Incoming Feral buff

[Volitar]

The ST versus AoE specs is just the wrong way to go. Just think about what would happen if the "AoE specs" were doing just as bad on ST, as Feral do on AoE.

That would never happen, and so the whole idea if differentiating between AoE and ST dps specs is flawed and should be trashed.

Well when your spec can only do one thing and its mediocre at it why bother? I'm not saying Feral should be insane at ST but if you have abysmal AOE you should deff be one of the frontrunner specs when it comes down to pure single target damage.

[Lycanoth]

Simulationcraft is updated with the buff and it only simmed me about 35k (on patchwerk) higher than what I was simming for a couple of days ago. This doesn't seem right and I honestly haven't trusted sims for feral since this expansion started so I will wait for the reset to see what logs start reflecting.

With every raid night we do, the more I wonder to myself, why don't I just re-roll a class that does my job twice as good AND can do above average AoE?

At this point I do not see why to stay Feral when assassination rogue is pulling ridiculous numbers while being much much easier to play.

[Exerionx]

Simulationcraft is updated with the buff and it only simmed me about 35k (on patchwerk) higher than what I was simming for a couple of days ago. This doesn't seem right and I honestly haven't trusted sims for feral since this expansion started so I will wait for the reset to see what logs start reflecting.

At this point I do not see why to stay Feral when assassination rogue is pulling ridiculous numbers while being much much easier to play.

I simmed only about 22k more than I did before, so I'm not sure how accurate that is. And I would probably re-roll at this point too, but only few options are available for me for our raid team.

If ANY class is doing your ST job twice as good, you should re-roll because you do not know how to play feral. The AoE, I will give you. I actually switched to mage main for Nighthold because ferals are pretty much useless in there when compared to a mage's utility.

Twice as good is an exaggeration but you get my point.

[Deleted]

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[Whitepaw]

Well when your spec can only do one thing and its mediocre at it why bother? I'm not saying Feral should be insane at ST but if you have abysmal AOE you should deff be one of the frontrunner specs when it comes down to pure single target damage.

Well, that - and the fact that Feral has somehow been built to contradict own strengths. This probably happened in the last weeks of the beta prior to Legion launch.

I'm talking about our damage model (as in, how we generate damage). It's bleed heavy by design, to the extent that we don't really use Ferocious Bite any more, unless we're able to refresh Rip with it (which is after the target hit 25% hp). So, we Rake/Shred/Moonfire to 5 CPs, then we either refresh Rip or Savage Roar. We have the longest ramp up time of any spec, with around 60% of our damage ticking with Rip/Rake/AB on the target.

At the same time, we have THE highest movement speed of any spec in the game. We even have a utility spell to speed up our friends in the raid/party. So, the spec that needs extra speed the least of any melee spec, has the most speed! I mean, you would expect that speed to be used to enhance specs with front-loaded dps abilities and short ramp-up dps rotations, but no. Instead, we have a spec with a 145% baseline movement speed, and a dps rotation which has basically transformed us into a human-controlled DoT machine.

So now, when the fight requires a target swap (like Cenarius in EN), the Feral is more efficiently used when sticking to the boss - even though the Feral is the fastest melee to reach the adds when they spawn.

We also have some AoE abilities. In fact, we have 2 AoE abilities with some nice synergy between both them and our Artifact weapon. But now, instead of firing those off to get some real punch with using Swipe, we fire off Thrash to benefit from Predator.

Over-engineered much? Yes, it is.

[Deleted]

Well, that - and the fact that Feral has somehow been built to contradict own strengths. This probably happened in the last weeks of the beta prior to Legion launch.

I'm talking about our damage model (as in, how we generate damage). It's bleed heavy by design, to the extent that we don't really use Ferocious Bite any more, unless we're able to refresh Rip with it (which is after the target hit 25% hp). So, we Rake/Shred/Moonfire to 5 CPs, then we either refresh Rip or Savage Roar. We have the longest ramp up time of any spec, with around 60% of our damage ticking with Rip/Rake/AB on the target.

At the same time, we have THE highest movement speed of any spec in the game. We even have a utility spell to speed up our friends in the raid/party. So, the spec that needs extra speed the least of any melee spec, has the most speed! I mean, you would expect that speed to be used to enhance specs with front-loaded dps abilities and short ramp-up dps rotations, but no. Instead, we have a spec with a 145% baseline movement speed, and a dps rotation which has basically transformed us into a human-controlled DoT machine.

So now, when the fight requires a target swap (like Cenarius in EN), the Feral is more efficiently used when sticking to the boss - even though the Feral is the fastest melee to reach the adds when they spawn.

We also have some AoE abilities. In fact, we have 2 AoE abilities with some nice synergy between both them and our Artifact weapon. But now, instead of firing those off to get some real punch with using Swipe, we fire off Thrash to benefit from Predator.

Over-engineered much? Yes, it is.

