I believe these changes very poignantly address a lot of the biggest concerns including ability bloat, excessive crowd control, feral raid utility, feral inability to deal effective direct damage or target switching, tranq ineffectiveness, as well as pvp concerns in lack of survivability and lack of options for kill-potential outside of TF/berserk/incarnation/nv, and some other things. It is important to note that many of the changes work in tandem with others. It is important to read the entire list of changes to get a feeling for the big picture. Without further adieu:
General
- All positional requirements removed.
- Mangle can no longer be cast in Cat Form.
- Shred made baseline for druid. Energy cost reduced to 35 (down from 40)
- Hibernate removed.
- Soothe removed.
- Faerie Fire removed.
- Mark of the Wild is now a passive raid wide buff.
- All Raid Wide passive buffs no longer have a range, instead automatically applying to all party or raid members.
Feral Specialization
- Nurturing Instinct now increases nature spellpower by 125% of your agility (up from 100%), but feral druids do not benefit from other sources of spellpower (except Heart of the Wild).
- Omen of clarity reduces cost of next ability by 50 energy instead of making it free. Omen of Clarity procs should be more spaced and occur an average of 3 times per minute.
- Ravage no longer requires stealth. Increased energy cost to 60.
- Ravage energy cost reduced by 20 if used on a target over 80% health instead of increased critical strike chance.
- Pounce no longer has a bleed component.
- Rake no longer benefits from Primal Fury.
- Ferocious Bite damage increased by 100% and no longer consumes additional energy.
- Swipe now benefits from Primal Fury if it critically strikes your main target. It no longer deals extra damage if bleeds are present. Energy cost reduced by 5.
- Rip can now additionally be extended by Swipe.
- Thrash removed.
- Innervate removed.
- Tranquility removed.
- Might of Ursoc removed.
- NEW! Passive - Bloody Swipe
Enemies hit by your Swipe will spread their current application of your Rake to another nearby enemy. Rake will not be spread to targets with higher durations of your rake already applied.- NEW! Passive - Unrestrained Ferocity
Each use of Swipe causes your next Ferocious bite to deal an extra 8% damage to all enemies in a 7 yard radius up to 40%.
Talents
- Renewal now additionally increases maximum health by 30% for 20 seconds. Increased cooldown to 180 seconds.
- Faerie Swarm removed
- Mass Entanglement removed
- Typhoon moved to tier 75
- Dream of Cenarius moved to tier 45.
- NEW! tier 45 talent - Touch of Elune
Feral
Lunar Inspiration
Passive
You can now moonfire in cat form. Moonfire costs 30 energy and generates 1 combo point. Nurturing Instinct now applies to all spellpower.- NEW! tier 45 talent - Might of Malorne
Feral
Savagery
Passive
Savage Roar is now passive- Incarnation reworked. Now has a 90 second cooldown and lasts 15 seconds for ferals. When you deal damage with a direct damage attack, your bleeds will instantly deal damage equal to half of their ticking value.
- Mighty Bash removed.
- Heart of the Wild no longer increases stam, agility, and intellect by 6% at all times, and has a 35 second duration (down from 45), but has two charges.
- NEW! tier 90 talent - Blossoming Touch
Your healing touch now heals all allies in a 5 yard radius of the target for 40% of the healing done- Nature's Vigil no longer has a damage component, and the healing additionally triggers off single target healing effects.
- NEW! tier 100 talent - Blessings of the Ancients
Feral
Fury of Ivus
Passive
When Omen of Clarity procs, all bleeds cast in the next 8 seconds deal 35% more damage- NEW! Tier 100 Talent - Will of Malfurion
Feral
Vicious
Toggle Effect
When toggled, Razor Claws applies to all damage at 75% value, but bleeds can no longer crit. When toggled off, bleeds will remain unable to crit for 6 seconds.- NEW! tier 100 talent - Supernatural
Feral
Dire Cat
Passive
Replaces combo points with rage bar. CP generating abilities now generate 10 rage per would-be combo point. Finishing moves now cost 10 rage per would-be combo point. Cat form generates 3 rage per second while in combat. (does not replace energy)
Glyphs
- NEW! glyph - Glyph of Tiger's Fury
Major
Your Tiger's fury now has two charges, but no longer increases damage done.- NEW! glyph - Glyph of Maim
Major
Your Maim no longer requires combo points or energy, lasts 4 seconds, but has a 1 minute cooldown- NEW! glyph - Glyph of Mass Entanglement
Major
Your Entangling Roots now additionally affects all targets in a 7 yard range, but has a 30 second cooldown.- NEW! glyph - Glyph of Rip
Major
Your Rip ability lasts 4 seconds longer, but can no longer be extended by use of other abilities.- NEW! glyph - Glyph of Impale
Major
Your Skullbash ability now increases the mana cost of spells cast by the target by 20% for 10 seconds.- Glyph of Cyclone additionally allows the use of Cyclone in all forms.
