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

[Dahti]

I see your ideas for linking UIs/WAs/addons but honestly a simple link to Pawkets' WAs covers 90% of those issues, so that feels like a bit of a waste. So what? How to feral also seems redundant given there's a PDF guide available thanks to Xanzara. Genuine question, what would you like there to be in a hypothetical big feral 'masterpost' on a forum?

A convert to rogue button would be swell!

[Hobbes0773]

And you seem quite challenged in accepting that other people can have opinions which differs from yours.

In case you missed it: I disagree with the premis that a spec should be rewarding because it's "hard to play".

Hate to break it to you, but blizzard has held this stance for ferals specifically since WOTLK when they gave us a difficult rotation and the feral fanbase loved it. I am usually not one to say "if you don't like X, then try something else" but in this case, it holds. Being a harder spec to play is sort of the staple for feral and has been since we actually became viable.

[Whitepaw]

Hate to break it to you, but blizzard has held this stance for ferals specifically since WOTLK when they gave us a difficult rotation and the feral fanbase loved it. I am usually not one to say "if you don't like X, then try something else" but in this case, it holds. Being a harder spec to play is sort of the staple for feral and has been since we actually became viable.

To a certain degree, yes. But playing the spec to its fullest dps potential right now involves too much babysitting of timers - a lot more than it did back in WotLK when the hybrid tax was removed and Feral was made viable as a raid spec.

In fact, the differences to how the spec worked back then are quite significant. I will not go into detail, just describe how the changes have effected the gameplay of Feral:
- The tightening of SR uptime and JW has limited the use of FB to a point where it's used almost exclusively when the target is below 25%.
- BT has introduced yet another timer, heavily favouring using Rip.
- AB favours Rip as well.
- ArP has been removed.
- AoE abilities deliver way less dpe.
- LI has been introduced - yet another DoT.
- Mangle has been removed, as has the directional requirement from Shred.

The end result for Feral gameplay is that we end up with being the most heavy back-loaded melee spec in the game. Our ramp up time, which was already severe when SR was introduced, is now extreme.

This results in a very simplified gameplay in my opinion. I don't have to make decisions anymore when choosing a finisher, because choosing FB will almost always be the wrong choice in a SR/JW/BT build. Using combo builders is also a non-decision, as Shred is lowest on the priority list - and using Shred has become a lot easier because I don't have to be behind my target (this in itself also sacrifices some nifty mechanical advantages, but that's in PvP).

Skewing the Feral damage model so heavily towards the back-loaded gameplay of self-buffs and DoTs has made the spec increasingly boring. It has also made it somewhat counter-intuitive and hard to pick up, as mastering it requires the knowledge of some of the design decisions which are not very apparent or well explained.

But what is worse to me is that the "apply DoT and wait" gameplay has removed the "pool combo points and attack" option we have had previously, when FB actually did more damage than it does now (when compared to Rip). And that change came at the end of the Legion Beta circle, so we now have some fairly redundant artifact traits (including a gold trait which reduces the armor on the target by a very small amount). The damage model is partly out of sync with our artifact weapon.

So, we end up with having our bleeds doing way too much damage compared to our direct damage abilities - so much so that they almost disappear from our toolset. Right now, people seriously argue that FB is an execute ability. That's true, under the cookie cutter spec - but it shouldn't be. It should be a decision based upon several factors.

The Feral spec has simply become way too one-sided.

[Hobbes0773]

stuff.

That is a significant change from your original stance of "I disagree with the premis that a spec should be rewarding because it's "hard to play"."

I rejected that idea of yours. I would like some options instead of required complexity too, but don't go saying huge generalized statements like that and still expect to have people listen.

[Tradu]

To a certain degree, yes. But playing the spec to its fullest dps potential right now involves too much babysitting of timers - a lot more than it did back in WotLK when the hybrid tax was removed and Feral was made viable as a raid spec.

Which extra timers? Rake, Rip and SR were already in the game in Wrath, and Moonfire is pretty close to what Mangle used to be. BT is not a timer, the duration is entirely irrelevant(and PS duration is also barely relevant)
Are you actually, seriously, arguing that positional requirements on abilities are good? That's fucking insane when bosses like Ultraxion, Kromog, Archimonde etc exist and will continue to exist. And in what world is it ever a "mechanical advantage"? I hope you're aware that you can still go behind your target(and should) if you want to, you're just not completely fucked when a boss has no available "back".
How was there ever "decisionmaking" when it comes to CP builders by your logic? You always used the correct one(Rake if it needed refreshing, Mangle if it needed refreshing, Moonfire if it needs refreshing, otherwise Shred), that has always been the case. That is the decisionmaking.

