is Feral really that bad?

[exochaft]

I mean technically that's the same thing. Either way you'll do less DPS if you don't do perfect play.

The problem though is that you can't have specs doing significantly better than other specs just because they're more complex because if you do, all top raiders will flock to that spec/class, especially if it does around 5%+ more DPS.

TBH my biggest question about Feral is why in the hell did they put its challenge skin on the Agatha list? Putting a Bleed-based ST spec on an AoE fight is just a cruel joke and makes the completionist in me upset that I won't complete it prior to 7.3

guerron was probably meaning to state that he/she believes roughly the following for Feral DPS rankings in comparison to other DPS classes/specs:

mediocre Feral (7.2.5) <<< mediocre Feral (previous X expac) =< great Feral (7.2.5) < great Feral (previous X expac)

Simply put, the potential of Feral in comparison to everyone else is not as great as it once was while still being one of the more complex specs to play. While it may not be exactly the case at all, I'd stil say the gap between a mediocre Feral and great Feral in terms of DPS is much larger than it has been in the past. 7.3 changes should hopefully shrink the DPS gap between skill levels and allow Blizz to increase the maximum potential of Feral if deemed necessary without penalized the lesser skilled players.

With respect to the Feral challenge, it really sucks if you don't have a decently high level of crit with the typical builds that are used. Assuming you're a Moonkin, Polarthief, so crit rating is something you likely avoid, and that understandably makes the Feral challenge very annoying. For example, as a main spec bear, I had about 18% crit when I was Feral kitty (since I generally avoided the stat), and using an SR/JW/BT build with Predator instead of Blood Scent was extremely terrible. I was having issues getting extra combo points using Swipe when 3+ targets were up, to where I'd occasionally Swipe 5 times for 5 combo points. Now, the root problem was SR/JW/BT and the fact that Feral was an offspec: the spec works fine (even great) if your gear is tailored for Feral in 7.2.5 as you can generate combo points steadily enough to keep up with the timers without being energy starved, otherwise it plays marginally fine to downright horrible even if you're playing the spec correctly. This is specifically what the 7.3 changes are likely to fix.

For the time being, I'd recommend using SotA legendary ring and Brutal Slash instead of Blood Talons until the 7.3 changes go live with low crit gear (managed to do that 20-25 ilvls ago and beat the Feral challenge with 4pc NH tier with minimal headache), as your energy levels will be more stable to account for crit/OoC dry streaks that will happen with non-Feral tailored low crit gear. In a more general sense, SotA and Chatoyant is likely the best way to counteract bad itemization until 7.3 comes out in any situation, as long as one has access to said legendaries.

[Polarthief]

<snip>

I mean, my problem is a personal one in which I don't know how to play Feral optimally. I get the general concept (apply bleeds, have SR and TF (if avail) up when you apply them), and I can read how to do it, but actually doing it just makes my head spin. I'll gladly admit that I'm not an amazing player and I definitely tend to stick to the easier/middle-easier specs to play (I mean fuck I played Mage of all things from 2.4.3 til 7.0.3, and now I'm playing Balance, also an easy spec to play), in doing so, frees up some of my brain for mechanics and callouts (something I've been doing since Karazhan).

I guess what I'm trying to say is I simply cannot play a complex spec like Feral to its full capacity given my skill+my callouts. All that said, the Mage Tower challenges weren't really tuned for 930 iLvl (currently ~934 in Balance gear) so it's just frustrating that I can't beat it when I feel like I steamrolled the other three, but now we're just getting a bit off topic of the thread and into my personal problem of being a shitter. Thanks for the advice; I'll definitely use it in the next patch because I don't want the headache of trying til the leniency drops.

[Athorha]

I mean, my problem is a personal one in which I don't know how to play Feral optimally. I get the general concept (apply bleeds, have SR and TF (if avail) up when you apply them), and I can read how to do it, but actually doing it just makes my head spin. I'll gladly admit that I'm not an amazing player and I definitely tend to stick to the easier/middle-easier specs to play (I mean fuck I played Mage of all things from 2.4.3 til 7.0.3, and now I'm playing Balance, also an easy spec to play), in doing so, frees up some of my brain for mechanics and callouts (something I've been doing since Karazhan).

