Are the lvl 100 feral talents good for our dps role?

[mmokri]

DoC - moved into 100th talent:
Its because blizz dont think feral is spec worth developer investment.

[teddabear]

i think too many people seem to think these forums are owned by blizzard cause you keep addressing blizzard directly. this is mmoc, not the wow forums.

and what gives you the idea LI is only for aoe dotting? It's a DPS gain to use it as you would use rake; as another single-target timer. If it were only beneficial in ranged situations as a filler it'd be a seriously weak choice.

bloodtalons is fine; it emphasises the classes' hybrid style. you call it a niche which is stupid. it's - when used correctly - a dps boost and worth casting the healing touches to do. hardly niche at all since you can get PS procs with every finisher.

claws isn't just for pvp, it's useful in soloing and questing, and indeed it's raid-viable as it gives 5% versa. bloodtalons is still probably the stronger choice for a competent player but CoS is not to be mocked; indeed certain fights it may end up excelling on such as fights where the druid needs to use more of their 'non feral' spells, or fights where any additional damage reduction helps immensely.

In addition to Bloodtalons being a recycled talent that Blizzard tried to kill in MoP, I don't think there are a lot of Ferals that enjoy it. Certainly at the top everybody uses it but there also a lot of people using it poorly just because they read it was best or were told it was best. Also in a situation where Feral healing matters it is problematic.

If Blizzard gets LI working it seems there would be a scaling problem. It supposedly won't scale with Mastery so unless it gets some sort of bonus Crit scaling it will fall behind.

Claws seems like a "quick lets think of anything we can put in here" talent. A newish form and +5% secondary stat. However it looks like it will turn out to be a pretty solid talent with a variety of appeal.

[xfloydex]

Turning all our level 90 talents into heal only talents and shifting one of them into a lvl 100 talent is a disgrace as far as im concerned.

No other class in the game had the 90 damage talents turned into heal only.

[Kaeth]

Turning all our level 90 talents into heal only talents and shifting one of them into a lvl 100 talent is a disgrace as far as im concerned.

No other class in the game had the 90 damage talents turned into heal only.

Not even sure how that's relevant. As long as all the talents in a tier serve a similar purpose and are competitive with each other depending on the situation and/or play style, that's a good talent row. Classes and specializations should be balanced alongside each other; that doesn't mean they have to have the exact same kinds of talents in every row as every other class.

Think of it this way: feral will still be tuned to be competitive dps with every other dps spec (whether that's successful is another story), and you get bonus healing utility on top of that because your spec's dps isn't tuned with a dps-increasing talent row included.

[Krusza]

Believe it or not, not all changes are made due to PvE.

Claws of Shrivallah and the "new" DoC will be godly.

[Kraineth]

Turning all our level 90 talents into heal only talents and shifting one of them into a lvl 100 talent is a disgrace as far as im concerned.

No other class in the game had the 90 damage talents turned into heal only.

It needed to be changed, the level 90 talents had conflicting goals, either you take DoC for Max DPS or you take HotW for a Raid CD, that is pretty bad design. Making them affect only utility/off-healing solves the problem completely.

As for re-purposing the old DoC, it is a good thing they did so, plenty of people like what it adds to the rotation, to just remove the mechanic entirely would be a mistake.

[sayne9]

It needed to be changed, the level 90 talents had conflicting goals, either you take DoC for Max DPS or you take HotW for a Raid CD, that is pretty bad design. Making them affect only utility/off-healing solves the problem completely.

As for re-purposing the old DoC, it is a good thing they did so, plenty of people like what it adds to the rotation, to just remove the mechanic entirely would be a mistake.

I think that heart of the wild is incredibly lackluster now, at least in pve, without ferals having tranq if you want to consider it a healing cd. I can't think of many fights, really only Iron Jug if you did the knockback strat, where you would want a dps to stop dpsing and turn healer for a little while but you only wanted him to do that once during the entire fight. If we need a healing cd than NV seems the more logical choice. Feel as though heart should be retuned to be a 100% passive heal, 3-5% of damage done heals someone or something. If anything people will take it as a dps cd if they can't be in melee range for a little bit. I like the theme of the tier now though.

I hate bloodtalons but I don't have issue with it remaining in the game as a new talent. A lot of druids like that extra gameplay complexity and the best place to put that complexity is into a talent and not baseline.

[exochaft]

I think that heart of the wild is incredibly lackluster now, at least in pve, without ferals having tranq if you want to consider it a healing cd. I can't think of many fights, really only Iron Jug if you did the knockback strat, where you would want a dps to stop dpsing and turn healer for a little while but you only wanted him to do that once during the entire fight.

