Feral WoD wishlist

[exochaft]

You can't really count DoC. It works completely differently, I doubt anybody monitors it ever. If you don't have to track Tiger's Fury then you must know something I don't. I'm not sure why you wouldn't track Savage Roar. Granted at current gear levels you could refresh early if you aren't clipping bleeds but I wouldn't recommend it.

Well, as someone mentioned, removing trinket procs and other gear-related procs from bleed snap-shotting does remove a massive amount of the math and combinations you'd need to require. That being said, I think Blizz would make a few assumptions that make it less prone to "zomg I need an add-on to track this!"

First assumption is that SR will be up all the time. I know, sounds like a no-brainer, but it allows bleeds to snap-shot the SR buff and still not need to track the bleed strength with respect to SR. If the level 100 talents remain the same, offering passive SR, that's one less thing to track.

Second assumption is that we'll use DoC procs on bleeds. I'm a bit leary of this assumption, though, especially if we don't know how abilities in WoD will scale. However, if Rip/Rake are supposed to be the prime candidates for DoC when refreshing them, you can snap-shot DoC w/o having to track bleed strength with respect to DoC. Again, DoC is optional, so it's very likely the average Feral may not take it because it requires a bit more effort.

At this point, the only variable in bleed strength would be Tiger's Fury. One thing isn't too hard to track, especially if bleeds get the Pandemic treatment. Considering the length of our bleeds (especially Rake), it won't really be too difficult or maybe necessary for the average player to even worry about SR/DoC/TF effects on bleeds, as long as they use them with good uptimes.

[Bill Jenkins]

Pleeaseee take shape shifting off gcds.

[hullaballoonatic]

tiger's fury buff is easy to monitor because it doesn't last long and you control when the buff applies. The same is for DoC, and savage roar would be a part of your rotation monitoring regardless, and was never difficult to monitor.

Pleeaseee take shape shifting off gcds.

Taking shapeshifting off the gcd has too many extensive ramifications, unfortunately. It would be very nice, but not necessary or particularly possible.

[teddabear]

Well, as someone mentioned, removing trinket procs and other gear-related procs from bleed snap-shotting does remove a massive amount of the math and combinations you'd need to require. That being said, I think Blizz would make a few assumptions that make it less prone to "zomg I need an add-on to track this!"

First assumption is that SR will be up all the time. I know, sounds like a no-brainer, but it allows bleeds to snap-shot the SR buff and still not need to track the bleed strength with respect to SR. If the level 100 talents remain the same, offering passive SR, that's one less thing to track.

Second assumption is that we'll use DoC procs on bleeds. I'm a bit leary of this assumption, though, especially if we don't know how abilities in WoD will scale. However, if Rip/Rake are supposed to be the prime candidates for DoC when refreshing them, you can snap-shot DoC w/o having to track bleed strength with respect to DoC. Again, DoC is optional, so it's very likely the average Feral may not take it because it requires a bit more effort.

At this point, the only variable in bleed strength would be Tiger's Fury. One thing isn't too hard to track, especially if bleeds get the Pandemic treatment. Considering the length of our bleeds (especially Rake), it won't really be too difficult or maybe necessary for the average player to even worry about SR/DoC/TF effects on bleeds, as long as they use them with good uptimes.

Basically Blizzard is removing all the ones that really matter from snapshotting. So their claim that it is about removing the need for add-ons doesn't hold water. What they are really doing is dumbing down the game yet again so there will be even less of a difference between good players and bad ones.

[Deleted]

Second assumption is that we'll use DoC procs on bleeds. I'm a bit leary of this assumption, though, especially if we don't know how abilities in WoD will scale. However, if Rip/Rake are supposed to be the prime candidates for DoC when refreshing them, you can snap-shot DoC w/o having to track bleed strength with respect to DoC. Again, DoC is optional, so it's very likely the average Feral may not take it because it requires a bit more effort.

That's an interesting theory; we might actually see more usage for DoC on shred/FB if they decide to boost our direct damage but it can quickly get out of hand if a) we don't have enough haste /energy regen to react to the short PS timing or b) HotW's default stat buff or NV's usage will outsim any possible combination of DoC usage. It is a very good point that TF will essentially give us a higher skill cap compared to the average player for its usage with rip/rake/thrash snapshots while trying to get in as many DD abilities as possible. However, in a world where snapshotting is no longer our major contributor to skill-motivated performance I don't really see a place for DoC in its current form.

