Feral WoD wishlist

[hullaballoonatic]

Still though, I am under the impression most arena ferals take NV for the additional burst, but without damage components to those talents, pvp ferals would pick up hotw more consistently, and use it for extra survival in bear form.

[RelaZ]

Still though, I am under the impression most arena ferals take NV for the additional burst, but without damage components to those talents, pvp ferals would pick up hotw more consistently, and use it for extra survival in bear form.

In EU most Ferals do, in US however most take HotW.

[Arielle]

Sure...

You sure don't do any research do you?

https://twitter.com/holinka/status/431843250937151488

[exochaft]

I'd be fine with that, imo having to stand still for 8 seconds has become an increasing liability. That is of course if we can assume that other DPS also lose their raid cooldowns. I don't recall seeing any hints that Blizzard was moving this direction but I haven't really been paying attention lately.

I swore there was a random tweet where it was mentioned in passing that they'd tone down raid CD's... or maybe it's my wishful thinking. I've been advocating for the reduction/removal of, as Arielle put it, healer-strength cooldowns being on DPSers for quite a while, as it's gone a bit overboard now. From my perspective, HotW has suffered as a cooldown because of the rampant presence of cooldowns on DPS classes, especially in a 25man environment (seemed to get less use the further the expansion went, as well, from a proactive raid saver CD). I'm sure there are many of us that aren't fans of "arms races" when it comes to... well, about anything in WoW, whether it's raid CDs, CC's, etc.

Alright... now notice the bear backing away slowly into the cave and out of sight... I tread lightly in Feral discussions and pick my battles.

[hullaballoonatic]

I'm not sure the abundance of raid cooldowns was due to an arms race persay, but because of 10 man raids and general raid design philosophy. When having to create fights and balance around only 10 people, with 34 specs, you have to make sure you can build a 10 man raid out of most combinations of those specs, and combined with many fight mechanics that just blatantly require raid cooldowns, you end up with the system we have today.

Although low flex numbers will occur, Blizzard will hopefully move over to more interesting design choices for fights now that mythic is a static 20 people. I expect things like rage dispels and simple raid cd rotations will not be as abundant, and as long as all healers bring them, I can understand all dps losing them as well.

There is another side to this coin, though, and that is the depth of dps gameplay as a whole. It's always nice to have something to do other than blatantly dps, and while fight mechanics can offer this, class abilities will more consistently. Even if you're not a fan of raid wide cooldowns, you have to admit feral tranquility is one of the most interesting ones from a gameplay perspective, requiring a lot of planning to pull off precisely and efficiently.

[raffy]

My 10-man guild is pretty casual and we've been struggling the last few weeks with attendance, etc... To help with the healing, I started using my PS heals for emergency raid healing (using right-click on raid frame no-shift macro.) While it requires a little extra effort, being able to pump out targeted 100K+ instant heals is pretty nice.

However, when I look at my raid healing at the end of the encounter, it's always so depressing seeing how little overall healing all that extra effort produces. Sure, everyone else's self heal (like Warlocks) or autopilot AoE heal (Ele/Enh healing rain/totem/whatever) is brainless and unable to actually save anyone whereas I can prevent a death, it's kind of embarrassing how little healing I actually provide with my PS procs (considering it's 1 every ~12sec + GCD + alignment issues if DoC.)

I know Blizzard had said that smart heals are a bit out of control and they will probably be scaled back considerably, however I hope (if the PS mechanic still exists) that our PS+HT heal becomes a bit more beefy. I understand that a direct buff might not be the right option -- being able to dump a 300K heal a few times a minute is probably a bit too good, but it does require human interaction (it's single-target and non-smart), requires a GCD, and requires a DPS to do something outside their normal role (triage heal as DPS.) For example, it would be nice if the PS+HT heal was more like a PS+Regrowth (a big heal + short hot component) so it wasn't all front-loaded so the overall throughput could be increased. Additionally, people have talked about making our HT splash heal (which is interesting) but makes it a smart heal.

I think WW monks have a great model, where their Tiger brew also increases their healing done. It also doesn't help that we're using the Rune, which doesn't provide agility and doesn't increase the strength of our heals.

I also think our LotP heal is a bit dated and really question why we got Ysera's Gift (which is like LotP 2.0) -- these easily could of been condensed into one as a Feral/Guardian baseline ability. I also miss NS, but I guess that ship has sailed.

