Dying breed

[teddabear]

Under-representation is not a valid argument for a class or spec being weak. In terms of damage and overall package warlocks and ret paladins have been the only outliers (strangely for the entire xpac...) representing the high end and the low end of the spectrum respectively.

I wish people would be more constructive in their posts/threads. It's disheartening to see a thread entitled 'qq no one plays my spec' near the top rather than the discussion on 5.4 changes or a thread on set bonuses or a thread on DoC/talent tier. Nothing constructive comes from complaining or comparing your spec to another or making an assumption that too few people play a spec.

It's valid if it prevents the spec from getting a raid spot. There are almost countless parses that show Feral is both low DPS and has low representation. True you can't prove a correlation and there are more factors than just DPS, especially in 10 man.

There have been threads on all the topics you mentioned. I see nothing wrong with this thread and i did learn something useful about Guardians I didn't know.

[Deleted]

Im confused why ppl think that a talant that decrease our dps a small bit for more raid utility is a bad thing? This is exactly what this game needs more of, a choice between utility and more damage.

And rocketbear, rogues do have better average dps because it takes 5min to learn how to maxdps on a rogue while ferals have way bigger learning curve, but after you know your class, ferals are not far behind rogues (if even behind)

[Viromand]

Im confused why ppl think that a talant that decrease our dps a small bit for more raid utility is a bad thing? This is exactly what this game needs more of, a choice between utility and more damage.

True but you are missing something. HotW and tranq is a long cooldown on alot of fights it can only be used once. And tranq has a longer cooldown than hotw. Since the difference is not game breaking it doesnt matter but to sacrifice dmg for utility when all other classes get utility that is baseline or a glyph and more powerful than ferals.

Tranq is nice on its own too, with HotW its really strong. I mean shamans use a glyph and sacrifice a bit of their dps, but they get more than a feral using HotW.

[Dysheki]

Im confused why ppl think that a talant that decrease our dps a small bit for more raid utility is a bad thing? This is exactly what this game needs more of, a choice between utility and more damage.

I actually agree this makes an interesting choice in raiding but I somewhat understand why Blizzard may not implement it. You put extra strain on someone by making these decisions. If you need more dps and choose that talent you're putting more strain on the healers to make sure they can make it work. If you choose the raid cooldowns you're putting more strain on the dpsers to make sure they can still do what they need to do. To a lesser extent you're also skewing logs a bit (not a big deal, but it's definitely a thing).

Balancing encounters over these decisions would likely make raiding more difficult to manage (and they don't want players to have to manage any more cooldowns than they already have, imo).

[Deleted]

One more thing which makes feral life hard on 10 mens: weapon availability. Drop rate of polearms seems to be around 10% for each of two bosses who drop polearm. For 25 men its not that big problem but for 10 men it means its totally possible to go months without getting new weapon. And no good weapon = no competitive dps.
Hunters have same problem probably.

[gardner]

A lot of people have this idea since always that feral are not good and those ppl cant be more wrong. Im playing feral cat since wotlk, started seriously raiding in Toc 25 man and ever since always have been raiding. I only play feral spec, always have and will and never once i was left out of a raiding group, was it 10 or 25 man normal or hc. If you know your class good any normal, good, reasonable guild will take you. Its not only the classes that make a good raiding team, its the ppl that play them. Feral is as viable as any other class, if you cant down a boss its not the one wrong class that is in the raid, its the whole raiding team failing at something.

[Paloro]

Pretty much. Ferals suffer a lot from target switching, which is an issue in 10 man where sometimes you simply cannot afford to leave one dps tunneling a mob, at least more so than other melee dps. In 25 man you have that extra fexilbity where your raid composition doesn't really matter, since ferals don't bring any worthwhile raid utility to the table, at least no more so than other melee classes which are able to push out higher number consistently (perhaps DKs as exception here), what point is there to actually bring a feral in a 10 man guild where you already are quite tight on space.

I'm not saying ferals are not viable, but I'm saying they're lacking in comparison to other melee dps specs, in terms of dps and utility. Yes, you can go tank with HotW. Great, how about I give to a rogue and have him or her do that for you as well (Combine this with Evasion, and the rogue will be laughing) without having to go with a worse talent dps wise and sacrifice dps in order to do so. Arguably, this ability can only be given via Symbiosis, and 2/4 specs do not really gain anything of worth out of it linking to a rogue (only boomkins and ferals get something good out of it).
Yeah, you can do decent healing with tranq and Hotw, but you still need that lesser dps talent in order to make the raid cooldown worthwhile, also, most of the time, you are either going to be doing one or the other, not both at the same time, and with HotW on a 5 mintue cooldown, you really don't have a lot of leeway.
Good, you can do crazy Aoe dps, how about I take RoR away from you? Let's see how you do then.

