So how does Feral look a month away from the expansion?

[Deleted]

I've been struggling on deciding what class I should return to WoW as. I'll be going back in the mindset of that i'll be raiding and I'm pretty much stuck on what to try out.

I've always had a soft spot for ferals I've just never properly played them but I've always thought they were really damn cool and with the new artifact shapeshift forms.

I'm just after someone to shed some light on if they look like if they're going to be at least a little viable? I'm always that guy who's always concerned about fashion on WoW but if it turns out I look beautiful but I'm horrifically under performing, I'm not sure what I'd wanna do.

Thanks in advance

[AsgardFM]

I can only comment on the PvE side of things, you'll need another source of advice for Feral PvP.

If you're concerned about fashion then druid is a fairly bad choice. Except for Resto we spend most of our time with gear hidden. The forms look good to start with but (until artifacts came along) you'd end up with no way to change anything significant. We'll have to wait and see what post-Legion brings to change that.

Mechanically we're in much the same place as before. Strong on sustained single and multi-target encounters yet weak on sustained AoE. With new talents you have the option of reducing the complexity that has previously defined the spec without as much DPS loss as before. The new talents can also help to improve AoE, either greatly increasing burst AoE (while indirectly nerfing sustain) or moderately increasing sustained AoE, based on a proc.

Raid utility is diminished with Stampeding Roar reverting to 10-yard radius. We regain a bit of the old 'hybrid' state through the Affinity talent row but you can only boost one additional role at a time. Personal mobility remains very high and personal survival cooldowns are moderate vs raid aoe.

Basically, for every strength we have a weakness. Every class has this but it does feel as though Feral weaknesses are a bit more pronounced. With that said, Ferals are still perfectly capable of raiding endgame content but don't expect to be taken to raids on the cutting edge of Mythic progression.

[Kjarl Grimblood]

With that said, Ferals are still perfectly capable of raiding endgame content but don't expect to be taken to raids on the cutting edge of Mythic progression.

I wouldnt take his advice too seriously. Every class ive checked on these forums, someone eventually popped out of nowhere and threw this line at someone's face.
On a Warlock forum, i saw the exact reply. Claiming Locks wont be good in Mythics.
Same i saw about Monks, Shamans, Warriors and now Druid Ferals? lol
Misleading people seems what these forums do best.

[Deleted]

I wouldnt take his advice too seriously. Every class ive checked on these forums, someone eventually popped out of nowhere and threw this line at someone's face.
On a Warlock forum, i saw the exact reply. Claiming Locks wont be good in Mythics.
Same i saw about Monks, Shamans, Warriors and now Druid Ferals? lol
Misleading people seems what these forums do best.

It's all personal opinion I guess, depending on what information people find on the subject and then how they interpret it. All still useful information though, I just want to find out as much as I can anyway

[AsgardFM]

I didn't say Ferals can't do mythic raid content. A large amount of data on logging sites would prove me wrong, along with many posters at The Fluid Druid. But historically Ferals are rarely used by guilds in the top 10 mythic race, particularly as encounters in Warlords a number of priority targets that needed killing quickly.

If you're after more information then check out the Fluid Druid forums.

[Deleted]

Much appreciated, thanks Asgard I'll check it out.

[Tellof]

I wouldnt take his advice too seriously. Every class ive checked on these forums, someone eventually popped out of nowhere and threw this line at someone's face.
On a Warlock forum, i saw the exact reply. Claiming Locks wont be good in Mythics.
Same i saw about Monks, Shamans, Warriors and now Druid Ferals? lol
Misleading people seems what these forums do best.

Seems like you're misunderstanding his point or just ignoring pieces of it. He did make the very clear distinction in the snippet you quoted that they are "perfectly capable of raiding endgame" but also said that they were probably not going to be among people's top choices for "cutting edge progression." There is nothing wrong with this statement, and it is largely true.

