[Feral] Legion Discussion

[OzUnOo]

Not really seeing much reason to play feral in legion pvp with cyclone removed. Is there anything else to set feral aside from other hybrid melees?

[Jeff420]

My main is a feral, and apparently we get skins to choose from in Legion is this correct? Great post as well OP.

[teddabear]

I have never been in favor of removing Savage Roar but I would rather remove then have it at 24 seconds for a 5 point SR.

I was in favor of shortening bleeds times but now that bleed damage is nerfed by 300% relative to direct damage that becomes rather irrelevant.

[Deleted]

Current feral talents/artifact trait interaction is counter intuitive and actively penalizes some choices.
Final trait Ashamans bite and major trait open wounds REQUIRE having Rip on the target and spending CP on Ferocious bite
Talent Jagged wounds REDUCES Rip time on the target
Talent Savage Roar - spend CP on this means either less for uptime for Rip or fewer Ferocious bites.

Now that bleed damage is reduced it becomes less of a DoT and more of a required buff to do damage, almost like... Ferocious roar! Both of which require the same resource to do the same thing - whilst reducing resource for the other finisher, ferocious bite (now the only thing actually doing decent damage). The fact the Rip is more of current target debuff while savage roar was an across the board damage buff makes it even more bizarre.

All in all not quite sure what the heck is going on design wise but it's a mess - unless anyone can see some cunning synergy/plan?

[huth]

Current feral talents/artifact trait interaction is counter intuitive and actively penalizes some choices.
Final trait Ashamans bite and major trait open wounds REQUIRE having Rip on the target and spending CP on Ferocious bite
Talent Jagged wounds REDUCES Rip time on the target
Talent Savage Roar - spend CP on this means either less for uptime for Rip or fewer Ferocious bites.

Depends on whether it is a fixed chance or RPPM. If it is RPPM, none of that is going to have significant effect.

And Jagged Wounds reduces duration, not uptime.

[Saracens]

Current feral talents/artifact trait interaction is counter intuitive and actively penalizes some choices.
Final trait Ashamans bite and major trait open wounds REQUIRE having Rip on the target and spending CP on Ferocious bite
Talent Jagged wounds REDUCES Rip time on the target
Talent Savage Roar - spend CP on this means either less for uptime for Rip or fewer Ferocious bites.

Now that bleed damage is reduced it becomes less of a DoT and more of a required buff to do damage, almost like... Ferocious roar! Both of which require the same resource to do the same thing - whilst reducing resource for the other finisher, ferocious bite (now the only thing actually doing decent damage). The fact the Rip is more of current target debuff while savage roar was an across the board damage buff makes it even more bizarre.

All in all not quite sure what the heck is going on design wise but it's a mess - unless anyone can see some cunning synergy/plan?

Feral seems to be the last bit of nonsense in a confusing state, as far as classes go. I've seen more effort put into others and, as someone who isn't in Betalpha, I've heard and read very little in the way of druid changes outside the Boomchicken.

[Rivin]

Current feral talents/artifact trait interaction is counter intuitive and actively penalizes some choices.
Final trait Ashamans bite and major trait open wounds REQUIRE having Rip on the target and spending CP on Ferocious bite
Talent Jagged wounds REDUCES Rip time on the target
Talent Savage Roar - spend CP on this means either less for uptime for Rip or fewer Ferocious bites.

Now that bleed damage is reduced it becomes less of a DoT and more of a required buff to do damage, almost like... Ferocious roar! Both of which require the same resource to do the same thing - whilst reducing resource for the other finisher, ferocious bite (now the only thing actually doing decent damage). The fact the Rip is more of current target debuff while savage roar was an across the board damage buff makes it even more bizarre.

All in all not quite sure what the heck is going on design wise but it's a mess - unless anyone can see some cunning synergy/plan?

If you're using Savage Roar, you can probably just assume that Ashamane's Bite is an execute-phase trait, since that's when it would primarily be applying.

And Rip should pretty much always be up, especially with Jagged Wounds, so Open Wounds should always be active.

[Saracens]

I don't know how I feel about this.

[Rivin]

I don't know how I feel about this.

What do you mean?

[Saracens]

What do you mean?

It's actually a tough decision for most of the tiers. This is new to me.

[Rivin]

It's actually a tough decision for most of the tiers. This is new to me.

Oh, haha, yeah. I like it, though. It means I might not be using the same talents the entire expansion this time around!

[teddabear]

I don't know how I feel about this.

