Feral Damage Really That OP?

[Balduvian]

Ferals are the only dps I can't handle as a resto shaman. Every other melee is fine, even rogues, but Feral have way too much cc, and are immune to mostly everything. >>
In 2v2, feral + heal is the only team we have no chance against...

In other words, your own comp should be nerfed the shit out of since only Ferals can beat you.

[Hand Banana]

In other words, your own comp should be nerfed the shit out of since only Ferals can beat you.

God, you are so feral biased its ridiculous. He's not saying ferals are the only comp he loses to, just the only comp he has no chance of winning against. I am the same way, unless your running with a disc priest healer you have no chance against ANY feral comp. No double dps can handle their dmg/survivability/healing and no other healer/dps (besides hunters) can handle the damage and try to land a kill.

Then again, 2s isnt balanced so its hard to say. However, according to most glad lvl players, ferals are in fact OP. Shocker I know.

[apepi]

God, you are so feral biased its ridiculous. He's not saying ferals are the only comp he loses to, just the only comp he has no chance of winning against. I am the same way, unless your running with a disc priest healer you have no chance against ANY feral comp. No double dps can handle their dmg/survivability/healing and no other healer/dps (besides hunters) can handle the damage and try to land a kill.

Then again, 2s isnt balanced so its hard to say. However, according to most glad lvl players, ferals are in fact OP. Shocker I know.

I do not have a problem against feral as a mistweaver. Ferals are not Op, they should be the bar that everyone should be brought to, a feral does not win by burst, but by just their constant damage. Would make this game a better game.

[Balduvian]

God, you are so feral biased its ridiculous.

Based on what?

Ferals are indeed better than average, very strong in fact, and paired with a healer probably OP as far as 2v2 goes. 3v3, 5v5 and RBG however (the brackets that actually count, although RBG is to be lol'd at as well), they are simply not. Very strong nontheless.

Ferals are not Op, they should be the bar that everyone should be brought to, a feral does not win by burst, but by just their constant damage. Would make this game a better game.

This and this all over again.

[asb]

I do not have a problem against feral as a mistweaver. Ferals are not Op, they should be the bar that everyone should be brought to, a feral does not win by burst, but by just their constant damage. Would make this game a better game.

However you label it, you're still calling ferals an outlier. Power is relative, and if ferals are stronger than most other classes that makes them overpowered by definition. They don't actually have to be able to solo you or do generally unhealable damage for that designation to be valid.

In terms of balance it's easier to fix a few outliers than everything else. Making sustained pressure the standard would do some very weird things to the game too. Consider: How would you land a kill? Right now it's because of the disgusting amount of CC, but I think everyone wants that toned down at the next opportunity. Should we just keep it all in? Alternately, we could (try to) tune healing so tightly that even occasional CCs will make a healer struggle to catch up. In that scenario though, realistically pvp would mostly come down to a 1:1 CC fight. Hybrid offhealing would also be valuable almost to the point of necessity. You could also try to restrict healer mana to the point where every game comes down to a mana war. Again though, I think hybrids would just be inherently necessary and the game would probably be more about long-term mitigation and control than damage. I'm sure there are other options, but you hopefully get the idea. Nobody likes burst when it's too strong, but burst potential is really a core part of pvp in this game. Without it games would be very stale and one-dimensional.

[TJ]

Ferals aren't op? Well, now I've heard it all.

Achievement Unlocked: New level of bias reached!

[Whitepaw]

@ Yvaelle:

Shift to interrupt the cast - it's not an endless cast / recast cycle - at worst you are also denying your opponent any (useful) action during that time as well: which is way better than being CC'd and have your CC'r running amok on your team. At best, you are denying your opponent long enough for you to get a Predatory Swiftness proc so you can instantly cyclone them - after which they will be too far behind to worry about trying to Hibernate-duel you (I'm assuming a Resto Druid opponent here).

...and you said the same about Scare Beast - still doesn't make it right.

Your presumption is small-scale PvP. A scenario where I am actually able to watch most, if not all, incoming CC. Well that could apply to all CC abilities in the game with a cast time, to a certain degree. You would often be able to dodge those CC abilities by LoS or interrupts - and that's probably what happens in 2s and 3s (with a lesser frequency, but still).

