is Feral really that bad?

[Atoczix]

I love playing Feral Druid, don't like Balance.
I've been leaned towards not playing it simply because a lot of people say they are under-performing and have been for a while.
I have a ton of fun playing it but if I ever want to get into serious PvE, apparently I won't be able to?

Just wanting to clarify things. I'm playing my Priest but I keep thinking about my Feral Druid :'(

[-aiko-]

No.

Feral has a bad community image because the spec has a high skill gap and not many players play it. When played at the highest level, Feral can absolutely be competitive and brings high single-target DPS and cleave. The problem with its image stems from a few things:

1. Since few players play it, and it has a high skill gap, the chances are unfortunately not low that a Feral you run into in a random dungeon/LFR/whatever is severely underperforming
2. Current raid content heavily favors classes with immunities, which Feral has none of
3. Balance is stupidly strong this tier, making the comparisons to Feral even more damaging

Blizzard is aiming to fix the first problem with the 7.3 changes, which will lessen the gap between perfect and less-than-perfect gameplay. Also, while it remains to be seen, it appears that Blizzard realizes their mistake with "Tomb of Soakgeras" and is trying to provide more balanced and varied boss encounters for Antorus.

[Fappy]

As the poster above mentioned, Balance looks really good compared to Feral mostly due to the encounter design of the current tier. There are just a lot of fights that favor Boomy's toolkit over Feral this go around.

[Malmmoc]

As Aiko said, Feral is getting some substantial changes in 7.3 so if you are interested in playing it I would take a good look at those. I think it is going to be in a better place, personally.

[Littleraven]

Feral is fine but you are punished severely for not playing it well. Even someone who knows what they are doing can suffer if they make a lot of mistakes.

[Aggrophobic]

No.

Feral has a bad community image because the spec has a high skill gap and not many players play it. When played at the highest level, Feral can absolutely be competitive and brings high single-target DPS and cleave. The problem with its image stems from a few things:

1. Since few players play it, and it has a high skill gap, the chances are unfortunately not low that a Feral you run into in a random dungeon/LFR/whatever is severely underperforming
2. Current raid content heavily favors classes with immunities, which Feral has none of
3. Balance is stupidly strong this tier, making the comparisons to Feral even more damaging

Blizzard is aiming to fix the first problem with the 7.3 changes, which will lessen the gap between perfect and less-than-perfect gameplay. Also, while it remains to be seen, it appears that Blizzard realizes their mistake with "Tomb of Soakgeras" and is trying to provide more balanced and varied boss encounters for Antorus.

It's not only the "image though, it's one of the weaker classes even if played by an enthusiastic and skilled player.
It lacks the right tools and it's unnecessarily complicated, as you said.

Unless you really, really like the class there are just so many better options right now.

With all the "class fantasy" and that stuff that Blizzard talked so much about I really thought that feral would be made into an AOE moster. I mean it's a bloody tiger with claws and stuff! Should really AOE better than a darn pirate (outlaw), right?

Heres hoping that 7.3 will make it better and the new raid as well.

[Xarathan]

It's not only the "image though, it's one of the weaker classes even if played by an enthusiastic and skilled player.
It lacks the right tools and it's unnecessarily complicated, as you said.

Unless you really, really like the class there are just so many better options right now.

With all the "class fantasy" and that stuff that Blizzard talked so much about I really thought that feral would be made into an AOE moster. I mean it's a bloody tiger with claws and stuff! Should really AOE better than a darn pirate (outlaw), right?

Heres hoping that 7.3 will make it better and the new raid as well.

I really cannot see how feral would be an aoe monster in regards to class fantasy, if anything cat-like predators have extreme tunnel vision and single out weak from packs of stronger prey, thereby making them extreme single target oriented.

[Aggrophobic]

I really cannot see how feral would be an aoe monster in regards to class fantasy, if anything cat-like predators have extreme tunnel vision and single out weak from packs of stronger prey, thereby making them extreme single target oriented.

Really? I see my cat go nuts and there is claws and shit all over the place. Tigers and our tiny house cat might not be the same thing...

