Feral AOE

[Tublerone]

An aoe finisher might be nice

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Is Swipe bad because of Unheeded Warning and Maloriak trash burst way back in Tier 11 and they never bothered to tune it since or is it Thrash that helps it to be such a mediocre ability?

[Bonkbonk100]

All I want for Christmas is Blade Flurry or Rushing Jade Wind AoE or at the very least some sort of AoE finish move, but the last part certainly won't happe because, you know, button bloat.

[wrathblade]

Trash buffs it dmg allitle and i like having to press 2 buttons for aoe instead of spamming my 1 aoe button.
Atm the dmg is to low / energy cost to high / lacking a finishing move.

I don't care that i can't be as good as some classes to aoe seeing other classes suck at switching while others shine there.
a nitch is a nitch.

But atm i noticed i do more dmg just raking everything in sight and spending the combo points on a extra rip on the highest hp mob i see.
swipe is easy to spamm and i think it would be allot better if the made swipe 50% cheaper making us able to swipe more and rebalance the aoe dmg from it then.
Having to pool upto 90 energy have save tiger's fury just for add phases sucks, especially when a warrior charges by does Wirlwind and ragingblow followed with dragon's roar and blows everything up before you blinked.

[Bearshield]

What addons would you recommend?

I believe another poster already answered this, but I personally have used ClassTimer for years. Simple to use right out of the box, you can have bars or icons show and it works with every class.

[oresika]

An aoe finisher might be nice

Either lunar inspiration baseline and starfall as 100 talent, or starfall baseline as a finisher for aoe

[Eranthe]

Either lunar inspiration baseline and starfall as 100 talent, or starfall baseline as a finisher for aoe

doesn't really fit with the feral theme. although neither does lunar inspiration.

[Zstr]

...lacking a finishing move...

you have 3 to choose from SR, Rip, FB , it's all valiable in aoe situation as mostly enocunters you primary target is still boss, or there some adds that need to die quickly.
rest 2 are pretty much the problem why ferals aoe is so bad this time]
There lots of way to fix this, but what need to be done is that this issue has to be pointed and adressed to developers\class designers

[Themessiah]

Either lunar inspiration baseline and starfall as 100 talent, or starfall baseline as a finisher for aoe

I really like this idea. Something like a starfall talent would give us 100 talent choice of more aoe, more single target, or increased versatility.

Not only that, but each one would also provide a small boost to the others niche too. So you could use that starfall on single target, or blood talons on AoE, but it just wouldn't be as strong as the appropriate/optimal talent.

[Zstr]

There was AoE talent to put rake on trashing target, some said it was rediculiously overpowered, but fuck that numbers could of been tweaked, yet ofc, `Dream of Cenarius` lovers was crying out for that mechanic back, and we stuck and suck now with shit aoe coz of that. Enjoy ur single target peeling!

[peki]

You guys expect far too much, sure our AOE is one of the worst in the game currently but we have other niche capabilities like fantastic healing during rotation downtimes, good survivability and movement, plus above average single target.

It comes down to nitpicking, we are good..just not as good as we were during ToT/SoO.

What is a bit annoying is that almost every other melee class you can justify bringing more than 1 to a 20man Mythic boss, but come crunch time I feel we won't make the cut if your raid is going for full efficiency.


edit:

I have high hopes for our 2/4pc, 3 bleeds should net us some much-needed energy regen

[ro9ue]

When I played Feral back in Cata Swipe was in a good place. I like the synergy now of having to maintain Thrash bleed for the Swipe bonus damage, so to me, the answer is in having Thrash do something to allow more Swipes.

Either Thrash bleeds cause more Clearcasting procs, or if you use Thrash and it hits more than 3-4 targets, Swipes energy cost is reduced by 50% for 20 seconds.

- - - Updated - - -

You guys expect far too much, sure our AOE is one of the worst in the game currently but we have other niche capabilities like fantastic healing during rotation downtimes, good survivability and movement, plus above average single target.

It comes down to nitpicking, we are good..just not as good as we were during ToT/SoO.

What is a bit annoying is that almost every other melee class you can justify bringing more than 1 to a 20man Mythic boss, but come crunch time I feel we won't make the cut if your raid is going for full efficiency.

