Idea for "new" talent! Feral Kin 2.0

[Deleted]

When Feral Kin was announced as a talent, it didn't appear all that special to me. The concept of a big wolf companion held some nice flavor, but the package he would be delivered in was severely lacking, and it was just an upsized Feral Spirit in visuals as well, so...meh.

When they took it away though, I suddenly felt it was a shame they didn't try and remake it, given how they came up with so much interesting talents otherwise. Yesterday evening, I thought about it again, and was suddenly awash with cool ideas for how Feral Kin could make it's glorious comeback as an interesting talent, both in flavor, gameplay and experimental design.

My Ideas:

1) Feral Kin returns, as a talent. It would take the place of the lvl100 Talent "Crashing Storm". Crashing Storm could either be backed into Crash Lightning baseline somehow, or go away entirely. Since we do not have all that much in baseline aoe anymore, maybe something can be done with it in that regards.

2) Feral Kin will be a seperate ability and not replace Feral Spirits.

3) It will have a reduced cd of 1 or 2 minutes

4) It will have infinite duration (!).
That's right, permanent pet. Feral Kin would be the passive lvl 100 talent vs the low cd burst and high cd Ascendence.
I think it would fit as far as placing goes, since Crashing Storm would've been forced in an aoe scenario, where now I could imagine all three talents being viable anywhere.
Having a huge Spirit Wolf at your side all the time would greatly emphasize shamans' spiritual side, and imo feel god damn awesome. It would also allow blizz to get additional material to work with as far as melee dps with pets is concerned, and might help in their design on survival (Or we might profit from their work they put into sv already)

5) Outside of combat, we'll get a green arrow when hovering over our companion. Guess why? You're goddamn right! Class Mount! We'll be finally able to get our long desired Ghost Wolf mount.
For that, a simple Feral Spirit upsize wont do though, obviously. I would really love a specifically designed, awe inspiring wolf companion that would look great as a mount.
My idea would be that mounting would be instant, as enh already has/had instant 200% speed gw in WoD, so it's not really special if it gets a cast time.
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You could even expand on this mount idea and give each different shaman race a different spirit animal.

Orc = Wolf, Troll = Raptor, Tauren = Mountain Lion, Dwarf = Bear etc

You could also allow allies to ride it, and mount regularly. Man, how awesome would that be?

You could even expand it to flying, and have those spirit companions hower like the spirits they are, on a astral cloud or something, or have them switch places with a spirit that can fly. Orcs = rylaks, Trolls = bats or windserpents, Tauren = Wyvern or Eagle, Draenei = Nether ray, Dwarf = Gryphon etc.
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6) Feral Kin would work like a pet, and be controllable. It would add as additional flavor to have it have some synergetic effect with Feral Spirits. Using Feral Spirits in the presence of a Feral Kin would make them use their old Twin Howl sound and then turn into assists of the greater wolf, becoming indirectly pets as well. You'd have your pack of three wolfs for a time. Wouldn't that be cool?
Feral Kin would have similar synergy as Feral Spirits with other talents. It would be an additional, permanent, MW generator, and get buffed by spiritual resosance. When using Feral Lunge, it would lunge at the same target, and perform a vicious bite at the targets foot, slowing it for 50% for 6 seconds and dealing bleeding damage every second.
Obviously, the damage it overal contributes has to be right. We want an amount that is roughly in the ball park of Earthen Spike, and in a fight that doesn't favor Ascendence because of lenght, outperform Ascendence in favorable situations.

7) Gameplay-wise (I know many hate the idea), enhancement with this talent would be a pet class. Keep in mind that it would be an option! Being freely able to choose what others are forced into, imo isn't a bad thing. And while it will at times provide less to do than ES or Asc, pet management can be a challenge too.
Also, for people new to the spec, it would lower the immediate difficulty, as we would have more hard-to-mess-up talents. And people can work their way up from there.

