You also should redesigne Innervate. the current Innervate is close to be useless, i dont know, why u guys dont change Innervate back, to the form. like it was in Wotlk
Which identity?
we had back in Bfa/Shadowlands more Spells than now, u made a Pathing choice between incapacitating roar and Mighty Bash, while in Shadowlands we had Both
This makes using Clone in pvp situations really difficult, and also kinda outdated, i still dont know why a boomkin can cast Clone in the Owlform, and a resto druid dont need anyway to be in a Form, so Feral Druid is the only Spec who leaves the form, when he cast Clone, or Battle Rezz, and this Feels completely Clunky, and out to date in Dragonflight
Either Feral’s survival ability should be increased, or Feral should be able to cast clone in cat form
or give him another Pvp Talent which allows him to Instant Clone your opponent and consume Predatory Swiftness for it (but give Clone a Cd instead, or lower the duration)
something have to be changed, if it comes to the “toolkit” from feral, u currently use the Predatory Swiftness only to Root your opponent, because Regrowth is a global waste
So if you are reverting orbital strike back to how it is currently on live servers that means we dont get the proc one i guess, i hope i am worng.
From a pvp stand, i dont udnerstand why Wild Mushrooms was so nerfed after it was combined with Fungal Growth, in pvp you would always pick Orbital strike, it provides a lot more than the mushrooms could ever do, Sundered Firmament’s Fury of Elune proc is doing less damage than my auto attack with mele, and when it procs it generates 2 Astral power over 8 seconds, i dont know if you realise how bad that is of a talent.
There was a time season in the early beginings where the so called Starfall Build was soo much fun in arena, i would put dots on everyone and spam starfall that procs starsurge and that procs incarn and starfall calling down starburts, it was the most fun i have ever had on a balance druid in pvp ever since Mists of Pandaria, and Starfall got soo guttet in pvp that it is completely unplayable, also the astral power regeneration got nerfed too. I look forward to see a lot more buffs with starfall to make it good in pvp again, its kind of a shame that the most notable spell for balance druid being Starfall ever since Wrath, has just become a meme now in pvp, i know you can do pvp only changes, so nothing is stopping you.
It’s an unnecessary annoyance, just make ress castable in cat form already. Why not include it in Predatory Swiftness at least? Can you do something in good faith for guardian as well? Shifting into bear form sets rage at 25 and rebirth costs 30 rage.
Worse rogue, worse warlock, the worst type of healing with convoluted form management (absorbs>instant>overtime) and after the latest round of Bloody Frenzy nerfs, a much worse warrior.
The concept of multi-form gameplay is a failed one. Cat weaving in Resto COULD work in a less bursty environment but it isn’t tuned very well for the amount of effort and attention needed. I don’t even know why a Guardian druid who is offtanking would ever switch out of the main form when he does inferior damage in all alternative forms? Some classes even outperform our DPS-role healing through their own leech effects.
What flavor, what identity? It’s a bunch of half-baked concepts stitched up together, sort of like giving Survival Hunters an Arcane Shot just because.
Nice changes to Balance. What would be very nice now is some help on survivability for both feral and balance.
Regrowth is currently so weak its not worth casting…out of combat its faster to eat/drink for healing, its that bad.
Protector of the Pack is also so weak that it actually dont make any difference on Regrowth either.
If druids are supposed to be a hybrid class that casts heals than the heals should be worth casting…we (the dps specs) are currently outhealed by warriors and mages ^^
Rejuventation 3-4k per tick with 600k health a underwhelming considering it costs a talent point. It seems like the healsin class tree havent been adjusted for the specs that dont have a mastery that affects healing.
Upon review, the only ability not currently affected by Balance’s Mastery, Astral Invocation, is their PvP talent Star Burst. There are no changes to Orbital Strike’s or Power of Goldrin’s tuning in the next 10.2 PTR build. Apologies for the error.