That's the only expectation though, that if they want certain specs to have a 'niche', then there shouldnt be specs that are just good at everything. There are several specs that just have no weaknesses. My Paladin was my first 100 and his Ret gear is the same ilevel as my Feral, and while their ST is about equal, offheals about equal, the AOE for Ret is vastly superior.

[peki]

Thrash on clarity proc then swipe spam with DoC interwoven isn't as bad as people think. We build combo points like crazy. Its alot more work and once again makes our spec one of the hardest to master.

In saying that, prior to this it was more along the lines of, "put in the effort and you will be rewarded" regarding our spec, where if you really worked at it and pushed it to the limit, it was obvious. A good feral > A good everything else. Its similiar but nothing compared to what it was.

[teddabear]

No it is not. We can do great single target dps right now. We are just not strong AoE and I'm ok with that. We can't be the best at everything.



I beg to differ. Two ferals in a 12 man encounter normally cover around 10% of our overall raid healing.



There really is. The main reason is because you like Feral. It can pull the same damage.

Balance does 20% more on Imperator and Tectus, Feral does 5% more on Butcher. Hardly equitable. Not necessarily a Balance issue. They may be a little too high but the issue is Feral AoE just sucks.


Blizzard isn't going to add a button to fix Feral AoE. They need to buff Swipe, end of story. If generating combo points is the reason Swipe is so low then they need to remove that mechanic.

[Deleted]

Why should I though? Just seems like bad game design to require a player to use 3rd party addons to be able to play a spec, no?

games evolve adapt or get left behind

happy to help

[Bodakane]

this is misleading. on aoe, mastery takes precedence even over crit. if you're trying to do 1 general jack of all trades, the stat priority you mentioned is fine, but if you're trying to optimize for everything, you'll need a crit/multi single target set and a mastery>everything aoe set. (and probably a crit>mastery set for cleave)

I dunno, considering there's so many high movement fights now, I think crit/mastery is still pretty strong overall.

Of course, I'm not the type of player doing the type of content that I'd need to min/max within 1 dps either.

I think if a feral is just doing H5's, LFRs, Normal Raids, crit/mastery is absolutely the way to go.

Also, to the OP, thrash, rake all the mobs, then swipe for combo pts and drop a rip (or FB depending on health left) on the most important mob. Rinse, repeat.

[zagoskin]

To the OP:

Yeah, feral AoE isn't really good unless you are with berserk UP or get that 10 OoC procs in a row. Still you have to consider swipe is really nerfed right now, we still do pretty good in multi-target scenarios (like tectus), you just need a good amount of mastery. We just lack the burst in AoE we used to have, that's why Boomy seems better. If you had to dps 4 mobs at a time for 1 hour then feral beats boomkin. Ofc that's not the case. Take into account that we offer a really good amount of heals, and any of the 3 talents to do so is good. Heals don't count as a "hey this is the best dps class!" stat but all the healers in my raid say that if I wasn't there we would struggle in some fights.


As an opinion, I don't think feral needs buffs right now. The stats provided in Highmaul aren't very good, we get a good amount of crit but not so much multi/mastery. Even the staff and the mace have haste. This is just a period where you have to get what you can, and dps with that. I recommend you simulate your character to see what item is better for you to improve your dps AoE-wise. The main issue with buffing feral is how. To tell the truth, they could make swipe the same as the AoE of one of the rogues...generate combo based on targets hit (but only 1 even if crit). Still I think that'd be too much. Then you can talk about buffing bleeds damage but you have to consider the impact that would have in PvP.

tl;dr: feral is fine, highmaul stats in gear just suck. Blizzard claimed many times they didn't want all classes to be good in everything.

[teddabear]

Feral is definitely not fine. Blizzard has made several huge improvements and I give them full credit for that. However there are some urgent issues that need to be resolved as soon as possible.

Bloodtalons is the only real level 100 talent. The others are bad conceptually and in implementation. The very basic concept behind them is ok but never flushed out and the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. In addition the difference in DPS between the 3 talents is far too large. Also Bloodtalons is only competitive if used with an array of sophisticated add-ons. The is in 100% opposition to Blizzards stated goal.

The way Feral secondaries work in regard to single target vs multi-target is a major issue as well. Don't count on gear itemization to improve, the drops per tier is much more limited in WoD and it will be itemized for Rogues as it has always been.

I'm not saying Feral needs buffs, with the exception of swipe which most definitely needs a buff. Some of the core design mechanics need reworking.