Thread: Dying breed

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  1. #101
    Quote Originally Posted by Viromand View Post
    Tranq doenst mitigate dmg. Cant really say tranq is better than smokebomb or SB better than tranq. tranq doenst mitigate 60-80% of that dmg.

    Smokebome(absorbs/mitigation): Is worht more during the first weeks of progress, where stuff will likely kill you due to the lack of HP.

    tran (heals): worht alot on non stacked fights with a certain dmg over a certing time.

    the main problem ifor ferals is on those fights like qon/magaera/council shaman outheal us cause our cooldown is so freaking long.

    Looking at numbers,

    An ability does 100k every 1 second for 10 seconds thats 1 million dmg per player.
    In 10m a tranq heals about 3 million dmg so thats 375k hps. With a 8 min cooldown.
    Smokebome will mitigate 100k dmg per player putting them at 200k hps, with a 3 min cooldown.

    If an ability does 500k dmg and you only ahve 450k life smokebome will save you tranq will do nothing. And alot of abilities doe about 100% of you hp as dmg during first weeks of progression. Ionisation one shotted with an ilvl<520 without cooldowns.

    The tier has all sorts of incoming dmg, so all spells are usefull. the problem is that tranq has a way to long cooldown, i would say 6 min is ok, so it lines up with hotw.
    Tranquility is situationally better than smokebomb. If you don't want to get outhealed by AG you're probably going to have to take vigil and take the damage loss. You're comparing 2 different spells anyway, ATM dps shaman's tide won't outheal tranq. Discussing how to make the other 90 talents outside of HotW equally compelling choices would be a far more constructive conversation than the one here, that's going nowhere fast.

    'Dying' is a massive exaggeration. Damage-wise feral is on-par or above most other melee and it has the least downtime on bosses that aren't reachable by melee for a short period of time and their aoe is at or above most other melee as well. Most of this thread is incorrectly correlating the lack of a necessity to bring melee classes for a lot of encounters with ferals being in a bad spot.

    Again, lack of representation doesn't equal a problem with the spec. Discussing more raid utility or cooldowns on any hybrid atm is incredibly unrealistic. Have you ever considered players just prefer other classes' playstyle more than feral or just want something braindead easy like elemental?

  2. #102
    Quote Originally Posted by Aseyhe View Post
    Tranquility is far better than smoke bomb in those cases. Difference of 20% damage mitigation versus ~60-80%.
    Tranquility doesn't heal dead players. Bring 2 Rogues and sit the Feral and you have 40% mitigation every 3 minutes vs a Tranq every 8 minutes. The only way Tranq would be competitive with Smokebomb is it if it had a 3 min cooldown.

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    Quote Originally Posted by fappasaurus View Post
    Damage-wise feral is on-par or above most other melee and it has the least downtime on bosses that aren't reachable by melee for a short period of time and their aoe is at or above most other melee as well.
    Most melee with the exception of one that uses the exact same gear. Big difference.

  3. #103
    Feral was never really popular to begin with, but now it's just not even rewarding anymore.

  4. #104
    Again, lack of representation doesn't equal a problem with the spec. Discussing more raid utility or cooldowns on any hybrid atm is incredibly unrealistic. Have you ever considered players just prefer other classes' playstyle more than feral or just want something braindead easy like elemental?
    Wasnt the exact same problem with firelands and DS, where rouges brought nothing to 10m except dmg. Now they have buffs and raidutility and the good dmg on almost all fights and considered overall the best melees for progression. They even added the legendaries daggers for rogues cause they were so unrepresented in raids. Which will never happen with ferals cause they have 3 other speccs that are currently very strong in 10m

    ATM dps shaman's tide won't outheal tranq
    enhancement shamans outheal every other melee. sure they suffer a small dps loss, so does ferals. and with healing tide beeing available for every specc now and you can use an extra talent to heal.

    it has the least downtime on bosses that aren't reachable by melee for a short period of time
    again enhancement shaman can use their cooldown on those phases and loose no dps at all.
    Last edited by Viromand; 2013-07-14 at 01:13 PM.

