Feral WoD wishlist

[Kildragon]

Just a couple of things. I think taking maim away from ferals will be far too crippling. By taking away any kind of baseline stun you're basically forcing every feral into mighty bash. Typhoon and ursol's will never be taken and cyclone is still a shitty cc for ferals. Also mind you that since ferals had instant clone taken away their performance in arenas has been awful. Out of all the classes feral is one of the bottom classes for cc already. I know blizz wants to reduce cc but let's see how much cc classes like mages, rogues, locks and hunters are losing first. I know you listed the cc that feral will still have but clone and mighy bash are the only real CC left. Roots don't count as much and I'm not seeing your glyph of pounce mentioned anywhere in the OP so you might have accidentally removed it but without it feral would be seriously gimped.

Another issue I have is with your finishers. Currently there are 3 finishers Rip, Savage Roar and Ferocious Bite. Bite being the only direct damage finisher. You don't really want to tie rake application to it because overwriting a buffed rake with a weaker one simply cause you had to use your finisher will kill your dps. If you want to have an aoe finisher either make a new bleed or just turn trash into the finisher. You can even make bite do something like 50% of damage done is also done to all targets within 8 yards. Just don't tie multi target rake application to a single target finisher.

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My bad about that double post on the last page.

Now, for AoE situations I think you absolutely have to avoid rake being auto applied as part of your single target rotation, especially if it's as a side effect of your aoe finisher. If I understand it correctly you want bite to be the aoe finisher? I can get on board with that idea but you still have to revert FTear back to FBite. I know I'm repeating myself here but auto application of a dot that's as strong as rake will do one of two things. A) you can't auto apply rake 100% of the time like hunters can serpent sting and you'll get horribly frustrated overwriting buffed rakes cause tear is your only direct damage finisher. B) you'll be able to keep it up by tearing 100% of the time and it'll be horribly op especially in pvp

[hullaballoonatic]

Ferocious Tear can certainly be coded appropriately so that you're not applying rake to targets with more powerful rakes on top of its prioritization for little duration left. I don't particularly see a problem with that.

Feral CC is a continued discussion. You don't see glyph of pounce there because originally i had removed both mighty bash and maim, and pounce was made to have no prowl requirements but a 1 minute cooldown (essentially cat form mighty bash), but a glyph would cause it to not apply the cooldown if used from stealth. I liked this method, especially with disorienting roar in the talent trees, but it got a lot of flack (mostly from people that didn't fully read my OP) saying that without mighty bash and maim, feral would be dead in the water.

I just don't believe that cyclone is a bad feral CC, but I'd be happy to see a glyph that allows you to cast cyclone in cat form and give it a tad extra range, which would alleviate most of the difficulties with it.

I don't have a lot of intimate knowledge of other specs, so I can't be certain what kind of CCs they are losing, and as you said, ferals are on the weak end of the spectrum after one nerf when they were prior on the strong end. It may be we don't lose any CCs.

I still take issue, however, that we have 3 stuns to the rogue's 2. I think we can manage with 1.5 stuns (assuming either my pounce/glyph idea) or mighty bash in the talent tree. As you said, mighty bash feels mighty mandatory for pvp feral in such a tree. I may revert back to my old concept, but I'd appreciate your input.

[Kildragon]

Not sure if blizzard would go the route of not overwriting more powerful dots with bite/tear. The only spell they have ever done that for is ignite but that as necessary. I personally just like the idea of adding another finisher that applies rake. Mixing aoe and single target finisher feels a bit awkward.

As for cc, feral only has 3 stuns if they spec for it. If they have a baseline stun taking the talented stun also becomes less mandatory. I also don't agree that ferals shouldn't have 3 stuns cause rogues have 2. Rogues have a plethora of cc options that both don't share a dr with each other and cancel out that disparity

[hullaballoonatic]

I updated the model to the current CC loadout:

Pounce no longer has a bleed
Maim remains
Mighty bash removed from the tree
Maim has a glyph to turn it into a 4 second mighty bash, but you'll lose its use as a finisher
Disorienting Roar is back in the tree.

Added to glyph of cyclone that it can be cast in all forms.

Made glyphs of cat form and savagery baseline.

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Additionally incorporating aggixx's idea to move rake spreading to swipe. In the current model swipe causes rake to spread to one additional target. This is a very neat concept. Gives rampup to the rake spread and it should spread exponentially. 1 target then 2 then 4 then 8, etc.

Actually now that I think about it, blizzard mentioned giving cool Passover each level from 91-100, and a handful of these ideas fit comfortably there, including bloody thrash, ravage refunding ng energy above 80% health, as well as neat ideas like faerie fire giving a cp if used from a distance, and ferocious bite dealing additional aoe damage depending on number of rake ticks, etc. other bonuses would be simple things like extra crit chance on shred, extra haste on rip, or reduced cool down on berserk. I'll concoct a full list I find appropriate.

