Feral Cataclysm Concerns
I have been paying attention to the druid changes so far but I'd like to see what others have to say regarding my concerns and my hopes.
Playing with the talent calculator I have developed a fairly simple feral spec that I think will be the baseline feral spec.
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=-aBTwSMSw.9q4.druid
Notes on the spec: Ravage is intended to be our new opener from what Ive seen based on the massive damage boost, improved feral charge, aswell as predatory strikes. The one point that I have in predatory strikes could be moved to survival instincts if ravage getting extra chance to crit isn't worth it. It could also be maxed from another talent (if i had to guess i'd say master shapeshifter or furor would be the weakest.)
My beefs with the current feral spec are there is NO choices. As seen by my spec I was able to place points into damage increasing talents without having any leftover. (I actually was 1 short). I am aware that feral charge and brutal impact are not dps increasing but I view them as necessary utility. I was able to allocate 41 points into pure damage talents. In my opinion this number should be around 33-36 points with some extra points for utility, survival, or pvp.
Another problem is the talent Feral Aggression. A 6% damage increase to ferocious bite is easily workable to be baseline considering resto and balance specs do NOT use ferocious bite. The 3 stacks of faerie fire being applied is interesting. My interpretation of this talent is that the developers want feral to apply the stack of 3 faster. I don’t understand this as there are some inconsistencies that need to be worked out first.
First:
Faerie Fire lasts for 5 mins in the caster mana costing form compared to the 30 secs of the feral free form. Unless this is a bug it should be made consistent one way or another. If not made consistant I can see ferals shifting to caster form every 6 secs in order to get faerie fire stacked. The trade off being not re applying it every 30 secs but applying it every 5 mins.
Second:
This talent shows that blizzard wants ferals to be able to apply the stack easier but the ability shows they want us to use it more. This is inconsistent logic unless they wish for us to just push the button more which, quite frankly, is boring as it deals no damage.
Third:
The developers obviously knows that balance classes usually apply faerie fire and keep it up. My only reasoning for why they are leaving the regular faerie fire in stacked form is so ferals do not open a fight in caster form.
My proposal is to make Faerie Fire a consistant spell.
Faerie Fire 30 yard range costs 20 energy 8% base mana, no rage cost.
Decrease the armor of the target by 12% for 2 minutes. While affected the target cannot stealth or turn invisible.
This gives the ease of applying that balance enjoys without making it overpowered or underpowered for either spec.
I have a concern with the resto tree’s subspec options. While blessing of the grove’s shred damage increase makes it vital to our spec the other talents to take are slightly confusing.
Furor: This is a fine talent in its current form on live. It allows a druid to shift out at any time so they can battle rez, innervate, cc or whatever. The cap on 60 energy means if you shift out of cat form with more than 60 energy that excess energy is lost. If this goes live it means that a druid would have to spend energy in order to be below 60 if they need to battle rez, cc, or innervate someone without gimping their damage nearly as much.
Another problem is for bears, Many bears require the furor shift as a way to charge into combat. Enrage also serves this purpose but it has much greater cost. Charging into a boss fight is fine but with the enrage buff still active you are charging in, out of healer range, up to a boss while you have less armor. Doesn’t make much sense. Make the chance to proc rage 100% so pulling isn’t such a scary thing for healers.
The only problem I could possibly see with this is boomkins and resto druids using this for pvp in order to get a free bash off after going bear form. Although, if that is all they are taking it for I don’t see a problem with it.
Natural Shapeshifter and Master Shapeshifter:
Master shapeshifter is an interesting talent as it provides something that every spec can use. The problem is that it requires 3 points placed into a talent that has very little use especially with cat, bear and moonkin forms being reduced from 35% base mana cost to 5% base mana cost by default. So for 3 points you save 1% base mana those rare times in pve you swap forms. In pvp you also save around 3% base mana as travel form, flight form and aquatic form all cost 13% base mana.
This is a semi decent talent that requires a really bad talent to get. All for a total of 4 points. Bad bad bad. Change please.
My final issue is one that has been a problem for awhile now. Bear druids lose their utility of battle rezzing and innervating others while they are tanking. Those are 2 key class spells that should be modified so bears can use them.
I would suggest that an effect is placed deep in the feral tree that allows bear druids to cast innervate and their battle rez while in bear form with battle rez being instant cast and not taking them out of bear form. The only argument is that bears aren’t always tanking, problem is there are plenty of encounters already ingame that the tank is busy 100% of the time and cannot get a battle rez off at all.
I would also suggest the ranged be increased to 40 or 50 yards with that talent (while the druid is in bear form) as a bear druid can’t wander around trying to find a corpse with professor patricide smacking him from behind.
I would love to hear your ideas and reponses to this.
In before
TL;DR and “its beta for a reason”. These concerns are of new beta talents and things that have been concerns for awhile. This is the perfect time to bring them up.