im really sick and tired of feral atm, compared to many classes. Feral is the only spec i find really fun in the game and it has been my main for so long. what annoys me so much is when people whisper you when you try to join a group and they say “boomy” ? if i say im a feral they will just decline. Overall it now has a boring playstyle by just spamming ferocious bites and the fact that a resto druid specced into feral affinity does more damage is just stupid ( pvp ). Do any of you expect good changes to feral in 8.2 or should i just give up?
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A good way to look at it is that Feral is basically an Affliction Warlock with no benefits of being an afflock. Well, in PvE at least.
You can’t even fault players for asking if you’re boomy or not. Feral doesn’t do anything better than Balance in any respect and Balance is also ranged.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think this is really quite sad. I play all specs (favor Balance though) but I like me some kitty every now and then. But I just can’t see where I’d ever want to be Feral over Balance anywhere beside Warmode (altho Resto with Feral Affinity is close enough).
Idk if you want the technical stuff or not but I doubt Feral will be good unless they buff the crap out of the numbers because the spec makes no sense. The bleeds are weak, the baseline rotation makes no sense and the current talent setup doesn’t enhance their strengths at all.
Feral also suffers that it lacks burst damage and is the only spec to my knowledge that has non existant AoE baseline.
I do feel Feral was one of the specs most affected by losing the artifact weapon as some of it’s traits masked just how poor the spec actually plays. Two obvious examples would be that there was a trait which increased all damage dealt during berserk (or incarn) by 20% (+4-12% depending on Nether Crucible) which made the cooldown actually seem good. Now it’s useless.
Another was the Open Wounds trait which simply had Feral ignore 15% total armor of any target with a bleed. Gone.
Ah well, I’ll stop my ranting but I’ll say keep your eyes out on Wowhead for the 8.2 datamining. Hopefully there’ll be some good stuff for Feral in Rise of Azshara but I fear the spec needs a complete rework to be wanted in the modern game which may last all the way til the next expansion.
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true. but i feel like this expans they took everything that feral was good at and destroyed it
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I started this expansion as a feral main: a week later am Havoc DH main with Guardian druid alt…
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Feral is very bad atm and blizzard should be aware of that.
Few days ago a dps druid was in motherload +16 with good io score. We all ignored his spec as we assumed he is boomkin. He was the very last in dps, and during reaping he was strangling to stay alive. First bossfight dmg was ok but still way lower than other dps. We didn’t make it.
On the other hand Resto is OP on both pvp and pve. High keys requires resto druids.
Please buff cat druids and nerf resto druids. Simple make DoTs ramp up faster.
I would prefer to see mixed healers in m+ and arena and more feral druids.
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It’s sad to see that this is the state of Feral for the second expansion in a row :< I never felt any stigma as I did in Legion… I thought. It’s even worse in BFA.
I level my feral up first, and then get it some gear here and there, and otherwise it just stands around… Waiting for Blizzard to wake up and make it viable again.
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I had most fun on my feral druing MoP. Bring back that!
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++ ist really wierd… in pve too as healer i do 3 -4 k more dmg…
on 6+target i do 10k more (sunfire and spam swipe… as resto spec) , feral is so week or i am wrong… ??? guys i do all WQ and weekly with resto spec or Balance… feral not even fun anymore
Some Support :)))
il try to do some m+ push ___ like and Support guys ![:blush:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/blush.png?v=6" ":blush:")
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQUPAi-DmY
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Feral is more than fine in pve, people have just not yet figured out how it works. But I do agree the st rotation is plain dumb with the new talents revamp, unless with certain traits.
What feral is suffering from the most is pvp. When you think back to how powerful they used to be in pvp, you just wanna cry and fire the incompetent dev team.
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I have given up on feral now. The devs have shown blatant neglect towards the class and its a joke. Fed up with it. Cancelled my sub today for that reason
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This was one of the posts that are so great. Well said my friend!
damn it’s so much whine on feral sucking in Pve/keys… I am well aware if u not bommy u will not get an inv, but feral beat bommy on some places… And about the dmg part, i have been nr 1 dps on all keys i done since 8.1 except 2 times when a 420 Unholy and a 418 outlaw was in grp… Feral is pretty good in keys atm!
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looking at your talents i suspect your DPS would dip a bit on single-target fights. sound about right?
i dunno, man. i can take my WW or Hunter into anything from Arena to raids without having to change their talent spec too much. is it okay that i can only hang in m+ as feral if i specifically pick my talents to do AoE damage?
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Isn’t this what all specs has to do or am I missing something?
I’ll not speak on behalf of Guardian as I have neglected the spec more than the others in BfA but both Balance and Resto have prefered talents that are almost mandatory in m+ with little deviation.
Balance has to pick Force of Nature in the first row. There’s so many reasons for it and even though the other options are better for your personal DPS Balance has problems to keep up DPS on a pack by pack basis in m+. Furthermore Force of Nature is amazing on reaping and can setup for the whole group to demolish it in seconds. Simply put Force of Nature increases the DPS of your group and is more valuable than WoE/NB.