Taking quick look at the 3 most important tiers.

Moment of Clarity - Terrible mechanic. Anybody that has used T18 4pc already knows this.
Blood Talons - Nerfing Bleeds by 300% makes this rather impotent. Now it is FB + ?
Brutal Slash - Would have been a great if they hadn't made it replace Swipe. Seems that a decent number of Alpha players think it is undertuned.
Elune's Guidance - Clunky. With the changes to Bleeds and direct damage I guess it's 2 quick FB's now? I imagine it went from worst DPS talent to best by a large margin. It's diametrically opposed to how Feral gameplay has worked.
Jagged Wounds - Would have been great in WoD and spectacular in MoP. In Legion it will be worthless.
Sabertooth - Not sure if the buff to FB + Nerf to Rip makes this better or worse.
Savage Roar - I would agree that Savage Roar duration had gotten overly long but this is ridiculous. 8 seconds for 1 combo point and 24 seconds for 5?
Incarnation - It will depend on final tuning. I didn't like having so much damage depend on Incarnation in WoD. I would assume it will be tuned to be below SR.
Soul of the Forest - The only tuning scenario that would result in anybody ever taking this talent is if it was the highest DPS which would be ridiculous.

[Rivin]

Blood Talons - Nerfing Bleeds by 300% makes this rather impotent. Now it is FB + ?
Jagged Wounds - Would have been great in WoD and spectacular in MoP. In Legion it will be worthless.
Sabertooth - Not sure if the buff to FB + Nerf to Rip makes this better or worse.

Rip and Rake will still deal more damage than Ferocious Bite and Shred respectively, making mechanics that buff them still worth using. They just won't have as much impact as they would today.

[teddabear]

Rip and Rake will still deal more damage than Ferocious Bite and Shred respectively, making mechanics that buff them still worth using. They just won't have as much impact as they would today.

I do recall Rip having 600% the DPE of FB at one time but I haven't seen any DPE numbers in a very long time. It will be amusing to see what % BT ends up at to stay the top DPS talent. I will make an eduated guess that it will be in the vicinity of 90%.

SR will hit some crazy numbers by the end of the expansion as well, to make up for the anti-synergistic nature of the talents and the artifact.

[Hivey]

Really REALLY need the alternatives to Savage Roar to be good!

[Rivin]

I do recall Rip having 600% the DPE of FB at one time but I haven't seen any DPE numbers in a very long time. It will be amusing to see what % BT ends up at to stay the top DPS talent. I will make an eduated guess that it will be in the vicinity of 90%.

SR will hit some crazy numbers by the end of the expansion as well, to make up for the anti-synergistic nature of the talents and the artifact.

Well DPE numbers are irrelevant at the moment since nothing is tuned. We'll have to see what the actual tuned numbers are like to make that sort of comparison. However, Blizzard's stated intention is that bleeds are still stronger than direct attacks, just not as much as today, so even at current numbers talents that buff bleeds will still be good.

[Lisa Frank Succubus]

I've always been balance, dabbled in resto..but I was so excited for the new feral skins and wanted to try out feral...its a shame hearing its in such dire straits in the alpha. Its very telling seeing how the boomkin legion thread is 100+ pages and this one is 4.

Is it really that awful?

[Nerxyrall]

Read the thread its only 4 pages long. Its stated multiple times, that Ferals use another Forum for their discussions and before this thread was made, there were multiple, multipage long threads on parts of feral gameplay just not everything in one.
But apparently Aoe is still really bad.

[teddabear]

Read the thread its only 4 pages long. Its stated multiple times, that Ferals use another Forum for their discussions and before this thread was made, there were multiple, multipage long threads on parts of feral gameplay just not everything in one.
But apparently Aoe is still really bad.

They use Fluid Druid but there isn't much to see there because Blizzard hasn't done any work on Feral in a long time now.

This forum moves pretty slow these days, it's not hard to go back and find all the Feral threads. There is very little about Feral in Legion.

AoE is fixable since there is a talent specifically to address that. It is not clear that Blizzard wants to fix it which makes having a Level 100 talent specifically for that reason rather strange.

[PickleballAce]

With the Savage Roar change, are they pretty much trying to kill the "I've got enough time on Rip and Savage Roar so I can sneak in a Ferocious Bite" gameplay, and more-or-less take FB out of the equation until nom nom nom phase?

Sounds like a sort-of backhanded simplification if you aren't worrying about trying to make that judgment call of when you can weave in FB between Rip and SR refreshes.