Having played Feral on Beta for a few days now here are some thoughts which i’ve wondered whilst playing:
The Melee 3y loss isnt as impactful as I thought it wud be - playing Cata Classic also and its not even an issue as it was back then.
Tear Open Wounds is a major loss. Reapplying Primal Wraths feels empty and the talent, Rip n Tear is just so boring. Obviously damage meters show the real impacts but ToW felt good to play with on packs which were alive for a long time - Now you just wanna only reapply it and spam Bite for RF/Ravage. Not exciting gameplay, actually tedious.
Energy feels lacklustre.
Berzerk is an awful cooldown. Has been for YEars. Incarn isnt much better. Picking that -60secs talent is just not worth it anymore. Rather spend it on Carnivorous Instinct and get that extra damage buff. I’d be in favour of Berzerk being removed completely and the spec being designed around FF, TF or Incarn being baseline. Give us Hysteria from Shadowlands instead of Incarn as a choice node. Or come up with something thats fun.
Instant swap between Cat, Bear or Caster is awesome - great idea. Not for damage purposes but just general feel, not being caught by that pesky GCD wait-time.
Bite spamming still isnt fun. Mentioned it above but its really boring to just spam Bite, especially every since the 25% Execute was removed or the Rip-extend was taken away.
Feral lacks something. Mage, DK, Ele has something spec-defining. I cant really tell what Feral’s got thats going to make people go ‘ooooh awesome’.
Ravage’s frontal slice cant hit two targets on the side. If you take the 3 target dummies in Org and cast ont he middle, you’ll only hit one, not both - very poor. Awful cone.
Wildstalker shud be fun, looks neat but isnt. Adding Moonfire with LI to it doesnt make it better. If it was something you could spread like Seed of Corruption or have many of like with Primal Wrath, cool, but even 10mins on target dummies it hardly ever procs on multiple targets - tuning issue perhaps but it ‘feels’ really poor.
Why didnt Devs do Feral-Balance Hero talents? Even as a concept to show us they actually have good ideas.
Rip n Tear needs to have ToW baked into it to be of use - or replaced fully.
Veinripper still sees no play.
Swarm is slightly better and more visual but shud be off the GCD as its still just a ‘click n forget’-button might aswell make it one completely.
Predatory Swiftness NEEDS TO BE A CLASS TALENT. Why do we need to power through a Utility-talent halfway in our spec tree which we cant even get instant Rebirth on. Whoever decided that needs to be relieved of duties.
Primal Fury BEHIND Skull Bash? What? Awful decision. There are times in Raids where you dont pick Skull Bash if no interrupt needed and now you gotta spend a point to get Primal Fury. Awful. Repeat; AWFUL.
Overall Feral lacks identity. We used to have one pre-legion in HFC. Get Rip n Rake on as many targets and keep them up with Bite and reapplications. I found this highly entertaining. Ever since we got Legion’ed and BFA’d spec has lost some identity. Bleeds dont account for a major sum of Single Target damage which is just so bland.
Convoke was fun in SL, now its just a must-pick because beforementioned Zerk & Incarn blows major chunks. I’d love to see Convoke cast Starfall, Starsurge and either Full Moon or the Ion Cannon of Elune. Make it visually fun to cast Convoke even as Feral if we have to cast spells.
Feral needs a reality check; Look at how Ret changed towards the end of Season 1 Dragonflight and look at how many play it now for Mythic Keystones; its like 600k+ players vs less than 35k Ferals. Feral, and other specs, needs to same major remake and free reign redesign as Retribution got.
Just a thought; Legion, BFA, SL and DF - Havoc DH hasnt had ONE poor season since they were introduced. Not one season where they werent one of the most played specs or most necessary; Perhaps you, Devs, cud look at changing it up once in a blue new moon.
It is rather disappointing to watch other specs/classes - sometimes the really popular ones even, like Mages with Sunfury - get really cool Hero Talents and design, and we get ugly looking vines and a Ravage that has about the same oomph as a deflating balloon.
I’m not sure why they keep wanting to make Feral a dead spec, it’s already painful trying to PUG raids or M+, as we don’t even have any utility that Resto or Balance Druids aren’t bringing already. Why play Feral, and why choose Feral?
I mean catform has combopoints that build up but cannot be used on anything by guardian/balance/resto
Its always been a half-finished product thats been just buffed enough to get the job done.
Druid has never had a gifted developer look at it, all balance reworks are failed in more ways than they work…only to get numbers buffed.
Guardian was doomed at start of DF…on paper it was just missing so much that iw wasnt worth bringing to any group. And history repeating itself; blizzard buffs the numbers on a dysfunctional spec so much that it becomes meta deluxe… lol
Dont worry they will look into feral after the 152458th rework of mage and QOL changes to that class.
its very clear some classes will always get all the attention while the rest fight for scraps
I don’t mind Primal Wrath because of M+ viability, I don’t agree with the design of making a spec only viable in one type of content. And while I indeed didn’t play Feral all the time, I found myself rather enjoying the Dragonflight playstyle - something which apparently isn’t actually the design many older Feral players enjoyed (APM bite-heavy rotation).
I think Hero Talents could’ve been a great opportunity for Blizzard to split the existing Feral designs into two - one that is more bite-centric and one that is more bleed-heavy. Druid of the Claw and Wildstalker attempt to do so, but IMO not as capitalizing on the opportunity as I feel they could have.
I feel like Berserk for both Feral and Guardian is simply hilarious how you’re taking multiple talents just to improve one single cooldown. That’s so bizarre to me, I don’t think I’ve seen it on any other class.
I’ve already essayposted my own thoughts on Hero Talents and their fantasy here in this forum before, but personally just to summarize, I’m rather disappointed in everything come TWW. Very sad.
Incarn used to have 3 uses of Prowl during combat. Was capped at 1 recently. Used to be 60% Energy reduction, is much lower now? 30sec duration which is now only 20.
3 talents to make it ‘worthwhile’ where one is just a flat -60secs, is just sad.
PW isnt an issue, it just shows they needed todo something to make Feral viable in BFA for M+. However when DH, Warrior et al do insane frontloaded damage and Feral has to wait for bleeds to tick, tick, tick, Feral’s already starting behind.
Most people dont know how to use feral in terms of rated battlegrounds.
Feral is insane in Bgs.
Mostly because of the speed you got you can be anywhere and peel from anywhere too with mount speed while stealthed.
Also druids can ninja cap really easily with clone.
Not to mention that youre tankier than a boomie and completely self sufficient.
Damage is good.
Thr strategy that got me to 2.4 4x times also leading my own team is feral 24/7 between bases either aiding defence or going ninja capping.
Never static.
You can also keep feral behind the enemy ground to 1v1 incoming respowners.
You dont need feral in team fights but that doesnt mean feral is useless.
2.4 during the weakest seasons of feral.
Community is just toxic and elitist and if you dont make your own groups- you wont play.
when it comes to pvp side , unplayable even worse than DF post ssn 1, if it stays this way im just going to refund the whole expac and wait til they actually bring feral back on playable lvl
And now with the hunter reword another big counter to feral in pvp
remember when they removed second charge of SI and kept it at 3mins CDs? well hunters now have 2xquasi SI(40% dmg reduction) on a 1min CD with much better utility and mobility as well with easier DPS rotation