[Deleted]

it seems to me that our reasoning is winning, because the devs are actually buffing talents that gives us better AoE and allows a Feral to play his favourite spec without constantly matching two finisher timers with 2/3 DoTs, a PS proc and TF.

you want talents that reduce the complexity of the spec to be on par with talents that increase it, There's no micro management involved in either PS or TF providing you're a little more than fucking brain dead (this seems to be a problem you suffer from however so my condolences) feral has always managed 2/3 dots and a buff (once upon a time 2!). You're petitioning for feral to be changed from what it has been for the last however many years, ever since wrath. In fact this incarnation of feral is the closest its been to wrath SINCE wrath (outside of af) Rip duration is only barely longer than wrath rip duration, rake is barely longer than wrath rake, Savage roar is shorter. Hell the fucking TIMERS for when you cast ferocious bite are practically fucking identical. The only difference in the two is mastery vs armor penetration. It seems to me that you don't want to play feral, you want to play a different class that happens to have cat form.

If your "favorite spec" is a feral that doesn't watch bleeds, then your favorite spec isn't feral.

yes blizzard are buffing talents that increase AOE, by buffing BrS they might extend the use case slightly which is commendable. But if you think MOC, or Sabertooth, or soul of the forest should EVER be viable in single target, then you're fucking autistic. (especially soul, the reasons the talent cannot be equivalent to Sr have been repeated ad nauseum)

[Eranthe]

There should be talents that reduce feral's complexity because it's plain old too hard for some players. Those talents should not be competitive with the harder to execute stuff. That's basically the definition of easy to learn, hard to master.

Feral is like that now. You can play with predator, soul of the forest, sabertooth and moment of clarity and the gameplay is fairly straightforward and easy. But you won't be (and shouldn't be) competitive with people who want to try harder to achieve more.

As far as aoe goes, Luffa Wrappings helps a shitload. Maybe you could argue that it shouldn't be gated behind a random legendary drop. (i would probably agree with that), but my aoe is good enough with the bracers. It's not top tier, but it's at least decent. If they would make shadow thrash more reliable, feral's aoe would be a lot less annoying.

I have to agree with the others in this thread that are saying, if you don't like feral's concentration-heavy, micro-management-heavy playstyle, you probably need to go play another class, because feral is a unique and rewarding spec IF you put in the time and energy to perfect it.

[Deleted]

Step 1. Give a shit at all "feral is lifestyle" and "look-at-me-picking-pro-talents" discussions
Step 2. Install Ovale
Step 3. Profit

[Dastreus]

Just give Feral even 6 more energy regen per sec or a higher crit chance on combo point generating moves and it'll be decent. Until then, it's rage starved and dicks to play.

[Tradu]

Just give Feral even 6 more energy regen per sec or a higher crit chance on combo point generating moves and it'll be decent. Until then, it's rage starved and dicks to play.

"even 6 more". That's the equivalent of 60% haste's direct contribution to energy regen. Feral is not a super fast paced spec, it never was(HFC didn't happen) and hopefully never will be. If you want to spam buttons as an energy class, rogue is right there for you. Fuck off with trying to change Feral into that.
Seriously, if you don't like playing Feral as a slower paced, more planning-oriented spec, don't play it. There's 35 other specs in this game, play those instead of trying to get Feral changed into what those other specs are. Not every spec is for everybody, and that's perfectly fine.

[teddabear]

The resources channel has the guides and WAs, which are what will help people with the vast majority of their questions and looking there and having read at least 1 of the guides should be expected before asking in the channel. Next you're gonna complain that we tell people to sim themselves instead of just giving them some stupid generic pawn string, right?
The certain types of info that would be valuable to have on a forum are even more valuable in guides, which is where that info is already, so forum posts don't really fit any niche in terms of responding to questions.

And again, stop lying about things you know nothing about. Maybe 1/10 questions at most gets missed, and a lot of the ones that get missed/ignored were answered very recently so people can just scroll up a little bit before asking their question and avoid getting ignored that way. I've been in the discord nearly from the beginning and been a regular(automatically granted to the most active people in the discord) for the whole time that system has been in place, and what you're saying is just straight up false.

