Feral concerns

[Duskpanther]

Hi everybody.
once again I know these are only current alpha patch notes, no values fixed etc... but I think these notes may be commented anyway, while we all wait for the beta , the concerns are of course only for feral pvp.
So, first concern.
With ravage gone there is less crit chanche with the open move (unless the pvp set bonus abilities will be provide something similar, we'll see). Also with shred one combo points costs 40 energy now, instead of 35 with former mangle. These 2 facts meaning slower accumulation of combo points and less free spells (healing or roots) over a fight. I see this fact as a nerf, considering healing capabilities of other classes (once again dk with conversion as example), I personally would call it a huge nerf.
Second concern.
checking the current lev.100 talents, I do not see the utility of Blood Talons. As far it is described this talent gives a 30% dmg increase only on 2 melee abilities and only after casting healing touch. Savagery on the other hand gives a 45% dmg increase always. Why do I have to choose BT ?
Third concern.
As far I understood (I hope i got it wrong), once again they want to nerf down bleed dots compared to current values, and make the cat stay little more melee range.
My analysis, which may be wrong, but I want to share, is following.
If I choose BT the glyph of Savage roars seems to be almost mandatory and I have to get this one instead of Ursols defense, a nice armor buff for bear, which gives opportunity to apply some more dots and mangles, w/o taking insane damage, letting at the same time kitty energy to regen.
Considering that for kitty the other 2 mandatory glyphs are ninth life and cat form / for survival, I really do not see the reason of choosing BT. Even Lunar Inspiration seems to have quite small utility. May be when a mage blinks or speeds away, and charge is on cd... in order to build up few combo from distance, but Vs. melee I see this quite useless, considering abilities of other melees to close the distance very fast.
Look forward to your opinion.
Happy shredding to all kitties.

[Deleted]

Hey man, tbh you'll really have to wait and see what PvP in WoD looks like. For example - casters are losing a lot of their mobility - this is an indirect buff to Ferals with their instant rootbreak and general unpeelability. Fear is also down to a 6 second duration, and we're immune to poly.


Wrt the savagery talent - I'm pretty sure that'll be a DPS loss unless you can't keep SR up by yourself (which good ferals can). I guess we might have to go DoC?

[mbal23]

I think the changes are good overall, feral wont see any nerf with the balancing, you lose things but other things make up for it. Also why would you consider BT any ways Savagery is the talent specifically created for feral. Combo generation will still be close to now with points transfering to your current target automatically. Dots hit pretty hard right now but i dont see there being a large drop since i generally use TF and SR before i use rip which boosts the damage. Wait till you play it though, I have a feeling that feral will get stronger at max level with the new perk.

[ApeDosMil]

Hi everybody.
once again I know these are only current alpha patch notes, no values fixed etc... but I think these notes may be commented anyway, while we all wait for the beta , the concerns are of course only for feral pvp.
So, first concern.
With ravage gone there is less crit chanche with the open move (unless the pvp set bonus abilities will be provide something similar, we'll see). Also with shred one combo points costs 40 energy now, instead of 35 with former mangle. These 2 facts meaning slower accumulation of combo points and less free spells (healing or roots) over a fight. I see this fact as a nerf, considering healing capabilities of other classes (once again dk with conversion as example), I personally would call it a huge nerf.
Second concern.
checking the current lev.100 talents, I do not see the utility of Blood Talons. As far it is described this talent gives a 30% dmg increase only on 2 melee abilities and only after casting healing touch. Savagery on the other hand gives a 45% dmg increase always. Why do I have to choose BT ?
Third concern.
As far I understood (I hope i got it wrong), once again they want to nerf down bleed dots compared to current values, and make the cat stay little more melee range.
My analysis, which may be wrong, but I want to share, is following.
If I choose BT the glyph of Savage roars seems to be almost mandatory and I have to get this one instead of Ursols defense, a nice armor buff for bear, which gives opportunity to apply some more dots and mangles, w/o taking insane damage, letting at the same time kitty energy to regen.
Considering that for kitty the other 2 mandatory glyphs are ninth life and cat form / for survival, I really do not see the reason of choosing BT. Even Lunar Inspiration seems to have quite small utility. May be when a mage blinks or speeds away, and charge is on cd... in order to build up few combo from distance, but Vs. melee I see this quite useless, considering abilities of other melees to close the distance very fast.
Look forward to your opinion.
Happy shredding to all kitties.

1) Something to keep in mind before worrying too much about this is that stats will be brought closer in value than they currently are. So, yes, shred is a little more costly, but haste will (hopefully they keep their promise) be more valuable than it is now. Figure that our energy regen will be higher to at least make up for the increased cost. Plus, they could just flat out reduce the energy cost of shred.