Even Warriors Outheal us in Pvp, and the Funfact is, Ignore Pain has no global cd, but Regrowth cost a Swiftness Proc + a global cd, and Heals for Nothing
and before i forget, the Normal Druid Tree needs a Rework, the Pathing is so so bad aswell, for every druid Spec
Yes even with 50% versa (in pvp) on guardian the regrowth from Dream of Cenarius + max protector of the pack + 20% from Verdant Heart +6% from Nurturing Instincts heals for like 20% of my health.
Maybe something getting lost in mechanics somewhere
What about the tier set that is coming in 10.2, 2 piece tier set bonus feels not really impactful at all, but its cool that u get to cast wrath or starfire fast as that makes you go into eclipse faster, however, the damage of these two spells is still pretty low, maybe the new mastery will change that and make them not wet noodles.
The 4 piece tier set looks nice, however it might feel bad losing all this dot damage and recource generation from the season 2 tier set.
I am going to say it again, can we please buff starfall in pvp, i want it to be good and viable to have a big aoe damage in pvp, like the start of the season 2.
It is sad to not even spec for starfall because of how bad it is.
I get it that probably the mastery rework is going to buff it, as of course, that buffs everything in terms of damage because you do not rely that much on dots anymore, you now probably will min max with dots, at least in pvp because every one keeps dispeling it.
Also on a defensive note, can we do something about it, because boomies are very not as tanky as they were in shadowlands and against most classes you cannot really do anything, they pin you down and they micro cc your wild charge 9/10 times because Wild Charge is very underwhelming when you have warriors and dks and monks and dhs with infinite ways to catch you, in some games you would have to not play the game but sit in travel form and run around the pillar to kite them, because if they connect to you, you die.
Can we trade Wild Charge for Displacer Beast?
Or at least can we have some form or roots, look at resto druid, you made Force of Nature really insane for them, why cant we make force of nature be as cool as the ones on Resto druid, i am referring to MoP Force of Nature for feral and balance druid.
And also can we move away from sitting in bear form, to not die, i rather have mobility and outplay enemy team with it and a little self healing, than to sit bearform and hope that the healer can keep me up. Bear form simulator is not fun, not a single balance druid likes it.
I can’t wait to see what will happen with the 5-target cap to Blood Frenzy once players start doing dungeons. Sure, druids are slightly stronger than other classes right now (key 32 compared to around 30 for every other tank), but no one accounted how integral this one talent is to overall Rage generation in multi-target situations (read more than one pack pulled in a dungeon, an approach which won’t be changed in this modern version of the game where no CC is needed and you just facetank and kite).
If the devs want the game to slow down, buff individual mob damage, force use of CC and introduce a hard aoe cap for every dps specialization. Maybe even introduce a properly telegraphed mechanic here and there so doing dungeons doesn’t feel like playing rifts in Diablo 3 where everything is a DPS race with no chance of dying, until you suddenly get one shot by something you couldn’t see, let alone react to in time.
Quick question, does the starburst form stellar flare also not being affected byt the mastery?
Also can we buff starfall in pvp so people can actually use Starburst just like the begining of season 2?
I hope to see a lot of changes for Balance Druid considering the feedback that is given right now in this thread, if you need more time, that is fine, just make it happen and let us know you need more time for this, maybe 1 more week, please.
Horrible decision for Rebirth to still break Cat Form. It already has a cast time that causes friction but Feral will 9/10 be standing in melee while casting it as well. Breaking out of form and having to use a global to get back to doing damage feels disgusting. Casting Rebirth as Feral feels clunky and throws you off your rhythm. What “friction” do the other Druid specs have that Feral doesn’t share?
Also friction is not what makes high end mythic plus fun. The people I’ve spoken with all agree the worst part about m+ is the overlapping affixes designed to screw you over creating no-win scenarios. The thing that makes m+ fun is being able to do big pulls and blast enemies down. m+ affixes should provide benefits if played well rather than punish.
The question is do we need friction to be able to provide utility? I understand friction if you want to suddenly pop out and start healing your group / team cause the healer made a mistake or something, but why have friction around say giving your healer Innervate or ressing your tank / dps / healer when every second matters? Can’t we just let ress require Predatory Swiftness and 30 energy to instant cast in cat form? That would be probably enough friction. Instead we have to probably run away from everything, make sure no AoE one shots us, cast it and later lose another global to start doing DMG.
