SL Beta: No Hope for Feral, again?

[Locruid]

They need to yank bleeds from the Rogue and make Feral the BLEEDSTER class again.

I remember when it came to basic DPS you rolled a rogue for Burst/sustain/CC or a Druid for the DOT/offheals/Defense (with bear)

But then they stiffened up Sub with Bleeds and screwed over Feral's Niche

They should just screw the pooch and:
Assassinate: Poison based
Outlaw: Stunner/CC/Sustain based (good out of stealth, mediocre in stealth)
Sub: Burst

Feral: Bleeds/Defense

O and make Rogue lose it's speed but keep vanish.
Let Feral be the speedster with no vanish.

[Whitepaw]

They need to yank bleeds from the Rogue and make Feral the BLEEDSTER class again.

I remember when it came to basic DPS you rolled a rogue for Burst/sustain/CC or a Druid for the DOT/offheals/Defense (with bear)

But then they stiffened up Sub with Bleeds and screwed over Feral's Niche

They should just screw the pooch and:
Assassinate: Poison based
Outlaw: Stunner/CC/Sustain based (good out of stealth, mediocre in stealth)
Sub: Burst

Feral: Bleeds/Defense

O and make Rogue lose it's speed but keep vanish.
Let Feral be the speedster with no vanish.

It is interesting to see just how much the Rogue class has taken from the Feral spec over the years:
- Feral has had bleeds as a central part of its dps rotation since the spec was introduced. Rogue has been given more and more Bleed-based gameplay.
- Feral had armor reduction for several expansions. Rogues got that in WotLK with a finisher and now it just activates passively with other abilities.
- Feral had shadow damage via the artifact weapon in Legion. Now, Sub Rogues have shadow damage baseline, as a dps cooldown.
- Feral was THE fastest spec for several expansions, especially in stealth. Then Rogues got that too.
- Feral started with having an ability called Feral Charge, only usable in Bear, like the Warrior Charge. In later expansions, that ability was also available to Ferals in Cat Form. Now Rogues also have this ability.

Players often call the Feral spec a Rogue-lite. I disagree - it's in fact the other way around. Rogues have gotten extremely important abilities and game mechanics from the Feral spec, while Feral hybridity (healing, bear being good defensive and able to counterattack as well) has been nerfed heavily, mostly so with the splitting of Feral into Feral and Guardian.

At the same time, Rogues have been given a multitude of unique abilities and now has what is probably the widest spectrum in abilities of damage dealing potential, especially as Subtlety. A Sub Rogue deals
- direct damage, with a passive armor reduction on its target during burst windows.
- bleed damage.
- poison damage.
- shadow damage(!)

All of those either reduces armor mitigation on the target or just downright ignores it.

[Prag]

Players often call the Feral spec a Rogue-lite. I disagree - it's in fact the other way around. Rogues have gotten extremely important abilities and game mechanics from the Feral spec, while Feral hybridity (healing, bear being good defensive and able to counterattack as well) has been nerfed heavily, mostly so with the splitting of Feral into Feral and Guardian.

I think that’s why they call it Rogue-lite. It’s a watered down version. It’s probably a nice way of putting it, considering the efficacy of the Rogue-version of those once-unique abilities.

I think HotW has the mechanical potential to fill the gap, but I have no hope of them tuning it to be effective enough.

[Whitepaw]

I think that’s why they call it Rogue-lite. It’s a watered down version. It’s probably a nice way of putting it, considering the efficacy of the Rogue-version of those once-unique abilities.

I think HotW has the mechanical potential to fill the gap, but I have no hope of them tuning it to be effective enough.

Yes, I am aware why people call it a Rogue-lite - and I object to that!

Feral is not a Rogue-lite - Rogue has copy-pasted a lot of amazing Feral abilities!

And on top of that, Rogues got an incredible passive immunity (Cheat Death), incredible on-demand immunity (Cloak of Shadows), incredible damage mitigation (Feint) and incredible selfhealing (which has now, thankfully, been nerfed). All of these can be used while staying offensive, while Feral defensives for the most part requires actually going on the defensive (switch to bear/switch out to heal etc), thereby stopping offensive gameplay.

