Thoughts on Feral from a re-roller's perspective

[Pull My Finger]

Feral has been my main spec since 2006 - yes, even back then when it sucked big time - and I really love it, but target switching and AoE are two things that piss me off. But I'm not sure if Blizzard currently wants it to be better than is right now, because they deliberately design classes and specs with strengths and weaknesses.

[mmokri]

There is bad quality design compared to other classes:
1. Long redirect cooldown.
2. 6-seconds rip prolongation.
3. Soul of the forest + DoC - these talents increase power of combo points. Meanwhile combo-points are switch problem.
4. Dots scale MUCH better than direct damage. Plus amount of time required to apply fresh rip assuming you have zero energy + cooldowns.

But these points also snowball feral into beast single target.

[Deleted]

There is bad quality design compared to other classes:
1. Long redirect cooldown.
2. 6-seconds rip prolongation.
3. Soul of the forest + DoC - these talents increase power of combo points. Meanwhile combo-points are switch problem.
4. Dots scale MUCH better than direct damage. Plus amount of time required to apply fresh rip assuming you have zero energy + cooldowns.

But these points also snowball feral into beast single target.

All of the above are no longer relevant with dot snapshotting being gone though so we'll have to wait for what blizzard comes up with to compensate for playstyle immersion.

[mmokri]

Also about rogues. I may be VERY incorrect - because I played rogue only at free-shards.
I think rogues evolved with latest expansions MUCH more. Previous rogues were much closer to ferals. Its related to OP because he played rogue before.

[Deleted]

Also about rogues. I may be VERY incorrect - because I played rogue only at free-shards.
I think rogues evolved with latest expansions MUCH more. Previous rogues were much closer to ferals. Its related to OP because he played rogue before.

You're right, in fact a lot of work has gone into rogues in the last two expansions (cata & mop) with an ever greater emphasis on making all of their three specs pve-viable; not necessarily all three in the same tier, but the balance has been shifting very organically. Blizzard seems to be continuing this trend in WoD mentioning that they are working on making changes to rogue specs to not only make them viable but also "feel different".

I believe this approach was so far unavailable for ferals and druids in general due to the vast amount of blockers and baggage that they had to clean up before being actually able to work on it, ie. pvp vs pve bleeds, bearcatting, IMBA MANGLE SPAM + IMMUNITY (Hello TBC), tank imbalance, rejuv spam, feral scaling, balance aoe, the feral/guardian split, introducing new trinket mechanics in ToT and SoO which wrecked predictions, dot snapshotting, the list goes on.

It seems that we might finally be seeing some proper work done to ferals (ie. design changes, not just quick fixes) and it has been a long time coming. But the results won't be perfect (rogues took 4 years of tinkering) and I'm sure we'll see some more of it. I just hope that they improve, or rather "evolve" things in such a way that it will be more benefit/fun than harm in the first couple tiers of WoD where the stigma and feral raiding populations are most likely to take shape.

[teddabear]

I definitely agree with fixing Ferocious Bite. Since Blizzard has already crossed the threshold for having abilities work differently in PvP I see no valid excuse for not fixing FB in PvE.

[mmokri]

@teddabear I would rather nerf rip/rake/mastery + buff direct damage abilities.

EDIT: Really I would rather reroll rogue instead of reworks which transform feral into rogue.