Has Blizzard completely destroyed Feral Druids??

[Meanshield]

Feral was better for ST and dual target before 8.1 It was WAY better. But as pr usual the community doesnt know their head from their rear; they bitch and moan for an AoE finisher, but as a result also gets our ST destroyed. Before we we're the kings of ST, now we're barely mid-tier. If people had reigned in their complaints we wudnt have had Primal Wrath that now forces us to sacrifice our ST damage for AoE. No other class needs todo this.

Furthermore, bleeds dont do fuckall damage. Even if you stack heavily on Mastery you wont get anywhere near where Rip really should be. Its all about the Ferocious Bite and nothing else. Its awful and boring gameplay.

Savage Roar needs to be competitive and so does Incarn. Incarn could be come baseline instead of zerk, giving Feral an actual cooldown we can be proud of. Or remove it and buff everything accordingly and have Feral be all about the Tiger's Fury and no other cooldowns.
Feral Frenzy needs to go and Moment of Clarity needs a buff. Execute should be placed back on Fero Bite instead of Sabretooth, giving us options in the L15 row.

Dev's have lost ideas for Feral and Druids in general, and its clear as day to see. Even in Legion they didnt really do anything to fix the issues untill LATE in the expansion, a few weeks before Antorus opened.

[chriseggroll]

Feral really needs something to buff shred to sometimes give more combo points, or something like rip and tear to get the bleeds rolling quickly. A talent like Exsanguinate to make them tick faster would be good too. Compared to an actual Rogue, Feral just feels like a letdown.

[phosp]

Feral buff oh wait it's a blizzard game

[Vitinariy]

Dev's have lost ideas for Feral and Druids in general, and its clear as day to see. Even in Legion they didnt really do anything to fix the issues untill LATE in the expansion, a few weeks before Antorus opened.

Wow, so you consider horrible Antorus versatility-MoC build a fix? A completely reversed gameplay for a supposedly bleed based class?
Yes we had damage, but they basically copied the rogue gameplay, so it was not at all a fix.

[Rhaxus]

Wow, so you consider horrible Antorus versatility-MoC build a fix? A completely reversed gameplay for a supposedly bleed based class?
Yes we had damage, but they basically copied the rogue gameplay, so it was not at all a fix.

don't know where you get the "bleed based class" from? it just says it "deals damage with bleeds and bites" which it did, but even if the bleeds are just a small amount of the damage source, then they still fulfill their description.
personally i am fine with whatever as long as feral plays well and performs above moonkin in st, so that there is a clear incentive to choose feral in some situations rather than always thinking/ hearing "moonkin can do it too, and better".

also, strong utility in form of leader of the pack or something similar would be really helpful.

edit: at least the rogue-like (heh) moc build felt like it was doing something rather than just waiting to alternate 5cp buffs with bleeds

[Nfinitii]

don't know where you get the "bleed based class" from? it just says it "deals damage with bleeds and bites" which it did, but even if the bleeds are just a small amount of the damage source, then they still fulfill their description.
personally i am fine with whatever as long as feral plays well and performs above moonkin in st, so that there is a clear incentive to choose feral in some situations rather than always thinking/ hearing "moonkin can do it too, and better".

also, strong utility in form of leader of the pack or something similar would be really helpful.

edit: at least the rogue-like (heh) moc build felt like it was doing something rather than just waiting to alternate 5cp buffs with bleeds

Should give lotp and faerie fire back imo.

[M1r4g3]

you could play an assa rogue instead, just use some toy to change yourself to a cat or something also change your icons from garrote>rake, rip>rupture, shred>mutilate, bite>envenom, primalthing>toxic blade, you can also add feral sounds to those buttons i think? ez feral fix.

[Rhaxus]

give rogue a tank option and i will think about it ^^

[Raugnaut]

I mean, what exactly is the overall issue with feral atm?

Mythic+? I've found that a Wild Fleshrending set will allow me to compete with most Balance druids I've seen.
Raids? Sure, we may not be as solid as Balance, but several entire classes underpreform our single spec.
PvP? Burst setup is amazing there.
Playstyle? Yea... Playstyle is pretty much fail nowadays, but which class hasn't been !@#$ed over by blizz?

[Holymacaroni]

I mean, what exactly is the overall issue with feral atm?

Mythic+? I've found that a Wild Fleshrending set will allow me to compete with most Balance druids I've seen.
Raids? Sure, we may not be as solid as Balance, but several entire classes underpreform our single spec.
PvP? Burst setup is amazing there.
Playstyle? Yea... Playstyle is pretty much fail nowadays, but which class hasn't been !@#$ed over by blizz?

Berserking, is probably the weakest 3 min cd has to be one of the largest issues. My boomy @ 418, ilvl burst for 50kish within its cd and stabilizes around 26-28k, feral set on the other hand 419.87 ilvl probably better suited for stats and all burst for a wimpy 35k and stabilizes @ 22-24k. I think berserking is a quarter of its problems. Bloodtalons being the go to for pve if not omen of clarity as well shouldve been replaced by feral frenzy by now but feral frenzy probably will never get love. Aside from its dps issues utility for feral is a joke when you could've brought a rogue or boomy. I was a feral main until this tier, had to throw in the towel and just play it casually for keystones, Boomy just currently does everything better except maybe reaping packs unless i got astral power saved up.

