[Feral] 7.3 Change Dislikes

[Deleted]

From my time in the Feral Community I expect these changes to be *very* popular by the masses, but this is one of the times where I completely and utterly disagree with the general consensus. Feral has historically been "the difficult spec of WoW", so naturally the people who enjoy playing it for the challenge have gathered playing it, me included. I'd hate to see that change too much.

The changes make the amount of stuff to actively manage a lot lower (with its Savage Roar and Jagged Wounds duration increases). Every since MoP I feel like both SR and Rip consistently are less and less meaningful for our rotation. It used to be that the point of the spec was to keep up your dots/buffs no matter the cost, which you would accomplish with great planning, and if you did this well, you'd be on your way to doing great dps.

In stead of the long time planning we used to have, Legion offered us a kind-of-spammy playstyle that was still pretty okay, simply because we had lots to think about all the time. Now with these changes, we're both spammy and also have little to think about. Basically I feel like we're becoming more and more like rogues; a spec focused on just getting rid of all this energy and these combo points that keep bothering us. Not a fan.

[Thorim]

It will be popular with the people who never play feral in raids outside of LFR, I played it because the spec was fun to play BECAUSE it was very skill based. If I wanted to play babies-first-spec I'd play an easy spec.

[Myztikrice]

The Legion playstyle wasn't spammy at all...

[Deleted]

The Legion playstyle wasn't spammy at all...

Historically, it was and it still is. Our energy wait times used to be like 40%, and now they're nowhere near that. Whether you enjoy the short term planning/reacting of most specs or the long term planning that feral used to have is of course personal opinion though. I happen to enjoy the second one, and am a bit sad we're moving ever further away from that point.

[teddabear]

I'm in favor of short duration bleeds but SR is far too short.

[exochaft]

Many people are viewing these changes from a Feral main-spec from the start of the expansion sort of view. If you're new to the spec, Feral is your off-spec, or you don't have gear itemized well for the spec, these changes are very welcome.

Try playing Feral w/o Feral-specific legendaries and heavy haste/versatility gear and you'll understand immediately why something needed to change. While Feral isn't the exclusive spec that is a slave to itemization, it's likely one of the most punishing specs in that regard with the current talent selection/power. The core difficulty of Feral is still remaining with the new changes, and proper execution is still rewarded.

[Sinitar]

You people who enjoy the complexity of the feral spec should stop your elitistic prattle and actually understand blizzard's reasoning for their changes. They don't try to dumb down the feral rotation. What they try to accomplish is make it less cookie-cutter, where you're only allowed to play one build or gtfo. How is it fun, to be forced to play a build simply because the other talent choices are incredibly underwhelming?

If you enjoy being the type of masochist who likes to pay close attention to timers while also executing tactics flawlessly, fine, but don't you think it's fair to give options to the other players who also enjoy feral, but wish to take a simpler route to its rotation without being severely punished? Blizzard said it themselves; you will still be able to play the same rotation as on live, but I, personally, am very relieved they finally start giving us options instead of forcing us to play one single build solely because the other talents are very poorly tuned.

[Kraineth]

Eh, I disagree

As someone who has fought blizzard on basically all attempted dumbing-down of the spec, these are good changes.

-Bloodtalons should have never reached 50% increase, it never needed to be that high to compete with the other talents in it's row
-SR never should have even been made a talent, much less talented with reduced duration.

I can grumble a bit at the Jagged Wounds nerf, but it doesn't make the spec somehow way easier to play.

All of these changes allow for more talent diversity, instead of running the standard SR/JW/BT build in 99% of situations. The fact that a 33% buff was used to counteract nerfs to talents that didn't even add up to 50% nerfs to the power of the build should tell you how screwy talent balance has become.

I am the first person to defend the need for Feral to remain an engaging spec with short timers and relatively unique mechanics, but there is no way any of these changes are bad.

[worcester]

Try playing without Chatoyant/Archdruid/Clutch/Pouncers. Because feral resources are linked energy->cp->ps, increasing the generation/pooling capability of these resources greatly improves the playability of the spec.

I get that you want to keep your little club, but the spec is way to hard right now if you aren't geared properly (which is the case for many non-main ferals). Personally, I absolutely love feral and juggling bleeds/sr and managing my energy/cp and have always maintained feral os in past expansions but this one broke me.

Not to mention because of ferals low population, some legendaries get overlooked and are actually some of the most broken things in game (luffas, for example, is pretty much a different spec).

[Whitepaw]

Eh, I disagree

As someone who has fought blizzard on basically all attempted dumbing-down of the spec, these are good changes.

-Bloodtalons should have never reached 50% increase, it never needed to be that high to compete with the other talents in it's row
-SR never should have even been made a talent, much less talented with reduced duration.

I can grumble a bit at the Jagged Wounds nerf, but it doesn't make the spec somehow way easier to play.

