The difference doesn’t matter. It was major changes to class viability.
SoB vs SoC is not enough to skew class viability, as paladin viability is determined by their utility. The SoB changes makes alliance ret paladin better than blood elf, which is intended as a faction balance, not a class balance. The only things that remotely come close to this is priest racials.
The difference matters because, just like SoB vs SoC balancing yet unlike weapon nerfs, it was an unintended result.
And of course SoB skews class viability, because if it didn’t then it wouldn’t work for faction balancing in the first place. All the alliance ferals who got a % dps loss are now competing as dps/utility against ret paladins who got a % dps increase.
Feral DPS has is never gonna be “viable”. The sum of their utility and DPS is overshadowed by naked retri, they provide far less value than a feral tank, which is a much better choice for the druid you bring.
The thing is SoB is extremely unimpactful, the reasons for faction imbalance is racials; basically Berserking & Orc vs Draenei +1 hit. The only faction imbalance the seals solve is logs between palas, though it just makes alliance paladins better due to getting expertise/1 hit as draenei.
First off im not saying “Please make an exception for Ferals !” Im asking Blizzard to take a look at a VERY questionable change that was never addressed at any point as a Feral nerf. If anything it looked like an accident. They say its not? Il not ask for it again and make due.
People saying “Well they said they would look at each class and maybe change some stuff” etc etc, thats corpo speak for give us ur money as we promise stuff we wont deliver on.
I am not threatening to cancel my sub, quit, or anything along those line, and if this was a “buff me plx because Hunt and Lock do more dmg and its not fair” id not participate. I am fine w/ the dmg, utility and everything else. My thing from the very start was that this was never an intended nerf. How so? Because the change was made (and you can still see it in the patch notes at the time) to address innervate, mana tide, and (I think) adrenaline rush ticks. It was not meant to be a VERY sub par dps and a VERY sub par Arena spec nerf.
Ignore the Ferals asking for exceptions, or at least thats what I was doing. This was and has been a gameplay change from the start. Yes, its more dmg, but no it wont make us an amazing dps, we will still stay average to strong average.
These were all intended changes, the BS mace was a main hand only up until Sunwell if I remember correctly. Would I care if they changed it now? not at all, you same as Feral will not beat Locks and Hunters, and Guilds will still not take melee outside of what they have to. Oh and poor casters, its horrible for them, the Mages and Warlocks will surely struggle now xD (I dont even understand the point you are trying to make).
They did the two seals at the time since they wanted there to a difference in Horde and Alliance Paladins. Its was a flavor thing that sadly ended up causing a balance issue. BUT, it was intended as such at the time. They changed it now, I think its a wonderful change, and Ret will actually do a lot of dmg, keep lying to yourself if you want, but Ret and especially Alliance Rets will do a lot more dmg now.
And again wrong. Feral does very solid dmg, especially at the start. By the end Feral should be going from B- to B+. Ret does bring 3% crit to the raid and blessings which is very strong no questions. But Feral brings 5% crit to the Hunter grp, innervate, combat rez and 3rd tank on the fly. Both are quite strong, depends what you need at the time.
You think SoB is unimpactful because you fail to understand how Ret mechanics work. How much additional dmg you get with each swing because you can seal twist, and how much dmg you will be taking due to SoB = more mana = you wont go oom.
Again, some of you guys bring up good points, im not questioning that. But most of what you said are documented changes that were intended. The Feral energy nerf was not. Again, this is why I am complaining. They make a post explaining it was intended ? I wont say a word again.
Those are only losses in DPS. What non-ferals like you aren’t understanding that a fundamental part of our rotation has been broken, the playstyle of ferals is wrecked. It’s like if Blizzard decided suddenly to change rage mechanics to not work on hits and getting hit but rather giving warriors 5 rage every second while in combat.
If need be, nerf feral DPS by a flat 14% but fix the tick, both the resetting and the occasionally generating 19 instead of 20.
Maybe you should read what I responded to before responding to me cluelessly.
The resource change was an intentional change, it was never undone either.
The DPS gain is significant for the paladin, however the raid DPS gain is small and the non batch reliant seal twisting is more significant.
Feral does solid bottom tier single target DPS along with being nowhere to be seen on cleave/aoe. Ret brings 2% damage to party, a blessing and 3% crit to the entire raid.
The druid utility comes nowhere near the value of the paladin. An arms warrior is a perfectly good tank and provides more value in a hunter group than a feral does by 4% flat damage increase to all physical damage as well as battle shout on pets aswell as cleave damage.
You are greatly overestimating the mana issues.
The energy change was intentional. It was however never implemented as a nerf, however the change itself was never reverted or readjusted for ferals. Ferals were however significantly buffed in 2.3.0
I understand perfectly well, I don’t think I’ve expressed an opinion on the subject here either.
Quite wrong, Feral does solid single target dps. Do agree with the cleave, Feral has almost none.
You forgot immunity, DI and BoP, but I understand what you meant.
As I said before, both bring a lot of utility, Ret in general brings more, I agree. That does not mean a naked Ret brings more value. Druids in general bring better utility when someone dies or there is a mana issue.
