Struggling Feral with AoE/cleave

[Vodkatwist]

Hello all!
I'm writing because I'm concerned about my friggin' low dps in aoe and cleave scenarios.
I tried everything: dotting every long living target, popping CD and spamming swipe etc etc but nothing really worked.

Is a learn to play issue or the spec is that far behind in this scenario?

[Zephirdd]

feral excels at single target and priority target damage. Don't waste your time trying to be a king of AoE or whatever; instead, stick to a main target. Fights like Hellfire Assault and Socrethar are terrible for us due to that.

as a rule of thumb, use Maul and Swipe only on 3+ targets or if you get a Omen proc and other dots are managed; if the target number is low enough Rip 'em all, otherwise just stick to a main target and keep maul+swipe while spending finishers on your main target.

either way, don't fret for not topping metters on aoe. you are doing your job destroying your priority target, let the aoe classes worry about the fodder. This doesnt mean ignoring adds, it means that you should stick to a priority rather than to aoe.

[Yourgrounded]

Maul? Don't do drugs man!

[teddabear]

Feral just sucks that badly. Nothing you can do about it. Hopefully you aren't trying to do Mythic.

[Lynxx89]

I am just coming back to Feral, finally after a 4mth Rogue fling. Had to find a new guild due to officers leaving and the new one gave me the option of feral or rogue! =D

I have just be able to mess around a wee bit with AoE. I would be interested to see what people have had better success with. The rake dotting or taking luck with swipe/thrash.

Feral just sucks that badly. Nothing you can do about it. Hopefully you aren't trying to do Mythic.

Cheer up Tedda! Glass is always half empty eh? There are plenty of ferals in Mythic. Top end progression, not so much. Still doesn't mean I don't love Feral for what it is. I plan to never stray from it, now that I am able to main it again.

[Vodkatwist]

Thanks for the replies!
I'm glad that it doesn't mean I'm bad but it's just how things are for everyone.
Right now I'm thinking about rerolling monk (can't get away from leather), but I just love the druid class.
The struggle is real xD

[Zekyu]

If you are looking to play another leather class Id play Rogue over Monk. It's the much better version of Feral and has consistently done well for as long as the game has been around. Unfortunately Feral is not too great at the moment, and is in a worse state relative to how it was in BRF (which I felt it was pretty good in for a lot it). It isn't totally not viable but it's not very good when everybody is pretty geared.

[Zephirdd]

Maul? Don't do drugs man!

I meant to say Thrash. sorry~~

[Deleted]

I love feral and their utility. I am hc geared and doing +70k on every fight. So i dont know where the hate is coming from :-)

[Grmmppff]

and you have updated skada after receiving soul capacitator? No, truth be told, 70k isn't too hard with the right equip(legendary ring, soul capacitator, 710-715 weap, 4p t18), when aoe comes into play though, many other classes perform better. You should try to rake everything, rip some long living targets, thrash on omen procs(especially with 4p), swipe when everything's properly bleeding; it won't make you no.1-aoe-dps, it will keep you from being last though

as for utility I only half agree, we have cr and stampeding roar(all druids have it though), so it's not bad to take us, on mythic high end a raid might prefer to take something else though

[Deleted]

Hehe yeah i have :-) when i say hc geared i mean 716 ilvl. So yeah its in the better end of gear, but we knew from day 1 of 6.2, that we wouldnt be top dps. But top 3 i not unreachable on some fights, depending on raid comp. Ursols Vortex saves lives! neverforget :-D

[teddabear]

You should be able to get into a Mythic guild on a high pop server, unfortunately that is only about 5% of servers these days. Feral shares tier gear and class trinkets with Mages and Rogues and Jewelry you share with Hunters and Rogues. If the guild doesn't use DKP it may be death by a thousand cuts.

Fragnance switched to Warrior, Pawkets switched to Warrior, Stenhaldi is less than happy. That is 100% of my weak auras. Hopefully Blizzard will make an attempt to revive Feral after leaving it to die on the vine but I highly doubt it.

[aggixx]

feral excels at single target and priority target damage.

I think you said "priority target damage" when you really meant "boss damage". They aren't the same thing and we certainly don't excel at priority target damage.

