Feral Cataclysm Concerns

[Nangz]

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.

[Shifthappens]

Talents are not final, they said it 1000x already, they didnt change them to their 5 points bonuses yet

EDIT: druid talents r heavyly broken atm, so give it some time, i would be concern when 4.0 comes out and they still the same, atm it doesnt bother me

EDIT 2: FFF is fine the way they made it, theres more then enough time every 30 sec to refresh it once, more buttons we click more fun it is, this wouldnt be the case if we had to cast it 3 times, but since only once, it fine the way it is.

EDIT 3: i would only be happy if they completly remove ability for feral druids to innervate/BR

[Nangz]

I don't know how to respond to that. I understand your first 2 points but asking for innervate and BR to be removed? wtf?

[exochaft]

Feral Cataclysm Concerns

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.

Just wanted to touch on this a bit before I start the coffee brewing.

There is a reason for the design, and it's two-fold.

1.) Blizz wants the first two tiers in the talent trees to be useful for sub-specing (talking in general). For druids, moonkins/ferals dip into resto. Now, it would be easy to make more interesting semi-passive talents for moonkins in the resto tree since they're both casters, but the trouble comes with feral. Blessing of the Grove increases damage/healing, Furor increases our resources, so the only thing left we all share is the ability to shapeshift (hence Natural Shapeshifter). It's also a talent that takes little effort to balance between specs.

2.) Blizz wants to avoid bears and kittens to nab the exact same talent tree (part of the separation of roles in one spec). As a kitty, you'd probably end up taking 2/2 Blessing of the Grove and 3/3 Furor for those times when you have to shapeshift and don't want to end up with zero energy... which leaves them needing to blow 4 points extra in the resto talent tree to get Master Shapeshifter to increase their damage output. For bears, I see something more along the lines of 3/3 NSS, 2/3 Furor, 3/3 Perseverance and 1/1 MSS. Okay, what does this accomplish? In the efforts of a kitty to maximize damage and a bear to maximize survivability/threat, Blizz has does something rather neat by funneling points into a shared utility talent in order to keep kittens from getting tank talents and bears getting kitty talents elsewhere in the feral tree. Long story short, it's designed as is to prevent a kitty/bear hybrid spec that can do everything, and each talent tree iteration improves on this.

Now, if you're asking me if I like the values currently in place, I'd say no. With how low the shapeshifting costs currently are, the talent does become lackluster (however numbers like these are usually changed last since they don't impact gameplay too much). On the other hand, MSS still seems almost too weak to the point where bears and kittens won't want to pick it up. As it stands, yes, the 4 points seem like a waste currently, but I have provided you with the reasons for their design. I can almost guarantee that the design will stay the same, even if the individual talents and/or values do not remain. If anything, Blizz would probably adjust MSS to be more appealing in some way so the points invested make NSS a nice bonus at the end of your 3-point investment.

[Shifthappens]

EDIT 3: i would only be happy if they completly remove ability for feral druids to innervate/BR

read it again plz, i said for ferals only, because im DPS in raids and i really dont like running half the map sometimes to res ppl... u lose alot of dps

[Hviske10ske]

EDIT 3: i would only be happy if they completly remove ability for feral druids to innervate/BR

read it again plz, i said for ferals only, because im DPS in raids and i really dont like running half the map sometimes to res ppl... u lose alot of dps

Selfish bastard tbh, you should be more of a teamplayer rather than only having tunnelvision on your own personal dps.
Yes, and so what. You might actually save the raid by ressing a dead healer or an OT.

Use sprint to get to him, use your instant cast to get him up, back into kitty form while sprint is still up and then charge the boss when in range to gain 30% melee haste.
Shouldnt be that big of a loss. And if its a dps you are asked to ress the raid dps will probably be higher wich should be the aim for every raid.

Also, if you removed those abilities for ferals, then thats 2 more reasons NOT to take a feral to a raid. BR and innervate is 2 pretty good reason to take druids to a raid. And you dont think that boomkins and trees looses healing or dps when they are asked to BR?

Back on topic.

