[Feral] DoC in 5.4 - what's all the fuss about?

[Deleted]

There has been a lot of threads about if HotW or DoC should be best for ferals in 5.4 since (as I understood it) DoC was going to get nerfed. Now after reading the latest PTR patch notes I don't get it.

The old DoC: Wrath, Starfire, Starsurge, and melee abilities increase healing done by your next healing spell by 30%. Tranquility is not affected.
Nourish, Healing Touch, and Regrowth increase the damage done by your next 2 Moonfire or Sunfire casts by 50% or by your next 2 melee abilities by 25%.

The new DoC: Increases the amount healed by Healing Touch by 20%. Casting Healing Touch increases the damage for the Druid's next two melee abilities by 30%.

So the healing bonus is reduced by 10% but damage is increased but 5% from it. Sure, we don't get to use Nature's Swiftness anymore but still... without having done the simulations it sounds like a nice buff to me. Or am I missing something?

[Kojo]

You're missing a very large chunk of time before they added that +5% to soothe the raging "masses" and understating the value NS used to have.

[Deleted]

Wait for Aggixx to post the new opener (once you have the new 4set of t16) - it'll remove the 'need' for NS at the start of the fight. It sucks we lost NS but for an extra 5% I'm not going to complain.

[mmokri]

These threads 0-0. Feral remains unchanged.

[Deleted]

These threads 0-0. Feral remains unchanged.

Couldn't be further from the truth. It's not game-changing, but it's definitely our biggest change since 5.0. FoN becoming viable, a raid tier which gives HotW hurricane some opportunity, several viable weapons, etc. The only thing that's unchanged is how OP Rune is, other than that you can start scribbling notes about new rotational quirks and the new set bonuses.

[Themessiah]

I really hope Nerien's script gets an update for the next patch.

[teddabear]

There are much bigger unanswered question for Feral in 5.4 other than DoC. How well will it scale with all the extra combo points? Will FoN be a good replacement for SotF since energy will not translate efficiently into damage at those item levels. How will the set bonuses pan out? Will the encounters exacerbate Feral's weaknesses? Will Rune compensate for weakness of haste and crit for Feral considering the obscene levels of secondary stats. Looking at heroic chests I am seeing combined secondary stats over 3000. My hunch is that specs that have 2 good secondary stats are going to outscale specs like Feral that just have 1.

[Deleted]

@Teddabear All i can tell that each scenario will be the "best" scenario once this tier so prepare your reforge money plot because if you really want to min max you'll be switching around talents and reforges and trinkets quite a lot :-)