In regards to PvP, I feel that PS should become undispellable. Since it can't be used for legitimate CC anymore (PS+Cyclone), I don't see why it should be dispellable since it's not truly a proc -- it's user-controllable, it's just that we're inside of a GCD whenever it goes off, so it's always vulnerable.

[teddabear]

I swore there was a random tweet where it was mentioned in passing that they'd tone down raid CD's... or maybe it's my wishful thinking. I've been advocating for the reduction/removal of, as Arielle put it, healer-strength cooldowns being on DPSers for quite a while, as it's gone a bit overboard now. From my perspective, HotW has suffered as a cooldown because of the rampant presence of cooldowns on DPS classes, especially in a 25man environment (seemed to get less use the further the expansion went, as well, from a proactive raid saver CD). I'm sure there are many of us that aren't fans of "arms races" when it comes to... well, about anything in WoW, whether it's raid CDs, CC's, etc.

Alright... now notice the bear backing away slowly into the cave and out of sight... I tread lightly in Feral discussions and pick my battles.

The emphasis on "healer strength" gives me pause as if they are only going after the healing raid cooldowns. Rallying Cry, Devo, Barrier and Smokebomb all on much shorter cooldowns are all better imo. As has been mentioned many times this expansion damage prevention beats damage healing every day of the week and twice on raid days.

[exochaft]

The emphasis on "healer strength" gives me pause as if they are only going after the healing raid cooldowns. Rallying Cry, Devo, Barrier and Smokebomb all on much shorter cooldowns are all better imo. As has been mentioned many times this expansion damage prevention beats damage healing every day of the week and twice on raid days.

I'm pretty sure we're lumping them together? Maybe not, but typically healers (and to a lesser extent tanks) have classically been viewed as keeping the raid alive, whether it's from healing or preventing the raid from damage... the tools used on the raid to meet this end are what I'd consider "healer strength" CDs. Personal survivability is one thing as a DPS, extending that survivability to the raid is quite another. Ferals and Tranquility (not sure if Ysera's Gift is typically viewed towards this end or not, I doubt anyone would make a fuss about it) has just been dwarfed by the presence of all the shorter CD damage reduction abilities that DPS can bring, although if you took all those abilities away and left Feral alone, it would appear to be heavily lopsided in favor of Ferals. It makes sense that Blizz would take a look at Tranquility for non-healers.

Someone commented above about my mention of an arms race, and I meant that in an effort to keep classes from being excluded (and probably 10man balance to some degree) raid CDs have just started piling up. When rogue got a DR for the raid via Smoke Bomb for the sake of just having a raid CD, that's a sign that either raid CDs are too necessary and/or raid CDs are too abundant. It's a delicate balance that hopefully Mystic raids will partially solve, especially if Normal/Heroic aren't tuned so tightly that raid CDs are necessary. Also, if Blizz makes a move to keep those kinds of raid CDs with healers and potentially tanks, there should be less issues with DPS rosters... yes, it may introduce a slew of other problems, but it's a step in likely the right direction.

That all being said, there shouldn't be an issue with minor raid survival/healing abilities (such as Ysera's Gift, NV, or targeted HT's) even in a world with massively restricted raid CDs. If nothing is done about the rampant spread of raids CDs across DPS classes (highly unlikely as it may be), then Feral may have a case towards getting more love in that department. However, I think it's smarter to put more energy into QoL issues outside of raids CDs at this point in time.

*edit* - Just remembered when LotP healed the raid when they crit, and I'm kinda laughing at how that may be viewed nowadays.

[Themessiah]

My 10-man guild is pretty casual and we've been struggling the last few weeks with attendance, etc... To help with the healing, I started using my PS heals for emergency raid healing (using right-click on raid frame no-shift macro.) While it requires a little extra effort, being able to pump out targeted 100K+ instant heals is pretty nice.

However, when I look at my raid healing at the end of the encounter, it's always so depressing seeing how little overall healing all that extra effort produces. Sure, everyone else's self heal (like Warlocks) or autopilot AoE heal (Ele/Enh healing rain/totem/whatever) is brainless and unable to actually save anyone whereas I can prevent a death, it's kind of embarrassing how little healing I actually provide with my PS procs (considering it's 1 every ~12sec + GCD + alignment issues if DoC.)