- - - Updated - - -

I love feral and their utility. I am hc geared and doing +70k on every fight. So i dont know where the hate is coming from :-)

Inability to contribute meaningfully to the part of the encounters that actually matter, which is the opposite situation of last tier. Total DPS is far from the only meaningful factor for spec desirability, as a feral druid you should be very familiar with that.

[Dysheki]

Swapped to my rogue for mythic xhul'horac, will be going guardian for mannoroth, and I'm not really liking the prospect of archimonde but we'll see. I ranked 1 on Velhari tonight . . . . out of a whopping 11 ferals that have public logs. The saving grace for that fight is NV healing at the end of the fight (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ny%24false%240). Honestly should have been sat for Gorefiend but I was in for our first kill (constant target switching, just AIDS). Most of the other fights aren't really difficult so whatever, but you can see where we are deficient as most fights have things that need to die ASAP in short order. If things were up for a reasonable time (i.e. long enough for a rip) it might not be so bad. But those fights don't really happen often in HFC.

And even if fights were favorable to our strengths WE AREN'T EVEN STRONG IN THOSE AREAS ANYMORE. Several specs blow by feral for ST and 2-3 target cleave. So we have shit burst aoe, awful target swapping, and just above average ST/cleave. But we can run fast I guess.

I usually try to stay positive with some healthy skepticism, but I think I've seen enough of this tier and no response from Blizzard to know they are purposely oblivious to specs that aren't highly represented (oh wait, they buffed WW . . . ).

[Blueredwolf]

But we can run fast I guess.

It's sad how much of a selling point this is, for me at least. Our dmg and overall usefulness might be meh, but I sure do love the speed.

[teddabear]

It's sad how much of a selling point this is, for me at least. Our dmg and overall usefulness might be meh, but I sure do love the speed.

I've noticed during run backs a lot of classes can keep up with you these days if they use all their speed boosts but I agree when I saw 5% speed boost for WoD that was one of my favorite changes.

It would take so little effort to at least partially fix the AoE problem, it is mind boggling that they won't do it.

[Will]

AoE is still going to be a horrible experience, particularly whilst tab-targeting behaves erratically. Tabbing through a pack and having the tab cycle to mobs on the other side of the room who HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN PULLED YET is super awkward, doubly so because in addition to dotting everything up you have to keep looking around to ensure your current target is in front of and near you.

People keep referring me to feral's single target niche as a justification for our bad cleave/AoE, but we're not even a top tier single target any more. And with most fights demanding some form of cleave, we're effectively worse than specs which not only have far superior AoE, but are still able to do better on priority targets than us.

I could wholly accept doing mediocre AoE and excellent single target, but our AoE isn't mediocire, it's downright awful, so surely we deserve awesome single target to compensate? When other specs can deliver higher single target damage and still do better AoE, AND with half as many button presses, you know something is wrong.

I hope that in Legion they make it so thrash applies rake on all affected targets, and perhaps give us an AoE finisher of sorts; or a perk that lets Rip be applied to all targets in the vicinity (360-degree spin Rip!) Thrash, swipe to 5 and then apply Rip to all is a simple change, and the AoE component of Rip could be independent of the primary target, IE: All adjacent targets are Ripped for x% damage of the primary target. Any imbalance could be fixed by simple tweaks of this value. With changes such as this, we could gain decent AoE potential for adds that have a suitable TTL. Adds with a low TTL could either remain a weakness, or they could buff Swipe instead.

I'm not TOTALLY against the whole 'niche' idea, but in all fairness if a hunter is MM and has bad AoE, they can just go BM for an AoE fight, and although they're two different specs, they retain their ranged identity, and additionally, the difference between hunter spec playstyles isn't too drastic. As Feral, we don't have that luxury; if we play feral because we enjoy melee, we do not have an alternate melee spec with a similar playstyle to switch to for AoE-centric fights.

The rift between Feral and Balance is far greater than the rift between MM and BM. Niches are only fair and acceptable when similar alternatives exist. As feral, we have no such similar alternative. Boomkin is far, far more different to feral than BM is to MM.