Did blizzard mention anything about making feral's gameplay more enjoyable in 7.1.5?

[Ustabil]

Yeah, the ring and hands seem to fix the issue i have with feral, to bad i cant rely on getting them xD

Kinda wish the talents where a bit diffrent as well. Instead of jagged wounds Sabertooth should have reduced the bleed times each time You FB. This ofc would have created some issues with FB refreshign rip under 25% but would gladly give up the FB spam under 25% for getting to use the FB in the rotation normaly

[Deleted]

The problem with feral isn't its complexity. I love this part of it to death. What I can't really stomach is reward vs effort. A rotation that is difficult should also feel rewarding, but with feral, that simply doesn't happen. For once, it's a very slow spec compared to others, which makes it rather unsatisfactory for WQs. It feels mildly annoying to require such a hefty setup to do damage, when other classes simply have high damage built into their spec instead of relying on artificial means such as SR.

Secondly, the AoE is pathetic. I'm sorry, but that's the brutal truth. I always do my WQs as guardian because it does better AoE than my cat and is infinitely more resilient.

Now, we finally get to the single target damage, where feral is supposed to shine, right? Well, there are numerous class and specs who will do better damage than you with half the effort. It feels bloody demoralizing to execute tactics well, to do my rotation well, and still have MM hunters, fire mages and rogues beat me. Why should I have to endure the throes of a complex rotation to achieve mediocre results? This is masochism, to put it mildly... I really hope they get rid of the annoyance that SR is. Even with that buff up, at 880 ilvl, my abilities still hit like a wet noodle, and Ashamane's Frenzy is downright pathetic for its long CD. Balance has a shorter CD on full moon, and that thing crits for a fuckton. Meanwhile, we have Ashamane's Frenzy that is only awesome due to combo points and Ferocious bite which is not ferocious in the slightest. Yeeeeeeeeeey.............

We completly feel the same way. Only started Feral this expansion and it was a huge pain in the but to be able to learn it. I'm kind of okay now, but it's demoralizing when most other classes outshine me in any way, while some are just spamming 4 buttons. If we fuck up once in our rotation you can already notice serious dps loss and when we don't fuck-up, we are just on par or sub-par with other classes.

[Lycanoth]

Sadly though FB can never be good as long as sabretooth exists.

That whole talent tier needs to be remade to be honest.

[lotj]

Am i the only one that wishes the speed of the feral rotation was increased. Loved leveling my feral with SOTF and Moment of Clarity, was really fun, felt like the correct speed the spec should have been. To bad these talents are way behind in dps, if i understood it correctly

The less downtime a rotation has (higher speed) the more impacted it is by movement phases of a fight.

One of the advantages feral has is we can refresh our bleeds and dump our energy to only lose a few seconds of aa damage during movement phases. If you increase its speed then that window gets reduced or goes away.

There are other classes with the high speed you're likely looking for. Feral is more about resource management, which is always going to feel slower.

[Hobbes0773]

The less downtime a rotation has (higher speed) the more impacted it is by movement phases of a fight.

One of the advantages feral has is we can refresh our bleeds and dump our energy to only lose a few seconds of aa damage during movement phases. If you increase its speed then that window gets reduced or goes away.

There are other classes with the high speed you're likely looking for. Feral is more about resource management, which is always going to feel slower.

I think both can exist. Blizzard is very adamant about opening up multiple playstyles with talents, and if they were to bring in another for feral, this is the one in demand. SOTF already does a good job, it just needs a bit more tuning. They are already changing pvp talents in 7.1.5 to offer a spread pressure build and a single target focus build. It think they intended to do this originally for feral: one FB based and one bleed based, but at the last minute they didn't have a way to force you to choose so they just killed off the FB style.

[bubbadubba]

The fact you actually have to think and not just mash 3 buttons is what makes Feral enjoyable for me and most other feral players. We don't want 'babies first spec' ty.

After playing for 10 minutes, the spec isn't that hard after you get used to it. The hardest part is setting up the Keybinds and then getting used to them.

[Hobbes0773]

After playing for 10 minutes, the spec isn't that hard after you get used to it. The hardest part is setting up the Keybinds and then getting used to them.

I'd argue feral with BT in PVP takes a bit more than 10 minutes to learn. Especially after playing feral prior to the BT talent being forced on us. it is very counter intuitive to use your heals and utility for dps regularly.

[Thalrion]

Yeah, the ring and hands seem to fix the issue i have with feral, to bad i cant rely on getting them xD

Kinda wish the talents where a bit diffrent as well. Instead of jagged wounds Sabertooth should have reduced the bleed times each time You FB. This ofc would have created some issues with FB refreshign rip under 25% but would gladly give up the FB spam under 25% for getting to use the FB in the rotation normaly

I know it's not really helpful but after getting the gloves it really is a lot better. Having to decide to let Savage roar or Rip expire simply does not happen anymore if you don't use Ferocious Nibble too often.

