Almost no feral feedback in the alpha forums :(

[Ontis]

So yeah, John fucking Madden was cool and all that, assuming you could stay behind your target 24/7 and the target would live long enough.

Aye, it was cool. Even when certain other classes could keep mashing three highlighted buttons one after another while we had to deal with multiple timers, procs etc. But Billzord seem to think that cats still need more complexity. Do not presume to find any logic in this. There is none.
They stopped actually 'designing' feral druid archetype since WotLK. Whenever a new addon comes up, they do their thing until the last few days before the launch. Then they finally realize that this game still has Cat spec in it. So they just throw random 'fun' things at cats and jam the "RELEASE" button. The outcome is obvious.
I'm not against complexity. I chose Feral back in late TBC for tanking and occasional cat Brutallus raiding (huntah teams with feral aura and hot-drop-shamans-4-BL) and I enjoyed the mediocre complexity WotLK brought to my class, which allowed me to properly claim a decent damage dealer slot in a raid. Ulduar was the best addon of all times: cats were finally optimized to stay on par with the rest of specs, which immediately allowed the best of us to claim top ranks worldwide on many bosses. Slappin' some of those fancy rakes and rips @ the Yogg's brain just before leaving the 'inside' phase was priceless, as was the capability to compensate for other damage dealers' tardiness by taking out some extra tentacles without dying to damage reflect. By the time ICC kicked in, cats were toned down but remained viable, which was good.
And then it all went to BS. Cata, Nonexistant addon, Warlords of Failnor. Sometimes the cats were buffed to be decent, but never again have they felt decent.

No wonder this picture remains viable for a decade.

[Whitepaw]

I will tell you what the problem was: ramp-up time. Anytime you had to target switch or stay away from the target, your dps was going through the floor. Ditto if you were running 5-mans with the other dps overgearing you (casual's perspective and all that)- by the time you got set-up and running for doing damage, they've blown everything up and your damage contribution was around the level of the healer. Also, forget about doing any real damage in pvp, but then again that wasn't anything new for people playing feral in previous expansions. As to feral still being a true hybrid back then, I agree and it was actually enjoyable.

So yeah, John fucking Madden was cool and all that, assuming you could stay behind your target 24/7 and the target would live long enough.

But ramp-up time correlates with the fact that our bleeds are an important part of our rotation. That problem remains as long as our dps is designed around bleed damage. And it was even worse in MoP.

What I believe is that people's perception of our ramp-up is heavily influenced by what they see in their dps-meter, when the fight starts! And that's a totally different issue: Berserk sucks. Berserk should simply be replaced with Incarnation as a baseline spell, with a 2 min CD.

[Ontis]

Berserk should simply be replaced with Incarnation as a baseline spell, with a 2 min CD.

Do not presume to throw simple solutions around. Billzord never cared about those. KOMPLEXEETY, mon.

Somehow this reminds me of one of my previous posts. Was it during early BfA before the raiding started? Dunno. But the point still stands: there is no logic behind Feral Cat concepts and designs. There is no decency. No sane decisions. Only sheer stupidity and negligence.

I think I received a ban for this one back then, eh?

[baskev]

We are a few days in to alpha and I am getting worried. Alomost nobody has given feedback on the state of feral in the alpha so far.

Sure, a few players gave their feedback regarding Bloodtalons. However, it's just one talent out of 21. Even if they get Bloodtalons right, it won't have a huge impact on the playability of the spec.

So far, even on Twitch I have yet to see a "true" feral. Everybody plays Boomie (not blaming them, ofc).

I fear, because of the lack of dedicated alpha feral players, we will get shafted again.

Therefor, I call on every druid in the alpha to give the WoW devs feedback on feral. At least some kind of unique utility is needed to make this spec somewhat desirable (in PvE).

Are you kidding me...what did you expect. Lets sum up druids/feral.

Druids:
- the class that is underpowered at the start of the expansion
- if its overpowered unlike other classes they nerf us to death. What paladin/disc priest are OP as healers....nope. What druid has something in their kit that could challenge them...bamm nerf.
- boomkin and feral also have the problem that they have been changing the core to how they work like every expansion now.
- thanks to the kit pretty much every other melee class does feral things better.
- its alpha so not as many people.
- and the people that are in are streamers/youtubers etc....aka big mouths like tali, preach etc. People who have a lot to say....about classes that get them views.


But after the above "happy times" . Lets talk for real. Yeah kinda dissapointed by it to. Play 2 druids. 1 moon/resto , other gaurdian/feral. And the comments of on the forums about some specs and the problems they have are.....yeah not there or bad.

