[5.2] Does Feral need love?

[teddabear]

I finally got a chance to get in some solid play time this week. While it was great to see the old LK rotation again it felt like it was missing something. The level 87 and 90 talents feel yawn worthy. Target switching, ramp up and cleave still seem like major issues. I didn't feel like I had gained anything worthwhile to make up for losing a reasonably useful bear form. Granted I was working through many layers of rust but has anybody else felt this way?

[draykorinee]

Came back to it myself just this week, really did not enjoy it. positional requirements, dot management, energy starvation, combo point management, savage roar (yuck), melee range! DoC, and so much more just turned me right off feral. After being destroyed on healing by our paladin and disc im now happily rerolling an elemental/resto shaman.

Out of all of those savage roar is my least favourite, and incredibly dull mechanic that offers nothing interesting to a rotation, also the remove of feral charge is a real nuisance too, I dont even bother to stealth anymore just open up with shred. Oh and Doc being best tier talent is just horrid, healing while a dps is a lame mechanic.

[Karlzone]

Hmm.. I love it how it currently is. Then again I can easily understand why it would seem daunting to people who are just picking it up (again). It's just a different playstyle than other specs/classes. Where a mage has a few abilities and you can pick one up and understand how stuff interracts with each other, you cannot do that with a feral. Considerably more research has to go into your feral in order to play it decently compared to playing a mage decently. Then again, that is stuff wich I enjoy. It will set you apart from other players. If you didnot research the fight well and dont know when exactly something happens (boss immune or something) your dps will drop much much lower if you were not ready for it and did not for example pool energy to switch target faster or something like that.

[emoelitistthreadderailer]

feral is for those who enjoy a challenging rotation.. you cant just play feral and hit which ever button lights up or is off cd etc like so many other classes
and theres lots of bad ferals out there giving ferals get a bad rep for being a shit dps class when its just being played wrong..

but nope feral is fine i think. better than cata...

[crittycat]

Came back to it myself just this week, really did not enjoy it. positional requirements, dot management, energy starvation, combo point management, savage roar (yuck), melee range!

That's funny.

If you do not have a constructive comment, please don't post.

[draykorinee]

That's funny.

In what way?

Agree with the rest, it really is a l2p issue, its a lot going on.

[Moosie]

In what way?

Agree with the rest, it really is a l2p issue, its a lot going on.

It's funny because you are moaning about a melee class having to be in melee range.

Feral is fine at the moment. You complain about DoC but there are 2 other talents which can benefit not only you, but the rest of your raid, and makes your rotation significantly easier.

That said, Devs have acknowledged that ferals are overpowered in PvP atm, so i'm expecting a similar nerf to that of 4.1. Fingers crossed they don't.

[draykorinee]

It's funny because you are moaning about a melee class having to be in melee range.

Feral is fine at the moment. You complain about DoC but there are 2 other talents which can benefit not only you, but the rest of your raid, and makes your rotation significantly easier.

That said, Devs have acknowledged that ferals are overpowered in PvP atm, so i'm expecting a similar nerf to that of 4.1. Fingers crossed they don't.

I was not moaning, I was listing things that I found difficult to contend with, as a pve player I found most bosses melee unfriendly, I said these are the reason I, me, myself did not enjoy, I did not say we were underpowered nor did i moan about the state of ferals, dont make stuff up, i didnt agree with the op that ferals need love.
I use NV because I dont like DoC, but doc is the best talent to take according to parses (not that im good enough to really worry about that), again just because I dont like it you assume moaning. Nothing funny about saying melee range is something i dont enjoy.

[Moosie]

I was not moaning, I was listing things that I found difficult to contend with, as a pve player I found most bosses melee unfriendly, I said these are the reason I, me, myself did not enjoy, I did not say we were underpowered nor did i moan about the state of ferals, dont make stuff up, i didnt agree with the op that ferals need love.
I use NV because I dont like DoC, but doc is the best talent to take according to parses (not that im good enough to really worry about that), again just because I dont like it you assume moaning. Nothing funny about saying melee range is something i dont enjoy.

Very few fights are melee unfriendly to the point were it's difficult to play. Elegon is basically the only one I can think of, off the top of my head, the rest are the same for both mdps/rdps or better for mdps such as fights like will of emporer and Garalon (if you aren't stacking melee).

You can't expect to just jump onto a feral and expect to play it off the bat. It's considered up there with some of the hardest rotations, with warlocks, so been able to play it, and play it well takes time. If you like the play style of feral, but deem it to hard, try a rogue, it's very similar in terms of mechanics, but without the things people seem to struggle with (Thrash on OoC, Shred positionals etc)

[Reyzzz]

I was not moaning, I was listing things that I found difficult to contend with, as a pve player I found most bosses melee unfriendly.

LOL.

Out of 16 current bosses, WoE is the only melee unfriendly encounter, unless you are told to focus boss only.

[Moosie]

LOL.

Out of 16 current bosses, WoE is the only melee unfriendly encounter, unless you are told to focus boss only.

