Removal of intellect started the way down for feral?

[years]

Hey. I started playing my druid in 2.1.0, and had before then played a warrior. I switched to my druid because I loved the uniquenes that the feral spec offered me. My attention went directly to the part of feral that was melee dps, backup tank, backup healer, backup caster(cc). This of course wasn't a roll in a raid back then, but restoration druids were pretty good to bring. This made me roll restoration for raids, and whenever I got the oppurtunity, I specced feral either for some arena jokes, bgs, dailies or whatever I wanted to do. My love for this spec goes deep, and I loved the versatility and at the same time challenges this gave me. Played right, I could do ok in duels, ok in bgs, ok in arena, ok in soloing shit, ok in about anything. And I know some of you might not see "ok" as good enough, but I dont concider myself an exceptionel player. Best ferals had high ratings, it was just really few of them, and they were never in the top. (Atleast not as I can remember) This meant that if you gave just a little more of yourself to this spec, you could be a unique player, who performed well.

Then came WotLK and took away our intellect. Since then, healing/mana pool has been severly nerfed. I quit interesting myself in ferals who performed well in arena, because it had turned into more of a nukefest. Ferals were better when it came to burst, and thats why we were more wanted. Already this had damaged our uniquenes. And it got worse, ferals were buffed, sure. Ferals got more attention in pvp, sure. But our uniquenes had turned into burst, burst, burst. I haven't really looked up pvp in cata at all cus I gave that up in WotLK.

I still play my druid, and jesus christ, leveling a druid was pain. Where did our survivability go? Down the drain with the hybrid I guess. (Oh and escaping from roots in the next patch.)

Don't bother answering if you concider this whine, I just want to know if any other druid out there feels like this? If this is what people want, then I guess it's not a bad thing, I'm just begining to think it's not my class anymore. Concider it, it's a total change of how the spec works, over quite a long time. How is our healing now...?

[Cluasen]

Are you asking how healing is while specced as feral??
If not, then I dont get it?

Healing as resto is fine now adays!

[Shizznizz]

Then came WotLK and took away our intellect.

I'm not sure what you mean, could you elaborate? I'm a bit special and my first max level was when ulduar patch came out, so i may have missed something there?

Ferals were better when it came to burst, and thats why we were more wanted. Already this had damaged our uniquenes. And it got worse, ferals were buffed, sure. Ferals got more attention in pvp, sure. But our uniquenes had turned into burst, burst, burst. I haven't really looked up pvp in cata at all cus I gave that up in WotLK.

A lot of pvp arena was about burst in WOTLK, I mean the average health pool was about 25k and if you couldn't burst a player down, a healer could easily top off a player at 10% in a couple of GCD's. I gotta agree with you about the burst, it was amazing while it lasted. I remember being VERY close to Armor Pen cap and having off-set resilience pieces with 4pt10..... i flattened plate classes. I started feral early in cata, switched to resto later but from what I recall, it was bursty, but is fixed in 4.0.6 with bleed nerd. We were significantly OP with our mastery and rip+rake tick for disgusting amounts, and we deserved to be nerfed, but blizz took it a step further and kicked the druid community in our collective nuts (and female equivalent parts, whatever THEY are).

I still play my druid, and jesus christ, leveling a druid was pain. Where did our survivability go? Down the drain with the hybrid I guess. (Oh and escaping from roots in the next patch.)

Don't bother answering if you concider this whine, I just want to know if any other druid out there feels like this? If this is what people want, then I guess it's not a bad thing, I'm just begining to think it's not my class anymore. Concider it, it's a total change of how the spec works, over quite a long time. How is our healing now...?

Survivability is fine, i'm curious to know what you had trouble with while leveling. Kitties aren't designed to take that much damage but you can always run away, thats something we definitely WERE designed for.

Oh and healing? In battlegrounds and raids, i simply adore it. Hots are so much more useful now with a big health pool so it wont overheal as much. And whoever thought of giving us a magic dispel at Blizz, i freaking love them.

[Elunedra]

I still play my druid, and jesus christ, leveling a druid was pain. Where did our survivability go? Down the drain with the hybrid I guess. (Oh and escaping from roots in the next patch.)