Other than that if it’s fortified week you have to go Fury of Elune. I would say Stellar Drift but Starfall sadly doesn’t do damage and is a key factor to the above pack by pack DPS problem.
Normally Balance also has to take Incarn but SotF can be decent on Fort weeks.
Twin Moons every time.
Resto prefers Photosynthesis, Stonebark and Abundance/Cenarion Ward. You can absolutely play other talents but the point is that many specs do change their talents based on what content they do and challenges they face. If it’s bursting I’d play Spring Blossoms unless my group has a planned big pull strategy in which case I’d play Inner Peace.
I’d hate to do Arena without Germination and I’d be a complete waste of time without Flourish in a raid.
I do know that Hunters (at least BM) have some terrible talent setups so maybe it is that the spec simply has so bad options that you can run the same build in all formats of play and maybe WW is in the same boat (I’ve no experience on this one) but that’s imo a problem with Hunter and WW in this case and not Feral at all.
Most specs do have to change their talents and that’s a good sign - all talents should have a place in the game to be utilized and whenever you read a guide and see the big red cross over a talent you know Blizzard has failed to create compelling and useful talents. The whole point of switching to this talent system in the first place was to change up and specialize our characters based on the impending challenge ahead.
On topic though, Feral struggles in this area because they are the only class with non existant AoE so if they talent it they do nothing on ST but if they talent ST they do nothing on AoE. Usually there’s a middle ground for specs, like Balance has with Twin Moons, SotF, Starlord, Incarn, Fury of Elune etc.
Feral doesn’t have this luxary and are forced into one focus and be a waste of time in the other department. But since they also don’t outperform other specs by significant margins even through cheese tactic (example: Unholy AoE) they are left with handicaps and hardly any positives to capitalize on.
in dung with mm+ build i do like 20 k ish so yeah a little dip but the increase i get in aoe i huge…
I even have the same mm+ build on some raid bosses but if it’s no adds or cleave i just change 2 talents, take like 2 sec in town xD I top some fight in raids aswell dps wise. So i dont know why ppl say feral sucks, think they just dont know that class so well… Sure some imporovments can be done but u can said that about many classes… Like my last run in ML i pulled nearly 32k avg in total after the whole run…
I agree with u on some points but if we focus on either ST or aoe we dont have zero dmg, well atleast i dont! Tbh we dont outpreform other classes on ST but on AOE we can outpreform many classes even DK unholy for a whole run, maybe no the burst but the total dmg over say a 10-13 key we can! The only Unholy that beat my dps was a 420 and at a that time i was like 408, and it was not with much… Depending on dung and the skills of the grp i avg like 24-32 k dps avg in total on keys… but yes the talent can be a struggle thing from time to time… But to get no inv cuz ppl say we got low dps is just a lie, or they aint know s__t about feral tbh… ![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I mentioned this in a different thread couple weeks ago but when you’re in the pug environment there’s no reason for leaders of groups to invite specs that might become a liability, especially in terms of DPS. If I have the option between a Feral and a Demon Hunter I’d take the Demon Hunter anyday because even if the Feral is exceptionally skilled there’s no way for me to know that and besides anyone can make rotational errors which punishes Feral unfairly much compared to others.
And you can expect countless errors in pugs making this a valid concern. This is also where the community perception of Feral puts them down even further, since Feral gets punished harder than most other specs if they make even a slight error.
This is also where I question the people you did the keys with if an Unholy DK has been the only one to outmatch you in AoE. Most of my experience in m+ comes from guild runs because I know those are good players and there’s no way I’d be able to compete against a competent BM, Havoc, Fury or Elemental on AoE with Feral. They’d blow me out of the water.
Bottomline is if you compare yourself to bad players you’ll always look good.
So I still have my stance that Feral needs mechanical changes because they have to sacrifice so much for so little gain.
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Well that’s true in the pug world that they can’t know about ur skills etc, but u have some tools u can use to see if ppl is good tho… Yeah feral is really punishing if u do it wrong but with the aoe build for keys, u minimize the error tbh! Yeah but that we can blame blizzard for doing that…
Well i do some pugs sometimes but i even do it with guild members more then i pug and they are pretty skilled players i would say, and some class/specs i have in the guild run is like Havoc, bm etc and i can say the opposite they are not near my aoe dmg, sure they can burst more then me but over the fight my ramp up dmg catch that pretty fast so if it’s no lower then a 10 key i have been on top every time on dps except from 2 times, unholy and a outlaw…And this is for the whole key in total dmg im talking about… Then u maybe not that good with feral or have some bad builds or stacking wrong gear/stats/passives etc… I know i not as good with other classes as i am with feral…Tbh i focus all my stuff into keys mostly! But i not compare me to bad ppl and that a fury would beat feral in aoe is a joke into my eyes… As far as i have seen it after 8.1 cuz that is the timeline im talking about not before just after 8.1 the only one that i could see beating my feral atm or get close in keys around 10-13 is 1 outlaw 2 unholy and 3 havoc… Im not saying im the best ppl in the world cuz im not, just saying the fact that i have from the experince i got since the patch of 8.1…If u like a class/spec that u enjoy u become pretty good at it at some time. But maybe even u underestimate the feral pwr in keys atm ?! Since it’s pretty hard to value a class/spec that u have not been seeing for ages! Just saying… And on that last part i totally agree with u, we could need some mechanical fixes, but the way they taking for 8.2 is just so wrong like comon dont be stupid blizz… We do need to sacrifice some stuff for either ST or AOE but to call it little gain, i dont think so…If u sacrifice st in dung ur aoe becomes awesome and if u sacrifice aoe for st that’s is where we loses the most imo. Still dont like 8.2 way they taking atm with inc etc… well well that’s about it… No hard feelings tho:)
That’s fair tho, we can only look at our own experiences to judge how we view individual specs. It’s clear you’re very invested in Feral and perhaps you’re a lot better than the majority so the view of the spec looks different in your eyes to others.
