Originally Posted by
Endus
The big issue with Feral Spirits is that they aren't JUST a DPS CD. If they just did damage, they'd be easy to tune. The issue is that they ALSO heal the Shaman, and increasing that damage increases the healing. They also (on live, anyway) bring a stun and a sprint, which is a significant amount of utility.
The healing thing, though, is significant. Consider that in WotLK, health pools were tiny and easy to burn through, so the healing made the window to burst an Enhancement down more narrow. If their damage had kept pace, popping FS in PvP during Cata might have made Enhancement effectively immortal, garnering huge self-healing while also providing extra damage and utility, and said healing works even while the Shaman is stunned or the like, unless it's an AoE attack that catches Shaman and wolves both.
Enhancement's definitely needed a DPS cooldown, but with Ascendance, that's less of a factor moving forward. Especially since they can also grab Elemental Mastery. A 2nd/third DPS cooldown isn't really as critical as it was during Cata, when it would've been the first and only. That said, I do think FS needs to be retuned a bit, to make it more clear the emphasis is on self-healing rather than DPS. Or go the other way, if they want it to be DPS and not survival. I'm not saying they're ideal as they are, just that the reasons they've fallen so hard make sense.