8) I touched upon it with Feral Lunge, and it is a...~wobbly~ matter, but we could reintroduce utility from our wolf companion(s). Feral Spirits used to provide selfhealing, mobility and a stun when they were first implemented. Now a personal pet is obviously different, so passive healing by it would be op.
It would be cool though to have it have things like:
...a heal similar to Healing Stream, on a cooldown...
...or something like damage sharing (~spirit~link (get it? )...
...trading places with your wolf via ~astral~shift (well? well? ) Obv current Astra Shift would go and be replaced with old SR

this would be a ~maybe~ point, because the other two abilities dont add utility, and we'd risk making FK to strong in general. That said, if Asc performs that much better for burst, I could still see it used in pvp for it, even with FK being a nice all around package.



Anyway, if you read this far: Thanks for putting up with my dreaming . Would love you guys' opinion.

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

blizz dont want anymore pet classes lol a lot of people have been asking for pet elementals etc to avoid totem mechanic limitations but now since totems are kinda taking the back seat we are kinda ok. also it would be far stronger than the other talents because of its longer use of buffs etc and the clutter it would cause would be insane having two pet bars up when the ele is up? zzzzzz

[Deleted]

I would love to have a permanent spirit wolf pet, the mount idea however might seem a bit far fetched. I also wouldn't mind if it replaced Feral Spirit since it's such a boring cooldown anyway. I also would rather see it as a T1, T4 or T5 talent rather than competing with Ascendence. Neat idea though!

[Black Sand]

I applaud your creativity and vision for this class! Perma-spirit wolf would be the enh Shaman of my dreams.

More powah to da spirits!

[Imnick]

Honestly I kind of prefer pets when they are simply baked into a spec.
When a pet is a talent, then it's always going to be little more than a glorified DoT effect with feet, that can only be on one target at a time. Complex mechanics and interactions can't exist with a pet that you don't always have, so it is less satisfying.
I don't think talents that add (or remove!) a permanent pet are a good idea, they stifle the opportunities a second body presents.

[Deleted]

blizz dont want anymore pet classes lol a lot of people have been asking for pet elementals etc to avoid totem mechanic limitations but now since totems are kinda taking the back seat we are kinda ok. also it would be far stronger than the other talents because of its longer use of buffs etc and the clutter it would cause would be insane having two pet bars up when the ele is up? zzzzzz

As said, it would be an option to choose from, so not really a full pet class. That said, I haven't heard blizz voicing their opinion against more pet classes. MM loses it's pet, so there'd be a free space, so to speak.

Also, this is to be enhancement only, and enhance will no longer have elementals. Feral Spirits are only companions we have no control over and would take up an assist role towards Feral Kin, so no dual-pet issue.

FK would be designed to be slightly weaker than Asc/ES in a raid scenario (if those are well executed), as it is a passive talent for the most part, and would require less skill/maintenance for the most part. It would also be attractive while leveling, possibly soloing stuff (it could have function as a tank there).

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I would love to have a permanent spirit wolf pet, the mount idea however might seem a bit far fetched. I also wouldn't mind if it replaced Feral Spirit since it's such a boring cooldown anyway. I also would rather see it as a T1, T4 or T5 talent rather than competing with Ascendence. Neat idea though!

Interesting. Ascendence would still be open as cd, and we'd sacrifice Feral Spirit instead. I do believe it would be to epic to be a low tier talent though. That said, the point of Ascendence is to be a choice. If you dont want a similarly cool talent in the same row, what's the point of talents in the first place? I very much hope that we wont be forced into Ascendence for legion all the time.

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Honestly I kind of prefer pets when they are simply baked into a spec.
When a pet is a talent, then it's always going to be little more than a glorified DoT effect with feet, that can only be on one target at a time. Complex mechanics and interactions can't exist with a pet that you don't always have, so it is less satisfying.
I don't think talents that add (or remove!) a permanent pet are a good idea, they stifle the opportunities a second body presents.

In WoD, I've mained a hunter (mm, taking bm for soloing some stuff). As mm/sv, a pet isn't much more than a glorified dot there either, tbh. And as bm, I was oft-times annoyed in battlegrounds at the long delay of damage when my pet would be on the way. Even the bm mechanics are so-so, imo. A lot of hunters dislike bm, because so much of your damage isn't your own.

Again, it is an options that you can clearly choose to pass up on.
Is it passive, and a glorified dot? Sure is!

That said, it has tons of flavor more than passive damage/glorified dot talents like:
Lightning Shield
Ancestral Swiftness
Landslide
Spiritual Resonance
...and sorta Hailstorm