[Cantor]

I can get behind the Swipe/Rake interaction, even if Thrash makes more sense thematically. This would allows us to spread Rakes quite quickly if we couple Swipe usage with TF (roughly 3 Swipes in quick succession, allow you to Rake up to 8 targets) or Berserk, without being a single button that massively powers-up our AoE, unlike the proposed Will of Malfurion talent from Blizzcon; giving the spec a small amount of ramp-up keeps things in-check.

Did you have any thoughts on target-swapping for Feral? I'm thinking specifically about adds that (typically) die within 15-30 seconds, such as medium crates on H Spoils or Nazgrim adds - if it lives longer than 30s you've got enough time to build 5CPs and let a Rip reach nearly full duration, but in a shorter timeframe we're pretty awful. I can certainly get behind the idea of either using Ravage as a Shrangle replacement (always crits if no bleeds on target for example), or the fixed damage per tick Rip - I think either of those 2 options are fairly elegant and don't require a big reworking of the CP system.

[hullaballoonatic]

I think feral in the state of my proposed changes would be far better equipped on fights like spoils, but keep in mind that feral can't be great at everything. That kind of fight would still be tough on us. I'm not a big fan static damage rip, since this lessens the complexity of the spec pretty significantly.

[smooth_c]

All I want is stance for Incarnation...

[Dasani]

I don't play feral, but I've always thought it was complete and utter horseshit how gimped feral stealth is compared to rogue. Feral's still have movement reduction on stealth, rogues do not. And now it's even the opposite, where rogues actually move faster while stealthed.

Absolutely ridiculous. I've always been disgusted by that kind of stupidity but I suppose i'm a bit more bitter than most as i've seen druids being the "shitty version of a rogue" since vanilla having only a fraction of their abilities with none of their own (that aren't just renames of rogue abilities) and they have always gotten the short end of the stick in that regard. I still remember how burned up I was that Maim was an incapacitate like gouge instead of a stun like kidney shot. So ferals didn't get to have gouge or kidney shot, instead they got to have an ability that ate combo points like kidney shot but was basically gouge. Ridiculous.

At least now after all these years maim is an actual stun, even though it costs more energy than kidney shot still and is also 1 second less in duration at every combo point.

I suppose blizzard is very, very slowly making progress. Maybe one day there will be some equality between them. Would be interesting to see if they ever get a vanish equivalent, gouge, or basically anything useful that isn't just pure damage with very shitty offheals made worse by ever increasing battle fatigue ramp ups.

[Zstr]

why you need another ability applying bleeds on aoe your furios tearsmth..,while Trash have same prupose right now(spreading bleeds around), when you are so crying loud about ability bloat.
Aoe is not relying on combo points, and swipe giving it to help stay on main target, when aoe rotation don't require finnishers and we are already top aoe class, after OP 1 button bladestorm...

[Cantor]

I think feral in the state of my proposed changes would be far better equipped on fights like spoils, but keep in mind that feral can't be great at everything. That kind of fight would still be tough on us. I'm not a big fan static damage rip, since this lessens the complexity of the spec pretty significantly.

I'm well aware we can't and are not meant to be great at everything, but some way to aid target switches would be a huge QoL improvement; I don't like raid leading and telling everyone else what to do, then ending with "but I'm just going to sit on the boss because my target swaps are poop". Having done some flex raids with my alt DK and Ele Shaman, it's really easy to see how poor Feral is at it, simply because of the way that energy and CPs work, plus being a spec focussed on DoTs. Even a toggle to allow Rake to generate no CPs (totally random example) would be kind of cool as it would allow you to stick Rake on a target that isn't near the boss (or you'd spread Rake to it with Swipe) while not losing CPs. I just feel that swapping is such a large part of the raiding meta that being crippled by it is very frustrating; Rogues have been given multiple ways to deal with this (Redirect and Marked for Death, Vendetta (sort of), plus some QoL improvements like Bandit's Guile as a self-buff and Deadly Poison being a single stack).

Zstr, we're not a top AoE class by any means; Ele Shaman, Frost Mage, Arms/Fury Warriors, Retadins and Surv Hunters are all better than we are, and probably some other specs that I'm forgetting. Feral is good at bursty AoE but then drops off quite severely when you're sat around waiting for energy regen and only getting a single CP per usage of Swipe – which I'm fine with; we can't excel in every area. We're the best single-target spec in the game, but I feel we're probably the worst at target swaps and middling for AoE.

[hullaballoonatic]

All I want is stance for Incarnation...

I see this request a lot, but no one says in what form this would take. Surely you can't suggest you want to be able to ravage, prowl, and pounce whenever you want? Do you just mean from a mechanics standpoint so you can have a separate action bar? You can already do this with macros, although I agree a new bar would be a more elegant solution. Personally I see Incarnation as adding abilities to bind, not replacing abilities to bind, so I would not use a new bar.

Feral's still have movement reduction on stealth, rogues do not. And now it's even the opposite, where rogues actually move faster while stealthed.