[Tradu]

I think both can exist. Blizzard is very adamant about opening up multiple playstyles with talents, and if they were to bring in another for feral, this is the one in demand. SOTF already does a good job, it just needs a bit more tuning. They are already changing pvp talents in 7.1.5 to offer a spread pressure build and a single target focus build. It think they intended to do this originally for feral: one FB based and one bleed based, but at the last minute they didn't have a way to force you to choose so they just killed off the FB style.

Once again, the problem is that they can't just "do more tuning"(read: buff) SotF, because it's already perfect for the niche it fulfils(sustained low-ish number of targets)

[teddabear]

I mean I'd probably ignore your feedback too.

I have never claimed to be a theorycrafter.

However I have always acknowledged how important they are to the spec. The contributions by Feral theorycrafters in previous expansions were huge and indispensable. In this expansion practically non-existent.

[Tradu]

I have never claimed to be a theorycrafter.

However I have always acknowledged how important they are to the spec. The contributions by Feral theorycrafters in previous expansions were huge and indispensable. In this expansion practically non-existent.

Once again, just because you limit yourself to MMOC and FD doesn't mean there are no good TCers. You clearly still have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, so stop talking shit about people without doing any actual research. Also Pawkets did a ton of work in beta and even after he switched to DH, so it's not like he completely lost interest. Just because it's not the same people doing it doesn't mean it's less valuable.
There just isn't any good channel for feedback currently, because there obviously isn't a beta forum(lets just pretend that forum did some good) and they're not particularly communicative outside of their occasional Q/A sessions.

[Hobbes0773]

Once again, the problem is that they can't just "do more tuning"(read: buff) SotF, because it's already perfect for the niche it fulfils(sustained low-ish number of targets)

Once again, it can. And I also don't think it needs to only sit in that niche. Stop pigeon holding things like they are a gospel. This game is fluid so stay fluid with it.

Also, once you get to saying "once again" maybe realize we disagree and that's fine. You don't have to agree with everyone. That doesn't mean you need to run in circles repeating yourself.

[Tradu]

Once again, it can. And I also don't think it needs to only sit in that niche. Stop pigeon holding things like they are a gospel. This game is fluid so stay fluid with it.

Also, once you get to saying "once again" maybe realize we disagree and that's fine. You don't have to agree with everyone. That doesn't mean you need to run in circles repeating yourself.

How would you change "refund a ton of energy when using finishers" in a way that made it better ST but not multitarget? Buffing FB? That'd require a bunch of other changes in addition, and won't happen while Sabertooth exists, and then it'd still have the issue of being better on multitarget as well(because of the increased number of Rips)

[Hobbes0773]

Yet again, there is a percentage to which you can buff SOTF or nerf SR to make them closer. If I dropped SR 1% it will not cause the changes you assume will happen. I could probably even push it a tad farther. There are also far more clever things that can be done, the quickest of which would be another bonus to SOTF independent to the energy return on SOTF that encouraged single target. FB extends rip, add a small chance for another bleed, etc. It takes two seconds to brainstorm ideas that can work with tuning. I am pretty sure an entire dev team can work an idea into fruition.

Stop acting like our talent tree is a delicate house of cards that shouldn't be touched. There are any number of changes that can happen without upsetting the talent balance.

[Deleted]

I think Ferocious Bite could use some big dmg buff, for a 5 point combo which deals 80k dmg in pvp it hits like wet noodle compared to other classes.

[Hobbes0773]

I think Ferocious Bite could use some big dmg buff, for a 5 point combo which deals 80k dmg in pvp it hits like wet noodle compared to other classes.

They are adding a pvp talent that causes FB to reduce the targets health by 10% for X seconds. I believe it stacks too if they didn't take that out. Makes for an interesting single target train build.

[teddabear]

Once again, just because you limit yourself to MMOC and FD doesn't mean there are no good TCers. You clearly still have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, so stop talking shit about people without doing any actual research. Also Pawkets did a ton of work in beta and even after he switched to DH, so it's not like he completely lost interest. Just because it's not the same people doing it doesn't mean it's less valuable.
There just isn't any good channel for feedback currently, because there obviously isn't a beta forum(lets just pretend that forum did some good) and they're not particularly communicative outside of their occasional Q/A sessions.

There are a small number of decent theorycrafters for Feral. There used to be a larger number of great theorycrafters.

I didn't try every single pastebin link I found so there may be some I would have liked, but I did try a lot. Certainly a lot more than most players would have bothered with.

It's not like Recount or Skada where you add it and then drag it to where you want. These addons take a decent amount of time to set up properly and then a considerable amount of use to evaluate them. A few have videos to give you some small idea what they are like but most do not.