An appropriate level for what, exactly? To make feral the most undesirable combat rez spec in the game because our combat rez is so difficult and clunky to use?
Asking for it to be castable in cat form is actually less than it would take to put feral on par with other melee dps specs. To give it equivalent value would require:
Rebirth to be instant cast but use a resource or;
Access to an immunity that we could use to stay alive while hard casting.
It’s nice to see devs posting on the EU forums rather than leaving it to Kaivax to share all the updates with us, but this response is incredibly disappointing. What’s the rationale behind deliberately keeping feral players as ‘second class citizens’ compared to other combat rez specs?
Also can’t we have both Orbital Strikes? Let’s call the one we have now live Orbital Strike and the new one I don’t know “Collapsing Stars” or something.
The current Orbital Strike is I think mainly only used in PvP and the new “Collapsing Stars” was more of a PvE burst talent? Is them both applying Stellar Flare the issue and you think Stellar Flare will have too much “free” uptime in PvP and PvE?
If that is the case just make the new “Collapsing Stars” deal more DMG over it’s duration and not apply Stellar Flare? Is there any reason it has to apply Stellar Flare?
Like is there something I’m missing why Stellar Flare is a must have for “Collapsing Stars”? Does it have some amazing interaction with our other talents? Does each application give us Astral Power as if we casted it?
If it’s just there to be a DOT you could even replace it with Moonfire? That way we’d get a ton of Shooting Stars procs + full mastery benefit on everything we hit every 1.5min.
From a pve standpoint I’m fine with most of the changes to balance druids. I really like the changes to our mastery. The only part I have a problem with is swapping Aethereal Kindling and Lunar Shrapnel. For higher m+ and even most of the aoe fights in raid you basically always want to take Aethereal Kindling, but until now you never took Lunar Shrapnel because there are other talents that simply offer more damage. Swapping these two talents means that we lose a talent point because now we have to invest two points to get Aethereal Kindling. For compensation maybe you could reduce Astral Smolder, Waning Twilight, Power of Goldrinn or Starlord to one point.
I don’t even play feral, but even I can see how frustrating it must be to change forms for Rebirth. Please consider letting cats cast Rebirth in cat form, too. This is not about friction, it feels more like some sort of punishment. Even as a caster I would hate to lose Moonkin Form to cast Rebirth because it seems incredibly dangerous. For ferals in melee range it’s even worse. When your tank dies, as a dps player you might be the next target and when you play melee, you might be dead before you can even finish the cast. Having to lose the benefits of cat form on top of that is just extremely dangerous. That’s not friction, that’s just unnecessary punishment in a really dangerous situation to begin with.
A much better solution to the problem would be to simply put our forms on a different gcd, so we have to shift out of our main form for a lot of things but don’t always feel punished when doing so. I really like Incapacitating Roar and Stampeding Roar but losing 2 gcds to cast one ability is just so annoying. It’s even worse for Skull Bash. Since Skull Bash does not automatically shift you into bear or cat form you have to spend 3 gcds to interrupt a target (bear form → skull bash → moonkin form) on top of the fact that the ability basically costs 6 talent points.
And the usual reminder: The druid class tree still needs a whole lot of work.
Casting a safe combat resurrection in higher level Mythic+ dungeons as Feral is fairly hard.
I’ve run over 100 keys over 20 as Feral in this season and rank in the top 150 of the spec worldwide by rating.
I’ve also reported Rebirth not being castable in cat-form as a bug in recent PTR releases over the past months.
Trying to cast Rebirth to resurrect a healer in a +24 Neltharus during the shield phase of the last boss is an exercise in futility due to area denial.
Developers may call this an edge-case but there are many other cases like these, i.e. large trash pulls before the second Underrot boss, towards the end of Freehold, in parts of Dawn of the Infinite and others.
Some may find that this is a way of skill expression and “fun”, unfortunately — and unlike with Innervate — the outcome of this one singular cast often decides wether or not the entire otherwise successful 30-40 minute dungeon ends well or depletes for the whole group. There is no second chance.