I’ll say as someone who’s very invested in the Druid class as a whole I refuse to invest a lot more time into Feral until it gets changed. Not by numbers but by gameplay. I played both Balance and Feral during Legion and while Balance lost a lot it’s nowhere near what Feral did.
I’m sad to see that so far 8.2 hasn’t shown any significant changes for Feral, but a possibility is that Feral might be able to abuse some of the essences to incredible effect. Obviously the 2 more highlighted ones is the resource essence and the cooldown essence. I dont know how it works with talents but I’d assume it works identical to the Blood Mist trait which procs Berserk or Incarn depending on if talented.
Now, this could get really interesting because Energy as a resource is partly why I believe Feral’s mechanical gameplay is awful since it goes back all the way to Vanilla and Feral takes inspiration from the Rogue, but Feral is limited unlike Rogue because Rogue is designed with energy in mind where as Feral is gimped because it has other “caster form” utilities. (decurse, heals, roots). (This is so offtopic but I think this is why DH’s have Fury over Energy, just try to imagine how awful DH would play with Energy)
But given those 2 essences and depending on how much Feral would give up for other essences it could result in them being absolutely flooded with energy allowing them to play more fluid and compete better with other specs.
Remember, Feral’s Berserk CD (and even Incarn) is not the traditional “increases damage done” but rather it reduces the amount of resource you spend on abilities. Incarn is a bit different as it does have a modifier to fillers but it does suggest that Feral’s damage output is tied a lot closer to their resource than some other specs in the game.
This means that potentially Feral could become a powerhouse in 8.2 assuming bossfights are not anti melee since their damage is actually good but they’re heavily limited due to resource and talents. Talents like SotF and Predator doesn’t enhance them - it simply tries to bandaid their weakness. If the essences can take this spot then perhaps Feral can more reliably take talents like Sabertooth and Incarn without feeling like they’re completely gimped outside of Incarn or be resource starved.
Indeed it’s! Yeah i have been main Feral since Tbc/karazan so yeah i would say im pretty invested:) Yeah that’s a good way to look at it… Ok so what is it u feel that need some more work on from blizz? That’s true, i think feral was on of the most spec that did lose most of to get rid of the artifact wep, uz it was some really decent traits on them… So i agree u on that part!
No not so much but i was talking about the new neck thing and essence etc, i dont like the way they going with that into all that inc spec, IMO feral should be about bleeds like a melee class of aff lock, not pure dmg from stuff like shred of bites etc… Yeah some of the effect could be really OP indeed that nice on it’s own i just not so fancy about that style tbh… It’s to eraly to say of those will ends since they keep changeing stuff and number on ptr atm, think we will have to w8 until the patch goes live until then we can’t be certain how thigns will play out, those stuff will do our ST way better, just dont wanna lose numbers on aoe to just have OP ST under inc cuz without inc we are pretty much only decent… But guess we will have to w8 and see!
Well i dont know about that but, we cant really compare vanilla feral with the thing we have now at that time feral spec could be both tank and dps and it was much move shapeshift focus at that time aswell… Well that on the other hand is true that we got other shapeshifts form etc and compare to old day it’s a 4 spec class now aswell…But rogue got some utilities aswell with blind, sap etc… Yeah it is! Hmm it could be but im not sure, well im not so good at dh gameplay etc but i dont think it’s the energy in it’s own thats make the problem. Dont know how dh would be with energy, u never know… So insteed of energy u want feral to have fury/ rage or something else ?
Yeah that’s the problem, that we dont know it yet… Could be good or not! The only dps side we need 2 be more competetvie is the ST not that it’s bad but could be litte better, im still not a fan for so heavly inc build…Like ooh see inc is up now im so OP now, ooh nooo it’s down my dps sucks now, that’s what im afraid of why not focus more on bleeds like the spec should be about anyways…? Yeah that’s right they are more tied to the resorce then other classes… Yeah that’s the other problem most boss fights so far in BFA have been so range friendly and not melee friendly…Nope those talent’s is way more powerfull for keys tbh… But u already use ST for raid tho…I dont know i think time will tell since they keep chaning things on ptr with number etc…Tbh then when the new xpack comes and amulet getäs deleted we are in the same state at we started, don think the neck and essence is the long term solution but hey, as i already told 100 time, time will tell!