I have been wondering about the 4 talents needed to get 2% crit in kitty form aswell, i havnt played around enough with talents to figure out what else i could put them in though. With 4 talents out of that you might be able to make a pretty good dps spec where you are only 2% crit from full dps, and can still get some of the most important bear talents to make you a good OT that can put out some good dps when not tanking.

[Gish]

EDIT 3: i would only be happy if they completly remove ability for feral druids to innervate/BR

read it again plz, i said for ferals only, because im DPS in raids and i really dont like running half the map sometimes to res ppl... u lose alot of dps

Someone doesn't like TeamPlay, and the fact a druid can fill any role it only makes sense that we are more of a support class then tunnel vision.

OT: The fact FF in feral is only 30seconds and in caster is 5mins is probably a bug, it's seems irrelevant to add another CD to an almost spam rotation.

[Cortano]

EDIT 3: i would only be happy if they completly remove ability for feral druids to innervate/BR

For innervate, last I heard, it is based on the caster's mana pool - not the targets! Essentially this "nerfs" the ability for feral druids such that it isn't worth using a couple global cooldowns to use. (Still remains valuable tor refill the ferals mana, as you might do in PvP.)

OT: The fact FF in feral is only 30seconds and in caster is 5mins is probably a bug, it's seems irrelevant to add another CD to an almost spam rotation.

It probably has more to do with making FF into a clone of "Sunder Armor" than anything else.

[Cerus]

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 rebirth and innervate all the time while I'm tanking - pretty much every ICC fight leaves an opportunity open to brez or innervate. I consider it part of knowing how to play a Bear Druid...just because you can't do it doesn't mean it should be made faceroll.

[Tryinmilkme]

EDIT 3: i would only be happy if they completly remove ability for feral druids to innervate/BR

read it again plz, i said for ferals only, because im DPS in raids and i really dont like running half the map sometimes to res ppl... u lose alot of dps

This is the problem I have with the raiding mentality of the game today. Your couple thousand damage done you loose pales in comparison to the couple hundread to million damage done the person you are b-rezzing will do once they are back in the game or not to mention if its a healer your b rez-innervate could very well be the difference between a wipe or a boss kill. If you are a druid it is part of your role in the game. You should feel good your b-rez/innervate saved the raid not slighted that you had to loose a couple thousand off your damage done. Too many people look at dps as the measure of a players utility, not to mention that Damage Done kills bosses, not DPS.

I actually like what I am seeing with the recent feral cahnges, I only hope they do something to the resto tree to justify spending 5 points in the first tier to want to get to master of shapeshift if you are a tank b/c right now I just dont see it.

[rated]

EDIT 3: i would only be happy if they completly remove ability for feral druids to innervate/BR

read it again plz, i said for ferals only, because im DPS in raids and i really dont like running half the map sometimes to res ppl... u lose alot of dps

If you were in my raid pulling that shit you would soon find youself OUT of the raid.

[Cortano]

read it again plz, i said for ferals only, because im DPS in raids and i really dont like running half the map sometimes to res ppl... u lose alot of dps

I totally agree. I hate battle rezzing. Not a FUN mechanic. We all do it because its powerful, but it doesn't really add anything to the enjoyment of playing a druid. I'd be glad to see it go.

[Eldrad]

Wow there are some serious morons in here.

Feral druid is my main going on 4 years now.
I love Innervate and I love "battle rez". I certainly don't want them removed from Feral.
Why someone would want abilities removed boggles my brain and makes me wonder about their sanity.
Hopefully Blizzard isn't swayed by stupid people and/or isn't reading this thread.

You do not have to cast those abilities if you want to. Ever.
Problem solved and normal people get to keep some very useful abilities.
Secondly, no smart raider is going to expect you to use either of those while tanking a boss in a raid. As for the non smart ones, who cares about their expecations.
Thirdly, a lot of people (not me) think feral tanking is too easy (easy is fine by me, it lets me focus on positioning boss, watching threat and aggro on adds, etc..) and want more of a challenge when tanking. Is it not challenging to throw a Innervate/BR and get in and out of bear form without dying? One could argue it is fun and lets a good feral tank show off some skills.