[hullaballoonatic]

As I did in my proposed spec changes in the OP, Blizzard absolutely needs to utilize glyphs and talents to offer the depth and complexity that high end ferals are looking for. Dot Snapshotting as it exists today can be maintained via a talent.

[teddabear]

Blizzard absolutely needs to utilize glyphs and talents to offer the depth and complexity that high end ferals are looking for.

While it irritates me that Blizzard isn't being honest about the changes to snapshotting, my real beef is that I like the complexity as it is now. That is what keeps me playing, I always feel their is room for improvement. While there will always be some troll claiming all classes are easy, for me Feral in its current form is quite challenging and I just don't see myself motivated to play without that challenge.

[mmokri]

Blizzard absolutely needs to utilize glyphs and talents to offer the depth and complexity that high end ferals are looking for.

Its going to be like DoC: BIS, hard, non-mandatory.
I don't support dps glyphs. I don't support half-ass snapshots (DoC,TF limited). I think moonfire talent is right path for high end feral.

[Rioo]

The moonfire talent sounds really shit atm imo. Just another rake to keep up pretty much, which will hurt our ramp-up time even more. I'm all for it being challenging, but adding more and more dots isn't fun game play. Making our dots matter, as they do now with snapshotting, is more fun even if it isn't ideal.

[exochaft]

While it irritates me that Blizzard isn't being honest about the changes to snapshotting, my real beef is that I like the complexity as it is now. That is what keeps me playing, I always feel their is room for improvement. While there will always be some troll claiming all classes are easy, for me Feral in its current form is quite challenging and I just don't see myself motivated to play without that challenge.

It will really depend on the scaling of abilities and the power of procs. While the bleeds will dynamically change with weapon/trinket procs, things still do change beyond just the power of bleeds. As we've seen in MoP, with certain procs Rake became a better combo point generator than Mangle/Shred in some cases. However, I'm hoping for the more imaginative scenario in WoD where procs will alter direct damage heavily or change which actions happen when in the Feral rotation (snap-shotting kind of did this, but the adjustments are very minor compared to what would have occurred w/o the procs). We've gotten so used to bleeds being everything that it may be better if the attention shifted to the entire package instead of throwing all our eggs into one proverbial basket.

[teddabear]

It will really depend on the scaling of abilities and the power of procs. While the bleeds will dynamically change with weapon/trinket procs, things still do change beyond just the power of bleeds. As we've seen in MoP, with certain procs Rake became a better combo point generator than Mangle/Shred in some cases. However, I'm hoping for the more imaginative scenario in WoD where procs will alter direct damage heavily or change which actions happen when in the Feral rotation (snap-shotting kind of did this, but the adjustments are very minor compared to what would have occurred w/o the procs). We've gotten so used to bleeds being everything that it may be better if the attention shifted to the entire package instead of throwing all our eggs into one proverbial basket.

I'm sure there are things they could do but I believe Blizzard's main goal is to minimize the difference between a good player and bad player. That way they can keep good hybrids below the pures without the bad payers quitting because their DPS is so low. That may sound like conspiracy theory but I think the dynamically changing gear is a definite indicator that this is going to happen.

[exochaft]

I'm sure there are things they could do but I believe Blizzard's main goal is to minimize the difference between a good player and bad player. That way they can keep good hybrids below the pures without the bad payers quitting because their DPS is so low. That may sound like conspiracy theory but I think the dynamically changing gear is a definite indicator that this is going to happen.

I agree with the premise, not exactly the end result. With snap-shotting, there is a massive difference between an bad Feral and a very good Feral (there's even huge DPS variance with a good Feral), the question is where you tune the middle ground. While I believe Blizz tries to tune it so the high-end players don't get a massive damage lead, the outcome sometimes doesn't align with that belief. Therefore, if you bring the low-end and high-end Feral damage potential closer together, you can actually tune the class damage better and hopefully avoid a great discrepancy in class damage output.

With respect to the dynamically changing gear, I don't think it really has much to do with class/spec balance. Considering the rest of the changes coming in WoD, it's more a QoL and bag space solution amongst other things. There could be a hint of that if we assume there was consideration made for secondary stat balance so using the same gear for different specs wasn't complete nonsensical.