Don't bother answering if you concider this whine, I just want to know if any other druid out there feels like this? If this is what people want, then I guess it's not a bad thing, I'm just begining to think it's not my class anymore. Concider it, it's a total change of how the spec works, over quite a long time. How is our healing now...?

i had no problem to level as a feral druid, o could pull enoguh mobs and if it went wrong id would go bear zerg :P

as for my class, yes it is tru i miss the old days of str / agi / sta items, the days of a massive armor multiplier and wearing green (bones) armor items in bear. the days of massive Feral Attack Power :P

yes gone are those days.. we are but rouges or warrior depending on what we specailise. offhealing as a feral is a defently no no. we cna cast abotu 10 heals that heal for about 50% of a normal heal and then we are oom , i remeber saving my raid in ZA whit tranquility

yet one thing still remains in this spec is the skilll required to play it.

i do miss the old days but classes chance over time, i feel every hybrid suffers from it and even some pure classes. mages will always be mages and cast spells. but for example hunters for focus instead of mana nowdays and paladin welll thier rotation is not based on a lot of pocs, healnig as palasin is nolonger spamming 2 spells its a complex choice of spells

[Basharic]

I'm not sure what you mean, could you elaborate? I'm a bit special and my first max level was when ulduar patch came out, so i may have missed something there?

*Leans back in the rocking chair*

Back at the start of WoW a Feral druid could use almost EVERY one of the base stats, with spirit being the only really meh.


So our gear looked like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=398


What this did was gimp our damage badly, but make us decently effective emergency healers; especially in PVP. Back in vanilla a lock buddy and I would roll most folks by him doing most of the real killing and me being a general nuisance and CCr, while throwing him heals. As Druids have evolved we've moved further away from true hybrids to more a "role switcher" kinda of beast. As we specialized we lost some interesting gameplay but gained a fair bit of competitiveness. Of course every time we really start to get competitive in pvp the folks who can barely play their own class QQ and we get the nerfbat.

[gaymer77]

@OP

As others have commented, not sure why you would be wanting int as a feral druid. Feral doesn't have the mana pool to effectively heal for any length of time other than just a couple "oh shit" heals in emergencies and even then your healing is increased by your agility. If you want to have stronger heals as feral...respec resto tbh.

So our gear looked like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=398

The link you provided was actually a bad link to show him a comparison of what sets used to look like to what they are like today. Wowhead updates their items with every patch so what you linked was what those sets actually look like today after the stat changes took place. THIS is a better look at how the druid pvp set used to look. The only thing on the set that is inaccurate to how it used to be is the equip on each of them saying "spellpower" as back then they said "damage and healing" and "healing" and I'm fairly certain that the druid set only said "damage and healing" since that's what the priest set had back then (and why my "tier set" was my pvp set until I upgraded out of individual pieces in Naxx & AQ40 that had "damage and healing" on them).

@Basharic I find it really funny how you would pvp with your lock buddy and roll most people. My shadow priest would go around with my friends who were a lock, rogue, and warrior and we blew threw groups of 8+ in AB & AV easily and why we all got rank 10+.

[Basharic]

The link you provided was actually a bad link to show him a comparison of what sets used to look like to what they are like today. Wowhead updates their items with every patch so what you linked was what those sets actually look like today after the stat changes took place. THIS is a better look at how the druid pvp set used to look. The only thing on the set that is inaccurate to how it used to be is the equip on each of them saying "spellpower" as back then they said "damage and healing" and "healing" and I'm fairly certain that the druid set only said "damage and healing" since that's what the priest set had back then (and why my "tier set" was my pvp set until I upgraded out of individual pieces in Naxx & AQ40 that had "damage and healing" on them).

@Basharic I find it really funny how you would pvp with your lock buddy and roll most people. My shadow priest would go around with my friends who were a lock, rogue, and warrior and we blew threw groups of 8+ in AB & AV easily and why we all got rank 10+.

Good point I wasn't paying that close attention! I did say every base stat but spirit though.