  5. #105
    Quote Originally Posted by Glurp View Post
    I find a lot of the people still playing Feral are people who have been playing it for a long time. It is quite a complex spec for newer people to learn and to make it worse because of the buffs/debuffs they bring Ferals are near useless in an ideal 10man setting, which is what most people raid now.
    Yup, Feral was my first, sad to see it go down like this...

  6. #106
    Quote Originally Posted by Viromand View Post
    Wasnt the exact same problem with firelands and DS, where rouges brought nothing to 10m except dmg. Now they have buffs and raidutility and the good dmg on almost all fights and considered overall the best melees for progression. They even added the legendaries daggers for rogues cause they were so unrepresented in raids. Which will never happen with ferals cause they have 3 other speccs that are currently very strong in 10m

    again enhancement shaman can use their cooldown on those phases and loose no dps at all.

    Here's my point though which you can't seem to understand: this thread is not constructive. If you want to improve feral you should brainstorm ideas to improve glyph choices, improve the talent choices that don't work etc. For example there are some really good threads on DoC specifically, and a recent one on the impact of splitting feral bear and feral cat into 2 separate specs.

    Saying the class is dead and useless is not only a lie, but it gets us nowhere and it's disappointing this is one of the more popular threads on the druid forum. It indicates to me that the community would rather complain endlessly than try to contribute to the solution. Most of the posts don't take the entire picture into account or even get to the root of a problem. Your comment on enhancement specifically indicates that.

  7. #107
    I've never seen any evidence that Blizzard implements or even reads suggestions on this forum. There have been lots suggestions that most if not all the Feral PvE glyphs should be baseline because they are pretty much mandatory and everybody takes the same ones. How many years Ferals been complaining about target switching and ramp up? Now they are trying to address it with a set bonus? The flaw in that logic is rather obvious. A major reason for Yawning quitting was Blizzard's unwillingness to listen or even communicate with the Feral community. The original DoC changes and set bonuses were so bad that they were indefensible and Ferals were able to generate a small blip on the PTR forum. Other than that Blizzard has turned a deaf ear to Ferals for as long as I can remember.

    I haven't seen anybody say Feral is useless. The problem is it is not competitive enough to keep a spot on most 10 man progression raid teams. If you are top 1% of Ferals or have been Feral with the same group for a long time then you will have a spot. There are too many bosses though where picking a Feral is rarely a good choice. The real irony is the most important drops tend to come from bosses Feral is terrible at and the bosses Feral is best at have no useful drops at all. In the end it comes down to loot distribution and there are better specs for a progression raid to invest their loot in.

  8. #108
    Feral is more than fine- If people want to think its weak and lacks utility that's fine by me. I'll be a special little snowflake

  9. #109
    Saying the class is dead and useless is not only a lie, but it gets us nowhere and it's disappointing this is one of the more popular threads on the druid forum. It indicates to me that the community would rather complain endlessly than try to contribute to the solution.
    The class is not useless.
    And alot of people even said what is wrong with ferals. And some of them even said what needs to be changed.
    tranq only beeing really good with hotw so they should bring the cooldown inline with hotw. make certain glyphs/proccs baseline.

    Most of the posts don't take the entire picture into account or even get to the root of a problem. Your comment on enhancement specifically indicates that.
    Why does my comment on enhancement indicate that. Sure ferals can use HotW with wrath spam when they cant attack the boss(not sure if there even is any bossyou cant reach even for a short period of time)but will loose alot of dps. But shamans can use ascendance making everything 30yards range even melee attacks. Dont know if you are talking about us not loosing so much dps cause our dots are so strong.

    And to our aoe dmg, when you play with ror and doc and have good proccs feral is by far the best aoe melee class thats true. And if not its still one of the best. So now change needed here.
    Single target again its fine with ror even better, if you are comfrotable with a new fight and specced into DOC you can pull good numbers here.
    2-3 target fights. feral are not so good here, making mangle/shred ripextending proc baseline would help alot on those fights.
    raidutility: have good add control. still tranq can be tuned a bit. let it have the same cooldown as HotW. To make it really good maybe let Predatory Swiftness make tranq be castable in cat form and we can still autoattack like monks can with their chiburst. Or let tranq be castabkle in cat when hotw is active.

