[Feral] Legion Discussion

[Yvaelle]

Even without PS, Cyclone was a problematic CC - I would be much more interested in giving Ferals a "Sleep" spell that they could use with PS instead - that was dispellable, broke on damage, etc.

Or, as I suggested - give them a ranged 6 second stun that doesn't require combo points, on a 30 second cooldown - that's basically Cyclone but you can also use it on your kill targets - that's extremely strong IMO - in some cases stronger than rogue stuns.

[Deleted]

Luckily we can remove voluntary parses from the equation completely.

All we have to do is look at first kills on Mythic Xavius by the top guilds. I found 1 Feral in the top 19 guilds, Yriss.

It looked like most were using 4 healers so that is 1 out of 266 DPS.

1 / 266 = 0.00375

So the top guilds in the world are choosing their specs out of perception?

So now we've moved the goal line from "good at high mythic+" to "good at world first competitive raiding"

good shit.

[teddabear]

So now we've moved the goal line from "good at high mythic+" to "good at world first competitive raiding"

good shit.

Well you are too dense to interpret statistics so I made it easier for you.

The good news is Chilton is leaving WoW which could be the best thing to happen to Feral since ever.

[Kraineth]

Well you are too dense to interpret statistics so I made it easier for you.

The good news is Chilton is leaving WoW which could be the best thing to happen to Feral since ever.

Statistics on what is for all intents and purposes a victory lap after killing Mythic Cenarius. That made me chuckle.

Feral has some of the smallest representation of any spec in the game just in terms of the number of players, be it casual or mythic raider, that even play the spec. Cynics will say its because the spec is "bad" realists will say its because it's the melee DPS option in the only class with 4 specs, which heavily spreads out the number of players interested in it. And barring massively OP specs like Shadow Priests and some other ranged hybrids, most top 20 guilds roll with classes that actually have the ability to change specs whereas when you choose to play feral, that's pretty much all you'll be playing aside from the occasional 3 tank fight, because giving int trinkets to a feral "just in case" really doesn't work.

Emerald Nightmare was such a joke of an instance that nobody really cares what you bring. The only recommendation is enough immunities/freedoms for clearing cenarius brambles. And of course bring all your good Shadow Priest players.

You've been complaining about feral for a long time, maybe it's time to leave? There are plenty of us who are extremely happy with where we are at right now, myself included.

[Lucrece]

Well you are too dense to interpret statistics so I made it easier for you.

The good news is Chilton is leaving WoW which could be the best thing to happen to Feral since ever.

You do realize with Chilton gone, Hazzikostas takes the helm and he's the guy who said he didn't mind the miserable state of demo warlocks in WoD because they actually didn't want people to feel too compelled to play that spec, right?

People said the same thing when Ghostcrawler left, that class balance would be better off without him.

Lo and behold, the expansions without him brought us arcane mages in HFC, and now shadow priests/fire mages/hunters trouncing everybody else by equally large margins.

Maybe you'll realize class balance is handled by a class balance TEAM and a single person isn't accomplished much. If I expect to hear whine about class balance, I expect it would be toward Celestalon.

Even without PS, Cyclone was a problematic CC - I would be much more interested in giving Ferals a "Sleep" spell that they could use with PS instead - that was dispellable, broke on damage, etc.

Or, as I suggested - give them a ranged 6 second stun that doesn't require combo points, on a 30 second cooldown - that's basically Cyclone but you can also use it on your kill targets - that's extremely strong IMO - in some cases stronger than rogue stuns.

I always advocated for hibernate being useful on humanoids, so I'm actually pretty comfortable with either of your suggestions. Feral druid could use any utility addition, period. It's wholly lacking in that department.

[teddabear]

I never believed Ghostcrawler leaving would be good and said so several times.

Hazzikostas has been in charge of encounter design. A lot of players think that has been Wow's only redeeming quality post Cataclysm.