There is a very common mistake people make where they look at bleeding edge, min-maxed class compositions and reverse extrapolate their viability and performance and assume that because they weren't "good" in the top 5% of difficulty that they won't be good in content that 95% of people play, but he wasn't making this mistake and was very deliberate with his wording. When guilds competing for world 1st Mythic clear are setting their comps they will absolutely have a ranking of specs and there will be some they choose not to bring along. Think of it like Olympic Swimming... Gold and Silver can be split apart by thousandths of a second, and at such a small degree of difference things like body hair and the material of your swimsuit actually matter... but to everyone else swimming in the hotel pool it literally makes no difference...

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I'm always that guy who's always concerned about fashion on WoW but if it turns out I look beautiful but I'm horrifically under performing, I'm not sure what I'd wanna do.

The truth of the matter is that your personal effectiveness with the spec is a much larger indicator of your performance as that spec rather than how it compares to other classes. For this reason you should aim to play a class and spec that mesh well with your play style. Once you feel you are squeezing all you can out of your performance and you're reaching that class' true potential, then it's time to decide if you would be more effective as a more over-tuned class. Do keep in mind that despite Blizzard encouraging players to pick a "main" spec through their Artifact design, the expansion will last a long while and there's no reason you can't re-roll to something more enjoyable/performant.

With that said, Feral is overall in a better place than it has been previously. Do keep in mind that if you play the "ideal" talent setup right now it is rather tricky to play and will take a good amount of practice to get the hang of. However, there is a simpler talent setup that you would probably do more DPS with as a newcomer while you get the hang of the rotation, and use that learning to transition into the harder stuff after.

[Polarthief]

This is kinda OT, but...

If you're concerned about fashion then druid is a fairly bad choice. Except for Resto we spend most of our time with gear hidden. The forms look good to start with but (until artifacts came along) you'd end up with no way to change anything significant. We'll have to wait and see what post-Legion brings to change that.

Toys that change your form say hi. I play as Bear most of the time but I never play in Bear form. I'm almost always using Kalytha's Haunted Locket. Orb of Deception turns you into the opposite faction (race depends on yours, each race has an 'opposite') with all your gear intact, and turning into a form like Cat/Bear will keep your Orb of Disguise on. There's plenty of ways around being forced to play as an actual Cat/Bear.

Also as Boomkin, we still have the glyph that keeps us in our normal form, but more astral-ly, so it's both spell specs of Druid that let you keep your form, not just Resto.

[Kjarl Grimblood]

Seems like you're misunderstanding his point or just ignoring pieces of it. He did make the very clear distinction in the snippet you quoted that they are "perfectly capable of raiding endgame" but also said that they were probably not going to be among people's top choices for "cutting edge progression." There is nothing wrong with this statement, and it is largely true.

There is a very common mistake people make where they look at bleeding edge, min-maxed class compositions and reverse extrapolate their viability and performance and assume that because they weren't "good" in the top 5% of difficulty that they won't be good in content that 95% of people play, but he wasn't making this mistake and was very deliberate with his wording. When guilds competing for world 1st Mythic clear are setting their comps they will absolutely have a ranking of specs and there will be some they choose not to bring along. Think of it like Olympic Swimming... Gold and Silver can be split apart by thousandths of a second, and at such a small degree of difference things like body hair and the material of your swimsuit actually matter... but to everyone else swimming in the hotel pool it literally makes no difference...

Did you see the poster asking about 1st mythic clears? I didn't.
What makes you think he even wants to participate in such a guild, and care for no sleep and raiding 7 days a week? And here you are telling me im the one who ignore pieces.
He merely asked if the class spec is viable for raiding, and the obvious answer would be yes.
Learn to read buddy.

[Tellof]

Did you see the poster asking about 1st mythic clears? I didn't.
What makes you think he even wants to participate in such a guild, and care for no sleep and raiding 7 days a week? And here you are telling me im the one who ignore pieces.
He merely asked if the class spec is viable for raiding, and the obvious answer would be yes.
Learn to read buddy.