But most PvP actually takes place in situations where this is not possible. So trying to argue that "Yeah, you are susceptible to CC effects that no other melee spec needs to worry about - but you can always dodge these anyway, so it's a non-issue" is only valid in small scale PvP.

The fact still remains that Ferals are weaker than any other melee spec to a lot of CC abilities - and immune to one (Polymorph - when in an animal form) and have a counter to another (roots by shapeshifting). Would I prefer a system where ferals had more counters to other CC abilities (and by counter I mean something that either makes us immune or let Ferals regain control of their char - Barkskin is not a counter, its a damage reduction CD) and lost some of the automatic tools? Yep, would make it more interesting tbh. I don't love the inability to counter stuns, fears, charms, incapacitates etc. When in combat, it translates into approx 35-40% combat time, where I can't control my character. And the most likely way I get killed is a fear --> stun --> stun --> dead. Having counters to that would be amazing. I did have some counters in Cata, but then Blizzard nerfed bear form in MoP (because of melee QQ) and gave me the original shapeshifting back. Now, we have QQ about the shapeshifting, while bear form is killable (small selfheals from Rage and some additional armor - but no generation of combo points and less healing received).

However, discussing Feral from an assumption revolving around small scale PvP is flawed and forgets the larger picture. Not all of us have a healer in our back pocket, just waiting to dispel etc.

If changes should be made, removing all auto-applied slows and giving all CC abilities CD's would probably be a good route to take. That alone would make Ferals easier to kite. Right now, I have 155% running speed and a slow applied through my normal combo-generating attacks. In terms of speed, I am 3 times as fast as my target - and if that target gets away, I have a Root CC with no CD ready (and fairly long range, unlike Cyclone). In fact, I use Entangling Roots a lot more than Cyclone in BG's, because dispels are just not happening that much in a larger scale PvP setting. This use should concern people writing in this thread - but since most of the contributors here are concerned with small scale PvP, the focus is almost exclusively on how to balance this comparatively small part of a much larger PvP environment.

[Yvaelle]

@ Yvaelle:



...and you said the same about Scare Beast - still doesn't make it right.

Your presumption is small-scale PvP. A scenario where I am actually able to watch most, if not all, incoming CC. Well that could apply to all CC abilities in the game with a cast time, to a certain degree. You would often be able to dodge those CC abilities by LoS or interrupts - and that's probably what happens in 2s and 3s (with a lesser frequency, but still).

But most PvP actually takes place in situations where this is not possible. So trying to argue that "Yeah, you are susceptible to CC effects that no other melee spec needs to worry about - but you can always dodge these anyway, so it's a non-issue" is only valid in small scale PvP.

If you are accusing me of talking about pvp balance in 3v3's, as opposed to at Workshop in Isle of Conquest, then - you got me. Whenever I talk about PvP balance, it's issues that pertain to 3v3's, 5v5's, or 10v10's - Blizzard publically makes no effort to balance anything else, so debating the balance of 1v1's, or 40v40's will always be wasted effort. In arenas and RBGs, good players can and do track all incoming CC to the best of their ability - good ferals do watch enemy resto druids for hibernate casts, or enemy hunters for scare beast casts - if someone lands scare beast on you in a 40v40 in Alterac Valley, I concede that you can't be expected to track that - but remember that somebody else probably wanted to Polymorph you and couldn't because you are feral - every other class would deal with that instead.

The fact still remains that Ferals are weaker than any other melee spec to a lot of CC abilities - and immune to one (Polymorph - when in an animal form) and have a counter to another (roots by shapeshifting).

Polymorph and Hex, you were immune to Mind Control for all past expansions - but Dominate Mind is a stronger spell than Mind Control was (it also works on Mechanicals who were also previously immune, for example). Ferals are also effectively immune to roots, as you mention, and snares which I mentioned - and you left out of your response: for almost all other melee specs a good snare can be an effective peel against them, not ferals (rets and enh shamans being the other two mostly-root/snare immune specs).

You aren't more susceptible to Fear than everyone else, you are as susceptible to Fear as most others are - warriors and dks being exceptions, not the rule - but nobody is straight up immune to fear like ferals are to poly/hex. Ferals are quick to point out Hibernate and Scare Beast, but like I mentioned - you can indefinitely prevent either of those from working by shifting - which in a small scale (ie. 3v3) environment - is the common practice of 3v3 ferals to not get CC'd by these - so while they do uniquely affect Ferals, Ferals who are attentive can indefinitely out-play them - no other class can claim that about polymorph or fear or hex or stuns: nobody else gets to shift through various forms which are immune to a variety of CCs.