Please on behalf of other druids, stop asking for useful abilities to be removed.
Thanks.

[Tryinmilkme]

I totally agree. I hate battle rezzing. Not a FUN mechanic. We all do it because its powerful, but it doesn't really add anything to the enjoyment of playing a druid. I'd be glad to see it go.

So it's not a fun mechanic to b rez a healer to save the raid or b rez an ot preventing the mt from getting one shotted, or b rezing a dps to ensure beating the enrage timer but it is fun to wipe on a boss because you didn't want to be burdend with doing any of these things? My advice is to roll a Hunter, no one will ever ask u for anything and you can put up the high dps numbers that is all you are obviously concearned about.

I agree with Eldrad and hope Bliz would never take that mechanic away from feral druids.

[Greenmahn]

I totally agree. I hate battle rezzing. Not a FUN mechanic. We all do it because its powerful, but it doesn't really add anything to the enjoyment of playing a druid. I'd be glad to see it go.

I don't know i think is Fun to time the boss swings and abilities to Br that newb healer that had chose to stand int he fire and get off that last heal but i guess that's just a personal view point.

But you can bet that blizzard will never remove druid core mechanics for one spec BR and innervate are core druid abilities have been since vanilla(even when you had to OMG talent for innervate)

[Cortano]

You do not have to cast those abilities if you want to. Ever.

It is too powerful not to use; not using them: not a real option.

Why someone would want abilities removed boggles my brain and makes me wonder about their sanity.

You have a number of reasons.

Obviously, class balance is going to be a big one. Battle Rez is too good an ability. You can rez a healer and save a raid. You can rez an off-tank to prevent a MT from gettign one-shotted. You can add a couple hundred thousand or a million damage with a single global cooldown. Its a powerful ability, one that can change the outcome of a fight.

An ability that powerful has trade-offs. Druids shouldn't be as strong as tanks, do as much DPS, be as good as healers if we have some "critical" buff we alone can bring. That was OK when all classes had some unique defining buff that only they could bring and guaranteed that all raids had at least one of each class. The game has changed.

Second, you have playstyle. Some abilities are not fun or interesting to use, no matter how powerful they were. Running around to rez someone might be effective, but its the kind of thing that I would just as soon someone else had to do.

Third, you have class "feel". Ferals are about teeth and claws. Ripping apart their enemies. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. The great wheel of life. Brez doesn't really "feel" like a feral ability. A priest or paladin thing maybe... but not a druid. If you reincarnated as some animal form, more like the DK ghoul thing, that might 'fit' the class better.

Please on behalf of other druids, stop asking for useful abilities to be removed.

Please on the behalf of other druids, please stop asking for bad abilities to remain just because it keeps the class overpowered.

[Eldrad]

It is too powerful not to use; not using them: not a real option.



You have a number of reasons.

Obviously, class balance is going to be a big one. Battle Rez is too good an ability. You can rez a healer and save a raid. You can rez an off-tank to prevent a MT from gettign one-shotted. You can add a couple hundred thousand or a million damage with a single global cooldown. Its a powerful ability, one that can change the outcome of a fight.

An ability that powerful has trade-offs. Druids shouldn't be as strong as tanks, do as much DPS, be as good as healers if we have some "critical" buff we alone can bring. That was OK when all classes had some unique defining buff that only they could bring and guaranteed that all raids had at least one of each class. The game has changed.

Second, you have playstyle. Some abilities are not fun or interesting to use, no matter how powerful they were. Running around to rez someone might be effective, but its the kind of thing that I would just as soon someone else had to do.

Third, you have class "feel". Ferals are about teeth and claws. Ripping apart their enemies. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. The great wheel of life. Brez doesn't really "feel" like a feral ability. A priest or paladin thing maybe... but not a druid. If you reincarnated as some animal form, more like the DK ghoul thing, that might 'fit' the class better.



Please on the behalf of other druids, please stop asking for bad abilities to remain just because it keeps the class overpowered.