[Myztikrice]

Just because their single target bleeds a lot (furniture) doesn't mean they're doing aoe

[Deleted]

DPS ok, but we are NOT competitive. You will have to put a lot of work in to maximize your dps and even when you play flawless there is always freaking ashamanes bite rng to fk with your numbers. Just look at the mythic logs on TOS and where ferals parse...last time I checked there was ONE feral on goroth mythic under the first #1000...on #995 or something like that.

But yeah worrying about TOS numbers makes not much sense at this point. Not too long until 7.3 hits the servers and since this will change a bit and make feral playstyle easier...or lets say more forgiving...I would just suggest that you play feral as alt and see where the ride takes you. Join the feral discord, take a look at the pinned notes, read up xanzaras guide, get to know the basics etc and you should be fine.

[ErothTV]

Really? I see my cat go nuts and there is claws and shit all over the place. Tigers and our tiny house cat might not be the same thing...

I would be afraid rather of the tiger and not your cats

[Aggrophobic]

I would be afraid rather of the tiger and not your cats

Dude, he is fierce as fuck! You should see what he did to a moth just a few min ago.

[Polarthief]

- High skill cap (higher skill required means less skill focusing on mechanics)
- Balance is stupidly good for most Tomb encounters (and is ranged; ranged is always a benefit over melee)
- Feral doesn't have an immunity, which hurts it more (though it does have some kickass survivability through a very powerful DR (way better than Balance's shitty Barkskiin) as well as having a Regrowth every time you do a finisher (more with that one Legendary). Needless to say, it doesn't squish like Balance does, but it still doesn't have an immunity.
- Feral's AoE isn't as good as Balance's. It can still be quite devastating though.
- Because almost every top Druid DPS is playing Balance, it makes Feral look worse on logs.

7.3 should fix some of these issues, hopefully, but who knows.

Also, while it remains to be seen, it appears that Blizzard realizes their mistake with "Tomb of Soakgeras" and is trying to provide more balanced and varied boss encounters for Antorus.

Yeah, I've heard that bullshit before. Way too skeptical of that actually being addressed since it's been a thing FOREVER now.

[guerron]

7.3 should fix some of these issues, hopefully, but who knows.

I feel like the problem right now is that Ferals get punished if not playing perfectly, while in previuos expansions you got rewarded for perfect play. Hi ranking Ferals should be like Top3 on single target which they simply are not. This will probably not really change with 7.3. You probably get punished less but not really rewarded more *shrug*.

[Ruts]

In the hands of an ape yes. Played by a skilled player its great.

[joshual]

How do you be a good Feral ?

[Daan]

Feral isn't that bad, but some other classes can perform much better with faceroll playstyle.

[Deleted]

Feral requires much more effort to not stand out as being bad. It remains pretty unforgiving to bad decisions being made in the rotation as the dps drops quickly if losing uptime on bleeds and SR, or not snapshotting and clipping the bleeds properly. It's just how the spec is designed, but in the hands of a good player it is still a strong dps spec and even has the ability to do fairly well on aoe fights with a few spec adjustments from encounter to encounter now.

[Polarthief]

I feel like the problem right now is that Ferals get punished if not playing perfectly, while in previuos expansions you got rewarded for perfect play. Hi ranking Ferals should be like Top3 on single target which they simply are not. This will probably not really change with 7.3. You probably get punished less but not really rewarded more *shrug*.

I mean technically that's the same thing. Either way you'll do less DPS if you don't do perfect play.

The problem though is that you can't have specs doing significantly better than other specs just because they're more complex because if you do, all top raiders will flock to that spec/class, especially if it does around 5%+ more DPS.

TBH my biggest question about Feral is why in the hell did they put its challenge skin on the Agatha list? Putting a Bleed-based ST spec on an AoE fight is just a cruel joke and makes the completionist in me upset that I won't complete it prior to 7.3

[Myztikrice]

Feral have okay AoE if you spec into it. Predator alone solves 90% of the problems in that challenge.