Then as now there are lot of clueless and under-geared pvpers, people for whom a competent player who knows their class can become a 5 man boss, and if the good player brings a friend . . . people die.

Of course classes get nerfed for such things . . . so be careful doing it!

But ya OP the point of removing our int was that they finally started attempting to make feral (kitty specifically) viable for raids, that meant a tighter focus on stat distribution. The intellect had to go to give us an allotment of melee stats equivalent to the other classes. Strength (and Intellect too really) bit it when they simplified us down to use rogue gear. Not to mention that to do otherwise would have truly made us into the shift-everything-heal-to-full-tank-20-people-and-fark-your-mom-while-you-bleed-to-death class that terrible players think we are.

Feral heals now can be clutch, but most often you'd be better off hitting. The time you spend healing a friendly could have been spent controlling or killin' whoever was beating on them. As for healing yourself in a fight, our heals are a buffer, not much else. For the first time in my WoW career I find it more efficient after a big brawl to actually eat AND drink. I used to just heal to full then glug. Now it takes too long, and empties my mana bar; that is only going to get worse as we all get more HP too.

[Mystile]

You know, I complained a lot to one of my friends about the removal of int from feral gear going from original/bc to wrath. It was an issue then, unless you specced into the two different shifting talents, one to reduce mana cost by 60% (maybe 70%) then Natural Shapeshifter (20%), making shifting practically free, like it is now. This was not a huge issue, as all pvp specs included both talents, but for raiding a bear could not get the shifting talent, and I would oom often while soloing purely due to shifting.

In the state of the game right now, shifting is fine, the whole "we can be snared now omg" thing is not much of a bother to me, just means I will give up against frost mages like I do with my other melee characters. Hell, I can even heal a little bit with how things work now. Sure, it takes awhile, but x3 lifebloom, rejuv, and nourish will top me from almost death to full and I'll still be able to shift into a form, with excess mana.

Moonkin is miles better than it was during any previous expansion, maybe a little weaker in pvp now than in wrath, but way better than original/bc. Resto is still amazing. It is and always has been the highest rated role in pvp (among druids). Feral will be fine post patch, bleed damage lowered is necessary, you cannot dispel or mitigate bleeds, they do not need to be critting for 15k, mangle should be critting for 15k, with bleeds backing it up for 6-7k crits (my own opinion, of course).

If druid gear still had strength, agility, int, stamina, and a few pieces with spirit on it the class would be so wonky it would not make any sense to anyone. Imagine a talent like "converts 100% of spirit into armor" or a talent like "your intellect also increases your attack power". These are necessary changes (my opinion) to make the class not ridiculously annoying, stat wise.

[FaerieDragon]

I'm not sure what problems you are having leveling as feral, I had no trouble at all, as someone else said, if it was getting a bit hairy, pop bear form and pwn some faces. Resto was a bit hard to get used to at first and imo, was very gear dependent at launch of cata, but once you get some good gear, they are still really good. In our raids, we have a pally, resto druid and resto shammy as our healers. As for me, I seem to get beat but hunters, but my melee competition is warrior, otherwise I'm usually on top. Not sure what's gonna happen after tomorrow though.

[years]

For the first time while leveling my feral I experienced having problems when fighting just 2-3 mobs, 3 was sometimes too much even. And I had pretty decent gear from WotLK, like everyone else.

What I miss is the role we had before, compared to the roll we have now. Like someone above me said, we've turned into a rogue/warrior depending what we spec. I agree that it might be OP with good heals, good dps, and good survivability, but the way it was before was just perfect for me. thats the druid I fell in love with, and that is why I still play my druid to this day with 122 days played... hehe, our time of uniquenes is over I guess, atleast the uniquenes Im thinking about. Its just a shame to look back at how much more amusing i found the druid class before, even after having played it for a long time.

Still holding on to it though, it's my class.

PS. Don't gank other druids

[LonestarHero]

In BC I remember leveling as a feral and being able to fill any of the roles in a single spec provided I swapped gear for all regular dungeons (minus MT, but that wasn't even out yet) and group quests. However heroic dungeons and raids were out of the question and I actually had to settle on speccing resto to progress any further.