A push for feral druid changes

[Rhineheart]

Hello Everyone ,

If anyone has been reading the BlizzCon Q&A thread, there has been a strong push from Elemental shamans for changes regarding their spec.

What does everyone think about making another push for feral changes? or what is the general consensus if there needs to be another push?

There is a general agreement from ferals who are in progressive (mythic) guilds that feral druids are fine, and we have to accept the fact that feral druids are great at sustained ST dps, and horrible at aoe.

For other ferals, they find the spec very lacking, especially if the feral druid is unable to commit to scheduled raids and is a social/casual. In most cases, they will be declined often when trying to join pug groups for mythic+, raids, and have make time to make their own groups to progress in tougher content.

During Alpha/Beta days of legion, a lot concerns facing feral druids were voiced often. Even the same feral druids who say everything is okay now, were pushing for changes back in the day only to be let down as little has been done.

Should we bring this to light again ?

What do you all think .

[Kraineth]

Most of the things I pushed for during alpha/beta ended up being given a chance actually. And most of my concerns with the spec were addressed, outside of really bad talent balance.

If you want to be a mongoloid aoe spec there are plenty of other options. In order for feral aoe to compete, the spec would need a heavy rework to basic abilities including shred, swipe, and thrash. And would probably need some completely new aoe mechanics.

This isn't something that is going to happen over the course of this expansion. Blizzard designed feral to not have very strong aoe, it wasn't some oversight, or ignorance. They simply don't want our aoe to be top tier.

[Drihan]

The problem is that mages have top-tier AoE AND comparable ST DPS. That is the main problem here. Simply horrifyingly bad balance. Mages in and of itself isn't a problem, it's the damage direction Blizz have put classes on that are missing the point entirely, making specs completely useless in certain parts of the content. Not just suboptimal, but directly useless.

[teddabear]

Well not to go into it too deep but the last minute changes to shred/bleed damage, and the Ferocious Bite nerf messed up the talent tree really bad.

In order to make the talents that generate combo points faster more deirable Ferocious Bite would need a huge buff. That would also make Sabertooth viable again.

Without running the numbers it would not surprise me if a 300% buff to Ferocious Bite would still leave it behind Rip after you factor in the Ashmane's Shadow Rip and Rip relics.

There is nothing stopping them from reducing the cooldown of Brutal Slash dramatically other than an unexpressed desire to keep Feral AoE quite low.

Regardless of whether you think this hurts Feral's desirability it certainly has hurt the gameplay with all the undesirable talents.

Realistically the only way I see these type of fixes happening though is if Feral ends up having scaling issues and it comes down to buffing already overtuned talents or fixing the talent tree.

Another change that could be interesting is changing Brutal Slash to a finisher. That could make for some interesting gameplay where Predator, SoTF, Elune's Guidance and Moment of Clarity become much more viable.

[Rhineheart]

Most of the things I pushed for during alpha/beta ended up being given a chance actually. And most of my concerns with the spec were addressed, outside of really bad talent balance.

If you want to be a mongoloid aoe spec there are plenty of other options. In order for feral aoe to compete, the spec would need a heavy rework to basic abilities including shred, swipe, and thrash. And would probably need some completely new aoe mechanics.

This isn't something that is going to happen over the course of this expansion. Blizzard designed feral to not have very strong aoe, it wasn't some oversight, or ignorance. They simply don't want our aoe to be top tier.

Do you think that Brutal slash is in a good spot?

I think it's fine but that some classes have weak aoe and are strong at ST, but I'm not sure rake spam is what they had in mind.

What concerns with the spec you had, were addressed by blizz for legion?

[The Cat]

I like the core mechanics of feral, I don't really want an overhaul. Some simple changes like allowing thrash to stack or being able to spread rake would go a long way.

[snackbacon]

I'd like to see the duration of savage roar increased.

[Daegalus]

im no where near the best feral player, but I do feel the spec is very locked in to one way of playing.

LI, SR, JW, and BT are almost mandatory. Unspecing any of these is anywhere from a 15k-30k dps drop easily, and the less good you are the bigger the hit is.

SotF, predator and such are only use when absolutely forced to like Ilgynoth, but outside of that, it's never used.

I think we need to push for talent fixes. I want to be able to pick Blood Scent, SotF, JW, and MoC, and be viable if i want a more spammy gameplay style (i dont actually want this per say, just an example).

I want to be able to do ok AoE, not absolute shit AoE. Even making Thrash apply a Rake on all targets would be a huge improvement if speced into Predator or Sabertooth or Brutal Slash. Or make Brutal Slash a finisher that applies Rake at half duration or something. Right now Feral has 1 way to play, period. Any adjustment or straying from the one path, buries your dps into a 20ft grave. It shouldn't be like this, even if its a dps loss, 5k, 10k max, not 30-50k dps loss.

So I do think Feral needs a bit of a revision.

[Deleted]

Hello Everyone ,

If anyone has been reading the BlizzCon Q&A thread, there has been a strong push from Elemental shamans for changes regarding their spec.

What does everyone think about making another push for feral changes? or what is the general consensus if there needs to be another push?

There is a general agreement from ferals who are in progressive (mythic) guilds that feral druids are fine, and we have to accept the fact that feral druids are great at sustained ST dps, and horrible at aoe.

For other ferals, they find the spec very lacking, especially if the feral druid is unable to commit to scheduled raids and is a social/casual. In most cases, they will be declined often when trying to join pug groups for mythic+, raids, and have make time to make their own groups to progress in tougher content.

During Alpha/Beta days of legion, a lot concerns facing feral druids were voiced often. Even the same feral druids who say everything is okay now, were pushing for changes back in the day only to be let down as little has been done.

Should we bring this to light again ?

What do you all think .

well since they obviously buff only classes that have vocal representation and give them +15-50% buffs here and there I say yes...

[braxx]

I think the first thing to address would be the fact ferals have to cast a heal to boost the damage (through Bloodtalon talent).

Feral don't even have the right to have a proper cd for their spec. Think how it would be messed up for enh or rets to have to do the same.

Feral have been such a joke at this point I don't even know why people keep hurting themselves playing it.

[Appelgren]

I spy with my eye a few non druids voting in this poll

[Heywes]

I'm fine with just having average AOE/Cleave.

I just wish the talents were more interesting/viable and that we had a smoother rotation.

I feel we just need a bit of a clean up/polish, nothing to crazy.

[Lucrece]

Problem is when feral single target isn't even the best single target, and that honor goes to shadow priest which also happens to have the luxury of being ranged DPS and also the top cleave class (besides destro lock).

Heavy ramp up single target is a really crappy niche to have, when there are classes with comparable single target that also aoe/cleave/have better utility.

Not that feral needs serious help, it's just....uninspired.