[Feral] Legion Discussion

[ErothTV]

yo everyone,

Has anyone checkd the PTR, how does it feel with the changes?

[-aiko-]

Has anyone checkd the PTR, how does it feel with the changes?

I messed around a little on the PTR today, using the standard BS/SR/JW/BT build (with SotF from ring). It felt...the same, really. The rotation has always been reactive and tactical, so I was still watching and pressing the same things. It undoubtedly plays differently in the sense that the durations have changed so I'm definitely getting in more bites, but I'm still asking myself the same questions as before and responding accordingly. Should I refresh Rip or Savage Roar? Do I have enough time and energy for a Ferocious Bite, or should I pool? etc, etc

I didn't bother trying to make any addons work, such as recount/details, so this is from a purely mechanical standpoint. It feels the same to me. I am not going to report on how our DPS is now as this wasn't something I really paid attention to, and I trust Xanzara and friends to run the math when the time is right.

Edit: I'll try some other builds later today probably. I'm particularly interested to see how SR/Incarn feels, or maybe JW/ST.

[ErothTV]

I messed around a little on the PTR today, using the standard BS/SR/JW/BT build (with SotF from ring). It felt...the same, really. The rotation has always been reactive and tactical, so I was still watching and pressing the same things. It undoubtedly plays differently in the sense that the durations have changed so I'm definitely getting in more bites, but I'm still asking myself the same questions as before and responding accordingly. Should I refresh Rip or Savage Roar? Do I have enough time and energy for a Ferocious Bite, or should I pool? etc, etc

I didn't bother trying to make any addons work, such as recount/details, so this is from a purely mechanical standpoint. It feels the same to me. I am not going to report on how our DPS is now as this wasn't something I really paid attention to, and I trust Xanzara and friends to run the math when the time is right.

Edit: I'll try some other builds later today probably. I'm particularly interested to see how SR/Incarn feels, or maybe JW/ST.

Well, I got my PTR yesterday too and dusted off my kitty.
Same - without addons and all the binds etc., but I've heard that the other builds - way more spammier, will be easier and some of them even better than the regular BT/SR/JW tier.

SbT is going to be nerfed, imo.
They achieved what they wanted - way easier spec and not so punishing (without the "standard build) imo.

Thanks for output and also waiting for Xanzara & CO for stats and numbers.

[Whitepaw]

Well, I got my PTR yesterday too and dusted off my kitty.
Same - without addons and all the binds etc., but I've heard that the other builds - way more spammier, will be easier and some of them even better than the regular BT/SR/JW tier.

SbT is going to be nerfed, imo.
They achieved what they wanted - way easier spec and not so punishing (without the "standard build) imo.

Thanks for output and also waiting for Xanzara & CO for stats and numbers.

Why should SbT be nerfed?

[ErothTV]

Why should SbT be nerfed?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1517240239

[axxey]

Odd analysis not commenting on Brutal slash with Blood talons at all, especially since he mentions using legendary boots. Far and away the thing I'm most looking forward to even if you do lose savage roar.

[Malmmoc]

you used to be able to have SR + BrS. Now you get BT + BrS. not much has changed.

[Heywes]

I messed around a little on the PTR today, using the standard BS/SR/JW/BT build (with SotF from ring). It felt...the same, really. The rotation has always been reactive and tactical, so I was still watching and pressing the same things. It undoubtedly plays differently in the sense that the durations have changed so I'm definitely getting in more bites, but I'm still asking myself the same questions as before and responding accordingly. Should I refresh Rip or Savage Roar? Do I have enough time and energy for a Ferocious Bite, or should I pool? etc, etc

That sounds "different" in the sense that, it still requires thought and planing, but gives you slightly more options/thing you can do during combat but that you don't have to do; you just adjust accordingly.

If it plays very similar but gives us a bit more wiggle room, sounds like a nice change.

[Deleted]

Quick question regarding Kj's burning wish since i just got the thing from Kadala while trying to get CoF; is this thing worth using over Cinidaria? My other trinket option was 900 alchemist stone. it sims practically identical so im just curious as to how it's like to play with if anyone's got any experience using this thing. I'm kinda salty now so bring me good news please.

[-aiko-]

Quick question regarding Kj's burning wish

If it's simming nearly identical I would use it over Cinidaria for the burst AoE potential. Outside of BrS we don't have anything so having on-demand AoE is really quite nice for dungeons. It's also a decent stat-stick.

[Deleted]

If it's simming nearly identical I would use it over Cinidaria for the burst AoE potential. Outside of BrS we don't have anything so having on-demand AoE is really quite nice for dungeons. It's also a decent stat-stick.

Fair enough, cheers for the answer Cinidaria's been triggering me anyway recently because everyone has so much frontload burst now the benefit feels diminished, although that's probably just a feeling since it's probably just far more compressed in its benefit i guess.