Would I prefer a system where ferals had more counters to other CC abilities (and by counter I mean something that either makes us immune or let Ferals regain control of their char - Barkskin is not a counter, its a damage reduction CD) and lost some of the automatic tools? Yep, would make it more interesting tbh. I don't love the inability to counter stuns, fears, charms, incapacitates etc. When in combat, it translates into approx 35-40% combat time, where I can't control my character. And the most likely way I get killed is a fear --> stun --> stun --> dead. Having counters to that would be amazing. I did have some counters in Cata, but then Blizzard nerfed bear form in MoP (because of melee QQ) and gave me the original shapeshifting back. Now, we have QQ about the shapeshifting, while bear form is killable (small selfheals from Rage and some additional armor - but no generation of combo points and less healing received).

However, discussing Feral from an assumption revolving around small scale PvP is flawed and forgets the larger picture. Not all of us have a healer in our back pocket, just waiting to dispel etc.

It's not flawed - it's the only PvP that Blizzard makes any attempt to balance, talking about 40v40 Feral balance, or 1v1 Feral balance - is just bizarre. It's why everyone assumes discussions like this are in 3v3 Arenas, at relatively high rating - since that is the closest point of balance in this game - pointing out that unbalanced brackets are unbalanced doesn't make for a very deep discussion. For example, Mind Sear is totally OP at Isle of Conquest Docks when the horde all pile into a group on the little ramp up to the flag - I do crazy damage - and nobody is complaining about Mind Sear in PvP.

If changes should be made, removing all auto-applied slows and giving all CC abilities CD's would probably be a good route to take. That alone would make Ferals easier to kite. Right now, I have 155% running speed and a slow applied through my normal combo-generating attacks. In terms of speed, I am 3 times as fast as my target - and if that target gets away, I have a Root CC with no CD ready (and fairly long range, unlike Cyclone). In fact, I use Entangling Roots a lot more than Cyclone in BG's, because dispels are just not happening that much in a larger scale PvP setting. This use should concern people writing in this thread - but since most of the contributors here are concerned with small scale PvP, the focus is almost exclusively on how to balance this comparatively small part of a much larger PvP environment.

It's not that the pvp community doesn't think random battleground balance is important - Blizzard doesn't think it is important: so we don't take it seriously. If Blizzard made random battleground balance a priority, a lot more of us would care about how to play it successfully to be the best at it. Competition only works between relative equal - balance is necessary - when balance is absent, competition doesn't occur - for competitive people winning through imbalance isn't meaningful.

[Whitepaw]

@ Yvaelle

Taking my remarks about small scale PvP (i.e. 2s and 3s brackets) and then concluding that I want the game balanced around 40v40 in IoC is a neat rhetorical trick - but it's also way off the mark. My point is that the more enemies in range, the more threats you have to potentially counter. So, let's say I counter a Scare Beast/Hibernate cast with shifting out of form - in 2s, with no shaman/mage present, it's a very valid tactic. In a 3s/5s/RBG scenario, I open myself up to other threats by doing this - and the added complexity also hinders my situational awareness in recoqnizing the incoming CC.

You aren't more susceptible to Fear than everyone else, you are as susceptible to Fear as most others are - warriors and dks being exceptions, not the rule - but nobody is straight up immune to fear like ferals are to poly/hex.

My point is that Ferals haven't got any counters to fear. DK's and warriors do, as you wrote. However, so do other melee specs, either pre-emptive or as a trinket-effect. So this is in fact the rule - and DK/warriors are not the exceptions to that rule. Enh shaman even have Tremor Totem (6 sec uptime, 60 sec CD, 30 yards range), which clears Fear, Charm and Sleep effects for all allies inside that range. So I will still argue that Ferals are weaker than other melee against fear effects.

The same goes for stuns. We do have a damage-mitigation effect (Barkskin), but we don't have a counter to the stun, like some other melee classes have (albeit not all - stun effects seem to be more accepted by Blizzard, but generally have a shorter duration than Fear). We also haven't got a counter-stun to reduce damage taken while stunned.

