Will you keep playing if Feral AoE is not fixed

[Deleted]

It all depends on what level you raid.

At the very top end there's absolutely no reason to play a feral unless your guild can support it.
We don't have a niche that another class doesn't have,
Our AoE sucks,
We can't take on jobs,
We have a hard time target swapping to temporary targets,
We don't bring any clutch buffs or utility,
Etc...

Our main benefit is our off healing which yes can be valuable but it depends on your situation, if your healers are fine then it's just not needed at all.

Personally I'll unfortunately be rolling hunter effective next week, for the simple fact that I can take on any complicated jobs while pulling similar if not higher numbers, and having to put less effort in to thinking about rotation. Also the added versatility, buffs, etc.

Hunter = God mode carry class 2 button hard spec.

[teddabear]

Our main benefit is our off healing which yes can be valuable but it depends on your situation, if your healers are fine then it's just not needed at all.

There were some times on Mythic twins where both tanks were between 10% and 50% and I tried to heal my ass off. Really though I have to question if it is worth it, my healing touches barely made their health bars move.

However I am now free of Blizzard's incompetence. It's a beautiful day!

[Hekkipekki]

Our feral druid is thinking about switching to DK, if Feral isnt changed

[drockrock]

However I am now free of Blizzard's incompetence. It's a beautiful day!

Keep us updated.

I feel like the side that says AoE isn't sufficient is cherry-picking a lot of data to show that we're not competitive with the outliers.

[Catbug]

I agree that Feral needs a buff to AOE, maybe making Trash and Swipe lower energy costs and buffing their damage a bit, but it's nothing I'll stop playing Feral for.

[teddabear]

I feel like the side that says AoE isn't sufficient is cherry-picking a lot of data to show that we're not competitive with the outliers.

Don't take my word for it.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...2&class=Shaman

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...uid&spec=Feral


You can access every spec in the drop down.

[lightheart789]

Summary: Feral needs to be top of the line in terms of damage to make up for the fact that its damage over time mechanics make it worse than other melee for some things.



The thing is, Feral as a spec is not that great from a mechanics perspective, especially not now that it doesn't have AOE burst. If you had two specs, X and Y, where X delivered damage instantly and Y delivered the same damage over time, "instantly" is almost always better because that spec can kill short lived things better. And if there's no penalty for being able to "front load" damage, why ever use the damage over time class?

With ranged dps, historically, the damage over time classes have been great when they have been able to easily throw their high damage per cast dots on multiple targets. Feral is supposed to play similarly to this when you have multiple targets, but it becomes really hard to play because you also need to juggle the energy it costs to apply the dots, and combo points, etc. You need to be extremely skilled to execute a Feral cleave fight perfectly, especially if the fight has mechanics that you need to dodge and react to, etc.

The reward for all this work in a cleave scenario at the moment is doing barely above your single target damage. Compare that to Sweeping Strikes for Warriors, and it almost becomes a joke. Feral should be at the high end of dps for a fight like Twin Ogron that allows you to freely dot up long lived targets, but in reality it's actually one of the worst melee. Not by a huge margin, but Feral is definitely behind Monks, Warriors and Rogues. If Feral can't even shine in a fight that is favorable to its mechanics, what is it good for? The fix is to move more damage to the bleeds and decrease direct damage to compensate. This will make the spec even worse at short term targets, but it will at least make it good at something.

If you look at when Feral has been a somewhat desired spec, it's when you actually got very good damage (better than all, or almost all specs) in the niche that Feral has always had, which is single target damage on targets that live for a long time. This was the case during WotLK, during MoP (didnt play then, but I've heard that it was very strong in SoO), and to some extent it was the case at lower item levels at the start of this expansion. Basically, the raid would take the penalty of having a Feral in on fights where it would typically do worse than other melee in order to gear it up for fights where it would shine. For an old school example of this, check out Ensidia's world first of Algalon where their Feral is dominating.

Earlier in WoW there were also fewer specs that used each piece of loot so you could argue that it was a good idea to have a Feral in to soak up agility leather unless you were really Rogue heavy, and to use agility staves that were only used as stat sticks by hunters otherwise. You also had the Feral's ability to spec for tanking while still being able to do more or less normal dps. With these factors, it made sense to have a Feral in the raid even if the mechanics of their damage delivery created situations where spec had big problems. Anyone remember Ultraxion and how Ferals couldn't even Shred the boss, and it wasn't fixed? That's how much Blizzard cares about you.