[Gemini Soul]

Odd analysis not commenting on Brutal slash with Blood talons at all, especially since he mentions using legendary boots. Far and away the thing I'm most looking forward to even if you do lose savage roar.

yeah what i was thinking, SoTA + Boots with BRS/JW/BT.

[ErothTV]

Odd analysis not commenting on Brutal slash with Blood talons at all, especially since he mentions using legendary boots. Far and away the thing I'm most looking forward to even if you do lose savage roar.

Have to agree, the burst potential of multiple brutal slashes under blood talons sounds exciting, weird he did not weigh in on that.

yeah what i was thinking, SoTA + Boots with BRS/JW/BT.

He added it

[Deleted]

There is a comment on BrS + BT to that sheet now
_________________________________________

EDIT 17/Jul
Bit more of a comment on BrS. BT builds as some people were asking, but see the All Builds tab to see all combos of it.

Its an interesting combo, but perhaps not as much as people were expecting. If you are using BTs on BrS, then that obviously boosts dmg, but not as much as it used to, as BT is now 25%. If you are also keeping up a Rip and Rake, then without legendary boots those are what will use the BTs. If you have legendary boots, then keeping up everything and using BT on rip,rake, BrS and perhaps Thrash, means the build feels very complex and perhaps too complex to realistically execute it well in many fights.

So the most common way I think you'll play BrS+BT will be in two modes, AOE where you do BrS+BT hits, which is nice, but doesn't feel hugely different in dmg or complexity. Or in ST mode where you continue to rip,rake+BTs, but without SR. So overall your AoE is a little more complex and your ST is a little less complex, it feels nice, but not as huge a change as I think some people felt it would be.

If your looking for something that feels different, try out SotF, BrS, EG, its needs a buff in dmg, but it did feel fun and different.

[Deleted]

Well I think that as a built (BrS, BT) would only be interesting with boots and for very specific fights; SbT will likely be vastly better at low target sustained cleave (and will likely be a huge niche for feral, making them very strong for high level keys).

I think they've done a great job with the talent shift. If they get the numbers reasonably right, feral will have multiple viable builts with significant nuances and differences in playstyle, possibly having the best talent setup in the game. Sadly their Frost DK talent reshuffle seems to have nowhere near a similar effect (perhaps because their talents are not interesting in the first place, feral talents were interesting after all, just badly tuned and in bad competition with each other).

Agreed.
The tuning on numbers will be very important though, and not completely easy to get right. There are 27 builds combos up for grabs here, its unlikely blizz will get all the tuning completely right, so some talents will just fall away from consideration. But if they do get it right, there could be near continuous ladder of talent builds ranging from simple to complex, that gives options for different situations and different playstyles, with slight (but worthwhile) progress of dps if you take on more complex playstyles. Even if blizz don't get it all just right, we should still end up with at least more viable options than we currently have on live.

[Whitepaw]

Agreed.
The tuning on numbers will be very important though, and not completely easy to get right. There are 27 builds combos up for grabs here, its unlikely blizz will get all the tuning completely right, so some talents will just fall away from consideration. But if they do get it right, there could be near continuous ladder of talent builds ranging from simple to complex, that gives options for different situations and different playstyles, with slight (but worthwhile) progress of dps if you take on more complex playstyles. Even if blizz don't get it all just right, we should still end up with at least more viable options than we currently have on live.

Why this wish for a "More complex = more dps" paradigm? And why is SR and BT seen as the talents that proves you're "better" at Feral.

It's a computer game. If you want to win acclaim, do something else. This "More complex = more dps" translates to "More complex = you'll do the balanced dps like every one else". The game should be fun - and fun, as a Feral druid, is to be versatile, mobile and baddass. Not about being a humanly controlled DoT with timers running left and right to squeeze out the same amount of dps as the other guy - who plays Rogue - who has a fun rotation, awesome immunities (no, they won't be taken away from Rogues, just forget that) and who is massively overrepresented on world firsts.

The Feral community used to be fun and engaging. Now it's about how we should "Learn the spec" and "Play complex rotations to gain dps" - to the point where some posters here actually believe that paradigm. But that way of thinking is flawed and brought us to a point where the devs have to correct our rotation with some pretty harsh changes.

The whole l2p and gitgud has been a failure, it has brought us nothing. In fact, it stopped Blizzard from designing us better. People still advocating that line of thinking should rethink their reasoning and actions.

[Deleted]

Why this wish for a "More complex = more dps" paradigm? And why is SR and BT seen as the talents that proves you're "better" at Feral.

It's a computer game. If you want to win acclaim, do something else. This "More complex = more dps" translates to "More complex = you'll do the balanced dps like every one else". The game should be fun - and fun, as a Feral druid, is to be versatile, mobile and baddass. Not about being a humanly controlled DoT with timers running left and right to squeeze out the same amount of dps as the other guy - who plays Rogue - who has a fun rotation, awesome immunities (no, they won't be taken away from Rogues, just forget that) and who is massively overrepresented on world firsts.