Just scrolled through last 90 minutes of Feral Discord. 0 informative posts. As usual

[Tradu]

Just scrolled through last 90 minutes of Feral Discord. 0 informative posts. As usual

Right, so I'm just gonna go through the first 30min of those last 90ish min of #feral you're talking about:

Discussing a 3 Feral M+ group and whether or not AoE trinkets are cheating, as well as which dungeon to do(specifically to prove you and the rest of the "Feral sucks in M+" retards wrong)
A guy asking for Potatosaur's WAs, which got a response within about a minute.
A question about BS vs LI, got a quick response within a minute and a slightly more in-depth explanation after that.
Talking about stats on live vs PTR.
A suggestion for the guy asking about BS vs LI to sim himself as well as a link to the guide on how to do so.
Questions about PTR(tier set, stat changes, OoC buff) which got answered reasonably well based on current information.
A "statweights pls" question which seems to have been ignored for a few minutes, then responded to with the appropriate "sim yourself".
Discussion about the OoC buff as well as set bonuses + Luffas.
A question on how to pool energy properly with an in-depth response.
A question regarding the legendary boots and what to spend those extra BT charges on, properly explained.
Another "statweights pls" question, responded to by suggesting to sim themselves.

You are just straight up lying, kindly fuck off. If you didn't find the information you were looking for, it's because you didn't ask for it so nobody could tell you.

[Hobbes0773]

There should be talents that reduce feral's complexity because it's plain old too hard for some players. Those talents should not be competitive with the harder to execute stuff. That's basically the definition of easy to learn, hard to master.

Feral is like that now. You can play with predator, soul of the forest, sabertooth and moment of clarity and the gameplay is fairly straightforward and easy. But you won't be (and shouldn't be) competitive with people who want to try harder to achieve more.

As far as aoe goes, Luffa Wrappings helps a shitload. Maybe you could argue that it shouldn't be gated behind a random legendary drop. (i would probably agree with that), but my aoe is good enough with the bracers. It's not top tier, but it's at least decent. If they would make shadow thrash more reliable, feral's aoe would be a lot less annoying.

I have to agree with the others in this thread that are saying, if you don't like feral's concentration-heavy, micro-management-heavy playstyle, you probably need to go play another class, because feral is a unique and rewarding spec IF you put in the time and energy to perfect it.

We agree on the concept, disagree that feral is currently there. It is close, but it could be tuned to be a bit closer. In fact, the PTR changes might have closed the gap up nicely and we will be just about perfect. BrT getting buffed and Incarn doing a bit more dps might have been the tipping point for me. Bear in mind that I want these changes for PVP, which just doesn't have the uptime to keep all of the best talents for dps. I would like to have a choice between dropping SR and BT, whereas right now it is basically drop SR for Incarn/SOTF and play with BT.

- - - Updated - - -

Right, so I'm just gonna go through the first 30min of those last 90ish min of #feral you're talking about:

Discussing a 3 Feral M+ group and whether or not AoE trinkets are cheating, as well as which dungeon to do(specifically to prove you and the rest of the "Feral sucks in M+" retards wrong)
A guy asking for Potatosaur's WAs, which got a response within about a minute.
A question about BS vs LI, got a quick response within a minute and a slightly more in-depth explanation after that.
Talking about stats on live vs PTR.
A suggestion for the guy asking about BS vs LI to sim himself as well as a link to the guide on how to do so.
Questions about PTR(tier set, stat changes, OoC buff) which got answered reasonably well based on current information.
A "statweights pls" question which seems to have been ignored for a few minutes, then responded to with the appropriate "sim yourself".
Discussion about the OoC buff as well as set bonuses + Luffas.
A question on how to pool energy properly with an in-depth response.
A question regarding the legendary boots and what to spend those extra BT charges on, properly explained.
Another "statweights pls" question, responded to by suggesting to sim themselves.

You are just straight up lying, kindly fuck off. If you didn't find the information you were looking for, it's because you didn't ask for it so nobody could tell you.

Wrecked. You and I might disagree in a couple of places Tradu, but that was glorious. Just glorious

[danji]

I'm not trying to be ironic here at all, but I can think of two very good reasons a forum post/compilation would be useful here - just for an "other side of the fence" view.

1) The person is incredibly antisocial (again, said without irony) and the idea of a chat room is either daunting or downright overwhelming, and the question they want answered has not been answered. Asking it in the wrong way can have people shit on you before someone kind decides to try and actually answer. Tradu, i've seen you be less than delicate with people quite a few times in the discord, even sometimes here, and that can honestly wreck a person's day. Sometimes it's okay to let a bad player be bad - you have no idea what their circumstances are, or what their capacity is for understanding. These kind of people that hide from the chat room format, and just want some place they can lurk and seek their answer in their own processing time, without putting themselves out there to be harmed (which is a subjective feeling, therefore 'get over it' or 'get good' are really just even worse.)
Counter: Of course, if their question has not been asked, you're left with the same problem, but it's a more static environment where less people are likely to jump onto the "lol u bad" bandwagon.