For me ferals should be made into something different. It should be a spec that can pounch :P from target to target. With dots ( bleeds), and hard hitting ability's. Maybe even a debuff. Less focus on getting finnishers, sometimes it feels like i am wasting casts and doing weird stuff , just because the rotation says so.
Also some added utility to help the raid/dungeon would be nice. While the other druids can go outside the spec and do some minor stuff. As feral it does not feel like this.

But sadly i expect not to much.
But hey its alpha so maybe we just need to wait.

- - - Updated - - -

No wonder this picture remains viable for a decade.

yup that is feral for most people. It just feels like a moonkin in some of its past/current forms. You do stuff because rotetaion says so and buffs/procs happen. It does not feel like you are playing a spec. But just pushing the buttons the spec wants you to push. Even though it might not be good in the current situation....( looking at you eclips).

[Fkiolaris]

But ramp-up time correlates with the fact that our bleeds are an important part of our rotation. That problem remains as long as our dps is designed around bleed damage. And it was even worse in MoP.

What I believe is that people's perception of our ramp-up is heavily influenced by what they see in their dps-meter, when the fight starts! And that's a totally different issue: Berserk sucks. Berserk should simply be replaced with Incarnation as a baseline spell, with a 2 min CD.

I might be remembering things incorrectly and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but the problem wasn't just the damage of the bleeds, it was that they were also massively buffing the damage of shred (25% or something silly like that I think) to the point that a fully buffed shred was more damage per energy point than a fully buffed FB. So even if assuming you got SR already rolling, you still needed to FF (admittedly could be done on the way if switching targets), mangle, rake, get 5cps (ideally), rip and then start shredding to do max damage- God forbid if you needed SR as well. As I said, that was nice and exciting under certain conditions and I thoroughly enjoyed it as such, but under others (target switch, reduced uptime on target, pvp) it was just not the most enjoyable experience.

[Whitepaw]

I might be remembering things incorrectly and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but the problem wasn't just the damage of the bleeds, it was that they were also massively buffing the damage of shred (25% or something silly like that I think) to the point that a fully buffed shred was more damage per energy point than a fully buffed FB. So even if assuming you got SR already rolling, you still needed to FF (admittedly could be done on the way if switching targets), mangle, rake, get 5cps (ideally), rip and then start shredding to do max damage- God forbid if you needed SR as well. As I said, that was nice and exciting under certain conditions and I thoroughly enjoyed it as such, but under others (target switch, reduced uptime on target, pvp) it was just not the most enjoyable experience.

FB was better than Shred, though. And it's very true that SR was a pain to keep up.

I'm not saying that we should move back to the WotLK dps rotation. But I am saying that it was better - way better! - than the MoP one.

[Lucavian]

Hi Lucavian,

What's that guaranteed heal on finisher change?

It might not have been intended, it's back to 20% chance per combo point spent now.

[formless86]

returning to wow after a 4 ish year hiatus, i left in warlords, got gladiator and quit. i played feral on and off from vanilla to wotlk and in cataclysm i made it my main and it was from that day on until i quit. after coming back to the game for so long alot has changed, alot of power is within the azerite trait gear and the heart of azeroth neck, those azerite pieces dont have secondary stats on them, just azerite perks...

from what i have noticed being back, feral can get out its damage alot faster, i was pleasantly surprised to learn rip damage is the same regardless of combos used, very very VERY nice change right there for pvp AND pve. I saw what they did to savage roar and i looked at the other talents in that tree, soul of the forest never used to boost finisher damage in my day, and since roar is only 10% dmg and regen- sotf isnt so bad anymore, back in my day you had roar baseline and youd take sotf or incarn, i look at that as a small quality of life change or a complexity change, a difficulty change. which is fine imo.

i have been crying for years for new finishers or new generators, or something to get snap instant combo points. they have all those implemented now. these are great things. brutal slash although weird, and aoe rip although not too interesting, is better than the 3 finishers feral had for over a decade and the brutal slash yeah not too interesting but it is a little better than a shred, whatever. feral frenzy instant 5 combos and damage 45sec cd, pretty nice i love it, very useful tool.

yet i still feel like, something is missing, i think the instant clone removal is going to make ferals alot more killable in arena. survival instincts is probably the worse damage reduction cooldown in the game, i mean 2 charges on a 2min30 cd and it lasts only 6 seconds, i mean its good its saved my butt, but when those 2 charges are down the feral literally has no way of mitigating any incoming damage outside of its crowd control and movement speed, with the shift nerfs and the longer cooldown on maim and instant clone removal, ferals survivability is a concern to me in pvp.