In my honest opinion, it is quite bad when a spec has to rely on a trinket in order to do competent aoe dps or has to a lesser dps talent to have some form of viable raid utility, that will cost him even more dps when using it. A tranq from a feral without HotW is pitiful to say the least, at least in a 10 man environment when flat out better options are available for progression.
I mean, you can easily look at logs and blatantly see that the SMALLEST gap between ferals and rogues on average is almost 30k on Iron Qon (looking at 10 man heroic bosses here), when on most other heroic bosses, you have rogues doing 80k more dps than ferals on average. While feral manages to stay competitive with the other melee classes on most bosses (Unholy DK and Ret Paladin for example), throw in the lackluster raid cooldowns and utility, and you'll have a class that as a result simply isn't very desirable in raids.

Perhaps the 25m you were running with was a bit different, but the only "luxury" boss that I had was Durumu in the fact that I didn't have to be in the red beam. I still had to switch to ambers and ice walls. Every other boss I got no breaks, even now I'm not allowed to tunnel on Horridon or stick to one target on Council. You are making a blanket statement saying that comps don't matter in 25m. Please back that up with some examples or you are just falling into the 10v25 debate.

In terms of dps, the huge discrepancies you see in averages from top parses is strictly from under representation. If you do a quick scan of #1 parses, you will see that overall the are about even (with the exception of some 1.5min kills). This just means that more guilds are progressed with rogues and will let them cheese certain aspects of it.

Utility is a bit of a different thing. You mentioned tanking and that a Rogue would laugh at it. Well no crap, Rogues aren't a hybrid! I would balk at the notion myself, but if I need to use it to complete an encounter......why not? Tranq really needs to be reduced to 5m to line up with HotW. Our rogues were forced to take Shuriken toss on Ra-Den to kill the orbs, but our RL could have made me take HotW and wrath spam. Going back a bit, wrath spam would have been amazing for Atramedes!

Don't you dare take away my RoR!!!!!! But seriously, our AoE doesn't rely on having a RoR proc. 3 fights this tier gives you the opportunity to have burst AoE (granted it's not SCK numbers).
Tortos (both kiting and killing bat methods)/ Twin Consorts (going into day phase) / Lei Shin (ball lightning)
Our 4p works wonders for this. Just pool some energy lay down a Thrash then TF to 3 swipes! The bulk of the adds don't last long enough to be effected by the Thrash dots and if RoR is proc'd you don't get the crit bonus from the 4p on Thrash so you swipe anyway so I wouldn't say my AoE is balanced around having that trinket at all.

[Tarazet]

One more thing which makes feral life hard on 10 mens: weapon availability. Drop rate of polearms seems to be around 10% for each of two bosses who drop polearm. For 25 men its not that big problem but for 10 men it means its totally possible to go months without getting new weapon. And no good weapon = no competitive dps.
Hunters have same problem probably.

There's a shared loot staff, a staff from Horridon, and a polearm from Lei Shen. It's much better for us than it is for Rogues or Enhancement Shamans, just put it that way.

[Dysheki]

There's a shared loot staff, a staff from Horridon, and a polearm from Lei Shen. It's much better for us than it is for Rogues or Enhancement Shamans, just put it that way.

There is a shared loot dagger for rogues so that gives them three possible drops as well. I have it on my alt rogue. It just sucks they have to get it twice. (I would assume there is a shared mace drop, but I'm not sure)

Edit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=95501

[Deleted]

Well, i am playing shadow right now and thinking about rerolling feral...is it worth it? 540 shadow right now...i hate the lack of single DPS capability.

[Dysheki]

Well, i am playing shadow right now and thinking about rerolling feral...is it worth it? 540 shadow right now...i hate the lack of single DPS capability.

I would hate playing a spriest on a heavy movement fight. They seem like the most immobile casters atm. (aside from maybe arcane mages, but . . . meh . . . arcane mages)

[Themessiah]

From what I've been told the current incarnation of Shadow is quite simple. Not 100% sure if that's true, or whether simple is the correct word. However what should probably be said is that achieving excellence with feral dps, even if only on a single target fight, can be quite challenging. Excluding long cd's we manage something along the lines of 8 active abilities to achieve our maximum dps, in a rotation which cannot really be described as a "rotation".

What we use: Mangle, Shred, Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Rip, Rake, Thrash, Ferocious Bite. Also for certain specs: Healing Touch, Nature's Swiftness (soon to be removed).

This is just single target.

So right now on live we're using in a constant rotation, 9/10 abilities in a maelstrom of priority. This is without energy and combo-point management. Add on top of that certain trinket procs shifting your priorities, and Omen of Clarity procs, and you've got a spec which for some may be unplayable at a competitive level. The fun and reward is there, but it's not for the faint of heart.

[Balduvian]

Feral is certainly not dying as it has been one of the least represented specs ever since the start of WoW. Nothing new here.

[Viromand]

There's a shared loot staff, a staff from Horridon, and a polearm from Lei Shen. It's much better for us than it is for Rogues or Enhancement Shamans, just put it that way.

And if you are really unlucky you stll have a change getting that str polearm.

there is no way you can argue about what that drops make a class better.

Ferals only need one weapon while all the other agi based melee classes need 2. Sure they are not as dependent on weapons as ferals are thats true.