2) In relation to #1, a compilation is searchable. There are many, many rehashes of the same answer in the discord that would be nice to find without having to ask for what turns out to be the fourth time that day, and I'm sure that the good people who take their time to answer would probably not keep a two page notepad up with c/p's to answer them, too.
Counter: The simming guide, for instance, that is often linked does not help a person who has literally never used simcraft before, because it does not tell you anything about which filters to check, and certainly doesn't help you to do a more advanced thing like ignore or change prepots. The available guide in a static format is then less useful no matter whether or not it's searchable.

We're druids, people. We're supposed to be patient and loveable and only bite when some moron puts their hand near our food bowl or wakes us up too early!

[Tradu]

I'm not trying to be ironic here at all, but I can think of two very good reasons a forum post/compilation would be useful here - just for an "other side of the fence" view.

1) The person is incredibly antisocial (again, said without irony) and the idea of a chat room is either daunting or downright overwhelming, and the question they want answered has not been answered. Asking it in the wrong way can have people shit on you before someone kind decides to try and actually answer. Tradu, i've seen you be less than delicate with people quite a few times in the discord, even sometimes here, and that can honestly wreck a person's day. Sometimes it's okay to let a bad player be bad - you have no idea what their circumstances are, or what their capacity is for understanding. These kind of people that hide from the chat room format, and just want some place they can lurk and seek their answer in their own processing time, without putting themselves out there to be harmed (which is a subjective feeling, therefore 'get over it' or 'get good' are really just even worse.)
Counter: Of course, if their question has not been asked, you're left with the same problem, but it's a more static environment where less people are likely to jump onto the "lol u bad" bandwagon.

2) In relation to #1, a compilation is searchable. There are many, many rehashes of the same answer in the discord that would be nice to find without having to ask for what turns out to be the fourth time that day, and I'm sure that the good people who take their time to answer would probably not keep a two page notepad up with c/p's to answer them, too.
Counter: The simming guide, for instance, that is often linked does not help a person who has literally never used simcraft before, because it does not tell you anything about which filters to check, and certainly doesn't help you to do a more advanced thing like ignore or change prepots. The available guide in a static format is then less useful no matter whether or not it's searchable.

We're druids, people. We're supposed to be patient and loveable and only bite when some moron puts their hand near our food bowl or wakes us up too early!

First point is perfectly fair, people like information in different formats, but my issue with having forum threads for answering questions is that people still repeat the exact same questions constantly, instead of making use of said search feature(which on MMOC is absolute trash, to the point where googling gets you better MMOC results, to be fair). And yeah, if the question hasn't been asked before, they're fucked. In this case if they'd prefer not to put themselves "out there", PMs on Discord, MMOC and even in game might be worth a try.

And regarding me not being "delicate", that's a conscious choice. If people ask for help/looking through logs/whatever in an attempt to improve, the way I see it is that they deserve to know what they're doing wrong without sugarcoating it, which happens way too much on this forum. Things like 50% DoT uptimes(or missing out on most of your BTs, or missing out on CD uses) are simply not something you can gloss over(which has definitely happened in the other Feral threads, with somebody with logs like that being described as "having a solid understanding of the spec but just needing more practice" or something along those lines), that's a major misunderstanding of how the spec is meant to be played and should be fixed ASAP.
The same thing goes for suggesting people play bad talents because they're "easier to learn" when they teach bad habits when you eventually do switch to the correct talents(for example if somebody struggles with SR, never suggest SotF. Suggest Incarnation. This is because SotF drowns you in energy and punishes pooling, whereas Incarnation is just SR without the actual SR ability).

If that's not how you'd like your advice, I'm clearly not the one to ask(although I'll obviously try to be accomodating if you mention beforehand that you're completely new to the spec/it's an offspec/alt or that you're just not super serious about being the best you can be immediately)

Second point also very true, the repeat questions still happen, but generally we can just point people to the pins(if not on mobile) or #resources, which has the answers to the vast majority of the questions people have, in the form of 3 different but good guides.
Not sure what you mean with the simming guide, though. I just went and looked at it to make sure, and it definitely does explain what to tick/untick for just getting statweights. And if people have questions after reading the guide, they're free to ask for clarifications. This goes for things like food(where I usually just recommend the "hacky" way of doing it, rather than the proper changing of the APL, as the "hacky" way is much easier imo)

[danji]

Maybe there's a new simming guide out (and at that, i'd probably like to go look at it, haha) - but the one that I think was by Guilty, maybe? Was pretty overview level. The discord does evolve pretty quickly. Perhaps that's point 3..?

