Feral Druid - Claw/Rake Improvements?

[philaine]

For feral druid veterans, a lot of you probably don't have these skills in your action bar: Claw / Rake (although I keep rake for anti-first aid or stealth when FF fails)

Essentially, Claw > Mangle for levels < 49 and Rake only has minor utility

Blizzard should consider upgrading these obsolete skills with some "shared" talent points such as:

1. Hamstring (perhaps OP and redundant w/ infected wounds)
2. Additional damage due to multiple bleeding effects (mangle, rake, rip)
3. Grants a possibility of double attack (claw - it's crappy damage anyway) when mangle's already up due to multiple feral droods

Just my $0.02. Any ideas?

[Lionhearte]

I don't have claw on my bar, but I have rake for various reasons.
I don't know if it should get buffed too well, it could be made to have a different effect, though. The only reason they haven't removed claw is so restos who are questing can go cat form and do some attacks. Not often, as they could just spam moonfire too, but that's why I think it's there.

I'd love to have it buffed though...

[astroslionheart]

there is a glyph, from the iscription job, that transfom rake in a hamstring i guess...

[gronyon]

I'm pretty happy with Claw out of my bar. Simply because Mangle talent is just an upgrade of claw. To make it two different skills you would need to make different use for them, and if mangle is for dps buff, what would claw be for ? frontal damage to replace shred when not from behind ?

Yet I wish Rake could have more situationnal use, or to have to maintain it for best raid dps, or debuffs for pvp. But I got really no good idea to share ... yet ?

[astroslionheart]

i use rake for build combo point when i don't have 40 energy for mangle lol

[mgp84]

I use rake on end-game mob bosses that have 7700 armor. (Basically SWP Bosses like Brutallus) considering it ignores armor all together. When I do use it however, I see a 20 DPS upgrade on average. Just something to think about

[Kryostasys]

The Rake Glyph states that it will make targets unable to Flee. This denotes PvE mobs who piss off when you get them down to 20%.

Now, you could compare it to say, Paladins Judgement of Justice, which makes a PvE mob unable to Flee, and a PvP target unable to gain speed over 100%. Theres no indication of that on the tooltip however. Don't get too excited.

Claw doesn't need updating. It's simply there as a bread and butter attack for non Feral specc'ed druids who like grinding in kitty, and pre 50 play. Other classes have similar "old" skills that get replaced with superior ones via level or talents; Frost Armour get's upgraded to Ice Armour on Magi, same with Demon Skin and Demon Armour on Locks. Death Knights have a talented replacement for Blood Strike and Obliterate for respective talent tree's. Prot Warriors replace Sunder with Devastate.

Rake has plenty of uses. I always apply it to rogues in PvP. Faerie Fire isn't reliable with Cloak of Skills. It's also a great bandage breaker, if you're good at judging when a non healing class will try and CC you to put a plaster on. And with Rend and Tear, I for one will be using it to pretty much guarantee my FB will crit.

In short. It's fine.

[lurking]

I have an idea. How about remove claw skill and give the claw's damage to rake's first damage?

(Energy still cost 35)

[1sickpuppy]

Mangle is a replacement ability for Claw, thats the purpose of it. Its just like for Warriors who get Devastate which replaces Sunder Armor. Claw is for non-feral druids or those who haven't reached Mangle yet while leveling.

As for Rake, its only use is to fill out the last combo point on the target. It is getting buffed in wotlk to be a more stable ability and the glyph for it isnt too bad, but very situational.

[Guran]

Well my druid is lvl 39 now and Rake and Claw are used constantly.
Especially pre-32 I used Rake to get that last CP for Rip so the bleed would kill off runners faster. Nowadays I mostly stick to Claw because I kill mobs too fast, but on harder q mobs it's definately Rake in first.

PS: Anyone know what the best opener is to kill mobs with? I'm stuck between Pounce + Shred or just Ravage, followed by Rake/Claw untill I can finish off with FB. I'm not exactly sure how good the DPS of either opening (combo) is, and I can't see a big difference in kill speed either, so maybe if someone more experienced could shed some light?

[gronyon]

Hmm yes interesting, rend and tear (+50% crit on FB on bleeding) will give Rake a serious use in pvp, on targets you didn't open with the bleed opener I forgot the name of... *blush*. You could "waste" a combo to get a rip, rake allows you to add a combo instead of wasting it

And I read somewhere it now scales with AP. If so, then Rake is a PVP tool.
The "prevent fleeing" pve tool is just... useless. And you would need to buy the inscription during leveling session, because once you are level 80 it's a bit late (depends on farming content).

If the "prevent fleeing" turns into paladin-like for PVP, then it becomes more efective than that crappy Infected Wounds (since cat will have +30% movement speed also indoors).