All of these changes allow for more talent diversity, instead of running the standard SR/JW/BT build in 99% of situations. The fact that a 33% buff was used to counteract nerfs to talents that didn't even add up to 50% nerfs to the power of the build should tell you how screwy talent balance has become.

I am the first person to defend the need for Feral to remain an engaging spec with short timers and relatively unique mechanics, but there is no way any of these changes are bad.

^ This.

If done right, these changes will also change the relative value of traits on our Artifact weapon - and the relative value of our relics. The -15% armor Golden Trait will make way more sense with these changes. We can also hope that our AoE will become more relevant (and when I write AoE, I mean a buff to Swipe).

Now we only need more utility.

[Myztikrice]

Historically, it was and it still is. Our energy wait times used to be like 40%, and now they're nowhere near that. Whether you enjoy the short term planning/reacting of most specs or the long term planning that feral used to have is of course personal opinion though. I happen to enjoy the second one, and am a bit sad we're moving ever further away from that point.

Your definition of 'spammy' is flawed if you think Feral in Legion is spammy.

[axxey]

They neutered their ability to balance feral effectively when they gutted the spec and gave it back in must have talents. Savage roar and bloodtalons should never have been talents.
Brutal slash should have been a godsend for the spec but instead it's stuck on bloodtalons tier, the combo that should have been key to giving feral burst AoE parity with any other classes.

[RelaZ]

No I disagree, I think the changes are amazing, coming from a PvP perspective.

It means that we can maybe finally get rid of the rediculously badly designed talent that is Bloodtalons in PvP. Bloodtalons forces you to use your utility (PS) to increase damage instead of providing utility (ie doing something skillful, not spamming damage). It is so counter intuitive to the idea of PvP that I'm sure the only reason it became the go-to talent in the PvP spec was because whoever is in charge of Feral PvP has a lot of specs on his hands and Feral was/is far down on his priority list. The rotation with Bloodtalons is so incredibly clunky in PvP that I could go on forever.

Also, the SR change is good - 24sec SR is just not feasible in PvP, at all. It should be increased to 42 secs like previous expansions and be made usable at 0 combo points for a 12 second buff though.

Tying less damage into pulling off the incredibly clunky and in-effective PvP rotation and more to just maintaining DoTs properly is great. Snapshotting is a great, but Bloodtalons and Jagged Wounds simply make Feral PvP incredibly clunky - if you get CC'd and PS falls of you're screwed and all you ever do is renew DoTs because you never have 100% uptime so you don't actually have time to do anything intelligent besides just renewing DoTs because they're about to fall off (not that there are many intelligent
Feral plays left in Legion anyway but yeah).

[friedmudkipz]

I enjoy actually having fun when I play a spec so I'll have to disagree with you.

[barrinek]

Personally I have always disliked SR, but grew to despise it when it changed from AA damage to all damage. Having the 30% or so damage gate they have had since the change feels absolutely terrible in scenarios where it happens to fall. It has always been a horrible mechanic and will be as long as it exists.

That being said, even getting rid of it I feel as though it could be replaced with something that is an actual mechanic. I won't pretend to have an idea of what they could do to replace it, but I'm sure they could come up with something.

Changes like this make me hopeful that someday SR won't be mandatory anymore.

[Whitepaw]

I'll quote Ishayu <Frostmane - EU> from the official forums:

"Pretty great changes and well needed. Bekrynn nicely sums up why. It unlocks many new builds and substantially reduces the punishment for a little it of failure, which was very, very needed.

I basically had to give up on my Feral because the rotation was just too punishing to perform while raid leading as well (which I was doing). That rotation was just beyond punishing, beyond ridiculously hard to maintain.

The only reason I was able to even play it at all is I ended up writing a model predictive controller algorithm for simultating ahead and suggest abilities. This is actually the same algorithm that powers the recently released automatic Insulin Pump. Without methods like these, it was unplayable while raid leading. That's just ridiculous.

Any attempt to deviate from the super punishing spec was met with completely ruined DPS potential. It wasn't just a little bit of punishment, it was really large. The spec basically had no flexibility.

However, this comes far too late. I've already rerolled, and I don't expect to return to this character, because even though you're fixing the retarded rotation, and good on you for that, this still doesn't feel like a Druid anymore. There's no shapeshifting and no real utility in it, and the survivability is beyond frustrating, especially in PvP.

However, I'm glad on behalf of my formerly fellow kitties that this finally got looked into. Good move, Blizzard."

I think a lot of players has the same opinion regarding the lack of utility as he does. How come the most versatile class in the game ends up with one of the most locked specs? We're still the only class that can fill every spot in any team, most hybrid of hybrids. But Feral is now punished dps-wise for using the (nerfed) healing, if done at the wrong time.

