Great guide! Seeing Feral return to the Bloodtalons/JW Bleed builds is very satisfying. Hopefully, we'll get the AoE tunings soon enough!
Blizzard gimped feral againclassicI mean it makes too much sense for one of the more difficult specs to be rewarding, right balance team?
The only thing is that snapshot thing. If you a new Feral you need to train hard to get it every time.
straight to it, no frills and informative. thank you very much!
Is there a hub on wowhead where all of the class community opinions can be viewed please? I love a link to it if there is. If there isn't please create a hub :)
"With the Battle For Azeroth prepatch now live Feral returns to its former glory. The spec has spent the last patch playing talents which heavily promoted a spammy and high APM playstyle, with the prepatch many of these talents are now less valuable and talents that promote a more thought out and measured playstyle are preferred. While this playstyle may have been preferred by some, many ferals do prefer the slower bleed focused playstyle of the olden days."Could this comment be any more bias and misleading? If you are going to be a spokesman and speak for many, try to remain neutral, not everyone shares your own ideals, specially after you admit to the existence of others.Even on the previous state of feral post several comments spoke in favor of DD in the what seems eternal conflict of feral existence of Bleeds vs Direct Damage. I could very well say that within my circle of contacts they are not looking forward the possibility of going back to the "paint drying" spec that is extremely slow and inefficient after seeing the recent results, making this way of thinking the majority. With no numbers it has the same value either way.Gonna address a few things here...Feral is not a pure dps class, the playstyle should be suitable in both ways with as little to no impact for whichever option you opt for, this of course would be the perfect situation. This balance between playstyles is found in the usage of Tiger Fury already.But its the insistence of wanting to play, and to be the "go to" way, with this outdated mechanic in the usage of Bloodtalons... popularized in a tier over five years ago, seemingly making people think they are playing something more challenging, continues to be stuck and not evolve, while other classes and specs continue to improve feral just goes back in both its "strengths" but more importantly all the weaknesses.Blizzard has proven that they cant tune bleeds and in demand AoE properly, one of the reasons why the play style of Feral suffer these drastic changes.This is a very good reminder of when the loudest voices in the Feral community spoke on Alpha and Beta forums of wanting to be Single Target "masters" and "niche" prior to WoD coming from what was the best tier for being a Feral druid ever. The result was atrocious as we all saw for the entire expansion.Its the mentality mentioned before that made Feral such a joke to the rest of players since WoD, sure, the spec is more "challenging" than others, but thats not really saying much considering how simple all are after playing them for enough time, not to mention that the reward is nowhere near the amount of effort invested.Data shows this on itself, the times feral has remained a heavy bleed oriented spec with snapshotting taking a primary role, feral has been low-middle tier damage, and with no existent utility for the group the result is making it completely undesirable in high end raiding. This excluding both the times when this mechanic was popularized with RoRO aka, Throne and Siege.With the loss of our Artifact, issues from the past just came back, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having bleeds that you must upkeep while you are effectively using your direct damage abilities very regularly. It doesn't make you less of a player, it doesn't make it any less fun and ultimately, it doesn't hurt your ego. At least it should not. What it makes you is an effective (key word in this entire issue) DPS, one that can have DPS on demand for changing, moving, rotating or out of distance enemies. What it makes you is a viable DPS because while you may not be that great in utility at least you can do damage.If the response to AoE is tab/rake it shows how little understood the spec is and how non viable it will remain, that idea can compare to wanting to run 100m with just one leg.Legion was an example of a very closely tunned expansion, something that has been widely agreed upon, the chances of a spec become extremely overturned are smaller and smaller as the team continues to improve on this aspect. In no way rake tabbing will be able to be strong enough to compete with other DPS classes and not become utterly broken in Single Target. The answer is obviously our already present AoE abilities but as mentioned before, prior to the second half of Legion Blizzard had failed to balance properly our bleeds and burst AoE.To finalize and in defense of heavy bleed gameplay I will say this, the addition of hasted bleeds may for certain be a change to this matter on which it makes bleed damage be able to compete effectively in all scenarios, including burst damage which is what most encounters revolve around. Feral has a decent toolkit nowdays, with small improvements like Jagged Wounds that have been added and even the currently undertuned Brutal Slash so I like to think that things wont ever be as bad as in the past and since it may very obviously be quite late to achieve any sort of change, I can only hope that this is the case and we don't become useless as many times before.****Editions for typos and missing words.
Yeah I'm definitely one of the "few" who much preferred the high-APM playstyle. Strong bleeds are nice when targets are spread out but on a single target I loved going ham. Furiously slashing and biting certainly read as more catlike to me. You ever pick up an angry cat? You'd be surprised how many scratches you get in a split second, lol. Also I'm dismayed at the return of Bloodtalons being The Best Talent by a wide margin again. It was nerfed during Legion to close the gap only to be thrust back into the limelight via Haste scaling with prepatch. I'm sure the "tuning will fix it" and/or the "you can just pick the easy talent and deal with it" crowds will chime in here but with Bleed damage being so strong now they'd have to nerf it into the ground, and we all know how poor it feels picking the sub par talent and feeling like you're holding your group back. It's back to being the problem child talent again.
I prefer the high-APM style of tier 21 as well. It was a wonderful balance between your bleeds being used at the correct time during tiger's fury and the burst from incarnation and the artifact trait feral instinct. The level of energy regeneration we had was fantastic and constantly using shred, while keeping your dots up provided for an active and engaging playstyle. Soul of the forest is a rather unused talent so I would like to see them build it in as a passive ability without having to spec into it. I would also like to see them build the artifact trait feral instinct into berserk/ incarnation at a 25% damage done increase that lasts for 15 seconds. I prefer to use moment of clarity, but if they made these changes it would make bloodtalons much easier to use and make the spec much less unforgiving.
I don't think AoE is undertuned. They said they want some specs to be bad at AoE and some to be good. BUT that means that feral should be good at something, be it ST or "cleaving" via multidots.
I'm also one of the "few" who preferred the high-paced Feral we had since 7.2.5. I'm glad the majority of Feral players love the "slower bleed focussed playstyle of the golden days". Enjoy! :)
I loved the "new" kitty in 7.3.5. it felt like a real angry cat, scratching and bitting it's foes till death. I really don't know why blizz is going back to the slow variant. As Felzane said:
During Legion I've been having more fun as my Feral than ever before! (Feral main since MoP.)Finally you weren't forced to take the most headache-inducing talent combination to deal the most damage. But now I'm seeing this recommended: Jagged Wounds + Savage Roar + Bloodtalons. That means you have to cast your bleeds more often, keep up a combo-point dependent buff, and time an added ability (Regrowth) before each major bleed and finisher.I enjoy the challenges of snapshotting, maintaining bleeds on multiple targets, and building up and spending combo points, even while maintaining Savage Roar. You're doing a lot at once so it's a very active playstyle. With Legion's instant damage, burst and viable simpler talents this frantic activity was rewarded by being impactful and dynamic.
It was fun while it lasted
I hope feral will be total rebuild like blizz did to enh shamans. Is this truly cat fantasy to just use little scratch and run to another target? We are predators not just domestic cats. I'm totally disappointed by this "review".
I loved the fast-paced Feral we had on Legion, was a refreshing way to play. Both playstyles was available on high-end, that was a fantastic thing. Now I'm forced to play this slow, energy pooling, hard-to-maintain-dps kitty.
