Originally Posted by
Kals
However by once again nerfing shapeshifting (even if it just reduces how often we can) you're losing the identity of feral. Since its inception the druid class has been able to shift out of roots and snares, with the exception of the wonderful Cataclysm expansion; we saw how terribly that turned out, even though I believe most non-biased players would say that nerf was definitely overkill. Feral has been (and I hope will continue to be) a highly mobile class that pressures with bleeds and support, but even I will definitely admit healing was a bit too high on Beta a few builds back. I haven't had much of a chance to go on lately for testing or just messing around but I'll definitely see how the healing tuning feels once I get back on.
In terms of damage I'm fine with FB nerfs, it'll help with PVE tuning as well since according to simcraft right now FB is roughly 20-25% of feral damage, making the choice for stat weights in that area of the game difficult, as crit pulls ahead for single target and mastery for multitarget. I'd like if the focus of feral damage is shifted away from Shred/FB and back to bleeds, notably Rip, which does roughly the same damage as Rake on the last build I played (non-stealthed Rake), when it's our 5 CP finisher. Putting some damage back into that to reward players who consistently keep it up on their kill target in both PvE and PvP would be appreciated I'd like to think.
As a side note if the proposed 3CP heal changes AND shapeshifting mana costs are made that's not going to be a decision that's even going to be needed to be thought about almost ever. Unless you're playing double DPS 2s or your healer is CC'd you're not going to bother wasting shit on a heal, you'll just shift out, still continuing not to think about mana cost.
I'd really love some 3v3 statistics or videos from beta for feral, especially now that a few fixes have gone live; as it appears most are quoting duels and 2v2s. I'll play but none of my team mates have beta and I'm not sure how well a random pug group would be for a good representation.
Note that most of this is speculation and opinion as, since I stated, I haven't played in a few builds.