I know all the reasons for pruning abilities, making sure we're not OP when bearcat/catbear, watching our healing output etc - I just don't care. I don't see Blizzard removing immunities from rogues fx. Or utility. Even though immunities have been borderline gamebreaking for over a decade now.

So Blizzard: Fix our utility! In patch 7.3. Buffing our affinities would be the logical start. Make it so going moonkin mid fight could be a good choice. Or start healing mid fight, as a Feral. Oh, and let us cast Rejuvenation in cat form. That's the least you can do, honestly.

[xfloydex]

Totally disagree. I love hard hitting finishers. And having little time to get in any ferocious bites continues to annoy the shit out of me. Also target switching will now become viable which is great. And will still require skill to execute properly.

[Tradu]

Many people are viewing these changes from a Feral main-spec from the start of the expansion sort of view. If you're new to the spec, Feral is your off-spec, or you don't have gear itemized well for the spec, these changes are very welcome.

Try playing Feral w/o Feral-specific legendaries and heavy haste/versatility gear and you'll understand immediately why something needed to change. While Feral isn't the exclusive spec that is a slave to itemization, it's likely one of the most punishing specs in that regard with the current talent selection/power. The core difficulty of Feral is still remaining with the new changes, and proper execution is still rewarded.

That's entirely incorrect. The difference between perfect gear and worst gear really isn't that big, simply because agility is better than all our secondaries.

- - - Updated - - -

Try playing without Chatoyant/Archdruid/Clutch/Pouncers. Because feral resources are linked energy->cp->ps, increasing the generation/pooling capability of these resources greatly improves the playability of the spec.

I get that you want to keep your little club, but the spec is way to hard right now if you aren't geared properly (which is the case for many non-main ferals). Personally, I absolutely love feral and juggling bleeds/sr and managing my energy/cp and have always maintained feral os in past expansions but this one broke me.

Not to mention because of ferals low population, some legendaries get overlooked and are actually some of the most broken things in game (luffas, for example, is pretty much a different spec).

As somebody who played without any of those legendaries until the end of Nighthold, they really aren't necessary to be able to play the spec. Sure, SotA is very strong and you want it for that reason, but it's not what makes the spec work.

- - - Updated - - -

^ This.

If done right, these changes will also change the relative value of traits on our Artifact weapon - and the relative value of our relics. The -15% armor Golden Trait will make way more sense with these changes. We can also hope that our AoE will become more relevant (and when I write AoE, I mean a buff to Swipe).

Now we only need more utility.

The changes really won't make Open Wounds much stronger. It's just a weak trait because of how armor works and because the value on the trait is low.

- - - Updated - - -

Personally I have always disliked SR, but grew to despise it when it changed from AA damage to all damage. Having the 30% or so damage gate they have had since the change feels absolutely terrible in scenarios where it happens to fall. It has always been a horrible mechanic and will be as long as it exists.

That being said, even getting rid of it I feel as though it could be replaced with something that is an actual mechanic. I won't pretend to have an idea of what they could do to replace it, but I'm sure they could come up with something.

Changes like this make me hopeful that someday SR won't be mandatory anymore.

It was only AA damage for one expansion, before and after that expansion(Cata?) it was all damage. And SR is necessary in order to have decisionmaking regarding CP spending, although the current short duration ruins that a bit.

- - - Updated - - -

So Blizzard: Fix our utility! In patch 7.3. Buffing our affinities would be the logical start. Make it so going moonkin mid fight could be a good choice. Or start healing mid fight, as a Feral. Oh, and let us cast Rejuvenation in cat form. That's the least you can do, honestly.

They specifically don't want us to use moonkin form as a standard part of our DPS, and it's already worth switching into if you're off target for a while.

[Deleted]

i think it's perfect in 7.3

[Doogler]

From my time in the Feral Community I expect these changes to be *very* popular by the masses, but this is one of the times where I completely and utterly disagree with the general consensus. Feral has historically been "the difficult spec of WoW", so naturally the people who enjoy playing it for the challenge have gathered playing it, me included. I'd hate to see that change too much.

The changes make the amount of stuff to actively manage a lot lower (with its Savage Roar and Jagged Wounds duration increases). Every since MoP I feel like both SR and Rip consistently are less and less meaningful for our rotation. It used to be that the point of the spec was to keep up your dots/buffs no matter the cost, which you would accomplish with great planning, and if you did this well, you'd be on your way to doing great dps.

In stead of the long time planning we used to have, Legion offered us a kind-of-spammy playstyle that was still pretty okay, simply because we had lots to think about all the time. Now with these changes, we're both spammy and also have little to think about. Basically I feel like we're becoming more and more like rogues; a spec focused on just getting rid of all this energy and these combo points that keep bothering us. Not a fan.

They said they are keeping the current spec as a top option. You are literally losing nothing. What you are complaining about is that people who you consider yourself better than will be able to play the spec reasonably well now.