So, our strength versus root effects and Polymorph is balanced around the complete lack of counters to fear and stuns. This is the result of Blizzard balancing of Ferals - we used to have a counter to Fear and a stun-reducing talent. We also used to have a damage-reduction talent, which ofc worked while being CC'd. All that was nerfed because of complaints - and balanced by adding other strengths to Ferals.

Why I mention this? Because we've already been where you (and others) want to go. We were there in Cataclysm - but at that time, Ferals just had abilities and strengths now removed in order to balance. The removal of shapeshifting roots in Cata was a straight up nerf in larger scale PvP (and no, that is not exclusively 40v40 at Workshop - that is PvP outside the 2 and 3s bracket), but the subsequent buffs to damage meant that we did too good (according to the "pvp community", like you phrase it), because we could be dispelled to regain superior mobility or be "un-killable" (to stay in jargon of aforementioned community) in bear form.

If you want to balance Ferals because you feel that the "effectively immunity" to roots is such a huge issue, you could start by suggesting what to give Ferals instead. Counters to the nummerous CC effects that ferals can not counter at present could be a solution - even though Blizzard has used the time from 2010 - present to remove these exact counters.

If you just want a straight nerf, you lack both perspective and valid arguments. I don't see Ferals dominating the competitive Arena/RBG ladders (that's 3/5s and RBG ladders, just to clarify) to such a degree that we should be nerfed on a signature-ability like shapeshifting. So a straight-up nerf would just lead to people not playing the spec, an indirect homogenization, since you would then end up with melee specs with very similar strengths and weaknesses - and therefore also a much simpler gameplay, because abilities and counters would be very similar.

[Biggety]

My point is that Ferals haven't got any counters to fear. DK's and warriors do, as you wrote. However, so do other melee specs, either pre-emptive or as a trinket-effect. So this is in fact the rule - and DK/warriors are not the exceptions to that rule. Enh shaman even have Tremor Totem (6 sec uptime, 60 sec CD, 30 yards range), which clears Fear, Charm and Sleep effects for all allies inside that range. So I will still argue that Ferals are weaker than other melee against fear effects.

Rogues and paladins who are running off in that corner miles away from their healers say hi. Well, they would, except they just got polymorphed, and sheep can't talk.

The same goes for stuns. We do have a damage-mitigation effect (Barkskin), but we don't have a counter to the stun, like some other melee classes have (albeit not all - stun effects seem to be more accepted by Blizzard, but generally have a shorter duration than Fear). We also haven't got a counter-stun to reduce damage taken while stunned.

This makes no sense. You list barkskin as a counter-stun and then say that you don't have a counter-stun? I am confused.

If you want to balance Ferals because you feel that the "effectively immunity" to roots is such a huge issue, you could start by suggesting what to give Ferals instead. Counters to the nummerous CC effects that ferals can not counter at present could be a solution - even though Blizzard has used the time from 2010 - present to remove these exact counters.

The problem for ferals is not root immunity. It is root immunity, snare immunity, permasprint, a passively applied snare, good CC, strong defensives, strong offheals, passive immunity to poly/hex, and opening out of stealth. The package is the problem. Of all melee, ferals have the easiest time remaining on target, which is important for interrupts and sustained pressure, and will eventually lead to a healer kill. The issue is that a feral must be made to be peelable by classes that aren't a warlock or priest. I don't care if every class can peel a feral, but their uptime on a healer or ranged target should be able to be limited with some effort. That is not the case right now, and a nerf to sustained damage is bad for PvE reasons. Something in the toolkit has to go.

If you just want a straight nerf, you lack both perspective and valid arguments. I don't see Ferals dominating the competitive Arena/RBG ladders (that's 3/5s and RBG ladders, just to clarify) to such a degree that we should be nerfed on a signature-ability like shapeshifting. So a straight-up nerf would just lead to people not playing the spec, an indirect homogenization, since you would then end up with melee specs with very similar strengths and weaknesses - and therefore also a much simpler gameplay, because abilities and counters would be very similar.

Ferals are a complex class to play well, which is why their representation is lower than FOTM classes. When played well, however, they are nearly uncounterable, which is bad for the game overall.