Wow. Just wow. I can't make stupid people into non-stupid people, but please realize that a Feral druid isn't different from a Restoration or Balance druid. They are all 3 DRUIDS. They share base line powers. They are all the same class. A spec is simply a specialization. Balance concentrates on making their nature and arcane spells more powerful, Feral on their shape shifting forms, and Restoration on their healing spells. All by personal choice.

Your analogy is horribly flawed.

From what I can gather from the few negative posts are that some people are:
Stupid.
Lazy.
Care about their numbers on recount more than ensuring a raid is successful.

I mean seriously. "I don't want to BR or Innervate someone while I'm a feral because it's not my play style... so Blizzard please remove those abilities" is the most selfish, childish and ignorant thing I've ever seen.

In fact, I now suspect I am being trolled. Yeah, on second thought I'm done posting because I think I've taken troll bait, no druid is that stupid.

[exochaft]

In fact, I now suspect I am being trolled. Yeah, on second thought I'm done posting because I think I've taken troll bait, no druid is that stupid.

Haha, don't get him started.

The power of B-rez and Innervate have been brought up before by Blizz in blue posts. The end story is they aren't powerful enough that raids will be stacking them like shamans in BC.

Well, some second-hand info (I know, I try to avoid this) on B-rez coming from one of my friends that's authoring mods in the beta: he noticed a new script command that seems to implicated a limit on the number of B-rezzes that actually go out in a fight. He hasn't played with it yet, but it exists. Sounds like a fail-safe switch to me if B-rez becomes too powerful since Blizz really hasn't stated much about it yet. On another note, even though most people haven't noticed, Innervate has been revised a bit: 33% of the casting druid's max mana pool over 10 seconds.

On a personal note, I love being able to B-rez and Innervate while tanking... I'm saying while I'm actively tanking! Takes a bit of healer trust to do it, too, because you have to do it right or risk getting one-shot. It's all about knowing a fight's mechanics, swing timers, and positioning. Never died or taken heavy damage while doing it yet, and I find it rather fun and challenging trying to time it right so I don't die/get hit and the person rezzed in front of the boss won't either.

[Tryinmilkme]

Times while tanking in ICC u can b-rez as a tank:

LM- During Bone storm
Lady- in between adds spawning
Gunship- really hope it would never be necc
Saur- Got me on this one, cant b rez
Fest- While casting blight, b-rezzed person will come back with no stacks like everyone else
Rot- during explosion
PP- Immeadiately after phase change
DW- Many oppertunies
Sind- During airphase's
BP- during boss swaps or while tanking voids as ot
BQ- MT never, OT at anytime
LK- During phase changes, person can take it when the change is over

Skilled tanks have many oppertunities to B-rez, and good players that play feral can and will always b-rez when called to.

[exochaft]

Times while tanking in ICC u can b-rez as a tank:

LM- During Bone storm
Lady- in between adds spawning
Gunship- really hope it would never be necc
Saur- Got me on this one, cant b rez
Fest- While casting blight, b-rezzed person will come back with no stacks like everyone else
Rot- during explosion
PP- Immeadiately after phase change
DW- Many oppertunies
Sind- During airphase's
BP- during boss swaps or while tanking voids as ot
BQ- MT never, OT at anytime
LK- During phase changes, person can take it when the change is over

Skilled tanks have many oppertunities to B-rez, and good players that play feral can and will always b-rez when called to.

Yay, at least someone understands. This kind of trickles into the other thread concerning the ability of bear tanks, and this is definitely one skill that separates good from great bear tanks. You have listed the easiest/safest times to B-rez, but it's still very possible to time it between melee swings and cleaves if it's absolutely necessary. Some moments take more balls and skill to pull off than others.

Edit: Figured I'd list my favorite one to do because it's just plain fun. On Blood Princes, I'm usually tanking one of the melee adds, so if I need to B-rez someone and don't want to bother with swing timers... find the corpse of the player, find a vortex, launch yourself in the vortex from the boss and be in range of the corpse. I actually use this when someone blows up a fire orb and does massive damage to people or a kinetic orb bugs out... literally a good 5-6 seconds of zero melee attacks on you, good for Innervates/B-rez/downtime on damage taken.