[Raugnaut]

Berserking, is probably the weakest 3 min cd has to be one of the largest issues. My boomy @ 418, ilvl burst for 50kish within its cd and stabilizes around 26-28k, feral set on the other hand 419.87 ilvl probably better suited for stats and all burst for a wimpy 35k and stabilizes @ 22-24k. I think berserking is a quarter of its problems. Bloodtalons being the go to for pve if not omen of clarity as well shouldve been replaced by feral frenzy by now but feral frenzy probably will never get love. Aside from its dps issues utility for feral is a joke when you could've brought a rogue or boomy. I was a feral main until this tier, had to throw in the towel and just play it casually for keystones, Boomy just currently does everything better except maybe reaping packs unless i got astral power saved up.

Imo, it's not so much that Berserk is weak, but rather unmodified Shred/FB is weak.

Currently, I'm running 3x Wild Fleshrending and 3x Masterful Instincts, and Incarnation, and at 396 ilvl (Completely unoptimized stats btw), I see ~55k bursts on ST bosses, and a general 26k stable on trash packs. Single target sustain is significantly lower then the "normal" feral build, but then I rarely raid these days, mainly sticking to M+.

Just have to experiment to see what all works. I, personally, got tired of having no burst in PvP, and looked to see what all I could do to help with that. Later on (~3 months after I had this build set up), I joined a guildies M+ group, and beat all the other damage... while not one-sidedly, by ~12% overall (1 was a rogue, didn't pay attention to spec).

Rather then going with whatever the #1 simmed spec is, better to actually take a look at ALL the options. Feral Frenzy, for instance, while a poor PvE talent, is extremely strong in PvP - With 3x Masterful Instincts, it's a 150k damage burst with NO crits from either FB, it's insane! Wildfleshrending is a fairly poor ST sustain option, but it's great for burst combined with Incarnation (See a certain theme?), and the BEST option for AoE.

Personally, I feel that they gutted Feral and moved much of the previous power it had into Azerite traits, which, imo, is bad (Compared to Legion - Without Azerite traits, feral lacks both ST burst AND damage reduction, while they had both in Legion via Artifact). As that was moved into Azerite traits, when those are gone, will Feral STILL be without ST burst/survival? I feel probs.

Blizz needs to take 5 steps back and realize that they should NOT remove things from classes base kit to put into a clunky side-progression bar. I don't really play other classes at all besides soloing old raids, so I can't say exactly what all was removed from them over the years.. But I can say with 100% certainty that Blizzard has gutted Feral, Guardian, and Resto each expansion, just to put what made them strong into a side-system.

[Shizune]

Destroyed? Not really. Though for me personally it's not as satisfying to play feral as it once was.

[kek280]

Berserking has always been a piece of shit and Sabertooth is the most brainlet tier talent they could have added on tier 15, actually blows my mind that made it out of the PTR, that thing just shouldn't exist.
I also don't understand the point of keeping snapshotting like it is, either make feral the only spec that benefits from complete old school snapshotting or remove it.

[deathshere]

Feral really isn't performing that poorly right now from a raiding perspective. I hate using logs, as it is tricky to gauge performance of an underrepresented spec like Feral, but even so we are actually parsing among the top 10 specs on 4 bosses this tier (using heroic/90 percentile as a baseline). Going into Mythic we are pretty similar, dropping a little under top 10 on some of those fights, but there are very little Mythic Feral parses. I mean, do I want to be higher? Yes, especially if ST damage is supposed to be our niche. There are bosses we are absolutely dogshit on, as well, but regardless this thread is packed full of hyperbole and misinformation.

I mean, when it comes to PvP we are actually quite strong. Jungle remains a pretty popular comp and is scary as fuck to fight against. Even after the nerf our off-healing is pretty nuts too, so I'm not sure why people are saying it's not. PotG gives us crazy burst healing and what other dps spec gets consistent, free heals? Bleeds are strong and we can spec for decent burst so we fit into both rot and burst comps. We are definitely squishy though.

Where our true problem lies is the M+ meta. We simply don't bring any burst AoE right now or solid enough utility to pick us over the other melee specs, who simply have better toolkits than us. @MookieRah is right, the strength of our bleeds aren't the problem, it is the amount of time it takes to get them rolling on multiple targets. We'll have to see how 8.1 AoE talents help balance this out but even with stronger AoE it's hard to pick a Feral over almost any other melee DPS spec.

" Bleeds are strong "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4

[-aiko-]

You realize you quoted a 7 month old post right?

Patches since have shifted most of our damage to ferocious bite.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

So how is Feral looking in 8.2 ?

I ask because I 've been playing Balance since BfA launch but my heart is always Feral ... and I 'm hoping the increased stats + essences and new Azerite Traits will help boost Feral

Plz some1 give me hope ... I 'm so sick of Balance

[-aiko-]

Check back next week after the inevitable tuning patch.

[Sxq]

Initial performance has feral as one of the best single target specs tbh

Then again we can make GREAT use of the currently overpowered cyclotronic blast, and who knows what spec tuning will bring.

[Nostalon]

For me the problem is just how boring it is to play

[kek280]

For me the problem is just how boring it is to play

That's all specs right now.