I certainly don't believe it will have a major impact in the short term. Medium to long term it can only help. I could give you a history lesson on Warriors and Warlocks in Season 2 and 3 but it would fall on deaf ears.

When a spec is good representation goes up, sometimes astronomically. There's a reason that has never happened with Feral. What happened to all the regulars at Fluid Druid? Do you really think that has nothing to do with the way Blizzard has handled Feral.

[Deleted]

I never believed Ghostcrawler leaving would be good and said so several times.

Hazzikostas has been in charge of encounter design. A lot of players think that has been Wow's only redeeming quality post Cataclysm.

I certainly don't believe it will have a major impact in the short term. Medium to long term it can only help. I could give you a history lesson on Warriors and Warlocks in Season 2 and 3 but it would fall on deaf ears.

When a spec is good representation goes up, sometimes astronomically. There's a reason that has never happened with Feral. What happened to all the regulars at Fluid Druid? Do you really think that has nothing to do with the way Blizzard has handled Feral.

Fluid druid is in general inactive and a lot of members have more so moved to discord, In the same vein of logic as you're using, Druid discord is the most populated wow discord channel and the #feral channel is the most active of the 4 channels on the server.

Well you are too dense to interpret statistics so I made it easier for you.

The good news is Chilton is leaving WoW which could be the best thing to happen to Feral since ever.

stop commenting on fucking balance when you have no experience or knowledge and some fucking retarded meaningless statistics to base your opinion on when you are a fucking normal raider, you don't play high end pvp, you don't push in in mythic+. You have ZERO basis upon which to base your opinions on the relative strengths of the class, while being told by multiple ACTUAL GOOD ferals that you're being fucking retarded. You mention Yriss? I've talked extensively with Yriss about feral and both him and his guild are happy with the state of it in the current patch, so, If a guild that have consistently come in top5 world are happy with the state of feral, that is indicative of reasonably good balance in high end mythic raids, another example,

Just stop being fucking retarded and we can all be happy. Thx

[Wolfheart9]

Could we possibly have a separate thread made for you 2-3 hurling insults at eachother to use? It's getting to be a bit much when I come here seeing new posts for hope of discussion and it's just the same 2-3 people smacking their epeens in eachother's faces. Either make a new thread for yourselves, or try to keep slightly civil in this one.. please.

[Yvaelle]

Also if anyone can offer some advice to my guilds feral that'd be nice (Got lost there for a bit)

Leyelle on Armory

Warcraft Logs of Normal Farm

AMR Report

[Tradu]

Also if anyone can offer some advice to my guilds feral that'd be nice (Got lost there for a bit)

Leyelle on Armory

Warcraft Logs of Normal Farm

AMR Report

As you mentioned in your other post, DoT uptimes(and Savage Roar uptime) are a big issue(on Nythendra for example, Rip had a 63% uptime, and on bosses with more mechanics it gets even worse. It should be 90%+ easily). Also on Nythendra another quite obvious issue is that she didn't have Bloodtalons snapshotted on over half her Rakes as well as 3 Rips. Ideally no Rake should be without BT(sometimes shit happens and you miss one, but it shouldn't be very often) and only the first Rip should ever be without BT(and even that can be done with some openers, but the opener isn't really worth worrying about when there's fundamental things to worry about first)
She also sometimes sits at max energy for a while(I'm guessing due to Rot or something along those lines), which is a big no-no as well. Dumping energy before running out or casting some Moonfires to avoid sitting at max energy would do the trick here. Planning/playing around mechanics is a pretty general skill too(like how as a caster you'd ideally want to have some instants ready for movement), so learning that will help in other areas as well.

TL;DR: DoT/buff uptimes(including snapshots on said buffs), playing around mechanics(energy management)

If she has further questions, I'd recommend asking it in the Discord for more direct/instant feedback and easier followup questions. It's where most of the FluidDruid discussion has migrated to.