I think Blizzard is trying to make feral this really "complex" class that is difficult to play and has a wide skill gap. But let's face it, it isn't hard to snapshot a bleed with buffs up, nor is it hard to pool resources to try to force out Ashamane's Bite with a long duration rip. It is however very clumsy and full of frustration; with considerable ramp up time and a lot of drawbacks compared to other classes - at the very least Feral should have the most consistent and reliable damage (when their rotation is performed correctly). It shouldn't be swinging by 20%++ just because of terrible RNG on a terrible trait.

Particularly if it could be fixed so easily, new Ashamane's Bite: Ferocious Bite creates a shadowy duplicate of Rip on any target already affected by your Rip, lasting longer and dealing more damage per combo point spent, where a 5 point Ferocious Bite provides a full damage, full duration Rip.

[teddabear]

Well, that - and the fact that Feral has somehow been built to contradict own strengths. This probably happened in the last weeks of the beta prior to Legion launch.

I'm talking about our damage model (as in, how we generate damage). It's bleed heavy by design, to the extent that we don't really use Ferocious Bite any more, unless we're able to refresh Rip with it (which is after the target hit 25% hp). So, we Rake/Shred/Moonfire to 5 CPs, then we either refresh Rip or Savage Roar. We have the longest ramp up time of any spec, with around 60% of our damage ticking with Rip/Rake/AB on the target.

At the same time, we have THE highest movement speed of any spec in the game. We even have a utility spell to speed up our friends in the raid/party. So, the spec that needs extra speed the least of any melee spec, has the most speed! I mean, you would expect that speed to be used to enhance specs with front-loaded dps abilities and short ramp-up dps rotations, but no. Instead, we have a spec with a 145% baseline movement speed, and a dps rotation which has basically transformed us into a human-controlled DoT machine.

So now, when the fight requires a target swap (like Cenarius in EN), the Feral is more efficiently used when sticking to the boss - even though the Feral is the fastest melee to reach the adds when they spawn.

We also have some AoE abilities. In fact, we have 2 AoE abilities with some nice synergy between both them and our Artifact weapon. But now, instead of firing those off to get some real punch with using Swipe, we fire off Thrash to benefit from Predator.

Over-engineered much? Yes, it is.

Blizzard has always had a problem with synergies when it comes to Feral. I think they would have been better off with large buffs to Shred and FB than the across the board 8%. They have done a lot of backsliding since claiming they could fix all Feral's mechanical issues with direct damage buffs.

[Deleted]

I found a early feral playstyle simulator youtube.com/watch?v=gtswgaNQ_2E

[Ollz113]

Ww are kings in AoE

Clearly you've never experienced a good DH with the cascading eyes legendary.........

[Soupkitchn89]

I was playing feral and switched to an SIN rogue recently and it feels like the way feral should be. Everything about SIN is just smoother.

Honestly feel like feral would be a lot more and honestly fun if they removed heals to buff dmg, and buff snapshoting on bleeds. I think how unforgiving the feral rotation can be vs other more smooth rotations only really works if executing it flawlessly nets tier 1 results by a noticeable margin.

The recent change to make SIN rogue rupture scale in duration and not DPS honestly just feels so good and makes the rotation a lot more fluid and flexible...made me really wish they did the same for RIP.

I liked the above suggestion for FB. FB just feels very underwhelming at the moment at least to me. I think a play style of dot maintenance with a buff to current bleeds via FB usage (not newly applied but already applied on target of FB) would make for a much more fluid and fun play style.

[Whitepaw]

A lot of posters in this Druid sub forum throws shade on Rogues - but Assassination doesn't feel that spammy to me tbh.

It's damage model is also heavily reliant on bleeds, but in a more balanced way than Feral (40-45%, in my experience). Their secondary bleed in on a CD and their primary combo builder costs more energy than Shred.

But Assassination does use Envenom a lot more. And the synergy between that, Vendetta, weapon traits and certain talent choices just makes that finisher a lot more exciting to use than Ferocious Bite. Btw, to use Envenom efficiently, they also pool energy - not for the off chance to proc an AB-like mechanic, but to buff their combo builders right after Envenom.

So when playing Assassination in a boss fight, with primarily single target damage, I find myself alternating between building combo points - deciding which finisher to use - pool energy before finisher - use finisher - use appropriate combo builder for next finisher etc. Since Vendetta is on a much shorter CD than Berserk (with the right relics, it gets close to 1 min), I also have to keep an eye on that. And I still have to keep 2 bleeds up on the target.

In an AoE fight, Assassination rogues have some of the same challenges as Feral. But since they can change poison and they gain energy from bleed ticks, the whole AoE game can be changed by their own play style. If they go Deadly Poison (the cookie cutter choice is Agonising Poison) and bleeds on several targets, they can spam FoK and deliver some real damage on the targets.

Right now, Assassination rogues just have more choices, more synergy (their abilities, weapon traits and talents are interconnected and work well together, in an intuitive and logic way) and a much higher output in their dps rotation than Ferals.

Feral started as a mesh between a tank and a melee dps, with Druidic healing and casting abilities retained. Since that was apparently too much, maybe we could get some of the nice things Rogues have right now?