Ultimately I agree, and I'm a hard ass on most of my similarly skilled friends that are curious about feral, to be fair. But tone is very different among friends than strangers, is all.

(Still going to call my fire mage friend who is by all means an excellent player a baddie because he can't sort out on his alt that a rip is only good if it's got 5 cp, tf, bt and sr, because I know he's otherwise competent. Maybe if he fricken used mods...)

[Zanzha]

Generally us nerds in the feral discord are pretty accomodating towards helping people if they have a genuine question about the specc, the only time I've seen the regulars (and myself) get riled up was when the first set of ptr notes came in, and a long with it swarms of players that were complaining about some of the changes and making wildly incorrect statements about the speccs viability, and in general giving very poor (read terrible) advice.

TLDR if you want to ask a question in there and learn new stuff then it's generally very welcoming. If you want to go there and whine about the specc then the hive-mind is going to get angry.

Perhaps a forum presence would be great of some sort, I've helped a bunch of people both from whispers in game and pms on discord / mmoc. If there's interest/support I'd be more than happy to kickstart a fix my dps thread or something.

edit: infact just gonna do it w/e if it gets used it gets used if it doesn't it doesn't.

[Tradu]

Maybe there's a new simming guide out (and at that, i'd probably like to go look at it, haha) - but the one that I think was by Guilty, maybe? Was pretty overview level. The discord does evolve pretty quickly. Perhaps that's point 3..?

Ultimately I agree, and I'm a hard ass on most of my similarly skilled friends that are curious about feral, to be fair. But tone is very different among friends than strangers, is all.

(Still going to call my fire mage friend who is by all means an excellent player a baddie because he can't sort out on his alt that a rip is only good if it's got 5 cp, tf, bt and sr, because I know he's otherwise competent. Maybe if he fricken used mods...)

Yeah, maybe. I know the simming guide got updated at one point to add the options setup part, not sure how long ago that was, though.
This is the one we have pinned currently

[Hobbes0773]

I'm not trying to be ironic here at all, but I can think of two very good reasons a forum post/compilation would be useful here - just for an "other side of the fence" view.

1) The person is incredibly antisocial (again, said without irony) and the idea of a chat room is either daunting or downright overwhelming, and the question they want answered has not been answered. Asking it in the wrong way can have people shit on you before someone kind decides to try and actually answer. Tradu, i've seen you be less than delicate with people quite a few times in the discord, even sometimes here, and that can honestly wreck a person's day. Sometimes it's okay to let a bad player be bad - you have no idea what their circumstances are, or what their capacity is for understanding. These kind of people that hide from the chat room format, and just want some place they can lurk and seek their answer in their own processing time, without putting themselves out there to be harmed (which is a subjective feeling, therefore 'get over it' or 'get good' are really just even worse.)
Counter: Of course, if their question has not been asked, you're left with the same problem, but it's a more static environment where less people are likely to jump onto the "lol u bad" bandwagon.

2) In relation to #1, a compilation is searchable. There are many, many rehashes of the same answer in the discord that would be nice to find without having to ask for what turns out to be the fourth time that day, and I'm sure that the good people who take their time to answer would probably not keep a two page notepad up with c/p's to answer them, too.
Counter: The simming guide, for instance, that is often linked does not help a person who has literally never used simcraft before, because it does not tell you anything about which filters to check, and certainly doesn't help you to do a more advanced thing like ignore or change prepots. The available guide in a static format is then less useful no matter whether or not it's searchable.

We're druids, people. We're supposed to be patient and loveable and only bite when some moron puts their hand near our food bowl or wakes us up too early!

A guide solves both of these issues better than forums can really. It requires even less social interaction than forums, and it is a one stop shop for most information. If you want to delve into specifics that are deeper than a guide can offer, the difference in social interaction is kind of negligible imo. And to be quite honest, the discord is far more helpful and welcoming than this forum.

[danji]

Yeah, maybe. I know the simming guide got updated at one point to add the options setup part, not sure how long ago that was, though.
This is the one we have pinned currently

OK, yeah, so this guide, it doesn't teach you about the Buffs/Debuffs tab and what the different kinds of fights mean, or how to change the prepots etc like I was mentioning. I opened it and had abso-freaking-lutely no idea what I was doing, so I was like, "*breathe* All right, if I want to be my best I gotta figure this shit out I guess..." so I went googling for like an hour. Still don't know how to change prepots and honestly couldn't figure out which trinket is better to save my life without Agixx. That sort of thing is frustrating, but I clearly have a different mental processing level for that particular thing. If I had the right source information (or a manual of some sort) and time to go over it at my own pace, I could probably be very good at it. Case in point!