EDIT: I found out part of why the uptimes are bad: she's wasting a lot of combo points(likely by using generators at 5 CP). The only thing in the CP resource log that should ever be wasting anything is Primal Fury(and maybe a low number for Ashamane's Frenzy), anything else is bad play. So there's a lot of general, fundamental stuff that needs to be fixed.

[-aiko-]

On top of the above, it looks like she should be quicker on using Tiger's Fury. The uptime looks low.

Looks like she has the basic priorities down she just needs to refine and not panic too much. It'll come with practice.

[Yvaelle]

@Tradu @-aiko-

Awesome feedback, we will work together on this over the weekend - I will encourage her to go hang out in the Kitty Discord too - she asked about something like that and I didn't know where the chats chat

PS. I hope the French kitties have already made that pun long ago

[Deleted]

@Tradu @-aiko-

Awesome feedback, we will work together on this over the weekend - I will encourage her to go hang out in the Kitty Discord too - she asked about something like that and I didn't know where the chats chat

PS. I hope the French kitties have already made that pun long ago

Actually puns are outlawed by law of the cat council

Newspaper Emoji

[Tradu]

Actually puns are outlawed by law of the cat council

Newspaper Emoji

By which he meows... he'd like for them to be, but bearly anybody else agrees with him.

[Deleted]

You're just a bad person dude...

[badzerath]

I did chuckle about reading some tom-foolery about "statistics" comparing a single druid specs representation in high level raiding vs an entire pure dps class.

What a fucking idiot.

- - - Updated - - -

stop commenting on fucking balance when you have no experience or knowledge and some fucking retarded meaningless statistics to base your opinion on when you are a fucking normal raider, you don't play high end pvp, you don't push in in mythic+. You have ZERO basis upon which to base your opinions on the relative strengths of the class, while being told by multiple ACTUAL GOOD ferals that you're being fucking retarded. You mention Yriss? I've talked extensively with Yriss about feral and both him and his guild are happy with the state of it in the current patch, so, If a guild that have consistently come in top5 world are happy with the state of feral, that is indicative of reasonably good balance in high end mythic raids, another example,

Just stop being fucking retarded and we can all be happy. Thx

You savage

[teddabear]

Fluid druid is in general inactive and a lot of members have more so moved to discord, In the same vein of logic as you're using, Druid discord is the most populated wow discord channel and the #feral channel is the most active of the 4 channels on the server.

stop commenting on fucking balance when you have no experience or knowledge and some fucking retarded meaningless statistics to base your opinion on when you are a fucking normal raider, you don't play high end pvp, you don't push in in mythic+. You have ZERO basis upon which to base your opinions on the relative strengths of the class, while being told by multiple ACTUAL GOOD ferals that you're being fucking retarded. You mention Yriss? I've talked extensively with Yriss about feral and both him and his guild are happy with the state of it in the current patch, so, If a guild that have consistently come in top5 world are happy with the state of feral, that is indicative of reasonably good balance in high end mythic raids, another example,

Just stop being fucking retarded and we can all be happy. Thx

I am very critical of incompetence and laziness. You are very immature.

To each his own.




Where are Pawkets, Stenhaldi, Kojiyama, Polihayse, Tinderhoof, Dysheki? The people that tried as hard as they could to help Blizzard fix Feral during Alpha and Beta. I know I left some out, I apologize to those people but those threads are gone.


Feral discord is a good resource but a pale and depressingly sad substitute for Fluid Druid.


Here is a compilation of their feedback for just Brutal Slash on the Alpha/ Beta forums. One comment from MMOC was added. Blizzard had this feedback for many months but completely ignored. It took a lot of time and effort for me to compile but I thought if we could get it all in one post on the Beta forum it might make a difference.


Really unimpressed with Brutal Slash overall... really didn't think it was all that great. Feels like far too narrow application, honestly. No synergy with Predator--which is the clear AoE talent in the first row--and the new, longer cooldown is too long to be convenient for trash pulls.
In a vacuum, it's seems like a nice upgrade to Swipe, but in many realistic situations it isn't. The fact that we lose Swipe makes it so we lose our AoE generator when the cooldown is not up... and on sustained trash pulls or even burst waves that don't go as quickly as expected, only having 3 AoE globals is really not all that much.

