Did blizzard mention anything about making feral's gameplay more enjoyable in 7.1.5?

[Deleted]

I know its a patch that is trying to rework some spells here and there and make it easier, but did they mention anything about feral or should i give up hope on dreaming a smoother gameplay?

[Hach]

They haven't said anything about druids in general, but I'm also hoping we'll see the Feral rotation get a little more streamlined and/or easier to handle. It's gotten to the point where I'm kind'a done with the spec overall, having moved completely over to Guardian and Balance. And this is despite playing Feral as my main spec since Cata.

[Morg]

They don't need to change a thing, ferals rotation is slightly harder than the a lot of classes which is great and is perfectly fine once you realise that SR REPLACES FB until 25% instead of being in addition to it. Ff you want the simplistic way to play feral take SOTF over SR and it becomes easy. Take the left talent over jagged wounds and it becomes as easy as a hunter.

[Wildmoon]

I am enjoying Feral just fine though.

[Thorim]

The fact you actually have to think and not just mash 3 buttons is what makes Feral enjoyable for me and most other feral players. We don't want 'babies first spec' ty.

[Sinitar]

The problem with feral isn't its complexity. I love this part of it to death. What I can't really stomach is reward vs effort. A rotation that is difficult should also feel rewarding, but with feral, that simply doesn't happen. For once, it's a very slow spec compared to others, which makes it rather unsatisfactory for WQs. It feels mildly annoying to require such a hefty setup to do damage, when other classes simply have high damage built into their spec instead of relying on artificial means such as SR.

Secondly, the AoE is pathetic. I'm sorry, but that's the brutal truth. I always do my WQs as guardian because it does better AoE than my cat and is infinitely more resilient.

Now, we finally get to the single target damage, where feral is supposed to shine, right? Well, there are numerous class and specs who will do better damage than you with half the effort. It feels bloody demoralizing to execute tactics well, to do my rotation well, and still have MM hunters, fire mages and rogues beat me. Why should I have to endure the throes of a complex rotation to achieve mediocre results? This is masochism, to put it mildly... I really hope they get rid of the annoyance that SR is. Even with that buff up, at 880 ilvl, my abilities still hit like a wet noodle, and Ashamane's Frenzy is downright pathetic for its long CD. Balance has a shorter CD on full moon, and that thing crits for a fuckton. Meanwhile, we have Ashamane's Frenzy that is only awesome due to combo points and Ferocious bite which is not ferocious in the slightest. Yeeeeeeeeeey.............

[Deleted]

The problem with feral isn't its complexity. I love this part of it to death. What I can't really stomach is reward vs effort. A rotation that is difficult should also feel rewarding, but with feral, that simply doesn't happen.

I agree completely, and I would add AB to the list of "problems". Whenever I sneak in a FB in my rotation, I hope to not get an AB proc right afterwards, as that is the biggest 'fuck you' for not playing "badly" and refreshing rip early, even if it's at 13sec left, after pooling.
On the bright side, I don't risk one-shotting myself at Cenarius while dps-ing in the thorns...yay, i guess?

[Hobbes0773]

The fact you actually have to think and not just mash 3 buttons is what makes Feral enjoyable for me and most other feral players. We don't want 'babies first spec' ty.

Stop with the strawman. It is not a binary choice between the current feral complexity and "babies first spec." There is plenty of room in the middle. Hell, making a talent compete with BT, but only to ~90% of the effectiveness of BT and you have the best of both worlds. The rotation does not have to be the most complex in the game at all times. There can and should be a few alternatives that keep the spec interesting to those that don't want to maintain BT, TF, SR, Rip, Rake, MF, etc. and actually look at the screen instead of a UI.

[Thaledwyn]

Stop with the strawman. It is not a binary choice between the current feral complexity and "babies first spec." There is plenty of room in the middle. Hell, making a talent compete with BT, but only to ~90% of the effectiveness of BT and you have the best of both worlds. The rotation does not have to be the most complex in the game at all times. There can and should be a few alternatives that keep the spec interesting to those that don't want to maintain BT, TF, SR, Rip, Rake, MF, etc. and actually look at the screen instead of a UI.

This 100%.

It's just not worth to play feral. You get insufficient DPS for its complexity. If you notice the crazy DPS of other specs (also in short fights) by pressing only 2 or 3 buttons, you want to delete your char all the time...

A first step in the right direction would be the removal of shitty dot snapshoting... no other class has it anymore...

[Hivey]

Some of you may think of me as a simpleton, but I do not like Savage Roar, I just want to spam Ferocious Bite as much as possible, while keeping up a couple of dots. Biting > roaring

Its so much more fun, which is subjective sure, but I can't be the only one.