I guess what I'm trying to say is I simply cannot play a complex spec like Feral to its full capacity given my skill+my callouts. All that said, the Mage Tower challenges weren't really tuned for 930 iLvl (currently ~934 in Balance gear) so it's just frustrating that I can't beat it when I feel like I steamrolled the other three, but now we're just getting a bit off topic of the thread and into my personal problem of being a shitter. Thanks for the advice; I'll definitely use it in the next patch because I don't want the headache of trying til the leniency drops.

I ended up having issues since I mostly pvp on my feral and having to "learn" savage roar gameplay during a hectic fight seemed like too m. So I just stuck with incarn and treated the fight as having add focused phases, and boss focused phases. Basically with incarn up I throw takes on everything and put all my dps into Agatha. Outside of incarn I'd prioritize dps on adds and try to keep bleeds up on Agatha with excess resources.

With Convergence ofFayes I pop incarn shortly after pull. Then it'd be up again shortly before she gets pushed to 50%. Pop it when she starts boulders ploughed through the adds with 3x brutal slash then push her to teleport before incarn ran out. Next teleport would be easier because of location / boulders so I'd usually just potion and focus on more on making it a clean phase and try to get any cool downs up if possible. Then on 2nd teleport pop drums and try to push Agatha saving 3x brutal slash for add packs. By treating the fight this way, it's a lot less overwhelming because you're ony focusing on one dps group at a time. In a full incarn you drop agathas health so fast, that really within 3 uses along with 1 drums use she should be dead (that's 2ish minutes of focus on the boss, the rest just focusing on making sure adds don't rape you and you drop shields / puddles on decent places

[Skylarking]

I'm seeing a lot more ferals lately. Could be the 7.3 changes bringing in the hype....or just coincidence. Who knows.

[ButterBeast]

yes.
Has less dmg than other leather melees and cant soak with immunities like rogues and dh this raid tier.

Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to your face.

[iamthedevil]

It's a lot worse with low ilvl bad gear. I've always love my feral druid, but now he's a bank alt.

[Daedius]

Feral has the stigma of DoT clipping still being an issue I believe, which hasn't been for other classes for a long time.

[-aiko-]

I'm seeing a lot more ferals lately. Could be the 7.3 changes bringing in the hype....or just coincidence. Who knows.

I don't actively watch any streamers but I heard that Sodapoppin plays WoW again (occasionally) and is back to Feral Druid. That could cause a spike. I also know that Preach Gaming is releasing a lot of guides and did a decent one that highlighted some good things about Feral. So I suppose those two things may have generated interest along with 7.3 changes but I haven't personally noticed too many more Ferals.

[Tareku]

Been playing feral since TBC, long time main and always loved it.
Well, feral isn’t that bad tbh, the thing is that other similar classes performs really well (DH, Rogues, etc) and those don’t have rotations that are as punishing as feral’s. Anyway, as soon as the 7,3 changes were announced the amount of ferals on the PTR sky rocketed. The main issues of the spec have been brought up during the post, and were summed up during the blue post that announced the 7,3 changes (High complexity and punishing rotation).
The 7.3 changes will bring up the lower tier of players playing the spec closer to the top tier ones (By reducing the complexity of the rotation by decreasing the power of the 3 more used talents). If you leave only this change, then parses on warcraft logs will only show a difference on the spec, narrowing the difference between a 50 percentile player and let’s say a 90 percentile player. Meaning that the spec numbers will stay as they are or even lowering. That’s where the 40% increased damage buff comes to play, and is what really is drawing attention from top tier players.