Ferals with the right glyphs, talents, gear, and enchants can move faster in prowl than a rogue ever could in stealth. It got to such an extreme (druids were moving at near spring speeds while prowling) that blizzard had to nerf it. It takes more investment on the druid's part, for sure, but with greater reward. It's not a particularly elegant system, but it's not terrible. I think the reason prowl forces you to move slowly by default is based on the aesthetic of cats in real life, who crawl at incredibly low speeds while getting ready to pounce.

why you need another ability applying bleeds on aoe your furios tearsmth..,while Trash have same prupose right now(spreading bleeds around), when you are so crying loud about ability bloat.

Yeah, the idea for a separate ability to spread bleeds was completely sacked. Rake spreading has been moved to swipe in a manner I'm very happy with.

we are already top aoe class, after OP 1 button bladestorm...

Ferals are not the top aoe class. We severely lack in sustain aoe damage, but we're great in burst aoe situations. Rake spreading (especially in its current state) through something like thrash would massively shift that dichotomy. I'd rather see swipe spreads rake slowly to give sustained aoe damage a long build-up.

I'm well aware we can't and are not meant to be great at everything, but some way to aid target switches would be a huge QoL improvement

We were having this discussion rather thoroughly earlier on in the thread. Currently the changes in the OP help in this regard through the following:

• Ravage refunds part of its energy cost on high health mobs.
  
  Though this does not necessarily apply best to a fight like spoils, it does allow druids to save TF and pool energy, and dump a lot of ravages on a new mob to deal a very good portion of damage immediately. Presumably you could get 2-3 Ravages and a FB on an add that only lives ~10 seconds in a raid
• Swipe now benefits from Primal Fury if it crits your main target.
  
  This significantly improves the prospect of swipe as a replacement CP generator in a cleave fights with only 2 targets.
• Swipe can now spread rake.
  
  Being able to get rake and thrash out on targets your're not even targetting is a major boon in this regard. You can also pop incarnation here to have those bleeds start dealing extra damage immediately while casting swipe.

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The topic I'd most like to discuss right now is Omen of Clarity. In the OP, I dictated the OoC procs would be spaced out more reasonably at an average of 3 per minute. Is that too few procs?

I'm somewhat limited in their number by the talent we constructed that also applies a buff to all bleeds places in 6 seconds when omen procs. I feel like if OoC proc'd 3 times a minute that gives the talent a ~30% uptime, whereas if omen proc'd 4 times a minute, that'd come out to ~40% uptime, which might be okay, but if at 5 times a minute, ~50% uptime is far too high, especially when you consider haste scaling with better gear significantly increasing these uptimes.

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Oh and I restructured the OP with a new section containing the passives granted at each level from 91-100.

[Elestia]

Some great ideas here. TF during Berserk would be great. Dunno about having so many passives though, seems excessive.

[hullaballoonatic]

Blizzard stated they are providing new passive bonuses every level from 91-100.

[RippedLife]

hey OP why aren't you working @ blizz yet??

OT: amazing ideas! +1 especially fell in love with Supernatural

[Nimrays]

hah yeah supernatural

[Deleted]

Could anybody copy the OP's post over the the wow EU and US forums? some great ideas here so would like to increase the chances devs see it.

[hullaballoonatic]

I'm still rather disappointed with the level 100 talent that extends rip by 4 seconds. It appropriately fills the roles I desire for that specific talent: throughput, simple, without changing the basic feral rotation too much. Unfortunately it's boring....

I also tried moving it to the wow us general forums, but those forums are far too quick for a thread like this. Were I to try it again, I'd probably place it on the damage dealing forums.

[mmokri]

I checked your new changes, I think - WHY? I cant find any meaning. I support tigers fury while berserk - noob friendly buff.

Faery fire gives 1 combo point

Useless staff. As I can remember it procs trinkets and dps loss.

all bleeds cast in the next 6 seconds to deal 30% more damage

snapshotting is going to be removed for good reason, not due to blizzard hates ferals/locks.

[aggixx]

Useless staff. As I can remember it procs trinkets and dps loss.

Faerie Fire is not a DPS loss if you use it at unimpeding parts of the rotation. There's plenty of times where you can't or wouldn't cast an ability within the next 1 second anyway.

[hullaballoonatic]

Not to mention the conditions for that faerie fire bonus. First you have to be a certain distance away and you have to be in combat. I imagine it used more by pvpers, but also crafty raiders.

DoT snapshotting is being removed for silly reasons like necessity of add-ons to track dot strength. Blizzard could easily implement this into the ui, but would rather remove snapshotting altogether as the easiest way of addressing the unintentionally complexity burden it places on aspiring players. On the other hand, many ferals greatly enjoy this gameplay, and I think the talent tree is the perfect place to offer that choice. It's important to note that tiger's fury and dream of cenarius (assuming they are staying) will still be "snapshotting" abilities.