my friend plays classic, he is loving it, i made a druid got to level 6 and was looking through the skill trainer, feral gets natures grasp baseline, the thing that roots ppl that attack you, feral gets thorns baseline (great way of getting attackers to STOP attacking you SOMETIMES) feral even gets barkskin with casting pushback resistance, feral gets pretty much all the heals resto gets, it also gets insect swarm which reduces hit chance 2% (you would take alot less damage by lowering someones hit chance 2%) feral even had enraged regen in bear form which heals like crazy. this is really just the tip of the iceberg of what feral had back in the day, and expansion after expansion they have taken away class specific skills and made the specializations more and more SPECIALIZED, in their own words almost quoted directly from their stated goal with shadowlands is- they are saying they want to go back to the days when all the specs were not so specialized, they said its at a point now where you almost cannot see any resemblance in 2 specs of the same class. its bad design and it is really what has slowly killed the game.

when i heard classic was gonna release, i had hopeful thinking blizzard would be able to finally truly see where they went wrong with the live game, and that baking abilities into skills and sharing same buffs over many classes and the specialization of specs have ruined the epic grand chess battle that was world of warcraft, they slowly over time turned the game into checkers. people like variety and choices, why are you taking abilities away from us??????

so if you compare feral from classic and even to how it was in wotlk cata and mop to how it has been the last 2 or 3 expansions, its a completely different class, the feral of today only has survival instincts and your crowd control is superbly limited, in classic, you had defensives in bear, you had barkskin, instant heals for you and everyone else, you could crowd control WAY better, everything was better about it because it had more tools.

the direction theyve went with adding new generators and adding new finishers and a utility ish damage cooldown in feral frenzy, all nice stuff that i have craved for over a decade. but you HAVE to give the druid stuff back to ferals. i named my druid formless because back then, to truly play a feral 100% you had to use E V E R Y form in pvp and sometimes in pve alot, throwing out tranqs or offheals or rooting crazy adds or going bear and picking up mobs or a boss. feral could go bear in cata even and tank bosses BECAUSE it had barkskin BECAUSE it had enraged regen BECAUSE it had better control. we need more baseline abilities back, not a 6minute cooldown heart of the wild crutch, if you want heart then it needs to be not soo strong for not soo long a cooldown, feral needs more BASELINE not activated under a certain window of time that lasts 1/16th of an encounter. in nilla wrath tbc there was no HOTW, only hey the tanks dead i have bear form and 3 or 4 defensives i can chain together to pickup the boss and tank it, it wasnt ''ok im using my 5minute cooldown and ill tank for the next 30 seconds'' hotw is cool but it shouldnt be the only way that you are actually able to effectively cross role on the fly. druids still need to be druids not i used a cooldown now im doing your job for 30 seconds.

[Fkiolaris]

so if you compare feral from classic and even to how it was in wotlk cata and mop to how it has been the last 2 or 3 expansions, its a completely different class, the feral of today only has survival instincts and your crowd control is superbly limited, in classic, you had defensives in bear, you had barkskin, instant heals for you and everyone else, you could crowd control WAY better, everything was better about it because it had more tools.

Just to point out something about Classic- you can only cast Nature's Grasp and Barskin in caster form, meaning that in pvp you are playing with fire if you try to shift out to cast them and then back to whatever form. I have been caught way too many times in between shifts and stunned in caster form, never mind actually doing that on purpose because I need to heal or use some utility. Also in bear you only have Frenzied Regen, which imo is very little. The other thing you also need to remember is that shapeshifting is very mana intense as well, which is another limiting factor in terms of our escape tools.

I am not saying that feral is crap, but all the plus points come with asterisks.

[formless86]

Just to point out something about Classic- you can only cast Nature's Grasp and Barskin in caster form, meaning that in pvp you are playing with fire if you try to shift out to cast them and then back to whatever form. I have been caught way too many times in between shifts and stunned in caster form, never mind actually doing that on purpose because I need to heal or use some utility. Also in bear you only have Frenzied Regen, which imo is very little. The other thing you also need to remember is that shapeshifting is very mana intense as well, which is another limiting factor in terms of our escape tools.