I would be extremely surprised to learn that developers who replicate or witness these situations consider them having “an appropriate level of friction”.
Combat-resurrection casts are time sensitive and as a melee class, feral players rarely get the luxury of choosing a spot that is a.) safe to cast and b.) will be safe to accept a resurrection in the about 5 seconds it takes to shift out, finish the cast and have the other player accept the spell.
The amount of times I’ve had a players perish instantly to mechanics after casting a combat resurrection on them is well into the double digits this season.
One could rightfully argue that part of it is a coordination problem (I exclusively play in random groups without voicecoms) but I don’t have this problem on my other classes because the CR casts are either instant with a resource requirement (DK, Paladin, Guardian) or ranged classes with a cast time, which leaves the player with more room or time to run away from cleaves and charges to find a safe spot.
Having to cast a “dicey” Rebirth on a perished player also tends to punish less-experienced players more, because they are far less likely to check if the spot is safe and the time to accept is appropriate.
Please drill down in your game analytics and find the relative amount of M+ dungeon deaths within 5 seconds after accepting a combat-resurrection for all specs; I can almost assure you that they will be highest for Feral by a decent margin.
These were all wasted combat resurrections and had a high change of depleting the key. Again, the whole group does not get a second chance; with all due respect, this never feels fun, fair or like good game design.
I understand and largely agree with the concept of “Friction” but this is not the right ability to apply this philosophy to.
The situation used to be less of an issue in previous expansions, but ever since area denial has become such a prevalent mechanic in dungeon gameplay design (and becomes lethal higher keys above mid-20), my Rebirth spell has become so unreliable that I prefer any other class to try and use theirs first.
At the very least please make the spell instant-cast. That would also give the spec some form counter for situations where the tank dies and we are highest on the threat list (with Berserk usually on cooldown and unavailable as a threatwipe).
Other than that one issue with Rebirth in M+, I’m really happy with the way this spec plays and enjoy the game more than I used to before the latest expansion.
Thank you for adding so much context and detail to the points I made above.
The biggest problem I encounter is having to combat rez the tank during a big trash pull in mythic plus. There is a high chance that I’m second on the threat table when the tank dies, and there is also often one mob in the pack that is CC immune, so tools I might use to stay alive, such as typhoon, vortex or a stun, won’t work on that mob.
I consider the loss of a dps a reasonable sacrifice to resurrect the tank in that situation, but as feral I’m usually dead before I get a chance to cast Rebirth. This isn’t the case for the other melee dps who have a combat rez - ret paladin has an immunity and DKs have an instant cast.
Not at all. I have exactly the same problems when playing with friends on voice comms.
Agreed. I’ve reached the point where I hesitate to stay if I’m invited to a group where mine is the only combat rez because I know how unreliable it is. When pugging my own key, I always make sure to invite at least one other class with a combat rez, when pugging with my (warrior) tank and (shaman) healer friend, I insist we invite another dps with a combat rez.
Balance here, I’m not going to repeat what has been said about Orbital et Aethereal Kindlings (weird choices).
I think the spec need a way deeper overhaul. For the second patch in a raw we have a fully passive tier set that won’t change our rotation at all. This rotation is very dull and boring (keep 2/3 dots, spam 1 builder and 1 spender). There is little to no diversity in our builds and even the AoE and ST builds are almost identical. Most of our talents in the last part of the talent tree are completely passive and don’t affect our rotation at all :
in the 13 nodes in the last part of our tree only 3 are active spells that would change our rotation, 0.5 is a passive that change our rotation (choice node with starweaver), the 9.5 others are passives that don’t even change our rotation. Throughout the tree, the only synergies between spells are Aetherial Kindlings, Umbral Embrace and Waning Twilight.
To make the spec fun again with the same kind of rotation we need either some kind of new interaction or procs to break the mononoty and not press the same spell 4 times in a row or add a kind of reward for perfectly executing this rotation (what venthyr added during SL, with its good part and flaws).
We need more stuff to do, more spells, more meaningfull choice while talenting.
And bring back pre nerf vault 4p (even without the bonus dmg).