Feral is not Rogue-lite at all. It would be nice if we all worked to stop that misconception.

[Dreyen]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like Berserk not having any benefit in AoE feels absolutely off? Rake and shred get that nice +60% damage but swipe/trash get nothing? lame.

[Eldrathian]

Looking at the changes to Feral in Beta has me seriously concerned. Every report seems to be "the spec is worse". It's worse...it's already a mess on live. Man, I just don't get it.

What changes on beta?

[Vicus]

It is interesting to see just how much the Rogue class has taken from the Feral spec over the years:
- Feral has had bleeds as a central part of its dps rotation since the spec was introduced. Rogue has been given more and more Bleed-based gameplay.
- Feral had armor reduction for several expansions. Rogues got that in WotLK with a finisher and now it just activates passively with other abilities.
- Feral had shadow damage via the artifact weapon in Legion. Now, Sub Rogues have shadow damage baseline, as a dps cooldown.
- Feral was THE fastest spec for several expansions, especially in stealth. Then Rogues got that too.
- Feral started with having an ability called Feral Charge, only usable in Bear, like the Warrior Charge. In later expansions, that ability was also available to Ferals in Cat Form. Now Rogues also have this ability.

*acktually meme*

This is not exactly correct.

Rogues in Vanilla (and beyond) had:
- Exposes Armor (armor redux finishing move) and the lowest dps rogue in the raid was sometimes stuck with Expose Armor duty, depending on the fight/raid.
- two baseline bleeds (rupture and garrote) and 1 talent (Hemorrhage), but they never compared to Feral bleeds until Assassination needed a "spec identity" in Legion.
- Shadowstep talent to blink to a target, even though Feral Charge was superior in every way.

Furthermore:
- Shadow damage was made baseline with subtlety in Legion to give it a "spec identity". (Shadowstike builder, Nightblades finisher DoT, and a Shadow Blades cooldown that made all damage shadow). Feral only got shadow damage as "borrowed power" in their weapon.
- Feral is still faster inside and outside of stealth at 150% vs rogues that need a talent (Sub & Ass) to move at 135%, in stealth only, or a talent for 130% all the time in outlaw (the real movement gem that got nerfed for feral was auto-shifting out of roots/snares, while functionally saying in cat form (I'm still salty about it))


I played Rogue in Vanilla and Feral from end of BC to midway into MoP. Every Xpac I want to switch back to feral and every xpac I am saddened that they fail to fix the spec. It continues to be one of the highest skill cap specs, and yet, if you are able to master it, you get to perform almost as well as a (Demon)Hunter pressing 3 buttons...

(Edit: logged onto free weekend and saw that both classes move faster than I remember, so fixed the numbers)

[Yoshimiko]

I've been seeing a lot of gloom & doom with both feral and balance.

Are they really bad as everyones making them out to be? Testing some stuff on AMR, I found them simming pretty decently(https://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simul...e5404876127386 - one of the highest sims I've made, dunno how accurate AMR is, though) and they appear to be doing decently in Arena - especially jungle cleave, though this could definitely be attributed to how crazy strong sub has been.

Is AMR off-base? Is jungle only being carried by how insane sub is? Is UH+Feral looken good for 3s?

I'm debating between mage, shaman and druid to main.

[Junglelily]

Feral Druid received a buff!

Druid
Feral
[With regional restarts] Damage of all abilities increased by 8%.

and they appear to be doing decently in Arena - especially jungle cleave, though this could definitely be attributed to how crazy strong sub has been.

Is AMR off-base? Is jungle only being carried by how insane sub is?

The comp 'Jungle Cleave' consists of a Feral Druid, a Hunter and a healer (mostly Disc). There is no Rogue involved in this comp.
I watch a few high ranked Feral streamers (Snupy, Ilovelucy, syfoxE, Mocfernando, Tonyferalmovies) and they all seem very positive about how Feral feels in prepatch/Beta PvP.

[Volitar]

The first of many blanket % buffs.

How many did Feral get in BFA? 10?

[Alanar]

So put bleeds on and run away is what people want back?