If you have some that you actually recommend then post them.

This is the hugely hypocritical aspect of this whole thing. I haven't seen any people that brag about how good they are list which addons or weak auras they use.
The complete opposite of when the top Ferals listed their addons and posted their weak auras for all to use.

[Alvito]

There are still plenty of people that have been playing feral since the John Madden days and enjoy all that is apart of it's priority/rotation. For the people that don't like that there are plenty of other options out there, no reason to keep striping down a spec more and more.

[Deleted]

This is the hugely hypocritical aspect of this whole thing. I haven't seen any people that brag about how good they are list which addons or weak auras they use.
The complete opposite of when the top Ferals listed their addons and posted their weak auras for all to use.

The fuck are you describing that's hypocritical there? You need someone to fucking babysit you on what addons and weakauras to use? How each person process information is individual, and what might work for one player doesn't necessarily work for another. Compare Zanzha's UI, to mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjmqpu477YM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-3hvs-6BfQ&t=5s

Very different ways of positioning information in the way that each of us finds best (Both of these WAs have been posted for others to use FYI)

If you need a top feral to tell you how to lay out your UI then no wonder you're struggling with feral, because this is the most basic indivdual building block.

And as to the SOTF thing, It really shouldn't be buffed, it has a clear and present niche existing in the game, talents that allow you to specalise into different areas are good, those talents don't also need to compete with a talent that provides a different niche, The SR, SOTF, Inc line is currently VERY well balanced and i see zero reason to change it. All 3 talents have a clear use case, and all 3 have seen use.

Incarnation for short burst periods (see ily'gnoth even post hotfix, incarnation is the clear winner for boss damage)

SOTF for when you have multiple equal priority targets (not currently a fight design in raids but present often in mythic+, if cenarius strat hadn't revolved around not killing dragons it would have seen use there)

And Savage roar, a talent that only really works in single target and as such performs best in single target.

If you buffed sotf to be withing a few percent of SR (Its currently 8-9% weaker than SR, so already not that far off) then you'd just run SOTF on every fight, because as it is at the moment, in order for it to be a dps increase it requires 2 or more targets for 50% or more of the time, so 1.5 average targets. This is very close to being how it works currently, with SR pulling ahead due to providing more damage to the targets that matter. If the single target gap narrows (no matter how it narrows) there would be 0 reason to not use SOTF in every fight, a) due to the ease of use, b) due to just flat out being better.

This talent row above all shouldn't be touched at all, its balanced well and its balanced delicately.

Predator/LI/BS is another nicely balanced row with good choices present

Our tier 100 talents (BT/BrS/MOC) are currently take BT and forget about it, this will change in 7.1.5 with the monumental BrS buff coming. Though MOC needs a look at because currently BrS is the better single target talent, there is a tuning knob present for MOC now so this can be solved.

Our primary problematic talent row (and it's problematic not just for balance reasons) is the SbT/JW/EG row. This row presents game balance problems not just because of the strength of JW. EG can never be useful in the current state, because the strength of EG relies on the strength of FB, and FB cannot be buffed while SbT exists. SbT is a toxic talent, it is extremely negative to game design and the primary change that should be made is to remove it, I understand its presence as an "easy" talent, and i agree with the idea of having easy talents present, however SbT negatively affects the class with its presence due to its interactions with FB. This is our only problematic talent row, and it is the hardest to fix, however it's also the row i want them to fix the least as JW is a fuck ton of fun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also tedda the irony of you still complaining about TCers on MMOC is palpable.

[Tradu]

There are a small number of decent theorycrafters for Feral. There used to be a larger number of great theorycrafters.

I didn't try every single pastebin link I found so there may be some I would have liked, but I did try a lot. Certainly a lot more than most players would have bothered with.

It's not like Recount or Skada where you add it and then drag it to where you want. These addons take a decent amount of time to set up properly and then a considerable amount of use to evaluate them. A few have videos to give you some small idea what they are like but most do not.

If you have some that you actually recommend then post them.

This is the hugely hypocritical aspect of this whole thing. I haven't seen any people that brag about how good they are list which addons or weak auras they use.
The complete opposite of when the top Ferals listed their addons and posted their weak auras for all to use.

Except most WAs etc are definitely just "plug and play"(apart from minor personal tweaks, like how I apparently use a different icon size than the rest of the planet), like Recount or Skada. Trying out which ones work for you isn't something new either. And if people actually ask, I'm sure the people that "brag about how good they are" would be happy to share their WAs/addons(I know I've done that myself when asked in discord/twitch chat). Also... wago.io has a bunch of good ones, there's like 4 different sets of snapshotting WAs in the resources channel on discord, one being Pawkets' which I'm pretty sure is by far the most widely used.