[Nyaldee]

So, our strength versus root effects and Polymorph is balanced around the complete lack of counters to fear and stuns.

I think hardcounter to Polymorph makes up for it plenty.

OT: My bigest problem with ferals is their Symbiosis with disc, it's simply retarded in 3v3 getting spam cycloned with hunter/feral wailing on whatever left uncontroled.

[Yvaelle]

To be clear about my point here, I'm not saying 'Ferals are OP', I know that's the topic of the thread - but earlier in this thread I was defending Ferals from this accusation: they are unpeelable, and that aspect of them is too good - but their damage and toolkit I generally like. Ferals complaining about crowd control has been a pet peeve of mine since Burning Crusade. This notion that Fear is somehow worse for them, or that Hibernate and Scare Beast are unique to them, or that stuns are death to them - is what urks me.

@ Yvaelle

Taking my remarks about small scale PvP (i.e. 2s and 3s brackets) and then concluding that I want the game balanced around 40v40 in IoC is a neat rhetorical trick - but it's also way off the mark. My point is that the more enemies in range, the more threats you have to potentially counter. So, let's say I counter a Scare Beast/Hibernate cast with shifting out of form - in 2s, with no shaman/mage present, it's a very valid tactic. In a 3s/5s/RBG scenario, I open myself up to other threats by doing this - and the added complexity also hinders my situational awareness in recoqnizing the incoming CC.

Why not with a shaman / mage present? Here, imagine a Hunter / Mage / Rshaman team against whatever team you play - if enemies chain-cast Poly, Scare Beast or Hex (or Hibernate for Rdruids) like you suggest - then we end up with the following:

Feral opens Mage
Hunter casts Scare Beast
Feral turns into a man
Mage and Shaman cast Poly/Hex
Feral turns into a cat
Go to line 2

Ferals like to point to this as though the mere act of stance dancing is shutting them down, that even though the CC never lands - they are effectively CC'd through constant shifting. Who else is CC'd by casts that never land, though? The entire enemy team. I used this team comp to demonstrate the point - but whether all three of them are present or just one, the case is the same - the Feral never gets CC'd and enemies who could potentially CC the Feral waste as much time as the Feral does in shifting - except the feral is also closing the gap during that time.

My point is that Ferals haven't got any counters to fear. DK's and warriors do, as you wrote. However, so do other melee specs, either pre-emptive or as a trinket-effect. So this is in fact the rule - and DK/warriors are not the exceptions to that rule. Enh shaman even have Tremor Totem (6 sec uptime, 60 sec CD, 30 yards range), which clears Fear, Charm and Sleep effects for all allies inside that range. So I will still argue that Ferals are weaker than other melee against fear effects.

Paladins and Rogues have no counter to fear just the same as Ferals, Windwalkers have Nimble Brew - but they also need that for roots, stuns and horrors once every 2 minutes. Enh can break one fear every minute - but they often need that for breaking their healers out of fears not specifically themselves. You aren't supposed to have a CC break (let alone immunity) to every type of CC in the game - you are supposed to have CC that actually sticks to you. Warriors have a reactive fear break every 30 seconds, but my lock can still land fears on them by casting one - having them Rage out of it - waiting 10 seconds - and then casting another - Warriors can trinket every fear my spriest casts, so it feels like immunity from a priests perspective. DKs can lichborne and desecrated ground, trinket, many are undead, and when they aren't in desecrated ground or transformed into undead (but inexplicably immune to Shackle Undead), they have AMS up - so they feel immune to fears, but if you survive the first minute of their immunity cooldown cycling they can be feared like any other melee. All of these specs have nothing against Polymorph and Hex. Those who are strong against fears are weakest against roots and snares.

The same goes for stuns. We do have a damage-mitigation effect (Barkskin), but we don't have a counter to the stun, like some other melee classes have (albeit not all - stun effects seem to be more accepted by Blizzard, but generally have a shorter duration than Fear). We also haven't got a counter-stun to reduce damage taken while stunned.

So, our strength versus root effects and Polymorph is balanced around the complete lack of counters to fear and stuns. This is the result of Blizzard balancing of Ferals - we used to have a counter to Fear and a stun-reducing talent. We also used to have a damage-reduction talent, which ofc worked while being CC'd. All that was nerfed because of complaints - and balanced by adding other strengths to Ferals.