[Deleted]

And there probably are fire mages around who would prefer using scorch over fireball, since being able to move while casting is much more enjoyable. But, if you prefer to play without savage roar, no one prevents you from speccing into Soul of the Forest or Incarnation.

[Zanzha]

I am enjoying Feral just fine though.

tbh same fam

[Hivey]

And there probably are fire mages around who would prefer using scorch over fireball, since being able to move while casting is much more enjoyable. But, if you prefer to play without savage roar, no one prevents you from speccing into Soul of the Forest or Incarnation.

My understanding (only just dinged 110 yesterday on Druid) is that the other two rival talents are very weak in comparison. So, for those who wish to play to a high standard, that will be the pressure 'forcing' people to play with that talent/play-style.

[Deleted]

Depends on what you are doing. On single target Savage Roar is quite ahead. In M+ dungeons SotF is competitive. More to the point though, spamming Ferocious Bite is just not how the spec is played right now. If managing some dots while dealing a lot of damage directly is what you are looking for, you will most likely not find it on a feral.

[Lycanoth]

What I can't really stomach is reward vs effort.

This really is the only issue I have with the spec right now.

On the bright side I do occasionally get compliments from people on my damage because some know how complicated Feral can be.

[lotj]

I agree completely, and I would add AB to the list of "problems". Whenever I sneak in a FB in my rotation, I hope to not get an AB proc right afterwards, as that is the biggest 'fuck you' for not playing "badly" and refreshing rip early, even if it's at 13sec left, after pooling.
On the bright side, I don't risk one-shotting myself at Cenarius while dps-ing in the thorns...yay, i guess?

Echoing AB as being a problem, but for different reasons. My obsession with AB launched during an Ursoc kill where it didn't break 500k damage total, and again with 95% rip uptime. I've seen it just not proc for 1.5-2+ minutes on a fight with 98% Rip uptime, and when that happens it doesn't matter if you refresh rip early - it's just not procing at all. Early refresh really only buys you a few seconds per proc, but if it doesn't proc then early refresh is just a dps loss.

It's bad enough that you can have instances where your dps takes a dump because your crit rate just decides to be 10-15% lower that round, but throw AB rng into it and it just feels like there's no point in trying to do anything well since way too much of your damage is out of your hands.

FWIW I love the complexity, but feel the spec lacks consistency due to layers and layers and layers of rng.

[Hobbes0773]

And there probably are fire mages around who would prefer using scorch over fireball, since being able to move while casting is much more enjoyable. But, if you prefer to play without savage roar, no one prevents you from speccing into Soul of the Forest or Incarnation.

Apples to oranges comparison. Scorch was designed to be sub optimal. Talents are designed to at least compete with each other. Right now there is no real choice in the final tier. Blood Talons wins. That is a huge problem and one that needs to be resolved. No one is saying BT should be nerfed or gutted. But it does need an alternative that is at least ~90% as good of a choice. That allows others to play a rotation they find fun if they don't by chance love BT.

Comparing Scorch to fireball as though it is the same as SR v. SOTF or BT v. BS is disingenuous.

[Deleted]

I wasn't replying to the comparison between SR and SotF, i was replying to a comparison between SR and Ferocious Bite.

[Miff]

tbh same fam

yeah, i'm enjoying too it's fine in pve and even stronger in pvp. if people aren't happy with the rotation/etc, which as been similar for a few years now, why are you still playing the class?

[Zanzha]

Echoing AB as being a problem, but for different reasons. My obsession with AB launched during an Ursoc kill where it didn't break 500k damage total, and again with 95% rip uptime. I've seen it just not proc for 1.5-2+ minutes on a fight with 98% Rip uptime, and when that happens it doesn't matter if you refresh rip early - it's just not procing at all. Early refresh really only buys you a few seconds per proc, but if it doesn't proc then early refresh is just a dps loss.

It's bad enough that you can have instances where your dps takes a dump because your crit rate just decides to be 10-15% lower that round, but throw AB rng into it and it just feels like there's no point in trying to do anything well since way too much of your damage is out of your hands.

FWIW I love the complexity, but feel the spec lacks consistency due to layers and layers and layers of rng.

Other classes have it MUCH MUCH worse than we do with rng, AR tends to do around what 6-12% of our damage on a really good pull. It's also somewhat controllable through proper pooling and I tend to get pretty consistent damage out of it over the duration of a fight. But yes you can still get shafted sometimes and that sucks.