You know, the ironic part is that you clearly didn't comprehend my post because the pieces where I'm talking about Mythic 1sts are directed towards you, who was criticizing someone else about mentioning them. Not once did I refer to the OP in those 2 paragraphs, those were aimed directly at you. Additionally, those 2 paragraphs clearly state the mistake people make in comparing bleeding edge progression to viability in the rest of content - so what sense would it have made for me to tell him not to play Feral or to say it's bad? I would have been contradicting myself.

The bottom 2 paragraphs, if you paid attention, were actually directed towards the OP and I did not once mention to him Mythic 1sts because clearly those are not his aim. If he has to ask about the performance of a spec then he is clearly not following the meta. I think I've paid more attention to him than you have to anyone else here. Instead, I probably gave him the most helpful advice someone could give to his situation by telling him that his personal effectiveness matters more than the potential of the spec, which is almost universally true. What good was your response to him? You basically said: "Just ignore this troll", and proceeded to not even offer any useful information pertaining to his question. It was only in response to my post that you finally said that Feral is viable for raiding.

It's funny to me that you quoted only the half of my post that you didn't like, where I wasn't even talking to the OP, and then you go on to criticize my response to the OP without even including my advice to him.

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The truth of the matter is that your personal effectiveness with the spec is a much larger indicator of your performance as that spec rather than how it compares to other classes. For this reason you should aim to play a class and spec that mesh well with your play style.

Case in point: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/rYk9XyQtBhfjZPgn

Yes, the guy is really geared and has the bleed -> CP legendary, but he's also using 4 different dots and presumably multi-dotting a lot of stuff seeing as he has a ton of casts. This guy is squeezing the potential out of Feral and he's owning that dungeon. Could he do similar or more DPS on an equally geared but different class? Sure. But nobody who sees ~400K DPS is going to say "I dunno man, you're a Feral."

[Deleted]

The bottom 2 paragraphs, if you paid attention, were actually directed towards the OP and I did not once mention to him Mythic 1sts because clearly those are not his aim. If he has to ask about the performance of a spec then he is clearly not following the meta. I think I've paid more attention to him than you have to anyone else here. Instead, I probably gave him the most helpful advice someone could give to his situation by telling him that his personal effectiveness matters more than the potential of the spec, which is almost universally true. What good was your response to him? You basically said: "Just ignore this troll", and proceeded to not even offer any useful information pertaining to his question. It was only in response to my post that you finally said that Feral is viable for raiding.

It's funny to me that you quoted only the half of my post that you didn't like, where I wasn't even talking to the OP, and then you go on to criticize my response to the OP without even including my advice to him.

Considering this seems to have devolved slightly you are correct that your response has been the most helpful, you were spot on with finding a spec to fit my play style and my ability to play it.

On release I think I'm sticking to my warrior for now and then levelling my Druid after and seeing how I feel with it. But thanks again for your insight

[Tellof]

Considering this seems to have devolved slightly you are correct that your response has been the most helpful, you were spot on with finding a spec to fit my play style and my ability to play it.

On release I think I'm sticking to my warrior for now and then levelling my Druid after and seeing how I feel with it. But thanks again for your insight

Nice! I'm still up in the air with what I'm going to play, but it seems to be between Feral, Arms, and Outlaw. Best of luck, cheers!

[Deleted]

Nice! I'm still up in the air with what I'm going to play, but it seems to be between Feral, Arms, and Outlaw. Best of luck, cheers!

Same to you!

[Justin-Sane]

They're incredibly strong in random battlegrounds right now. Of course it doesn't mean much because it's the pre-patch and stuff tends to be pretty broken, but it's still really fun. Been farming marks of honor on mine to get my demon hunter a set of gear. It basically feels like I'm PVEing. Using incarnation and brutal slash, I just aoe everything and apply all my bleeds to as many targets as possible and everything dies. Flag carriers, tanks, healers, doesn't matter. Everything melts like butter. I've been top on the scoreboard for all 30 or so battlegrounds that I did so far in the pre-patch except for three or four of them, where I was second or third, only being beaten by warlocks which I heard are also pretty OP right now. Kotmogu is especially fun. Killing five people at the same time using only brutal slash is the most fun I've had in the prepatch so far.