Barkskin (particularly with the Glyph) is a hard counter to stun-burst cycles. You lack a counter to fears, you should lack a counter to at least one kind of CC, don't you think? Everytime a rogue team wants to try to kill you, you will have Barkskin up for that - since Shadowdance and Barkskin have the same cooldown. BM hunters are very reliant on Beastial Wrath and Power-shot - both with 1 minute cooldowns. Frost DKs use Pillar of Frost: 1 minute cooldown. Frost Mages use Deep Freeze, which is a 30 second cooldown - but all the mages moan about how you never score kills except when you also have Frozen Orb, which is a 1 minute cooldown (I disagree with this, but even in this case you can prevent a kill every other Deep Freeze reactively. Barkskin is arguably the strongest anti-stun in the game. IBF lets you trinket the stun and take action, IBF also has triple the cooldown of barkskin and offers less survivability - it's also a DKs major defensive cooldown: more akin to Survival Instincts than Barkskin. Suggesting that stuns are shorter than Fears and therefore less of an issue is a fallacy, fears are peels - stuns are for kill cycles - it only takes being able to counter just one member of the enemy teams burst to break a kill cycle - for most classes who have stuns - barkskin will counter any given comp even if they burst into you on cooldown.

Why I mention this? Because we've already been where you (and others) want to go. We were there in Cataclysm - but at that time, Ferals just had abilities and strengths now removed in order to balance. The removal of shapeshifting roots in Cata was a straight up nerf in larger scale PvP (and no, that is not exclusively 40v40 at Workshop - that is PvP outside the 2 and 3s bracket), but the subsequent buffs to damage meant that we did too good (according to the "pvp community", like you phrase it), because we could be dispelled to regain superior mobility or be "un-killable" (to stay in jargon of aforementioned community) in bear form.

The real problem in Cata was that you could gain the benefit of both Cat and Bear forms simultaneously - good Ferals would apply bleeds in cat, then swap to bear for the duration of the bleeds to become nigh-immortal (bears at the time were also the highest survivability pvp tank spec, and required no real talent changes from Feral), swap back for a couple GCDs to re-up their bleeds, then go back to bear to ignore melee classes and control casters. It meant that you could put out Cat-like damage (which was also way too high at the start of Cata) without being a valid kill target for any enemy comp, which greatly limited enemy teams choices for who they could kill: since the feral was never an option. The same healer dispels that got them out of roots before, get ferals out of fears now.

If you want to balance Ferals because you feel that the "effective immunity" to roots is such a huge issue, you could start by suggesting what to give Ferals instead. Counters to the nummerous CC effects that ferals can not counter at present could be a solution - even though Blizzard has used the time from 2010 - present to remove these exact counters.

Ferals don't need to be given anything, they need to have more than just fear that peels them - not every team has fear - and many teams that are successful right now mostly ignore fears (Shaman success is largely attributable to tremor totem, Undead dominance at high ratings, dks, and hunters - who can silence/stun/feign/camo/stutter/BW to prevent or break enemy casts). Ferals don't need to lose much, they just need to be affected by roots and snares to some degree - if shifting was a 10 second cooldown root/snare break they'd still be the second best vs them only to Rets (who are affected by every CC thrown at them, apart from roots and snares).

If you just want a straight nerf, you lack both perspective and valid arguments. I don't see Ferals dominating the competitive Arena/RBG ladders (that's 3/5s and RBG ladders, just to clarify) to such a degree that we should be nerfed on a signature-ability like shapeshifting. So a straight-up nerf would just lead to people not playing the spec, an indirect homogenization, since you would then end up with melee specs with very similar strengths and weaknesses - and therefore also a much simpler gameplay, because abilities and counters would be very similar.

There are currently 45 Druids in the world top 100 3v3's, of which Feral is the overwhelming majority. Almost all the former Shadow / Fmage / Rdruid comps have swapped to Disc / Fmage / Feral - the few that haven't are rating campers. Jungle Cleave (Feral / BM / Disc) is the most popular comp in the top 100.

Ferals aren't the most popular spec above 1800 or anything, but they almost rival hunters for world top 100 representation right now. To be clear though, that doesn't necessarily mean they are OP, they are just the most imbalanced melee partner that synergizes well with Hunter comps: simply making them occasionally snare-able or rootable would do wonders.