I guess I had the privilege of been on the bosses and not been the strength tank (for a while anyway) xD

[Etapicx]

Fix target swapping and i'll be happy because it dose suck balls. Possibly a glyph to berserk like Increase duration but decrease benefit by X% or at least during berserk and/or Tiger's fury getting an increased energy pool as we had in cata would be awesome. As well as making FoN and HotW baseline and make new talents with fresh ideas because the current design of the talents at this moment will be really hard to balance to not have a cookie cutter built(This last one is from my experience across all specs and i do think Guardian Resto and Balance mainspec players also agree)

[Garth]

Nature's Vigil now has a 90-second cooldown (was 3 minutes), and now increases damage and healing done by 10% (was 20%).

This basically makes NV useless for PVE Ferals. I hate this change... I have been using NV all tier and doing competitive DPS. Seems like they are forcing our hand into using DoC which is not engaging at all IMO. Not really sure what they can do at this point, short of scrapping something completely, but I really think they could have found a better way to fix ferals in PVP than nerfing one of our level 90 talents to unusable levels.

PVP ruins it for ferals again.

[crittycat]

Fix target swapping and i'll be happy because it dose suck balls.

Which fights currently do you feel that our performance due to target swapping is putting us lower than other classes/specs? With or without Symb'd Soul Swap or Redirect.

[Soullord]

Rogue Redirect 1 min cooldown
Soul Swap 20 sec switch

that being said I hope the incoming PVP nerfs that druids are going to get do not impact pve too much

[draykorinee]

LOL.

Out of 16 current bosses, WoE is the only melee unfriendly encounter, unless you are told to focus boss only.

Again I only said I found them melee unfriendly not that they are, people seem to be putting words in my mouth and think my opinion is what I think is the norm :S. I personally hated stone guards as melee, elegon was pretty crap, woe wasnt great either, feng was fine so was gara, spirit kings wasnt an issue either so 3/6 i found I had issues. I havent done any other bosses as melee so I m not talking about those. Melee unfriendly may be wrong, but I certainly prefered them as ranged. Im sure people get some epeen out of trying to discredit my opinion, but I ve already said, its my first week and that its a l2p issue not a feral issue, ferals in the right hands are great, I simply stated my own opinion.

[Etapicx]

Which fights currently do you feel that our performance due to target swapping is putting us lower than other classes/specs? With or without Symb'd Soul Swap or Redirect.

I never said that we'r doing bad on fights what target swap but on those fights that has target swaping we are very bad at killing adds fast then swap back to the boss and do get up our DoTs again compared to other melees that aren't DoT relying they can swap targets straight away and still preforming good. Yes Soul Swap is nice. Some examples where i find it very annoying is the adds on Elegon, going spirit realm on Gara'Jal, swaping to adds on Sha of Fear.

[crittycat]

I never said that we'r doing bad on fights what target swap but on those fights that has target swaping we are very bad at killing adds fast then swap back to the boss and do get up our DoTs again compared to other melees that aren't DoT relying they can swap targets straight away and still preforming good. Yes Soul Swap is nice. Some examples where i find it very annoying is the adds on Elegon, going spirit realm on Gara'Jal, swaping to adds on Sha of Fear.

Agreed that our ramp up time is longer than many other classes and specs, but that can also be of benefit. Many a time it is what puts a good raid communication discipline into good play, for example that the raid leader decides what classes are assigned to what depending on what their strenghts are.

IMO the adds on Elegon works fine for me, as rake/rip keeps on ticking on Elegon when dealing with adds. It's more so a timing question to make sure that there's a 5CP rip + a rake on Elegon before jumping on something else that pops up. I could argue my bleeds do more damage in those scenarios than some other classes without DoT's.. On Spiritbinder I generally just run around and put up rakes and thrash on the adds which tick for a nice amount.

[Kronic1]

Nature's Vigil now has a 90-second cooldown (was 3 minutes), and now increases damage and healing done by 10% (was 20%).

This basically makes NV useless for PVE Ferals. I hate this change... I have been using NV all tier and doing competitive DPS. Seems like they are forcing our hand into using DoC which is not engaging at all IMO. Not really sure what they can do at this point, short of scrapping something completely, but I really think they could have found a better way to fix ferals in PVP than nerfing one of our level 90 talents to unusable levels.

PVP ruins it for ferals again.

I've also been playing SoTF/NV for a while now and not looking forward to the change in 5.2. However, 5.2 is still a while away. In that time, we can practice DoC to get used to it. Sooner or later, many top ferals would need to go DoC to compete agaist the top 50 Ferals who already played DoC. Also, Blizzard may decide to revert the change back when 5.2 comes out.

[Moosie]

I've also been playing SoTF/NV for a while now and not looking forward to the change in 5.2. However, 5.2 is still a while away. In that time, we can practice DoC to get used to it. Sooner or later, many top ferals would need to go DoC to compete agaist the top 50 Ferals who already played DoC. Also, Blizzard may decide to revert the change back when 5.2 comes out.

Honestly, after a day or so of using it, it's very simple.

The easy way to look at is, to do your normal rotation, but have DoC up when you use any finisher. To do this, pool energy when you are at 4/5cp so that when you use the finisher, you are at 0cp and almost full energy, spam shred until you get 4/5cp which is easily possible before PS runs out, if you are close to full energy. I highly recommend trying it, it's really fun when you get the hang of it.