[Cheze]

yeah people avoided using brutal slash for the challenge to increase DPS on agatha, but with the gear people have now that isn't really necessary and you can focus your talent setup exclusively on killing imps as quickly as possible

feral's aoe is actually really good if you spec BrS/predator, but it makes their aoe kind of anemic so most people don't. Feral can pump out really nice numbers in m+s with a lot of trash

[Whitepaw]

For Agatha:

Talent: Predator, Renewal, Balance, Typhoon, Savage Roar, Jagged Wounds, Brutal Slash. Oh, and I cheat, so I get Soul of the Forest from the legendary ring.

Legendaries: The ring and Cinidaria (the belt that gives healing from the damage dealt on targets > 90%).

Gear: As many set bonuses from tier 19+20 as possible, I went 2 set tier 19, 4 set tier 20. And here's the kicker: Get a trinket with some serious AoE. Macro it to Brutal Slash. Blow those imps up. I used the trinket from Sisters in ToS. 45% of my damage (did 834k dps, fight took 6 minutes) was from AoE abilities (Brutal Slash, Thrash, trinket).

Relics: 2 x Rake, 1 x Rip. My weapon is ilvl 935.

A few lessons identified from my mediocre performance:
- Always try to keep bleeds on Agatha. That way, your ramp up time on her is way shorter when she shields up.
- Killing the small imps that blow up and leave shit on the floor is a priority. So keep enough energy to fire off a Rake on that sucker when it spawns, so you can slow it (instead of having it wander over to you and go for your face).
- When she starts teleporting, she makes it more difficult for her imp healers to reach her. You can then speed things up a bit by not killing them, but instead focus her and the other imps. Meanwhile, the healing imps will wander from one side of the room to the other, never quite making it in time to heal her. When you pass them, just Rake them a bit to make them walk even slower.
- Watch your shorter CDs and make more use of them. Fx, that pesky blow up imp can be typhooned away to the side. Same with healing imps. Brutal Slash can be used in between the bigger imp spawns etc.
- The bigger imp spawns are quite annoying, because they spawn at random positions and distance from Agatha. You need to hunt them and kill them - never assume that your AoE will finish them off. Having one of the caster imps stay up and accumulate damage on you can be quite deadly.
- The green goo is not as deadly as the meteors. Jump into green goo, if that is necessary to avoid the meteor.

Good luck.

[Morg]

Been playing feral since TBC, long time main and always loved it.
Well, feral isn’t that bad tbh, the thing is that other similar classes performs really well (DH, Rogues, etc) and those don’t have rotations that are as punishing as feral’s. Anyway, as soon as the 7,3 changes were announced the amount of ferals on the PTR sky rocketed. The main issues of the spec have been brought up during the post, and were summed up during the blue post that announced the 7,3 changes (High complexity and punishing rotation).
The 7.3 changes will bring up the lower tier of players playing the spec closer to the top tier ones (By reducing the complexity of the rotation by decreasing the power of the 3 more used talents). If you leave only this change, then parses on warcraft logs will only show a difference on the spec, narrowing the difference between a 50 percentile player and let’s say a 90 percentile player. Meaning that the spec numbers will stay as they are or even lowering. That’s where the 40% increased damage buff comes to play, and is what really is drawing attention from top tier players.

lol what... feral is not getting a 40% damage buff

[forbsz]

I find Feral very difficult to play but rewarding I feel like it is one of the hardest specs to grasp in the game though.

[Ormod]

lol what... feral is not getting a 40% damage buff

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...TR-Build-24608

Feral Druid Increases damage/healing of Ashamane's Frenzy, Brutal Slash, Ferocious Bite, Maim, Moonfire, Rake, Rip, Shred, Thrash by 40%. Increases periodic damage/healing of Ashamane's Frenzy, Brutal Slash, Ferocious Bite, Maim, Moonfire, Rake, Rip, Shred, Thrash by 40%.

I believe Tareku was referring to this change currently being tested on the ptr.

[Hobbes0773]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...TR-Build-24608

Feral Druid Increases damage/healing of Ashamane's Frenzy, Brutal Slash, Ferocious Bite, Maim, Moonfire, Rake, Rip, Shred, Thrash by 40%. Increases periodic damage/healing of Ashamane's Frenzy, Brutal Slash, Ferocious Bite, Maim, Moonfire, Rake, Rip, Shred, Thrash by 40%.

