Greetings,
Within the next 24 hrs we will be making an adjustment via hotfix that will cause Omen of Clarity to always trigger when Faerie Fire (Feral) is used on non-player, non-pet targets. At the same time, Omen of Clarity will no longer proc from Gift of the Wild. This change is intended to smooth out Feral DPS gameplay for most players and resolve many of the social and gameplay challenges that were created by the so-called “Bearweaving” combat strategy. In many situations, Bearweaving not only increases the mechanical complexity of the class to a degree far above what was intended in original Wrath of the Lich King it also places a strain on the raid to keep up with the Druid’s added threat generation, with said impact continually increasing as the Druid becomes more adept at optimizing the rotation.
When crafting this change, it was a goal to ensure we did not “nerf” or decrease the effectiveness of the Feral DPS spec in PvE at all. It was also a goal to not increase the effectiveness of Feral in PvP, where the spec is already strong. Our final goal was to raise the relative skill “floor” for the class without too greatly increasing the output of Druids’ playing at the very highest levels before this adjustment. With this adjustment we expect that the best Feral DPS players in the world may expect somewhere between a 5% and 10% damage increase depending on the encounter while no longer requiring shifting into bear form to optimize output and will provide an even larger percentage increase in the damage output of those players who were not employing the Bearweaving rotation prior to this change.
As always, we are hesitant to make major adjustments to the basic playstyle of many classes, but we feel that this is necessary to bring the gameplay of Feral Druids much closer to the intent from the original Wrath of the Lich King and make the spec slightly more intuitive and approachable to the majority of players.
We appreciate all of the feedback we’ve received since launch on this and many other topics. Thank you!
18 Likes
Really? And Fury Warriors are still dogtier, Prot wars got indirectly nerfed with the dodge and parry nerf and Arms is unplayable…but buffing Feral is going to “reflect more how it originally felt in Wotlk”…you guys are so full of fecal matter that it stinks to high orbit.
4 Likes
Change is fantastic. I hate any kind of “weaving” (bear-weaving or owl-weaving from retail).
Anybody care to explain how is Omen of Clarity procing on FF(Feral) instead of on GotW going to remove Bearweaving from the Feral rotation?
The effort is probably not worth it anymore since you get a DPS increase from using Feral FF instead. Just a guess, I don’t play Feral. But I would suggest reading the Druid Discord for details.
All I could find atm is that it is going to make Feral rotation even harder and bearweaving is not going anywhere.
From my understanding, this change makes the gap between bearweaving ferals and non-bearweaving ferals smaller. But bearweaving will still pull ahead, especially if you are skilled enough to fit the FF on 6 sec CD.
Cool, but you can’t use Faerie Fire when there are Moonkin in the raid.
Well, look who posted the ret buff, same dev who mains ret, he was under Brian and Brian wouldnt allow changes like this.
Brian quit and 1 week after he did Aggrend posts about ret being buffed and now ferals aswell, 2 major competing classes against warriors. Its obvious that rets are salty for the days of classic when they did not get corrupted ashbringer over warriors.
The idea is that now when you are energy starved, instead of going Bear you cast a FFF, get a sure Omen proc which gives you one extra Shred/Mangle/Swipe (depending on scenario). During that 2 GDCs you recover some energy to continue the rotation, and the extra damage done and combo point/s earned compensate (and exceed) what you would have got by going into Bear Form
As for me, nice change for cats. Will have to test numbers to see the actual improvement, but the basic idea seems solid.
Also, having to Bearweave to be competitive and have that mechanic around was a bit counter-intuitive after removing powershifting.
Nevertheless, I’m a bit more concerned about the current status of feral Bear tanks than about the kitty DPS. On paper we are not THAT behind other classes, but the fact is that currently less that 3% of Ulduar tanks are Bears according to logs, (and only 4-5% if we include feral hybrid specs).
Anybody care to explain how is Omen of Clarity procing on FF(Feral) instead of on GotW going to remove Bearweaving from the Feral rotation?
When you get energy starved, instead of going bear you now cast a FFF, get a sure proc of Omen, and you can cast an extra Shred/Maul/Swipe (depending on scenario). That are 2 GDCs which allow your energy to recover somewhat and resume your rotation, and the damage of the extra attak (plus the extra combo point/s) compensate or exceeds what you would have got by going Bear instead.
Cool, but you can’t use Faerie Fire when there are Moonkin in the raid.
As far as I can remember, yes, you can. Feral FF and caster form FF are different spells and deploy different debuffs, so they can be overlaped in Wrath. Nevertheless, only the stronger one have any effect on the enemy (in this case, the Balance buffed one).
So salty damn, stop please, it’s sad.
1 Like
Using the bearish form isn’t really going anywhere, but I don’t think the rotation has gotten any harder.
It will play the same as I played before, just to activate the final blow (bite) will use bestial fire, not a gift from the wild.
This will free up 2 seconds of gcd)
Thanks for explanation.
So the below statement in the blue post are just empty words, correct?
You Seem to have forgotten about fury warriors, again.
“You will scale later” is starting to be kinda cringe at this point.
Yes we might scale later, but we will still be like 4-5th dps and the game would be over. Yay congratulations, you did it, you survived the whole of wrath being absolutely dog and now that the game is over, you are top 5
It is necessary to try, but it is very beneficial for the cat to take the form of a bear, this is both a debuff on bleeding and the ability to replenish energy without stopping dealing damage with skills.
Not being salty, but you are prob one of them meta slaves that dont want anything to come close to your class
Earthshaker along with other servers such as Mograine and Pyrewood Village remain locked for transfers despite their status being ‘high’ and not full.
This has been the case since Ulduar launch, despite their population rapidly going down.
Meanwhile, since the Firemaw-Gehennas transfer fiasco, Firemaw is open for tranfers.
Firemaw has roughly 5000 more active players than Earthshaker does.
Golemagg has even more players than Firemaw and is considered ‘full’ - yet transfers remain open to it.
This does not make any sense whatsoever and it is becoming an increasingly frustrating issue for me as I would love to transfer my Gehennas horde rogue to Earthshaker alliance.
Please fix.
Now that I’ve brought this problem to your attention, let’s instead discuss the topic at hand.
Cool that ferals get buffed. They deserve it.
Kind of odd you’re buffing ferals and rets when they’re hovering around the same level as fury warriors. Since you know, fury is also kinda dog. But I’m happy for the ferals, more bleed debuffs for the people.