I used to have the same issue on Lei Shen 25 HC. Sometimes our tanks would be very far ahead of our healers when moving Lei Shen around - being among one of the fastest classes in game, I was able to keep up and provide some healing assistance to the tanks when they took a spike of damage, which happened to be almost every attempt at similar intervals. I also looked for this extra effort of healing the tanks to be reflected in some sort of clearly visible way via Skada, but it was negligible at best.

No one else spotted that without my instant heal, and the extra effort to get it off on the right target at the right time, reducing my dps in the mean time (was using DoC), I saved us using a CR on the tank. However, I do not think this is an issue with the ability - I think it's an issue with tracking the direct impact of each person and ability in a hectic, rapidly changing environment. The fact that PS with HT does not provide large numbers on a grand scale does not stop it being a situational life saver - even if it can be hard to track.

It sucks that there isn't clear bragging rights to be had though. It's hard to substantiate the claim that 'I saved the tank with my 200k heal' when you have to trawl through a combat log to do so.

[Saralin]

Give us glyphs that makes Mangle look like the old cat "Claw" ability.
As for new things? I think it'd be neat to see a move similar to the monk blossom ability, but apply bleeds on the targets that hit them.
Would love to be able to be old school feral cats where we had bleeds but that wasn't where all our damage came from. Maybe make it so that swipe does more damage, has less cost and replaces thrash (for a talent or glyph or something). Would like to see a glyph that makes all our animal forms work for the glyph of stars so we can be a caster stabbing things with a weapon and then have the animal animations with that GW2 esque ability type.

[hullaballoonatic]

Give us glyphs that makes Mangle look like the old cat "Claw" ability.

Make a /cast mangle macro, give it the claw icon and rename it claw. Enjoy. Unless you mean the sound, too, which you can replace by fiddling with the sound files. The animation is already the same.

[hullaballoonatic]

Still can't think of an appropriate replacement for an additional 4 seconds on rip for that talent. Ideas are welcome.

Ideas on fun minor glyphs would also be neat.

[Zstr]

I've mentioned about tiger's fury having extra charge would be a nice set bonus(instead base ability), especialy at start of expansion, where cd reduction stat will be low at start

[Maximum]

I really hope they do SOMETHING to make up for us losing our ability to snapshot. I just dont see the class being fun as it is right now with dots ticking harder when something procs not based on what you did to it. It'll just be a Keep this and that up kind of spec and wont be too difficult. Kinda hoping blizzard just doesn't push me completely away from the class.

[exochaft]

I really hope they do SOMETHING to make up for us losing our ability to snapshot. I just dont see the class being fun as it is right now with dots ticking harder when something procs not based on what you did to it. It'll just be a Keep this and that up kind of spec and wont be too difficult. Kinda hoping blizzard just doesn't push me completely away from the class.

Considering that abilities, such as DoC and Tiger's Fury will still snapshot, there will still be skill involved in executing the Feral rotation optimally. While I'm going to take a leap and assume things will remain the same in terms of ability scaling for this example, even those random procs could still affect a Feral's rotation... such as RoR procs making Rake a strong CP generator for it's duration. Too much emphasis has been put on procs for Feral output as they are now, and no amount of skill can alter how often and when random procs will occur.

On a slightly different note, I was curious of the potential shadow priest changes would trickle down into other classes, such as Ferals. The changes I mean are the ones that let shadow priests be a DoT class or a direct-damage class depending upon choices made by the player. One of my personal gripes, albiet a minor one, is how our direct damage abilities seem rather lackluster in our contributions towards damage output. Of course scaling changes could be made to alter such balance, but I think having to choose between being all about the bleeds or all about direct-damage attacks could add an interesting choice to Ferals in terms of what they want to do for a specific encounter. Although, I think I'd settle with the damage of Mangle/Shred and Ferocious Bite having meaning or being at least comparable to Rake/Rip.

[Maximum]

Considering that abilities, such as DoC and Tiger's Fury will still snapshot, there will still be skill involved in executing the Feral rotation optimally. While I'm going to take a leap and assume things will remain the same in terms of ability scaling for this example, even those random procs could still affect a Feral's rotation... such as RoR procs making Rake a strong CP generator for it's duration. Too much emphasis has been put on procs for Feral output as they are now, and no amount of skill can alter how often and when random procs will occur.