2) Bloody Talon will probably be better for pvp than Savagery. Reasoning? You should be healing yourself as much as possible, and if you are getting focused, you should be healing yourself after every 5 pt combo. Savagery is nice, since it's 100% uptime +5% more damage (standard savage roar is 40%). Most of the time, Blizzard wants active talents to be better, though they can be less consistent. That said, I'm hoping lunar inspiration is good, because laser kitten.

3) Everyone is getting nerfed. The previous build everyone was buffed. They are trying to get the new tuning right. Pvp will be less bursty, and if anything, we may see our bleeds buffed in a later build, seeing as bleeds aren't all that bursty.

These are all valid concerns, especially since pvp doesn't get much testing before live. Let's hope for a speedy hotfix though. :P

[Will]

Considering that for kitty the other 2 mandatory glyphs are ninth life and cat form / for survival
Happy shredding to all kitties.

Those glyphs are mutually exclusive so you can't take them both.

Does anyone know if Bloodtalons affects bleeds? I think Celestalon said that Feral bleeds are still snapshotted. If so, Bloodtalon and using its two procs to snapshot rip and rake = around 20% damage increase OVERALL for most druids, whereas Savagery = around 7-8% damage increase in general.

[Deleted]

I don't have the link to the right tweet but TF and bloodtalons are intended to snapshot. So, I figure snapshotting Bloodtalons bonus with TF is intended to be better than savagery.

[Will]

But if that's the case, Darkmorcel, then it's a clear-cut winner. Even if bleeds at level 100 only account for half of our damage that they do currently on live, it's still the obvious talent to go for if your goal is doing as much damage as possible. One would simply, upon achieving predatory swiftness, hold off using it where possible until bleeds are reaching the re-application zone.

In fact, if this talent were to exist right now on live (hypothetically speaking) then popping out of cat and halting all attacks to cast a healing touch before refreshing both bleeds would STILL be considerable net DPS gain - let alone waiting for PS to trigger! Particularly so if you shifted out to cast HT during a time when A) you run no risk of energy capping and B) you run no risk of delaying the use of TF.

As I pointed out in another thread, let's assume 70% of someone's damage typically comes from rip and rake combined in a boss fight. They could snapshot only 1/2 of their bleeds using Bloodtalons and it would still be a bigger net DPS gain than Savagery or L.I.

[Deleted]

Well, I think it should be superior than savagery since you keep your maintenance buff + you have to add new thingys to your rotation. On the other hand, savagery is entirely passive.

There's still tuning going on so I suspect they may revert Bloodtalons snapshotting if the dps increase is too strong vs the two other talents.

[Will]

I hope they do. I ran some of these talents using current game numbers (I know it's not practical to do this, since so much class balance will be changing at 100, but I did it to get an approximate idea of where things will stand) and in the hands of a good player, Bloodtalons is worth over twice the value of Savagery.

[Zstr]

I did few battles on beta, and I could say passive savage roar or moonfire(this one not functioning yet) will be much better then bloodtalons, coz of pvp is not hitting standing still target dummy like in pve, you have to be mobile and think fast, and that talent will only mess your output, and I would prefer to use HT on critical moments not waiting to apply bleed when I would be dead by that time
through self healing is kinda overpowered with rejuvenation+HT
and Lunar inspiration give a opportunity to damage from range so it will be mostly a best choice for pvp

[FeralSynapse]

With ravage gone there is less crit chanche with the open move (unless the pvp set bonus abilities will be provide something similar, we'll see). Also with shred one combo points costs 40 energy now, instead of 35 with former mangle.

Ravage was completely consumed by Shred, it still has a higher crit % when the boss is at higher health/from stealth, etc.

[gestapo]

I'm concerned about a lot of the ability pruning and it's effect on Feral. Check out the ability pruning thread on this forum.

I see the overwhelming feedback being from a pve perspective and it's worrying for those of us that pvp because most of the PvE Feral players seem to underestimate the loss of abilities like Barkskin, for e.g.

I'm also disliking that the actual out-of-cat form utility for Feral seems to be severely diminished in WoD. On top of that they're sticking us with this ridiculous one button for all travel forms nonsense and not allowing the player to simply choose the form they like (within current restrictions of cours).

It just remains to be seen how many people will play Feral and give feedback during the beta. Given that Feral is played by very few people I don't see many changes happening, which will just about seal the deal as far as WoD being appealing enough to play.

[Deleted]

But with Savagery you always get a 5% icrease and combo points for anything else, witch would increase our damage more since we can use more offensive abiliteies instead of refreshing SR all the time, right?