You could always argue that as long as you are a great Feral player, you'll always have a raid spot unless you are in guild like Paragon or Method. That is true, but if you are a great Feral player, you'll most likely also be great at another spec that helps your raid more. In any case, in response to the person I quoted, I think that when you compare specs, you should consider them being used by equally skilled players, not a world class Feral player playing in a casual guild for example.

Apologies for quoting such a large post but Pokty really summed up this issue for us all and it bears repeating. Many of his points struck home to me. I am an elite feral druid who can always squeeze every little bit of damage out of gear, dodge mechanics and do over 10k hps in most encounters. Recently got a 99th percentile ranking on heroic oregorger for my ilvl bracket. Despite that my raid is pushing me to boomkin or another class for foundry because my skill will translate and feral no longer has a niche.

Move our damage back to bleeds and away from burst direct damage. Bleeds are skill, direct damage is button mashing.

Give ferals an aoe finisher.

Make our single target stat weights similar to our aoe.(this is from simming my 667 feral)
single target=Wdps > Agi > AP > Crit > Mult > Vers ~= Mastery > Haste
3 target= Agi > AP > Mastery > Wdps > Crit > Mult > Vers > Haste
Feral "niche" is now single target fights like Butcher and Gruul. Our stat weights are almost completely flipped for every other fight so we need to demand two feral sets to make ourselves worthwhile. Mastery feral gear is essentially boomkin gear, why would a raid gear you up to do 40k working HARD as feral when in same gear you would do 52k as boomkin spamming starfall.
Swapping a couple pieces for optimization is good gameplay, changing 7 doesn't work.

[Ziene]

I was thinking about this tonight. If they were to make energy for feral (rogues, monks?) made easier to instead allow abilities to generate energy instead and losing it. Would this help in dps?

I guess I look at a warr. They build rage to use abilities. Would using something in this fashion for energy be a good or bad idea?

[COFFEEMAN69]

Honestly blizz is just ignoring feral for right now. i feel like if they had us in mind they would have reworked soul of the forest for this patch. its a really lack luster talent and i feel like a consistent dps talent to counter act our burst talent would be good for the spec. it be nice if they added something like 20% swipe/shred damage to it so it would be useful in a aoe fight were when we use finishers we would get energy for swiping.

another option wd be too buff the weight of mastery so that tab raking actually hits hard. the reason this hasn't already happened it because theyre scared of our 3 target council type fight potential. but i dont think this would be a bad thing. we would be monsters at 3 target cleave our single target would be a bit better (as of right now my bleeds are like 35% damage on single target when in mop they were 50) and our aoe wd still be mediocre but not straight garbage like right now. honestly im in favor of keeping feral bad on aoe its not our "niche". although i will admit it shouldn't be as bad as it is right now. i would prefer to see us buffed in council cleave fights like twins/iron maidens along with single target fights like butcher/gruul

on a side note. one other good option to fix aoe would be to change soul of the forest a bit by also allowing it to make FB/rip cleave to 4 other targets kinda like blade flurry. that way soul of the forest still feels like a talent for boosting our finishing moves and they can keep with there plan for 6.1 of making some of the more useless talents balanced. i mean look at spriest they are having 3 of there dps oriented talents getting buffs this patch. it would also help us out alot with short lived adds that u can cleave off of (think aberrations on imperator). This talent reminds me of the way arcane barrage works for mages were it cleaves for 50% damage on up to 4 adds.

imo dpsing has evolved into 3 types. single target, long lived add cleave, and short lived hectic aoe. i think every class should be amazing at one very good at another and mediocre at the third or be balanced but not op across the board (think unholy dk being above average but never number 1 at all 3) this way every class get there niche and if u dont like the idea of being only good at 2/3 u can roll something like a ret palladin whos good at all 3 but not great at anyone thing.

honestly tho. dont give up now kittys. imo feral is one of the only specs left that takes meaningful skill and i find it so rewarding to play it well. i think blizz will come around to buffing us. if that means one mediocre teir for us then u guys will be kicking yourself's in the butt when we get buffed and youre stuck playing that 2 button hunter u switched to because u wanted to be "competitive"

[Zstr]

they would have reworked soul of the forest for this patch. its a really lack luster talent

A lack luster??!, when it was best choice in MoP,and if they not baked steathed abilities to others, so they dramaticaly had increased damage then Incarnation talent would be shit like it was.
SoF would still be best one, and could give us a bit of energy, we are lacking at start of expansions

[COFFEEMAN69]

it doesnt get used on any boss in this entire expansion. sure its not "lackluster" it does do a good amount of dps but right now its clunky as u over cap energy while berserk is up and overall cant compete wit other talents in the same teir. which makes it bad. i dont know why you're arguing that lol. i think it be a good talent to work into being aoe oriented as it already gives us energy back to cast more aoe spells.