Also really loving balance affinity too, it's really amazing how I can kite melee and attack them at the same time. Trolling warriors is the most fun thing ever. Being just far enough away that I can attack them and they can't fight back, but not far enough for them to charge. It's funny watching them try to leap or run away just to try and get a charge in. I've literally killed melee without being touched just because of that extra range.

Even if they end up bad in legion, I'd really recommend playing one now if you have nothing else to do, because they're tons of fun and with the way stats work now in PVP, it makes it more accessible and easy to jump into than ever before. You can perform just as well on a fresh 100 than a decked out character. I still have a few int pieces on my druid but because of normalized stats, it doesn't even matter. The reward boxes you get from wins also have 690 greens and 700 blues in them, which is pretty nice for alts. 21 marks of honor gets you an entire 710 set as well.

[Deleted]

People who are analyzing the future of a class... Pick anythin overtuned now(because you are listening to "experts"=you will garantuee yourself a nerf). Go with something you think is fun.

How can you even say anything about the DPS, when you don't know the interaction with artifact points vs. all the other classes(not to mention how tier gear is affecting your DPS).

[Trollhammer]

People who are analyzing the future of a class... Pick anythin overtuned now(because you are listening to "experts"=you will garantuee yourself a nerf). Go with something you think is fun.

How can you even say anything about the DPS, when you don't know the interaction with artifact points vs. all the other classes(not to mention how tier gear is affecting your DPS).

Feral is mechanicly bad though.. IE Savage Roar, Bad AOE etc.. These things won't change.

[Hobbes0773]

Feral is mechanicly bad though.. IE Savage Roar, Bad AOE etc.. These things won't change.

Yes. Because right now Savage Roar definitely didn't change to a talent. And we definitely don't have a talent that increases our AOE output.

While I would like SR to only be about a 4-5% increase in damage over the other talents, it is not required in any raid that isn't pushing the edge. Gear and skill will vastly overcompensate.

Fact is, these things have changed on an objective level.

[Gemini Soul]

Case in point: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/rYk9XyQtBhfjZPgn

Yes, the guy is really geared and has the bleed -> CP legendary, but he's also using 4 different dots and presumably multi-dotting a lot of stuff seeing as he has a ton of casts. This guy is squeezing the potential out of Feral and he's owning that dungeon. Could he do similar or more DPS on an equally geared but different class? Sure. But nobody who sees ~400K DPS is going to say "I dunno man, you're a Feral."

Did you even look at that log before posting it? That is a very bad Log to use to make your case....

Lets look at the last Boss, Druid 754K DPS 48% of his dmg was from Rip/Rake, Rogue did 670K DPS 47% of his dmg was from Rupture, the tank did 365K DPS, the healer did 41K DPS and the Mage did 38K DPS should also note that the only person to die was the healer. Its clear that mage was there as a Hero and nothing more, with a 851ilvl vs the druid 873 and Rogue 864. If they brought a 3rd DPS of equal gear who actually tried to perform then both the rogue and druid DPS would not of been as high, this log is simply one of those who gimmick and such to try and rank.

[Tellof]

People who are analyzing the future of a class... Pick anythin overtuned now(because you are listening to "experts"=you will garantuee yourself a nerf). Go with something you think is fun.

How can you even say anything about the DPS, when you don't know the interaction with artifact points vs. all the other classes(not to mention how tier gear is affecting your DPS).

There's been substantial testing on the Beta for months by people who do have the relics. There's also been a lot of behind-the-scenes simulations based on these artifacts even though Simcraft hasn't released yet. While looking at HFC on Warcraftlogs.com is not a good indicator of Legion performance, obviously, that doesn't mean we don't know what's working well and what's not in actual Legion.

With that said, I still stand by my previous statements that Feral is in better shape than some people feel. If you line up 3 Brutal Slash's with Tiger Fury you're going to do a monstrous amount of damage, and you're going to get your stacks back in ~45+ seconds which is a lot shorter than Bladestorm, the previous king of Burst AoE. Cleave is in pretty good shape because of multi-Rake and Single Target is fine.