The beauty is that Ferals are now capable of filling in empty GCD's with Rejuv. Also, if Feral off-healing capabilities aren't reduced, I could definitely see Ferals going HotW to help out with raid-wide damage... there's definitely a LOT of it in beta raid testing (I might try it out later, I'm addicted to DoC). Sure, we don't have Tranquility, but the damage taken by raids won't be drastic as to need Tranquility in order to be useful. There will also be mechanics in WoD raids where AoE damage will pulse for long durations and potentially get stronger, so having a Feral HotW + Rejuv spam during these times may not be so far fetched. I will admit, though, that it is rather off-putting having the long CD/use time, but if your raid needs the healing it could be worth it... at least you can still semi-tank and ranged DPS with it! Regardless, Ferals are probably the strongest hybrid in raids in terms of off-healing potential without sacrificing DPS.

[mmokri]

I think that heart of the wild is incredibly lackluster now

It was OP PvE cooldown, now its in line with other spells.

[teddabear]

It needed to be changed, the level 90 talents had conflicting goals, either you take DoC for Max DPS or you take HotW for a Raid CD, that is pretty bad design. Making them affect only utility/off-healing solves the problem completely.

As for re-purposing the old DoC, it is a good thing they did so, plenty of people like what it adds to the rotation, to just remove the mechanic entirely would be a mistake.

It's pretty crappy design for the players that don't like DoC. They suffer through one expansion and then find out in the next expansion it is taking up a max level talent AGAIN.

[sayne9]

The beauty is that Ferals are now capable of filling in empty GCD's with Rejuv. Also, if Feral off-healing capabilities aren't reduced, I could definitely see Ferals going HotW to help out with raid-wide damage... there's definitely a LOT of it in beta raid testing (I might try it out later, I'm addicted to DoC). Sure, we don't have Tranquility, but the damage taken by raids won't be drastic as to need Tranquility in order to be useful. There will also be mechanics in WoD raids where AoE damage will pulse for long durations and potentially get stronger, so having a Feral HotW + Rejuv spam during these times may not be so far fetched. I will admit, though, that it is rather off-putting having the long CD/use time, but if your raid needs the healing it could be worth it... at least you can still semi-tank and ranged DPS with it! Regardless, Ferals are probably the strongest hybrid in raids in terms of off-healing potential without sacrificing DPS.

Is it so much stronger than Nature's Vigil that it can offset its multiple uses during the fight?

I have every intention of throwing out rejuvs in my empty rotation time, which in the first tier is probably going to be quite a bit. DoC and Claws of Shiv look incredibly attractive because of all the downtime I am expecting actually.

[exochaft]

Is it so much stronger than Nature's Vigil that it can offset its multiple uses during the fight?.

Depends on the encounter, honestly, and how damage tuning is finalized all around. HotW is still a talent that's not just about healing, while NV/DoC are purely about healing for Feral. Since there is a general cooldown on combat rez uses, in conjunction with the reduction of boss damage supposedly to come, there could be some viability of Ferals going HotW tanking for limited amounts of time while waiting on said rez cooldowns to get up a fallen tank (or have a temporary 3rd tank). Haven't seen where going caster as Feral would really be needed, unless one deems being melee for certain mechanic durations is supremely annoying. The point is that HotW is still unique in that tier by letting you be strong in three different roles, and it's rather hard making a direct comparison to NV based on the entirety of their capabilities.

That being said, I haven't really tested NV extensively yet, as I'm curious how far the healing can be taken. I may queue for LFR and mess around with it, goodness knows there will be a need for healing there.

Also, has someone been simming Blood Talons versus CoS yet? During our raid testing, I haven't seen an appreciable damage output difference between the two, but I've seen a very noticeable effective healing difference between the two. Could just be player skill, stats distribution, and limited sample size.

[mmokri]

Blood Talons versus CoS yet?

DoC sucks less with increasing iLvL. Because you can generate more combos per second.

[Kraineth]

It's pretty crappy design for the players that don't like DoC. They suffer through one expansion and then find out in the next expansion it is taking up a max level talent AGAIN.

I don't like it that much, but it would still be a mistake to erase it, you have 2 other talents to choose from at 100 so I don't see a big issue.

[Deleted]

There's a glyph for that, which is probably the ideal implementation. Passive Savage Roar as a talent would either be mandatory or borderline useless depending on the damage bonus/penalty. Though the glyph is at worst a 3.6% damage loss, there are probably at least a few players who'd like to try CoS but don't want to make that kind of sacrifice.

I'm a casual noob. I'll be going CoS and glyphed passive SR.

same as me bro , im not hardcore raider, I like to play feral but I always let SR slip off, passive sounds good to me

[axxey]

wow, massive necro.

[Katoume]

I honestly like Bloodtalons a lot lol