I am not saying that feral is crap, but all the plus points come with asterisks.

yes it does, but there is situations where it is still very useful, in pvp and pve. using an ability in a certain time frame is good gameplay, if you know the rogue has kidney available, its quite a risk to shift out to cast grasp. everything comes with risk, its up to you to determine if its worth the risk. basically you are saying well thats a gamble so its bad, no its a tool that needs to be used correctly or you risk death or you need to use other things to survive etc. i see nothing wrong with that.

they made the game checkers, it used to be chess guys. choices and variety is the spice of life, more complexity means more depth, more depth brings more creativity, creativity differentiates us and immerses us.

back in my day, every so often i would get whispered ''wow that was beautiful'' after fighting someone- i dont feel like with the kit feral has now, that anyone could ever achieve a performance that was worthy of a whisper like that, theres just nothing to the spec anymore, youre stuck in cat. PLEASE LET ME GO INTO CASTER AND USE NATURES GRASP PLEASE! there is no creativity anymore you sit in cat essentially.

that been the trade off for feral and it was fine forever, if you used bears passive to soak damage in pvp guess what, you took alot less damage but you also did alot less damage, aka none for the most part, that was the trade off. if youre going to use enraged regen then you are relegated to sitting in bear form while it heals you (talking old regen) if you want to use insect swarm in pvp you have to use caster form.

and vice versa, it became good gameplay for players to apply stuns the instant natures grasp was cast so that the druid didnt get away and they could proc most of its roots and use its charges up by the time the stun ended on the druid. became skill for any shaman to purge grasp asap, became skill for healers to see ok grasp is up i need to dispel 3 roots on my warrior partner now, became good skill for mages to spellsteal it.

everything has risk and reward. what is wrong with this? what is wrong with more depth to the overall game? this is why we are in this thread right now in the year 2020 is because they have taken away from every class and every spec more and more and more over the years. and now we are here worrying about there being no ferals posting in alpha forums, probably because most ferals have become jaded after being gutted more and more every expansion and theres barely any of them left.

[Fkiolaris]

Mate, I won't sit and answer to that wall. However, do keep in mind that as much as you and I love pvp (or used to in previous expansions anyway), there is also pve in this game. Barskin, as an example, in classic is such a convoluted-to-use defensive for cats and especially for bears, it almost doesn't even count as one. You won't be shifting out of form when face-tanking something to pop barksin, period, unless someone taunts from you first. And no, the healer doesn't count :-p!

[TickTickTick]

I honestly wish they just redesigned the idea behind feral druid altogether. It will always be just a rogue wannabe with bleeds instead of poisons and without all the cool stuff rogue gets. I just can't see the spec mattering anywhere (in pve at least) with the way they design raid fights now.

Combo points should be rogue flavor. They should just move away from it for feral. Or move away from energy and make the abilities have cd. It's the same problem as with balance - for some reason they are trying to make the playstyle distinct from other specs, and because of that the spec suffers. Look at melee specs - most of them are just "build resource with basic abilities which have cd, spend resource on a big ability". And they work. Some of them are fun even. Not even mentioning they are also pretty easy. Preposperous.

Meanwhile feral doesnt work, it super hard and not that engaging. Just a mess of a spec and it seems nothing is going to change in that regard.

[Talrath]

I honestly wish they just redesigned the idea behind feral druid altogether. It will always be just a rogue wannabe with bleeds instead of poisons and without all the cool stuff rogue gets. I just can't see the spec mattering anywhere (in pve at least) with the way they design raid fights now.

Combo points should be rogue flavor. They should just move away from it for feral. Or move away from energy and make the abilities have cd. It's the same problem as with balance - for some reason they are trying to make the playstyle distinct from other specs, and because of that the spec suffers. Look at melee specs - most of them are just "build resource with basic abilities which have cd, spend resource on a big ability". And they work. Some of them are fun even. Not even mentioning they are also pretty easy. Preposperous.

Meanwhile feral doesnt work, it super hard and not that engaging. Just a mess of a spec and it seems nothing is going to change in that regard.

Problem is that players who shout the most actually just want more %dmg so they stand at highest at dps meters. They dont care about fun abilities or rotation, trust me ive tried thinking of new abilities and all I got was: "No your idea is useless because no group will invite ferals because of the dps".

These people dont come with something exciting, they only come with % dmg or bring a spell back from previous expansion and thats it. Ive played this game since TBC and Always thought that the rotation was meh, but now after all these years and what makes me crazy is that its still the same. Maybe cuz people dont want new fun gameplay but just dps buff. Its just hard trying to convince them, trust me. For them fun means #1 on dps list.

[formless86]

Mate, I won't sit and answer to that wall. However, do keep in mind that as much as you and I love pvp (or used to in previous expansions anyway), there is also pve in this game. Barskin, as an example, in classic is such a convoluted-to-use defensive for cats and especially for bears, it almost doesn't even count as one. You won't be shifting out of form when face-tanking something to pop barksin, period, unless someone taunts from you first. And no, the healer doesn't count :-p!