[hullaballoonatic]

I feel like that idea jives quite a bit with Blizzard's obsession with depth. I have faith in blizzard's ability to balance the game around a relatively wide spectrum of damage dealt from dps specs given that the difference between beginner dps and expert dps would be a rather large gap.

[Tinderhoof]

I agree with the premise, not exactly the end result. With snap-shotting, there is a massive difference between an bad Feral and a very good Feral (there's even huge DPS variance with a good Feral), the question is where you tune the middle ground. While I believe Blizz tries to tune it so the high-end players don't get a massive damage lead, the outcome sometimes doesn't align with that belief. Therefore, if you bring the low-end and high-end Feral damage potential closer together, you can actually tune the class damage better and hopefully avoid a great discrepancy in class damage output.

I agree it is a desire to be able to better tune a class. When you get huge outliers both good and bad it makes it more difficult. While class tuning is some of the reason for removing snapshotting it's not the main reason. The main reason is it prevents the design team from being able to introduce cool proc's from set bonuses, trinkets and weapons. Rune and UVLS are perfect examples of this. Both mechanics are cool, but grow to crazy rates of ridiculous when in the context of snapshotting. They would like to remove the existence of "If you have this trinket you do well, if you don't you suck". Having to nerf a trinket before the end of an expansion is something they consider a failure, but they didn't end up having a choice with UVLS. Rune got to stay cause you still had to work for it to get the most out of it. Keeping snapshotting around for anyone is just asking to be painted into a corner again. Either we have not release this new mechanic to people cause it's to good for 1-2 classes and awful for others, or we have to nerf it as soon as a new tier comes out. Taking out snapshotting levels the playing field cause only 2 classes really benefited from it in a meaningful way.

With respect to the dynamically changing gear, I don't think it really has much to do with class/spec balance. Considering the rest of the changes coming in WoD, it's more a QoL and bag space solution amongst other things. There could be a hint of that if we assume there was consideration made for secondary stat balance so using the same gear for different specs wasn't complete nonsensical.

It's not just bag space. With the new 1 raid size for Mythic they need to allow raid teams to be more flexible for specific mechanics. They can now bring back stuff that can be only countered by 1-2 specs. Makes sense to allow those raid teams to let one of their classes the ability to get that spec more quickly if they didn't have it already.

[mmokri]

new 1 raid size

Raid variations are renamed + reworked.

[HeroicMythic]

Feral cat should still need skill!

[exochaft]

Raid variations are renamed + reworked.

I think he just meant that there's one raid difficulty setting that has a fixed amount of players needed, versus flex and 10/25. I figured QoL meant bag space clearing up a bit (as druids have suffered this the most, so it's a bigger deal) and the flexibility of changing roles w/o having to accumulate an entire new set of gear. We commonly have Ferals go Resto or Guardian (sometimes Balance, too), and to entertain that flexibility we literally have four sets of gear plus various alternate items for each role and situation. At least with the gear shifting based upon spec, the worst part will likely be rings/trinkets, and trinket hoarding is something that already occurs. On the plus side, this should make hybrids more desirable in terms of filling in gaps or adjusting to encounters if all you have to do is switch a spec versus spending weeks accumulating gear to make it work. If people haven't guessed, I've been waiting for this change for years.

Feral cat should still need skill!

I still feel that RoR gave many people a false sense of skill for Feral. Before that trinket was even out, honestly how many people even cared about snapshotting outside of TF/DoC? While I'm sure some people did, it really didn't take off or become a point of concern and "skill" until RoR came on the scene and made bleed damage explode.

[Tinderhoof]

Be ready for the flood of datamined stuff! Keep calm and no one panic.

[mmokri]

active mitigation hasn't played out as well for Guardians as it has for some other tanks

My words

Glyph of Savagery now grants a free 5 combo point Savage Roar when leaving Prowl

Here is something for high-end feral.

Primal Fury now also grants a combo point for area attacks that critically strike the Druid's primary target.

Multidoting alternative.

90lvl talents no longer dps ones

Fuck yeah, using healing touch as filler, activating HoTW for tranq, 6% HoTW were dumbass.

Nothing about snapshot changes

No comments.

You can cast Rejuvenation while in Bear Form or Cat Form.

WTF? Its not canonically. I don't like this thing.

[aggixx]

Compiled list of WoD alpha changes here:
http://fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopi...&t=4882#p21830