  10. #110
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    And don't forget that rogues have Smoke Bomb ... so noone can say that they lack raid utility compared to ferals !
    I come across a quiet river, that wonders through the trees.
    I stare into its running waters and fall unto my knees.
    In resignation to the forest, that's held me for so long.
    I close my eyes and drift away into nature's evensong.

  11. #111
    Quote Originally Posted by teddabear View Post
    I've never seen any evidence that Blizzard implements or even reads suggestions on this forum. There have been lots suggestions that most if not all the Feral PvE glyphs should be baseline because they are pretty much mandatory and everybody takes the same ones. How many years Ferals been complaining about target switching and ramp up? Now they are trying to address it with a set bonus? The flaw in that logic is rather obvious. A major reason for Yawning quitting was Blizzard's unwillingness to listen or even communicate with the Feral community. The original DoC changes and set bonuses were so bad that they were indefensible and Ferals were able to generate a small blip on the PTR forum. Other than that Blizzard has turned a deaf ear to Ferals for as long as I can remember.

    I haven't seen anybody say Feral is useless. The problem is it is not competitive enough to keep a spot on most 10 man progression raid teams. If you are top 1% of Ferals or have been Feral with the same group for a long time then you will have a spot. There are too many bosses though where picking a Feral is rarely a good choice. The real irony is the most important drops tend to come from bosses Feral is terrible at and the bosses Feral is best at have no useful drops at all. In the end it comes down to loot distribution and there are better specs for a progression raid to invest their loot in.
    Not to go off on a tangent, but I kind of like having mandatory glyphs for feral. The glyphs feel powerful and like they do something, even if they theoretically limit options. Glyph of Cat Power and Savage Roar are mandatory and that basically leaves Shredding (?) and Stampeding Roar as the optional slot. But you could also look at it from the other side, I happen to also play a shadow priest and the glyphs for shadow are pathetic. I could literally not even glyph and it wouldn't affect my gameplay or quality of life, I wouldn't even notice. I rather have glyphs that are mandatory and feel powerful, than feel like I'm pointlessly slotting glyphs. I know blizzard wants players to have options, but the two are the extreme cases which I think are pretty common as far as glyphs are concerned in MoP. Some classes have mandatory glyphs and others have pathetically weak glyphs. Anyway thats my rant on that

    As far as yawning/blizzards response to feral - I think it's quite evident that they don't have a single person on the development team that adequately addresses feral on a consistent basis, but then again I can't blame them. It's one of the least played specs in PvE so I'm just assuming they devout resources elsewhere. Although, I would agree Blizzard's communication/understanding of the feral community has been non-existent.

  12. #112
    Deleted
    I have been leveling a rogue, because I felt like I wanted to do some pug raids outside of our progression, and I have to say it's apparent why many go to rogues. I'm not trying to bash on the class, I'm actually having a reasonable amount of fun with mine at the moment, but the spec i'm playing (assassination, supposedly the better spec atm) is ridiculously easy to play. Your slice and dice auto refreshes when you use envenom, which means you really don't even need to track it because your combo points fill up so fast you will be using envemon....a lot. The only real thing you need to manage is rupture, 1 dot...

    I would personally reroll if I wasn't still in love with feral. Assassination pretty much beats feral in dps on almost every fight, they are much easier to play so finding a good rogue will not be as hard as finding a good feral and with the amount of people with stats buff now, we aren't even favored for that, not to mention our raid cooldown is a talent, and while good, probably wouldn't make or break a raid group, especially in 10 man. I think even WW monks are doing better then us at the moment but don't quote me on this.

    Are ferals dying? No, it's hard to be a good feral now-a-days and you'll normally find that guilds with a well established rogue will often reject you, but it won't stop people playing feral. The community is small, but has some amazing people in it.

  13. #113
    *Bropaw*

    I've still got a feral druid, but he's not my main seeing as ranged seem to be wanted so much in raids. My gear is still pretty bad, but I can do decent numbers still. I love the playstyle, and nothing will stop me from not playing it.
    Humans fear the beast within the wolf because they do not understand the beast within themselves.