Barkskin Your skin becomes as tough as bark, reducing all damage you take by 20% and preventing damage from delaying your spellcasts. Lasts 12 sec.8 sec.
Usable while stunned, frozen, incapacitated, feared, or asleep, and in all shapeshift forms.
Now available to all specs

i copy pasted that off wowhead shadowlands.

all specs
all forms

what made you assume it was only useable in caster? what made you think about barkskin when i was addressing your comment about natures grasp? do you work at blizzard and decide what abilities are useable in what druid forms? its naive to assume it would be only useable in caster, they are undoing alot of the pruning that occured- but that does not mean everything will go back to how it was exactly in classic.

and lemme bite on this silly comment, even if skin was only useable in caster, its still a good tool to have for feral, there are pve bosses that cast 2-3 sec spells, you can cast skin and shift back in before the spell will hit you, they cant auto attack you during a cast. thats just one situation off the top of my head where its still useable and helpful for feral offtanking in pve.

are there not times during pve fights when you are not in melee range of a boss for whatever reason? yes. many times. mechanics, boss moves, boss stays you move, you pick but the fact is- barkskin is still USEFUL even if it required caster form but thankfully it doesnt in shadowlands.

its incredibly naive to assume everything in shadowlands will work as it did in classic, alot of great quality of life changes have been made over expansions, why would you assume they will undo all that? like combo points switching with your target...so now rogues and ferals are going back to how combos worked in classic and only stayed on the target, and if new target-zero combo start fresh.


Ursol's Vortex is now baseline for all specializations instead of a talent.
Cyclone is now baseline for all specializations instead of a PvP talent.

jk cyclone is useless for feral because we have to go caster form to use it. righttttttttt. makes sense...

[Fkiolaris]

what made you assume it was only useable in caster?

Because you were referring to classic so I took it as you meant the versions of the spells in classic?

[Mumba]

It's a self fulfilled prophecy. The spec is clunky and if you don't play it properly you won't pull good numbers, so people don't want to play it. If people don't play it there will be a lack of feedback to fix the spec, so Blizz will have a hard time making it better. Add that Blizzard also prioritize more popular specs because it will affect the most amount of players

[Djuntas]

I will play feral always regardless how bad it is, and yea it is kinda shitty now - I watch psy (1# rio) now and then on twitch and even he can't compete aka make feral be good.

Anyway primal wrath was amazing to get in 8.1, and feral is still fun and super good to play in open world etc.

[Vilendor]

I think some simpler solutions like Ferocious Bite consumes 25% duration of active bleeds instantly could be the start of something.

For damage: more focus on DoTs with emphasis on actively consuming them faster, currently DoT systems seem to slow in M+ content

For utility: Just give druids most of the affinity they choose's spec...I really want to pick up a boss when a tank dies and actually last more than 1 hit,
my most memorable moment of this xpac was when a tank died on orgoza? in heroic palace and I jumped in, just did whatever the tanks were telling me to,
something with an add and we got the kill.

Seein a heal die and Raid lead yell "BOOMIES GO TREE" is the world I want to live in

Also I think Heart of the Wild as a talent is a TERRIBLE idea unless it was a very generic cooldown meant to replace the major cooldown of the affinity spec chosen, vs
seeming like it will only allow you to fill another roll for 45 sec. As a feral I dont want to play moonkin as my strongest cooldown, thats so fucking dumb

Building a whole class around an ability that you use literally once per expansion is the dumbest idea ever. See your example. No one brings a class to prevent a wipe once a year. No one plans around maybe saving wipes. No one expects you to waste their time 9 out of 10 times instead of wiping quickly and pulling again. I'm so tired of Blizzard falling for this "i'll be the hero snowflake.... maybe once" idea. As a feral my job is to make damage

Also it already takes multiple addons/macros to monitor all the buffs/debuffs, cutting bleeds short based on combo points would make the class unplayable for new players and they wont let that happen

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

Honestly, I dont get why feral is so similar to other speccs.

Would be fun to completely rethink their resources, so they dont use energy and combo-points like rogues and monks...
Their specc could still be niche around being a DoT-oriented melee with exceptional movement speed.

Why do we need to be almost exactly like rogues (and similar to monks), but worse?

[Talrath]

Normally I would say to rework the entire class, start from zero, but since many don't like change, I can offer this.

Well atm we got ashmanes frenzy now, if they add jagged wounds with 33% faster ticks then most problems will be solved. More dynamic after we stack haste and mastery, we get to be viable in single target and aoe department. Imagine running mythic plus with predator + SoF or savage roar (depending how much haste you have) + brutal slash (on tyrannical) or primal wrath (on fortified) + bloodtalons.

The only thing you have to change will be talents instead of changing your entire gear for aoe or single target. Crit vers to mastery haste. It will be pure bleed build on aoe and single.