I believe Tareku was referring to this change currently being tested on the ptr.

That change is to compensate for the damage loss from rebalancing talents. Which means we are not getting a 40% damage buff.

[Tradu]

yes.
Has less dmg than other leather melees and cant soak with immunities like rogues and dh this raid tier.

Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to your face.

Feral is better at soaking than DH and is the 2nd best leather DPS after rogues, 3rd best melee overall(behind rogue and warrior), maybe arguably 4th if you consider DK's damage good enough to make up for the fact that a wheelchair is more mobile than them.

- - - Updated - - -

yeah people avoided using brutal slash for the challenge to increase DPS on agatha, but with the gear people have now that isn't really necessary and you can focus your talent setup exclusively on killing imps as quickly as possible

feral's aoe is actually really good if you spec BrS/predator, but it makes their aoe kind of anemic so most people don't. Feral can pump out really nice numbers in m+s with a lot of trash

Brutal Slash was always the better choice for Agatha, it was always an add control fight with boss damage being secondary.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't actively watch any streamers but I heard that Sodapoppin plays WoW again (occasionally) and is back to Feral Druid. That could cause a spike. I also know that Preach Gaming is releasing a lot of guides and did a decent one that highlighted some good things about Feral. So I suppose those two things may have generated interest along with 7.3 changes but I haven't personally noticed too many more Ferals.

Unfortunately Preach's guide was pretty damn bad and people are better off spending a few minutes reading the Wowhead/Icy Veins guides if they want an "easy" intro to the spec(otherwise Xan's guide is easily the best)

[Restors]

A guildie of mine is a feral-4-life all the time, no matter raid tier and the boy rocks on dmg meters. Like every other class / specc, its all about knowledge, practise to execute and perform well in raids.

We are nowhere close to playing "super semi hardcore", so theres some room for not to reroll speccs or even classes in case we enjoy the current ones.

[Tradu]

Been playing feral since TBC, long time main and always loved it.
Well, feral isn’t that bad tbh, the thing is that other similar classes performs really well (DH, Rogues, etc) and those don’t have rotations that are as punishing as feral’s. Anyway, as soon as the 7,3 changes were announced the amount of ferals on the PTR sky rocketed. The main issues of the spec have been brought up during the post, and were summed up during the blue post that announced the 7,3 changes (High complexity and punishing rotation).
The 7.3 changes will bring up the lower tier of players playing the spec closer to the top tier ones (By reducing the complexity of the rotation by decreasing the power of the 3 more used talents). If you leave only this change, then parses on warcraft logs will only show a difference on the spec, narrowing the difference between a 50 percentile player and let’s say a 90 percentile player. Meaning that the spec numbers will stay as they are or even lowering. That’s where the 40% increased damage buff comes to play, and is what really is drawing attention from top tier players.

No, because the top tier players understand that the 40% "buff" is just rebalancing to make up for talents getting nerfed massively. The goal of the patch isn't to buff Feral, it's "buffing" bad Ferals. It's currently looking like a small buff overall as well, but that's just a sideeffect and likely not completely intentional(although I think they'll leave it anyway, because it's not like it'll ruin class balance)

[Ormod]

That change is to compensate for the damage loss from rebalancing talents. Which means we are not getting a 40% damage buff.

Tareku already mentioned that the top 3 most picked talents would decrease in power. Morg's post was a simple dispute over the 40% damage buff. I provided a link to relevant data that would allow Morg to better understand Tareku.

Blizzard intends to lessen the damage variances between the higher level talents and lower the impact some talents have on the Feral rotation. A suboptimal talent build will be more powerful and the best build will be easier to play. They do not want to alter Feral's maximum damage potential.

[Myztikrice]

"Feral is better at soaking than DH and is the 2nd best leather DPS after rogues, 3rd best melee overall(behind rogue and warrior)"

Um...