[Balduvian]

Rogues do not have a way to counter fear? Wait...in what game again? Certainly not in the one I'm playing.

[Yvaelle]

Rogues do not have a way to counter fear? Wait...in what game again? Certainly not in the one I'm playing.

Either you are suggesting that all rogues are undead, which is partially true (but isn't a rogue problem so much as an undead problem), or you are suggesting rogues pre-cloak to stay on target during kill cycles (somewhat true), or that people blow their fears into immunities (not true at high level). I'm not sure which you are suggesting. One is undead specific, one is a problem with certain defensive cooldowns not being DPS losses (but this is true of many many classes - and a conflict with homogenization), the last option isn't true at anything above moderately high rating (CC's into immunities).

[Balduvian]

Using cloak to prevent/force an immume-fear is both easy and effective, and can be done quite often. Ferals do not have anything similar or anything else to prevent/counter fear.

[Linneth]

Using cloak to prevent/force an immume-fear is both easy and effective, and can be done quite often. Ferals do not have anything similar or anything else to prevent/counter fear.

Every spec have it's ups and downs, and I would say Feral wins quite hard on CC prevention when compared to Subtely.

[Yvaelle]

Using cloak to prevent/force an immume-fear is both easy and effective, and can be done quite often. Ferals do not have anything similar or anything else to prevent/counter fear.

I haven't blown a psy scream into a cloaked rogue all expansion that I can recall. I remember in 5.1 I screamed into a bubbled hpal once, and I've feared into already-raged warriors before - but usually that's to peel pets/teammates of the warriors when it's not worth waiting for his rage to end. Most warriors tend to wait until a fear hits them before they rage, but during burst cycles - particularly KFC - warriors were just blowing all their damage stuff and berserk so I couldn't fear them off (I'd still drop fear on them though to scatter the stampede). Not sure in what world you think it's easy or effective to pre-emptively cloak and then expect me to not notice your cloak and fear into that... pretty amateur mistake you are relying on.

[Lulbalance]

Using cloak to prevent/force an immume-fear is both easy and effective, and can be done quite often. Ferals do not have anything similar or anything else to prevent/counter fear.

what does ^ mean exactly?? her point O/A i think is: who cares? you're immune to an overwhelming majority of CC in the game!

this argument seems to be deteriorating into Yav making points and a few of you nit-picking little pieces of the posts that could be considered subjective, and then trying to exploit that grey area into counter points.

sad to watch.. reminds me of cata rogue discussions.

[Hand Banana]

Using cloak to prevent/force an immume-fear is both easy and effective, and can be done quite often. Ferals do not have anything similar or anything else to prevent/counter fear.

It also paints a huge sign on your back that says "Casters please nuke me". Unless you're 100% sure you're going to land a kill, pre-cloaking a cc is not very smart.

[Mormolyce]

Kate Upton

I've always wondered that and never asked!

---------- Post added 2013-06-20 at 01:02 AM ----------

It also paints a huge sign on your back that says "Casters please nuke me". Unless you're 100% sure you're going to land a kill, pre-cloaking a cc is not very smart.

I really hope casters DO nuke me while I have cloak up lol. I assume you mean after it wears off?

But that's the whole point of using cloak offensively, you hope that you can put out so much pressure during the cloak window that they have to go defensive, or peel off your target, or hey even die, whatever your objective was. It's a gamble because once it wears off you don't have access to it for another minute.

---------- Post added 2013-06-20 at 01:09 AM ----------

What is with all of the recent posts about feral damage being so OP? Considering the ramp up time required for feral to do max damage (SR, cds, combo points) I don't understand why people think they are so OP. Yes they have infected wounds, clone, and a few other tricks, but nothing more than other hybrid utility classes (especially priest). I hardly think rip/rake is going to burst anyone down.. #Hunter/mage/rogueburstisbetter

It feels kind of shitty that you can completely escape a feral and then die to their goddamn dots a few seconds later even through your self heals. Meanwhile my Rupture barely tickles!

Still yeah, ferals are a pain in the ass to set up and probably have the most obtuse melee rotation. I think their mobility is too strong though, being able to shift out of roots and snares has frankly always been cheesy, and ferals have more than enough tools now that they don't need that kind of advantage anymore.