  14. #114
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    I recently switched from Feral back to moonkin (I went Feral to give my guild team the crit buff, then they never got together >-<). Maybe I'm not the best person to give an opinion on the spec since I tend to favor ranged specs anyway.

    My main problem with Feral was the Shred / Mangle switch. It was a bit of a pain for me to have two buttons as primary combo point builders dependent on situation, usually I'd get used to Mangle while soloing and I'd have to get used to Shred again when in raids and dungeons. Not going to cry out for a change though, I think it's just part of the class that simply didn't sit right with me.

    Wouldn't say they're dying out though, I see plenty of skilled ferals knocking around. Maybe fewer than other specs.

  15. #115
    Comparing smoke bomb and tranq is done often and we get nowhere because of it. Different classes, different abilities. They're both good.

    Tranq is better when: people need to be spread out, the cooldowns will only be used once, the damage is spread over a longer period of time (tranq is 8 seconds or less and adds a hot for another 8 seconds).

    Smoke bomb is better when: people can be grouped up, the cooldown can be used many times, the damage is very bursty (smoke bomb is only five seconds and glyphed to 7).

    Side note to the 3 minute Tranquility idea: that wouldn't make it any better. Tranq without HotW sucks hard. It should be 6 minutes at the very most, for sure, but 3 minutes (without a HotW change) is a little silly.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Moosie View Post
    I have been leveling a rogue, because I felt like I wanted to do some pug raids outside of our progression, and I have to say it's apparent why many go to rogues. I'm not trying to bash on the class, I'm actually having a reasonable amount of fun with mine at the moment, but the spec i'm playing (assassination, supposedly the better spec atm) is ridiculously easy to play. Your slice and dice auto refreshes when you use envenom, which means you really don't even need to track it because your combo points fill up so fast you will be using envemon....a lot. The only real thing you need to manage is rupture, 1 dot...
    I get so bored playing my rogue at times, haha. The funny part about you saying you need to manage 1 dot: it doesn't even do much damage and you only have it up for the energy regen. Which makes it even easier. Not only that but they have a barkskin except it's more powerful, no cooldown, and mitigates so many AoEs it's stupid. I can blunder into a bunch of lightning things on heroic jin'rokh on my rogue but it's cool because I have feint. I feel like I'm cheating most of the time.

  16. #116
    Quote Originally Posted by Dysheki View Post
    Not only that but they have a barkskin except it's more powerful, no cooldown, and mitigates so many AoEs it's stupid. I can blunder into a bunch of lightning things on heroic jin'rokh on my rogue but it's cool because I have feint. I feel like I'm cheating most of the time.
    Well to be fair it does have a 2 second cooldown since it costs 20 energy. But it's more like Survival Instincts than barkskin.

  17. #117
    Quote Originally Posted by teddabear View Post
    Well to be fair it does have a 2 second cooldown since it costs 20 energy. But it's more like Survival Instincts than barkskin.
    Depends on the damage taken. If it's not considered an AoE attack and you have Elusiveness it will be 30% damage reduction (more powerful but closer in effectiveness to Barkskin at 20% than SI). If it is considered an AoE attack then yeah it's more akin to SI and more powerful with Elusiveness.

    But I'm just talking in general about all damage. Most people think of Feint as only an ability for AoE attacks but forget it can be talented to deal with all damage at a lesser %.

  18. #118
    Quote Originally Posted by Dysheki View Post
    Depends on the damage taken. If it's not considered an AoE attack and you have Elusiveness it will be 30% damage reduction (more powerful but closer in effectiveness to Barkskin at 20% than SI). If it is considered an AoE attack then yeah it's more akin to SI and more powerful with Elusiveness.