The Feral community used to be fun and engaging. Now it's about how we should "Learn the spec" and "Play complex rotations to gain dps" - to the point where some posters here actually believe that paradigm. But that way of thinking is flawed and brought us to a point where the devs have to correct our rotation with some pretty harsh changes.

The whole l2p and gitgud has been a failure, it has brought us nothing. In fact, it stopped Blizzard from designing us better. People still advocating that line of thinking should rethink their reasoning and actions.

Complexity shouldn't dominate, the other talents and builds should still be viable (as in dps is just a 2-5% behind the highest dps build), the reason I expect and argue for the more complex talents to give slightly more dps, is because if you have two builds, one is complex to play and one is easy to play and they give identical dps, then when it comes to challenging fights and raids, the complex talent becomes unappealing and arguably not viable, because the complexity of the executing the build puts it behind the simple build.

The way I see it is that simple builds are viable, while still been a small bit behind on dps, because for many players the reduction in complexity leads to higher dps in practice and may often be more fun because you are playing and not struggling with some arbitrary complex rotation. Complex builds aren't viable if they are slightly behind on dps because the complexity compounds the dps loss and the talent is just considered rubbish, leading to a build that is enjoyable for some people to be used by noone. To make complex talents viable, they need a slight dps bonus.

[exochaft]

Why this wish for a "More complex = more dps" paradigm? And why is SR and BT seen as the talents that proves you're "better" at Feral.

The way I see it is that simple builds are viable, while still been a small bit behind on dps, because for many players the reduction in complexity leads to higher dps in practice and may often be more fun because you are playing and not struggling with some arbitrary complex rotation. Complex builds aren't viable if they are slightly behind on dps because the complexity compounds the dps loss and the talent is just considered rubbish, leading to a build that is enjoyable for some people to be used by noone. To make complex talents viable, they need a slight dps bonus.

I think you're both of the same mindset, just the verbage is coming from different viewpoints. Can almost guarantee that most of the holdovers of keeping the rotation complex and punishing comes from WotLK, where we even had blue posts directly come out and say that because our Feral DPS rotation was so hard we were rewarded with amazing DPS. Skip ahead to Legion, that developer position (along with many others) have come and gone. The game itself has changed several times since WotLK, and the game designers just don't think that way anymore.

I feel most of the holdouts are using the terms complexity/punishing interchangeably. However, they're completely different, and both together are not necessarily good for anyone. The complexity of the Feral rotation comes from optimally using our energy/combo points in a snapshot environment while timing buffs/abilities to exploit said snapshotting while maintaining maximum uptime on our bleeds (talent choices alter how much we can snapshop or add extra layers of complexity). In 7.3, that's not changing at all, and it's still probably the most complex DPS system in the game depending upon your talent build. The punishing aspect of current Feral is that screwing up any of the complexity can drastically lower your DPS output. I'd even go so far as to say that Feral is so punishing that even if you play Feral correctly, additional environment/encounter variables (or even just pure RNG) can drastically lower your DPS output. In 7.3, many of the punishing aspects of the current Feral spec are being abated by relaxing timers and/or adjusting talent power so that you can be rewarded for adding complexity to your Feral rotation without being unduly punished because there's no wiggle room in timers/talent choices.

[ErothTV]

Short update for some changes in the next PTR build:

Thrash will generate 1 combo point baseline - as an energy-spending non-finishing move attack, it feels like it should. The Tier 19 2pc bonus which previously had this effect has been changed to a 15% damage increase to Thrash. With these changes, Thrash is still intended to not be used in the baseline single-target rotation (not counting the effects of sets/legendaries).

Additionally, to help out Feral AOE a bit more, the energy costs of Thrash and Swipe are being reduced by 5. (to 45 Energy and 40 Energy, respectively).

Moment of Clarity will, as an additional feature of the talent, allow Omen of Clarity's clearcasting proc to stack up to 2 times (and is now tooltipped). This should be sufficient with how the clearcasting procs are better spaced out in 7.3.

That's huge!

In addition:
Bloodtalons extra damage reduced 25% to 20%
Moment of Calirty stacks twice now, extra damage reduced from 25% to 20%
Feral's damage increased from previous mentioned buff 33% to 40%

In general, all smooth and nice, hopefully not overextended?

[Deleted]

The changes might address how weak our 3min dps cooldown is. With all the complexity, feral dps is constant and that is making the spec literally least viable for kil'jaeden. We can't utilize the intermission downtime and we can't utilize short AoE or cleave moments in the fight. Maybe mindset that complexity should't mean higher dps is fine but nonflexible dps should be higher to offset our inability to take advantage of encounter design.