I don't think the cooldown on Brutal Slash is the problem, per se... but more that if it is going to be on a cooldown, it needs to do very significantly more damage than what it does now. The cooldown can't really be removed and still be strong because then it replaces Shred really easily. (Which is essentially the design flaw with Swipe as well...)
Personally, I'm just disappointed that they have been willing to add conditional cleaving or proc mega-AoEs to other classes so that the AoE mechanics fit in better with the existing rotation rather than Brutal Slash approach.
I gave the example above for Fury just because their entire AoE toolkit just works a lot better overall and their AoE talents are more impactful and fit their existing rotation much better. Wrecking Ball procs and makes their next Whirlwind free and hit like a truck, then Whirlwind's effect procs and makes their next Bloodthirst cleave 4 additional targets and generate extra rage, and they can also talent into Meat Grinder to make Whirlwind cause their next Rampage (which is paid for by the fact that Whirlwind is free and the extra Rage from Bloodthirst) cleave 4 additional targets as well. It just fits together in a pretty interesting way with good results.
We get Brutal Slash, which is too limited in scope, doesn't do enough damage, and does nothing to address the other DoT-related issues we have with short-lived targets. They could have done something significantly more interesting with some DoT spreading mechanic, a cleaving mechanic, extra CP generation, or whatever...but Brutal Slash is just Swipe+ and really doesn't address any of the core issues with our AoE toolkit.
There just isn't anything interesting or synergistic here. Giving up Bloodtalons is a massive loss and Brutal Slash just doesn't pencil out because it isn't impactful enough even in pure AoE scenarios.
We need AoE mechanics a lot more than we need AoE abilities. Swipe has been limited by rotational mechanics more than anything else and making it into a talent doesn't really change that.

Every DPS class needs to have a way of dealing with the "core" damage patterns that come up in all encounters. The way at which they do that can vary wildly, but it should not preclude their ability to do it.
This is what the current talent design philosophy is supposed to offer, in theory. The ability to change your class play-style at the expense of something else. The issue is that Brutal Slash doesn't actually accomplish this, because it is mechanically not sufficient to do so.

I agree that ferals fall off but not once this xpac has feral been good on AoE. Yea I think that Brutal Slash will get buffed but thats not the point, because of the spells design it will just never be that good unless it is reworked somehow. Also I do think that the devs will leave feral in a poor state thats just the sad thing about it this entire xpac blizzard has left feral without good AoE and target swapping abilities.

The issue with the design of Brutal Slash is that there is really only so high it can go before it starts being a problem for balance vs. Bloodtalons. It essentially can never contribute more than Bloodtalons or it becomes the go-to in all encounters. It's basically recreating the "Swipe can't be better than Shred" problem in another area--just Brutal Slash can't be better than Shred+Bloodtalons. On the other hand, you can see more varied mechanical solutions in other classes such as enabling AoE splash damage that adds a lot of AoE potential without being a single-target DPS gain.
My feeling is that Brutal Slash as a talent would be better served trying to add something that more directly addresses our lackluster AoE mechanics as a whole, rather than just being Swipe+.

I'm not a fan of the design of Brutal Slash.
The damage is fine but the talent feels restrictive in that it doesnt really improve our AoE, it just front loads it in a small window and outside of those windows our it actually makes the AoE problem a lot worse.
I think it would be in a good spot if it didn't replace Swipe.

Likewise, Bloodtalons is going to be pretty hard to ever break away from. It's extremely strong due to its synergy with core Feral gameplay (one could argue it should just be a baseline component of Predatory Swiftness) and stuff like Brutal Slash and MoC have a huge uphill battle to climb to be competitive.

Brutal Slash is still very "meh" both from a damage and rotational perspective. It's mechanically boring and may as well just increase the damage of Swipe. The cooldown is awkward and limits its value significantly on a number of fights that we've seen so far.