    But I'm just talking in general about all damage. Most people think of Feint as only an ability for AoE attacks but forget it can be talented to deal with all damage at a lesser %.
    Personally I find it irritating that Blizzard felt they had to take away Ferals 30% AoE reduction but they make Rogues virtually invulnerable. It's not a huge deal but it's just one thing after another after another.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mooninites View Post
    Not to go off on a tangent, but I kind of like having mandatory glyphs for feral. The glyphs feel powerful and like they do something, even if they theoretically limit options. Glyph of Cat Power and Savage Roar are mandatory and that basically leaves Shredding (?) and Stampeding Roar as the optional slot.
    I could also add Prowl to that list. Prowl is and example of a good glyph. Not mandatory but very nice to have. AFAIK whenever a Feral needs to glyph Stampeding Roar thy sacrifice Shred. I think its safe to Say the SR glyph and Cat healing glyph are mandatory for progression and should be baked in.

    I agree is readily apparent that no developers play Feral. The original T16 4 pc bonus proved that. I disagree that it is acceptable. Since it is their job and I assume they are well payed for it they should be switching specs on a regular basis so they understand each spec.

  19. #119
    On the last two fights of this tier, Lei Shen and Ra-den, I'm inside the top 2 for dps. On Lei-Shen we have a lock which is nearly always 20-30k ahead of me. After that there's me, followed by the hunters. The rogues don't get close. On Ra-den there's the tank, me, then the rogues. The rogues, of whom we have 2/3, are beneath me by about 20k. Our item level is approximately 545. Again on twins it's usually me versus the hunters for the number 1 spot - I don't remember the rogues being challenging. Perhaps our rogues are bad, or shucks, maybe I'm really good.

    It's not really a fair test however - there are times when I'll have to stop and channel tranquillity. Because as much as it apparently sucks (see earlier) it really seems to help the healing team on the last phase of Ra-den and last phase of Lei Shen. Moreover, I’m not getting things like tricks of the trade on me either; at least, not on the pull anyway.

    The highest recent rank I've achieved when looking only at ferals was something like top 25. Of course, only looking at ferals doesn't really say how the spec is doing in general, but only how I am doing by comparison to others that play my spec. When I compare myself to others who get close to achieving their classes theoretical maximum, I'm in the dust. By way of comfort I wonder to myself, those others that achieve their class’s theoretical maximum, how often do they achieve it? I get top 2 on the fights I mentioned every week. They’re good fights for ferals, and appeal to our strengths. How often do the mages, shamans and locks really achieve those numbers we see them able to get in Simc? Is it as often as I am able to hit 240/250k on Ra-den? I do it weekly. Do they?

    One thing that bothers me is that our effort to dps ratio is terrible. If rogues are really as simple to play as was suggested earlier in this thread and for their effort they achieve superior or even competitive dps, then I do feel I am not getting a fair deal as feral. A couple of pages back I talked about the amount of abilities ferals have to think about at any one given time. That was without the intricacies of the spec (shred versus mangle), and things like energy regeneration and combo points.

    I’m told that when it comes to theoretical maximum dps that ferals are middle of the pack. However, when it comes to “effort” or “error margins” or “concentration” (each is different) ferals have the hardest time. If I had a wish for feral, it’s that we would see dps proportionate to the effort and skill involved in playing the spec.

    I suspect the reason we’re behind is because we’re very hard to buff without having consequences for pvp. A buff to bleeds causes tears. A buff to auto attack is just passive free damage. A buff to savage roar buffs both bleeds (which cause tears) and the free damage. A buff to shred or mangle means that when we’re on a target we really hit damn hard; and we’re mobile, so we’re often all over our target. More energy isn’t helpful because often we’re already energy capped, and it’ll make berserk less meaningful. Additional combo point storage could be interesting, as could making the combo points non target specific; but then switching in pvp would, you guessed it, drown us in tears.

    I don’t think feral is dead, or dying. I think it’s a remarkably hard spec to master and do excellently with. I think the major reward from playing feral comes from the knowledge that you’re getting it right, when you do in fact get it right. I know I’m “getting it right” because I rank quite highly across ferals, and often top in my raid.

    But if we are truly a theoretical middle of the pack dps, and those other classes perform their numbers with the consistency with which I perform mine, then we ought to see the effort ferals make rewarded in terms of having higher consistent theoretical maximum damage.

    I say this because I believe that effort, where possible, ought to be rewarded.

    Long live feral.
    Last edited by Themessiah; 2013-07-16 at 01:35 PM.

  20. #120
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    Well written response Themessiah. I feel the exact same!

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