[Trollhammer]

Remember the talent that spread rake via swipe in WoD Beta? I think we were balanced around that.. then it got removed..

[Dysheki]

A lack luster??!, when it was best choice in MoP,and if they not baked steathed abilities to others, so they dramaticaly had increased damage then Incarnation talent would be shit like it was.
SoF would still be best one, and could give us a bit of energy, we are lacking at start of expansions

Yes. I consider a talent you would never use for any fight a lack luster talent. In fact I would go a step further and call it useless.

[COFFEEMAN69]

Yes. I consider a talent you would never use for any fight a lack luster talent. In fact I would go a step further and call it useless.

That's what i don't understand. it has a great concept for sustain damage, buts its just not strong enough with all the things that require stealth now. i pray every day sotf becomes balanced cause i cant stand this burst play style. All be it does have its upsides (and i do love that 65k burst) i wish there was a alternative. blizz has already stated that they dont really feel classes need to be balanced right now just the lack of talent choices is what they wanna fix and with feral being locked into 2 specific talents out of 6 with LI having a very small niche u would think feral would be on there radar for talent buffing. odds are it wont happen tho as they would have to buff SOTF pretty hard to make up for the fact that incarnation is so good with our teir 4 piece. it also be nice if they made LI a bit better damage wise (probable by turning it into a bleed so it scales with mastery can be snap shoted and scales off our 2 piece) or make it auto cleave like sunfire for balance. they could also balance CLAWS to be a bit better in pve but they would have to make sure it doesnt become much better for pvp. it is kinda a shame that we are one of the only classes that have a talent based around pvp/makeing the rotation easyer but trading off output for it. honestly going into this expansion i was rooting for claws to be the clear cut choice just because it would be such QoL not having to worry about blood talons. at the same time i dont think feral wd be as rewarding as it is to play if they made it more faceroll.

I think the coolest but probable least practical thing wd be if they changed swipe into a aoe finisher that rips our bleeds off targets to do instant damage. that way if a group of mobs spawned u could quickly thrash then rake a few to 5 combo points and hit swipe and it would make all the bleeds on all the targets hit by swipe do the remaining bleed damage instantly (of course u would exclude rip from this otherwise it might be useful on single target). of course they would have to tune this to do 50% (give or take) of the bleeds remaining damage to make it as strong as they wanted.

[Logiibob]

AoE isn't a make or break for me in the game. I guest that if your intrested in mastering AoE, switch classes or go moon chicken.

[COFFEEMAN69]

AoE isn't a make or break for me in the game. I guest that if your intrested in mastering AoE, switch classes or go moon chicken.

ya but it be nice if our single target counter acted that fact. also u have a old mentality ever since SoO they have basicly made atleast half the fights have some sort of aoe. so im assuming blizz thinks it is indeed important. also moon chicken does more damage on single target fights as well LOL.

Also if aoe wasnt important why does enhancement have the second best spec score right now for brf when they are one of the worst single target classes in the game.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7

[Dysheki]

AoE isn't a make or break for me in the game. I guest that if your intrested in mastering AoE, switch classes or go moon chicken.

I'm really not sure I understand the point of this post.

[teddabear]

So I just checked out WoW Progress and MidWinter is #1. Congrats MidWinter!!

So I then went to check out their World First Mythic Iron Maidens kill and Stehaldi was a Bear

Sad Kitty




They did use 3 tanks so maybe there is a legit reason for this but I cant help but think if Feral was anywhere near where it should be Stenhaldi would be the last person they would have tank.

[tibben]

blah blah blah I suck at feral...

Hunter = God mode carry class 2 button hard spec.

Which 2 buttons are you referring to?

[Deleted]

Which 2 buttons are you referring to?

Can't decide whether I want to call you arrogant or ignorant for that one. I'll let it slide as I'm leaning toward the latter.

The 2 button part was merely an exaggeration due to hunter being an incredibly easy spec to play in comparison.