As most of what you're saying is correct I'm not speaking about keeping DoC and tf up on dots. That is like square one feral. Reacting to trinket procs and knowing when to pool and when not to pool is something entirely different and what mainly sets good ferals from not so good ones. If the big "skill cap" in ferals was just on using tf and DoC correctly the spec would be a joke compared to what it is. Just look at the disparity in logs for multiple siege of orgrimmar encounters, do you think the 2 people consistantly getting 1 2 or 3 on everything means they just get better trinket procs than everyone else? Maybe its just me but feral is really the best class when it comes to just purely outplaying people, and i feel like with that change it will become more like the rest of the classes

[hullaballoonatic]

I am even somewhat worried about what blizzard will do with Dream of Cenarius, which I'm rather certain they wholly dislike in its current state. These concerns fueled much of the suggestions I made in the OP, especially the addition of the level 100 talent that is essentially RoRO.

exo, though I was hoping to keep a talent in my list of level 100s that is not so drastically shifting of the feral rotation or demanding of skill, I think I'm more attracted to the idea of designing one that does shift feral damage from bleeds to direct damage abilities. I think I'll brainstorm how best that could be implemented. Obviously the first step would be shifting mastery to affecting direct damage abilities instead of bleeds, past that, it'll take some more thought. I'd appreciate more input.

[Deleted]

I really hope they do SOMETHING to make up for us losing our ability to snapshot. I just dont see the class being fun as it is right now with dots ticking harder when something procs not based on what you did to it. It'll just be a Keep this and that up kind of spec and wont be too difficult. Kinda hoping blizzard just doesn't push me completely away from the class.

It should be fun and challenging enough during the first tier of WoD due to DoC, energy starvation and lack of crit(I hope we'll be able to take DoC at least... ). Afterwards then I agree. I would prefer something more.

[exochaft]

It should be fun and challenging enough during the first tier of WoD due to DoC, energy starvation and lack of crit(I hope we'll be able to take DoC at least... ). Afterwards then I agree. I would prefer something more.

Except that's a more general issue that could be viewed independent of trinket procs and more towards the shift in spec power/flexibility as one gears up. When any class/spec is undergeared, everything feels harder to execute and will likely require more skill to optimally perform (which also causes spec/class imbalance, the typical balancing headaches). Once we start gearing up, everything gets easy... even with current snap-shotting of bleeds it's really easy to just track the strength of bleeds and react accordingly, and the amount of skill required to execute properly is minimal. The simplistic version is that from the beginning to the end of an expansion, Ferals go from insane skill cap to almost none at all currently; the snapshot change affects the beginning of an expansion a lot more than the end.

Anyways, in response to your query hullaballonatic, I think Blizz adjusting the damage spread to be more inclusive for direct-damage will be a lot more likely than offering two different playstyles... mostly because druids already have 4 specs, and this would almost be artificially adding another spec or subspec. If there's a simple and elegant solution, then perhaps. If it were to be a talent choice, not only would it have to bring bleeds and direct damage closer together (perhaps they trade places collectively), but there would have to be something that pushes it to be a throughput gain over the other talents potentially. Easiest vehicle would likely be Ferocious Bite, making its damage worthy of being a finisher versus something I press to refresh Rip at low target HP that happens to do some damage. I personally would prefer that bleeds still stay relevant instead of being left out purely, although the priority of Rip vs FB would have to be addressed.

Anyways, I have no idea if it would be popular or desirable at all, it's more of taking the concept of bringing bleed/direct damage closer together using the model that Blizz is aiming to use for shadow priests (without completely altering the spec). Again, I'd be happy if the damage of the abilities was brought closer together sans a talent making it happen.

[Skadovsk]

As most of what you're saying is correct I'm not speaking about keeping DoC and tf up on dots. That is like square one feral. Reacting to trinket procs and knowing when to pool and when not to pool is something entirely different and what mainly sets good ferals from not so good ones. If the big "skill cap" in ferals was just on using tf and DoC correctly the spec would be a joke compared to what it is. Just look at the disparity in logs for multiple siege of orgrimmar encounters, do you think the 2 people consistantly getting 1 2 or 3 on everything means they just get better trinket procs than everyone else? Maybe its just me but feral is really the best class when it comes to just purely outplaying people, and i feel like with that change it will become more like the rest of the classes

Now tell me how you got that immersus rank, besides double procs, how did you position yourself to hit everything, is that mostly tank's job or what, they're all over the place in my guild.