Hunters have same problem probably.

Hunters have no problems at all. they have 4 range weapons which drop off the easiest bosses currently. plus one from shared.

Rogues or Enhancement Shamans,

You are right, going into heroic the bosses that drop weapons for both classes are not the first ones you got to, sure twins is easy but still you start with other bosses. council megaera and twins are the 6-7 boss you go to while starting heroics. dont know where the other dagger drops but if I remember correctly it was from iron qon. And one of the fistweapons is faster i believe which is not prefered by melee shamans

the only problem is that if you take the leishen weapon out(cause if you kill him on heroic you cleared the raid so it will only improve your dps getting it will not help your progression.). than you only have 1 from horridon and 1 from shared.

[SilverSnake]

Was quite the bummer at the early parts of this tier when looking at World of Logs, seeing you got ranked #10 as feral, only to realize there was only 12 ranked ferals on that fight. Getting better now though.

I've played feral since ICC and I don't see any reason to stop doing it now. I see more of an issue of most fights favoring ranged over melee than other melee over ferals most of the time.

[Tarazet]

From what I've been told the current incarnation of Shadow is quite simple. Not 100% sure if that's true, or whether simple is the correct word. However what should probably be said is that achieving excellence with feral dps, even if only on a single target fight, can be quite challenging. Excluding long cd's we manage something along the lines of 8 active abilities to achieve our maximum dps, in a rotation which cannot really be described as a "rotation".

What we use: Mangle, Shred, Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Rip, Rake, Thrash, Ferocious Bite. Also for certain specs: Healing Touch, Nature's Swiftness (soon to be removed).

This is just single target.

Don't forget about maintaining Faerie Fire if you don't have a Warrior/Druid tank. You only have one real cooldown, and it just makes it so you can perform your rotation faster, so it doesn't simplify things. It's complicated enough to be unplayable without special addons.

[Themessiah]

Don't forget about maintaining Faerie Fire if you don't have a Warrior/Druid tank. You only have one real cooldown, and it just makes it so you can perform your rotation faster, so it doesn't simplify things. It's complicated enough to be unplayable without special addons.

Thats true - I end up doing this on Lei Shen quite often.

[Bonkbonk100]

I rarely see Feral druids when I do LFG and they're also rare in LFR. I guess most people don't enjoy the whole "Remember to keep this buff up or your dps gets cut by 30%, keep track of bleeds, remember to stay behind every single mob in the game, manage energy and combo points, "harder" to play than other melee DPS for less DPS" style.

Yes yes, some of you might enjoy it and that's kewl, but in today's WoW it's all about doing as little as possible for as much gain as possible.

[teddabear]

Feral is certainly not dying as it has been one of the least represented specs ever since the start of WoW. Nothing new here.

The difference being in BC and WotLK every progression raiding guild wanted at least 1 Feral. Now they only take them if they can't get something better.

[Mooninites]

I would say it's dying, atleast in PvE feral is dying, I don't PvP much but I've heard feral is quite alive and well

A number of things:

1. Feral dps has always been underrepresented, perhaps one of the rarest specs in PvE.

2. Most top end ferals are in PvP as far as I can tell

3. I would guess most ferals are players who have played the spec for a long time, it's the most difficult dps spec in the game, it's hardly a new player friendly spec nor is it a spec that you can half-ass, so you won't see many people picking it up on their alts. You have to devout quite a bit of time to refining your skill as feral

4. Feral isn't appealing to players because it just doesn't have things other classes have. Like what does feral provide to a raid? Roar is pretty much the only thing I can think of. They have a brez but a lot of classes do now, tranquility is a dps loss whereas other classes like rogues have smokebomb. Symbiosis is another cooldown, but does it really provide that much that people feel like they need a symbiosis in raid? hardly.

5. I think a lot of it is perspective. Rogues, Mages, and Warlocks have been some of the top dps all expansion long, and it's kind of like why bring a feral over a rogue? The introduction of monks didn't really help. Some people rerolled into monk, in which both Brewmaster and Windwalker are leather agility wearers and most guilds are concerned about stacking too many of certain types of armor wearers.

6. Feral has also been incredibly inconsistent in the past. Some patches it's extremely weak (I vaguely remember ulduar and ToC being bad for feral) where ICC was a golden age for feral. Feral has seemed fairly stable in MoP, but T11 (I may be wrong, first tier in Cata) feral was absolutely atrocious.

Feral has good single target dps, but MoP hasn't been that melee friendly, however, feral really struggles with target switching. To conclude, I know blizzard said they want people to bring the player not the class, but honestly it has to be a balance. There has to be a reason to bring a feral druid, and quite frankly there isn't a reason. Even if the feral druid is an exceptional player (in most cases you have to be to play feral) a rogue of as much skill, perhaps even less, can pull more dps, provide more to a raid, and have better survivability in general. Especially with most guilds going to 10 man. You only have a limited amount of spots available, where does feral fit in? 25 mans seem to only be heroic progressing guild most of which would rather bring other classes than feral.