Hope that will stay dead.

[Lubefist]

Feral is banging atm in beta so I don't know whats up with the whine up in here.

[LygoPhobia]

Feral is banging atm in beta so I don't know whats up with the whine up in here.

Folks are festering opinions based on outdated YouTube videos I would assume. Especially those w/e beta.

[Cyklone]

Everything with Feral has to do with a higher learning skillcap and very unforgiving on movement.

[Grendulum]

So put bleeds on and run away is what people want back?

Hope that will stay dead.

I hope not, that is the best part of feral. Being able to whittle people down, kiting and healing, alternating cat and bear while you're energy starved. Not every spec should go for big crits all the time. I play feral because I want to play around with dots, but I also want to be a melee and a hybrid. It fits me perfectly, except they change directions a bit.

[Whitepaw]

Everything with Feral has to do with a higher learning skillcap and very unforgiving on movement.

This is basically not true anymore.

[Kyranna]

This is basically not true anymore.

Well, you can still snapshot dots with Tiger's Fury and you should. You have to mantain Rake, Rip, Savage Roar and juggle Bloodtalons if you pick the talent. It's not a braindead spec, for sure it's miles ahead of Havoc DH (but then, what isn't?).
There is a massive difference in applying a boosted Rip compared to a random one: I'm not too deep in the game workings anymore, so I don't know if % modifiers stack as multipliers or are just added on top of one another, but TF has a 15% modifier, SR another 15% and Bloodtalons has a monstrous 30%. (I'm not sure, but I think only TF does actually snapshot, well...)

On top of this, assuming you don't energy cap ever, you can throw around (or on yourself) free Regrowths like candies.

I play also assassination rogue, it's quite similar, you have to get used to the priority, but then it flows quite nicely. I'm not a top player, but I do play since 2004 open beta, I've seen all iterations of all classes and honestly I quite like feral now, it could be way worse.

[Whitepaw]

Kyranna, there is no doubt that Feral is at a higher skillcap than the average dps spec - but we're not anywhere near the WotLK or MoP state of John Madden.

And the "very unforgiving on movement"-bit is just plain wrong now, in my opinion. We handle movement extremely well - as we should! We can leave our bleeds on our current target and quickly move to our new target. We don't risk fucking up a PS proc for a Bloodtalon buff, like we did in MoP.

We have retained snapshotting on Tiger's Fury - and Rip is buffed by Bloodtalons for the duration, as far as I know. That's fine, but when you look at the gameplay with Assassination and Subtlety, those specs are now more complex than the Feral is. I don't mind that at all - I just find it important to clarify this, so people don't stay away from Feral because they believe it's very complicated to play.

Now, the complexity for Feral has changed to the Affinities. With the Balance Affinity, you can now do a simplified Balance dps rotation! You get Moon and Solar eclipses, you get procs on your spells, you get Typhoon etc. Without Heart of the Wild, I do 50% of the single target dps I do in Cat Form - with Heart of the Wild activated, I can do approximately the same.

Same with Restoration and Guardian Affinities - do a decent job without Heart of the Wild activated, do a really good job with it activated.

So, we're back at mastering the Hybrid gameplay, which is really awesome! We're not alone at this - Ret Paladins can off-heal, Fury Warriors can off-tank and so on. But we can do that better, especially when we activate Heart of the Wild.

[Kyranna]

Yes, affinities are finally useful again! It's not the true hybrid of the past, but it's good. I think Feral is a great spec to play, while being a druid with all the possibilities to swap role with a couple of clicks. I love guardian, restoration and feral, while I do have a few problems connecting with balance, it's a really static caster style, but maybe the new talent that let's me move while Starfall is running will help mitigate that bad feeling.

Anyway I play druid since the game launch, first class I created and I still love it like it was day one.

[Treeskee]

Hoping to ask here as I'm not sure it's really deserving of it's own post, but I had a question about the new Blood Talons as I haven't played since WOD at this point.

So obviously for opener our generators would be rake, shred and I assume maybe brutal slash, but what about when rake doesn't need to be reapplied?

Thanks for any info!!