[Zstr]

form ability purning side
missing 2 buttons of steath opener, makes me pausing, but they work fine in the end, however with stat squish our crit chance is low so shred from steath not always critting ( or it bugged)
With merging shred and mangle, I stuggle - looking for shred button but pressing on empty space in action bar, while being behind target
also no more pre casting SR
those things need some time playing to get used to, everything else is same, nothing dramaticaly changed.

while as new expansion we are getting back to slow energy regen,
so Incarnation is going to be lots of downtime and need to parry it with berserk, and if you get cc it's just waste, plus missing roots, I more consider to go with treants,
loss of barskin is nothing as you have 2x Survival instincts, and lots of self healing rejuvenation in cat, HT on PS procs, and yesera's gifts...and some glyphs
as I'm missing in caster are only roots, maybe hibernate, but treant talent fix it, and hibernate is cc which are getting removing

Having SR passive will also give you some combo points for finnishing moves : Maim or FB instead recasting SR

[hullaballoonatic]

• shred has a crit bonus like ravage did
• moonfire will be only 30 energy, making it the cheapest cp builder we've ever had
• savagery makes savage roar provide a 45% damage buff instead of a 40% damage buff
• blood talons affects bleeds
• clearly bleed damage is going to be nerfed with respect to its current state, because there will no longer be snapshotting from items.
• as pointed out, ninth life and cat form are mutually exclusive
• blizzard's goal is to tune feral so that ever switching out of cat is a cost to your dps, even if you want to be cute with bearform.

I believe this addresses all your concerns.

Also, travel form can be glyphed back into multiple buttons

My concerns are:

• Haste and Mastery are still two completely mutually exclusive secondaries for us
• immensely crumbled feral skill ceiling. my spec is gonna be too easy to play ;_;
• level 100 talents, are, like, boring, yo
• cut of moonfire and lacerate because........reasons?
• lack of entangling roots begs feral pvp being even more tunnelvisiony than it already was.
• incarnation functionality is now fucking bonkers with the change to rake
• blizzard is nerfing muh special snowflake shadowmeld, and it likely is going to appropriately not affect glyph of savagery or improved rake.

[gestapo]

[list]

Also, travel form can be glyphed back into multiple buttons

This is a terrible & completely unnecessary change. They should have a minor glyph to give an all-in-one travel form button instead of the other way around.

My concerns are:

• Haste and Mastery are still two completely mutually exclusive secondaries for us
• immensely crumbled feral skill ceiling. my spec is gonna be too easy to play ;_;
• level 100 talents, are, like, boring, yo
  
• cut of moonfire and lacerate because........reasons?
• lack of entangling roots begs feral pvp being even more tunnelvisiony than it already was.
• incarnation functionality is now fucking bonkers with the change to rake
• blizzard is nerfing muh special snowflake shadowmeld, and it likely is going to appropriately not affect glyph of savagery or improved rake.

I thought you were for the removal of moonfire?

[Deleted]

This is a terrible & completely unnecessary change. They should have a minor glyph to give an all-in-one travel form button instead of the other way around.

From my understanding it will automaticly change to aquatic if entering water and stag/cheetah if on land. So I don't see how it will be wqorse, only a better change from my point of view but opinions are like asscheeks, split.

[hullaballoonatic]

This is a terrible & completely unnecessary change. They should have a minor glyph to give an all-in-one travel form button instead of the other way around.

This can be accomplished with a macro.

I thought you were for the removal of moonfire?

I just said I understand why it's removed. I don't think it was necessary to remove, and now what are level 4 druids gonna use? maybe they should have moonfire become rake and lacerate when you switch specs or something...

[gestapo]

From my understanding it will automaticly change to aquatic if entering water and stag/cheetah if on land. So I don't see how it will be wqorse, only a better change from my point of view but opinions are like asscheeks, split.

I like having control over what forms I use. It didn't cause button bloat and the change was completely unnecessary. At least with other changes made that I don't agree with (like removing moonfire, roots, hibernate, barkskin) it could be argued that it was due to blizzard wanting us to use fewer abilities. This didn't fit that requirement and I doubt it will be welcome.

- - - Updated - - -

I just said I understand why it's removed. I don't think it was necessary to remove, and now what are level 4 druids gonna use? maybe they should have moonfire become rake and lacerate when you switch specs or something...

You do seem to spend a great deal of time (in the ability pruning thread) convincing me why it was removed when we already knew the reason.
My complaint was that it shouldn't be removed. I just find it funny that here you are agreeing with me after all.

[Ryuutora]

I believe the cut of Moonfire was to make Lunar Inspiration a more attractive talent, it's not the first Blizz has cut something in order to make another more attractive; hell look at Elemental's new mastery or Arms new mastery, to make Multistrike more attractive to them and not to be OP for them.
Bloodtalons will always be a better choice than the other 2 when done correctly by utilizing Predatory Swiftness as done on live, I just think the name is a bit misleading and needs a change >.>
From what I'm seeing they really have nothing to give for Feral talents as they're all pretty bland or was once something we've already had.