- Glyph of Dash reworked. Now gives Dash an extra charge.
- Glyph of Cat Form healing benefit reduced to 15% (down from 20%).
Items
- Obtaining Fandral's Flamescythe places "the Druid of the Flames" in the toybox as a toggle effect. Maintains appearance only in combat when toggled on.
-------------------------Explanations of Changes--------------------------
There is just so much intricacy to the OP that I'm not sure I can succinctly address everything, but I'll explain the most important aspects as best I can:
Ravage
The new model for ravage is intended to fill a number of precise roles. Firstly, it is meant to take the place of shred as omen of clarity consumption. However, considering the increased potency of ravage over shred in the model, omen of clarity is altered so that it makes all feral abilities free except for ravage, which it limits to a cost of 10 energy. This still rewards skilled players without so severely punishing those without the necessary reaction time. As well, ravage returns as a method of dealing significant damage to short lived mobs like it did with its relationship to feral charge(cat) in cataclysm. In the current model, feral should be roughly capable of pooling energy and saving tiger's fury, then blowing 3-4 ravages and a ferocious bite to deal significant damage, though at the cost of the sustained damage on a presumed raid boss. It is also clearly an energy dump, filling in the place of thrash and ferocious bite. With a move that costs as much as 60 energy and only awards 1-2 cps, Ferals are very capable of slowing their cp generation while still managing their energy appropriately.
AoE
Feral in the current meta is extremely powerful in burst aoe situations and single target, but extremely limited in cleave and sustained aoe. The suggested changes are intended to improve feral's competency in these deficient areas without rising to any level of above average. The most interesting addition is Swipe's interaction with rake, which would cause the number of rakes present on the field to increase exponentionally (first 1, then 2, then 4, then 8, etc), which gives feral a significant ramp-up to its sustained aoe, while simultaneously limiting it by the duration of rake, which will be inherently less for each new mob it is spread to. The addition of swipe to primal fury makes it a good candidate for cp generation in 2 boss cleave fights, and giving swipe the ability to extend rip makes target swapping in those situations less burdensome. Cleave fights should prove to have exciting effects on our rotation.
Ability Bloat
Many of the cut abilities are in tandem with proposed global mechanic cuts. I assume the following: all raid buffs become passive (motw, pw:f, etc) buffs, enrage dispels are no longer raid mechanics, all raid-wide cooldowns are removed on non-healer specs, a vast scaling back of crowd control, removal of armor penetration, and finally removal of positional requirements. This cleans up Mark of the Wild, Soothe, Tranquility, Hibernate(from pvp), Faerie Fire, and Cat Mangle. On top of this, Feral innervate is useless, so that's gone. Finally I opt for two rather controversial removals: Thrash, and Might of Ursoc. The latter is baked into a talent, but the former is more complex. I don't think Thrash is a particularly interesting ability, and I baked in its usefulness as sustained aoe damage via my proposed interaction between swipe and rake, and thrash's use as a single target energy dump by providing Ravage in its place.
Revised Talents and Glyphs
Removing mighty bash is a method of scaling back instant crowd control (though this is partially replaced with glyph of maim). The two crowd control tiers are merged, maintaining the most interesting of the six, as well as making typhoon and ursol's vortex compete. Mass Entanglement is made into a glyph. Tier 45 is now occupied by an early throughput tier, which includes certain playstyle defining abilities like passive savage roar. Dream of Cenarius is moved to this tier, as it is more throughput than raid utility. Tier 90, on the other hand, becomes entirely a healing tier. Incarnation is altered to be a medium strength, length, and cooldown burst ability which needs ample set-up but with great payoff in the pvp environment.
New Talents
The three throughput tiers: 45, 60, and 100 are intended to provide the player with a level of choice in how complex they wish Feral to be. Talents like Dream of Cenarius and Fury of Ivus are intended to maintain the exceptional depth of 5.4 feral offensive rotation, whereas savagery, soul of the forest, and vicious are meant to be for less ambitious ferals or mere novices. As well, these new talents are intended to give feral a range of versatility in how it deals its damage. The standouts in this regard are Lunar Inspiration and Supernatural, the latter providing feral the ability to drop two full power finishers in a row on two different targets.
Most Importantly
I appreciate feedback, and will consider all constructive criticism or creative ideas thoroughly. I am not beyond further elaborating on changes I've suggested, if you wish. Thank you for reading this far!