible? This seems counter-intuitive but you have to remember that you only get passive energy regeneration and so you're only losing DPS here when your energy caps. For this reason, waiting is perfectly OK and a good time to assess your timers and plan your next move (Which is an aspect many Ferals love).

You should invest in some kind of Weak Aura or DoT tracker and watch Rake closely, and when you see it's got 5 seconds left hold off on any other actions and let your energy build up, then use your Rake.

Hope this helps!

i dont even have enough energy to cast a bite lol, also cant wait because everything falls down so fast that if im not smashing the buttons fast enough something is gonna fall off ( usually savage )

Pd: dont have logs because im testing the rotation on a dummy and i just cant make it work, maybe i need more haste <,<
Ppd: Pre patch i had no problems with savage because the time was about 30 or 45 sec IIRC, so that gave me plenty of time to set things up, IMO 24s savage is bullshit

[teddabear]

Back in the day, what I would call "the glory days" of feral (WotLK), we were good because A) we could tunnel a boss-type target very well, and B) our AoE was amazing. Even though it was just 1 button for AoE, it was a fucking good button. Add in Berserk, and it was a monumentally good button.

Back in those days, we could cleave pretty well by multi-dotting two targets. Not many fights where that was necessary, but we could at least do it.

And that is three of the four tools that a DPS needs to have in order to be relevant. The last is single target adds that need to die RIGHT NOW, which we were never all that great at, but it's okay, since we brought the other DPS things to the table

Agreed.

I would add defensive CDs that allow you to cheese mechanics and a good raid CD.

[Deleted]

loads of good points

I think you presented loads of good points but it can be patched in very easy way to be fair:

a) Artifact weapon doesn't add 3 combo points but applies 5 CP Rip to target. (Ramp up problem solved)
b) Rake applies its dot to all enemies within 8 yards.

All feral problems solved or at least patched.

- - - Updated - - -

Agreed.

I would add defensive CDs that allow you to cheese mechanics and a good raid CD.

to be fair fuck raid CD's and defensive CD's to cheese mechanics. Give use good cleave and solid aoe and feral is fine. Maybe remove SR at all or make it passive thing we have (tunning fork passive?) and remove FB. Just make Application of new Rip add damage to existing Rip and extend its duration.

This might feel like dumbing down the rotation but currently Feral is super complex compared to anything else and while we have this complexity we don't even do insane damage in exchange for it.

Last but not the least, make Haste affect ticks of Rip and Rake. Haste is such a bullshit state for us and it is a pain, getting a higher ilvl item with haste is just painfull as it often is downgrade.

[Tellof]

i dont even have enough energy to cast a bite lol, also cant wait because everything falls down so fast that if im not smashing the buttons fast enough something is gonna fall off ( usually savage )

Pd: dont have logs because im testing the rotation on a dummy and i just cant make it work, maybe i need more haste <,<
Ppd: Pre patch i had no problems with savage because the time was about 30 or 45 sec IIRC, so that gave me plenty of time to set things up, IMO 24s savage is bullshit

You could be suffering from not having enough crit, and so your combo points are generating extra slow. What are your haste and crit levels? General item level?