I would also prefer for Brutal Slash to not replace Swipe Entirely so we actually have something to hit for AoE when it is on CD. Talents like Bladestorm don't replace the Base AoE toolkit for warriors, why does Brutal Slash have to replace the base toolkit for Feral?

Brutal Slash
Still pretty mediocre for what we have to give up for it, and very niche. In Spellblade Aluriel testing using the ability felt pretty satisfying, and it was definitely doing some damage, but when I went to review logs when it was over I was underwhelmed. I was below middle of the pack on add damage still, and I was giving up Bloodtalons to get to that point. There are specs that do more AoE damage than us without any talents, and the ones that do use talents largely take them with a far smaller opportunity cost than the cost that is Slash vs Bloodtalons.
I also want to add that Aluriel was an almost textbook example for a good Bloody Slash fight with a bunch of adds only in 50-60s windows. There will be, and has already been, several raid encounters where Brutal Slash wasn't even worth trying just because of the timings and styles of adds on the encounters. If that's the case and I'm still not sold on it on a fight like Spellblade Aluriel something is wrong.

Our AoE is in a very, very bad place right now. Brutal Slash and the Swipe buffs have not helped. We need something more substantial here.

Brutal Slash is not going to keep us from being benched, IMO. It is only good in a very narrow set of circumstances and a "single talent" argument applies to Wrecking Ball as well, which is significantly more impactful than Brutal Slash. Taking Brutal Slash also ensures that our ST damage suffers very significantly, which is more of a loss than most specs have to incur for their AoE.
It is simply too problematic for Mythic progression and no longer fits the modern raid design paradigms used by Blizzard.

I'll go ahead and elaborate on Brutal Slash.
There are many talents across all classes that replace a baseline ability with another, more powerful ability. I don't think anyone disputes that Brutal Slash is "more powerful" than Swipe. The difference is that while Brutal Slash is adding some good Burst AoE to the spec, it is removing our only spammable cleave/aoe spell.
This is just contradictory to what talents generally do, which is offer a meaningful (sometimes) choice about how your spec will play and what they will be good at. The opportunity cost of taking Brutal Slash should be losing Bloodtalons or Moment of Clarity. Right now it is that PLUS the loss of an ability to hit instead of Shred when 3+ targets are around. This would be like Bladestorm replacing Whirlwind for warriors, warriors would be throwing a fit if that was the case, so why are we put in that position?
Doing 5mans, particularly Mythic+ Keystone dungeons, feels awful with the talent because of how important being effective on trash is supposed to be. And unlike a raid encounter, the majority of your time is spent with 3+ mobs around. So you use your charges, the warrior next to you uses bladestorm. And you both do some pretty good damage. But now the mobs are still at 50% and you have no AoE spell to keep hitting while the warrior can keep using whirlwind. And then it gets worse when you move on to the next pack and get maybe 1 charge of Brutal Slash to use while the warrior is just spamming whirlwind.
Just let us keep swipe, it's not like swipe can compete at all with the baseline AoE of most specs.

Brutal Slash: A talent that lets us compete with the Baseline AoE of most specs shouldn't prevent us from having access to Swipe. This is particularly aimed at Dungeons, specifically Mythic+ Keystone dungeons where 80% of your time is spent on Trash packs. The talent feels awful in that scenario. And I want to be viable for high level Mythic+ Keystone runs (not asking for #1 in the world here, just competitive with the likes of warriors and Demon Hunters)

If you take Brutal Slash for dungeons, you are out of your mind. It is terrible for dungeons.
It doesn't do nearly enough damage to warrant losing Swipe. Maybe you see the 1800% damage value and think "wow that's a crazy number"
But I suppose you fail to realize that feral having a 1.0 attack speed means it hits for significantly less than the co-efficient seems to indicate.
We're talking about all 3 charges hitting for less than half of a bladestorm, and bladestorm doesn't consume resources, and doesn't replace the baseline AoE of warriors.