Arms tank? No where near as good as a Feral one, even w/ a full dps build. And why would an Arms provide more to a Hunt grp ? That buff is raid wide, the 5% crit for the Hunter and Pets is waaaaay ahead of the War in the grp. So… all you have is a solid AP buff vs 5 crit? I dont see it standing a chance.
Not at all, comes down to how long the fight is. Go try to seal twist now, you will see how fast the mana runs out. Pots, Alchemy trinket and Runes will help no questions. But Rets will have mana issues on fights that are longer then a few mins. Especially when you realize that you have to double seal before the next seal twisting can start and have to Judge + CS and on a ton of fights Exo and Consecrate.
Ok, fair enough. You have any link proving that? Where Blizzard said “yeah, these horrible dpsing cats need a nerf, so we are just gonna rock the energy tick, because lols” The bs aside, you provide me with a single line where Blizzad clear cut stated it was an intended Feral nerf and you have my word I wont address it anymore.
Quite wrong, being bottom 3 DPS does make it bottom tier. Hunter, Warlock, Mage, Rogue, Warrior, Shaman and [paladin depending on phase will do more damage].
I ignored DI as along with battle ress they are quite irrelevant. Innervate & bop are probably on par, maybe slight edge to innervate depending on what mechanics you can ignore with bop, but they aren’t very impactful. Naked is hyperbole but you’d probably need a tier and a half or two advantage on the feral to make up the difference.
An arms warrior OT is gonna be better than a feral OT where a warrior tank is better than a feral tank. An arms warrior has 4% physical damage reduction to the entire raid. If you wanna ignore that for the sake of group only value you’d never bring a feral as having a hunter in place of a feral’s DPS is always going to be worth the change.
Read the rest of that paragraph:
It was however never implemented as a nerf, however the change itself was never reverted or readjusted for ferals. Ferals were however significantly buffed in 2.3.0
For feral cats to be viable they’d need either a unique buff and/or significant buff to cleave&aoe
They are ahead of Feral
They are most likely on par single target wise. Id say Feral is ahead of Warr on dmg single target but later on the Rogue would edge out. I am not considering AoE since as I stated Feral does not really have any, outside of Bear Swipe.
Dont see that as reality. As for the Ret… not sure, again depends on the fight duration.
If Feral gets proper powershifting back what I wrote above is the case. If not? Id say still ahead of Enha, but not as good as could be.
If I had to rank the melee in TBC (Depends on the phase) but in general single target dmg wise Rogue > Feral > Ret > Fury War > Enha/Arms War.
But again, if Feral does not get proper PS, then id put Feral near the bottom of the melee in later phases.
Small Edit. Maybe the Fury War is ahead of the Ret, but I dont see one or the other ahead of the Feral for single target.
I did my best to find this, and I cant… are you talking about the Blood Frenzy talent ? If so that’s a +4% physical dmg done to the target, not a 4% physical damage reduction.
Again, untrue. One Feral doing dmg while giving 5% crit to 4 Hunters, and their pets will result in more dmg then just 1 more Hunter. The case is not where Feral does (Not real dps numbers) 200 dmg and the Hunter does 2000. I would suggest checking the private TBC numbers top end Ferals are doing about 3.4-3.8k dmg in Sunwell, and Hunters/Locks are doing 4k-4.1k but… hard to say whats accurate to the real TBC and whats not.
“Those conversations have made it clear that the patch 2.2.0 regeneration change in late 2007 was not intended as a nerf to Druids.”
Told ya, Rich.
Can we say for once ‘well done blizz, THANK YOU for this very good change!’ ??
But to be clear, we communicated this MONTH ago and I rolled shadow priest with the launch because nothing happened. So your change comes MUCH too late for me.
Anyways, thanks for listening to the community blizz.
If I can now get my boost back so I can play feral…? Guess not…
You Just should ReR0LL Class,
Funny thing about ret paladins is that they are less viable that people thought, people are main tanking T4 content with 40/21 AOE farming Prot build instead of standard tanking one, so unless you need judgement of light bringing a 3rd paladin is not needed.
I think Wisdom if by far the more desireable of the judgements compared to Light. It’s a ridiculously good source of mana regen. Can’t have both crit and mana regen if you only run a prot.
Holy Pala judges wisdom, Prot does imp. Crusader
why do u necro this sht?
i do think prot paladin can provide the most value to a raid, ideally u’d be able to run 0 ferals 0 prot warriors, potentially an arms as 3rd tank.
the point i made about feral dps still stands however, the value they add to a raid is less than a ret, at least if u have < 3 palas. But I suppose the question becomes holy pala vs retri pala and for current content where it’s doable with 3 healers u’d probably drop the hpala before any other healer considering their lack of healing utility
Why on earth would you want to do that?
You want feral tanks because they are the tanks with the most threat, causing less threat cap issues.
There is a reason why the top guilds (speedrunners) use bear tanks.
Because that is only a factor as long as prot paladin single target threat is insufficient.
Not many guilds even bother with speedrunning in T4 especially not yet considering karazhan is the only “real” raid. Only 1 guild in top 3 used a feral tank and that was an OT
does anything other than oomkin and restodruid even exist nowadays? 