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Did you even look at that log before posting it? That is a very bad Log to use to make your case....

Lets look at the last Boss, Druid 754K DPS 48% of his dmg was from Rip/Rake, Rogue did 670K DPS 47% of his dmg was from Rupture, the tank did 365K DPS, the healer did 41K DPS and the Mage did 38K DPS should also note that the only person to die was the healer. Its clear that mage was there as a Hero and nothing more, with a 851ilvl vs the druid 873 and Rogue 864. If they brought a 3rd DPS of equal gear who actually tried to perform then both the rogue and druid DPS would not of been as high, this log is simply one of those who gimmick and such to try and rank.

... That's... not how these things work. If anything, a strong mage with Lust would have resulted in the other two doing even more average DPS because burst phases spike your DPS up real high and then when it's over you slowly taper back down. A strong mage would have shortened the fight and resulted in less of a taper. This is why Subtlety Rogues and Arcane Mages rank so incredibly high with the Legendary Ring in HFC, because the fight is ridiculously short and their average DPS is incredibly close to their Max DPS for the fight. You go on to talk about ranking in your post so you should have realized this. The only thing a stronger mage would have taken away from the others is total damage done because Boss HP is usually fixed, but nobody follows that because it's relative.

This is also in no way a "gimmick", it's not like you need to bring a gimpy mage just for the lust. A gimmick would have been bringing 2 Ret Paladins and a Shadow Priest running Surrender to Madness to have him do a lot of damage, die, and then give 50% damage boost to the Rets for 10 seconds to finish the boss off and have the Tank/Healer battle rez the priest.

The mage also did die during the last fight... twice. They battle Rez'd him, he used Time Warp at 42:01 and died literally a second later. Did YOU look at the log?

This particular fight has a second phase after 20% where a new boss comes out, and the first boss empowers your damage. The Druid did ~8M to the first boss and 100M+ to the second boss, which is also why their DPS is ridiculously high, and since the Mage was dead he didn't benefit from this empowerment. So, if you're saying I picked a bad log to make my point, you picked the worse possible fight to make yours.

Also, what does their damage distributions vs. skills have to do with performance? That's completely irrelevant here.

[teddabear]

I've been struggling on deciding what class I should return to WoW as. I'll be going back in the mindset of that i'll be raiding and I'm pretty much stuck on what to try out.

I've always had a soft spot for ferals I've just never properly played them but I've always thought they were really damn cool and with the new artifact shapeshift forms.

I'm just after someone to shed some light on if they look like if they're going to be at least a little viable? I'm always that guy who's always concerned about fashion on WoW but if it turns out I look beautiful but I'm horrifically under performing, I'm not sure what I'd wanna do.

Thanks in advance

In the Prepatch you are going to underperform if you don't have the class trinket, T18 4pc and Incarnation.

With current tuning Feral has good single target but is low in Priority Add damage and sustained AoE. Blizzard had shifted a lot of damage to direct damage abilities, i.e. Shred and Ferocious Bite, but then in a recent hotfoot shifted a substantial amount back to bleeds and nerfed DD abilites. Talents were not adjusted to appropriately to account for this leading to a lot of imbalances in the talent tree. Currently Savage Roar + Jagged Wounds + Blood Talons is much higher than other combinations in Legion.

Tuning could change things but Blizzard has some strange rules for Feral , like how much damage Thrash and Swipe can do relative to Shred. They don't apply these rules to some other classes which enables them to have much better AoE. That makes the likelihood of being fixed with tuning unlikely since Blizzard has ruled out mechanics changes at this point. Both Priority Add damage and AoE could have been addressed with the artifact but weren't. The artifact is a missed opportunity to patch Feral shortcomings until it receives an overhaul that it has needed for several expansions.

As far as community opinion goes I can tell you that Ferals usually get turned down for invites in Looking For Group to Mythic dungeons and Heroic raids. So far there is nothing to indicate that opinion is going to change in Legion.