[Tradu]

Where are Pawkets, Stenhaldi, Kojiyama, Polihayse, Tinderhoof, Dysheki? The people that tried as hard as they could to help Blizzard fix Feral during Alpha and Beta. I know I left some out, I apologize to those people but those threads are gone.


Feral discord is a good resource but a pale and depressingly sad substitute for Fluid Druid.

- - - Updated - - -



I am very critical of incompetence and laziness. You are very immature.

To each his own.

Stenhaldi quit, Tinder is busy(but when he's not he participates in the discord too), Pawkets/Koji are somewhat active in the discord(although both play DH mains), idk the other 2. And you left out: Guiltyas, Xanzara, Tradu, Kraineth, Night, Yriss, Purrowl, Redwolf and a bunch of others.

Yes, they ignored lots of feedback, nobody is denying that. That doesn't change the fact that Feral is in a very good spot currently.

[Deleted]

Gratz on posting a post that i've allready read? Like you keep talking about feedback. I litterally had enormous arguements with celestalon about the state of feral, To the point that he once told me i was dead to him...

The statement we made to him was that mechanically feral wouldn't be good unless we were hugely overtuned, Fortunately, we're hugely fucking overtuned...

"I am very critical of incompetence and laziness."

That why you're still complaining about high level play when you're stuck in about the least high level play possible? Is that not indicative of either incompetence or laziness?

EDIT: It doesn't matter if you and your spec are good if the community perceives your spec as being bad, as it makes it hard to get a group.

From the recent QA.

He's referring to people like you tedda.

[Lucrece]

Celestalon tells anybody who disagrees with him they're dead to him. Can't lose count of how many times he did that to Pawketz with his DH feedback on eyebeam single target or Binkenstein for elemental shamans lol.

Part of why Pawketz rerolled is because he knows that mechanics don't get addressed mid-expansion and tuning DOES change, especially single target. Didn't want to be at the mercy of a single patch making his spec obsolete. He made his displeasure with design choices and artifact traits known multiple times in beta.,

Celestalon's one of the more snooty devs. Binkenstein had to basically slap him multiple time with his spreadsheets to show him something was wrong with mastery for elemental shamans and thus why a hotfix later they buffed ele shaman mastery (it's still bad, but not terrible like havoc DH mastery bad).

---

I don't see ferals being discriminated against, honestly. Feral is just a second place shadow priest, which is not a bad thing at all since shadow priests are retarded OP occupying the same niche as feral of incredible single target and cleave with considerable ramp up.

If ferals get discriminated, it's on the basis of utility (druid's don't bring much of note to 5 mans, pruning affected some classes harder than others) and being melee.

Kraineth already covered that basis by saying many pages ago that you can just be in a guild group that brings a fire mage and fury warrior/outlaw rogue while you occupy the niche of boss melter which is so useful on mythic+10 with tyrannical because at some point your tank will run out of cd's for Ymiron and get 1 shot or your group will be wiped by the soft enrage of Melandrus.

I've cleared mythic +10 on my demo lock and havoc DH. One of those is supposedly desirable in mythic+, one is so not. I can tell you that on both of those at 865 ilv for warlock and 870 on DH, I get declined for lower keystone pugs about the same. But that is irrelevant because we clear mythic +10 with our guild groups every week.

So can you. If you bother to find a guild to do content with instead of moaning about the spec in a forum that no developer reads.

Our ele shaman clears mythic+10 with us, and so does the frost DK on our other mythic+ group. If we had a survival hunter, it would be just the same. The content is doable for all specs, you just need to coordinate accordingly.

Worry about clearing your Emerald Nightmare normal/heroic mode before you worry about spec representation at mythic+10; if you can't clear EN normal mode within 1-2 days at an average 840-850 ilv (even easier now), you have bigger problems to worry about than being accepted into mythic pugs. You should have at least heroic EN on farm before you worry about +9-10 keystones.