Hello all!
Hope everyone’s doing well. I would like to address the feral druid spec in this post. Now, I have limited knowledge on the history of the class since I have only started maining a feral in Shadowlands. That being said, I have based the overall feedback that I am about to present on the changes that took places from SL coming to DF. They concern feral druids on the grounds of PVE (m+ to be precise), since I have not played any PVP content as a result I will stay away from uncharted waters.
To be honest, I have had lots of fun with my feral, in the DF Beta and I decided to address some specific implimentations that I think made the spec great, in terms of rotation (numbers and damage meters are of little concern since tuning is still taking place). The somewhat reworked clearcasting mechanic enables me to finally use Blootalons effortlessly and implement it smoothly in my rotation, especially when primal wrath is used in aoe packs. In addition, I have palyed around with various talent builds and they all seem to be vailable, which is always a plus. I know a lot of people are complaining that for a few years now, dots and bleeds are the main source of damage for dudus, while bite has taken a back seat. I cannot comment on that, since I was not playing around the time that bite damage was the king of feral execution, but the current playstyle is very fun, in my humble opinion. What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you enjoy ferals now, more than you did in SL or/and the previous expansions?
New Feral is poggers. Big bleed damage, decent bite damage, no Sabertooth refreshing RIP so you have to use it on more than 1 spender and a lot better AoE and utility.
Its good to be a 
Atm lowest st dps in game on beta lol.
Better AoE yes. But that’s not so difficult considering it was basically nothing in SL.
Utility is worse. Not even sure it is ever worth picking up Disorienting Roar + Cyclone due to the new PvP trinket bonuses as well.
Seems just going full damage and face against the keyboard is the new move, which kind of sucks.
Disorienting Roar probably never, Cyclone yes, its one of the strongest CCs.
I dont see why you would think that. Now just being Orc as every possible class is not rewarding anymore, everyone got an equal playing field.
Damage tuning is literally the easiest there is to do, and usually season 1 and the last are a mess anyway.
Still the same problem as in the last 1ß years.
A lot of effort, only to be at the bottom of the DPS-Chart.
The gameplay feels better, but is way undertuned.
There are some speccs Blizzard will never get right. Feral is one of them.
Problem is Primal Wrath makes it so Rip needs to be “bad” and they deleted their band-aid fix to this interaction (which was Draught of Deep Focus). I don’t have beta-access though so I don’t know how bad the problem actually is or anything
Reading these comments makes me feel like I’ve gone back 2 years into the past, to the end of BfA. You do all know feral has completely changed, don’t you?
Actually, it was the opposite. One of the reasons our AOE was so bad was that they couldn’t buff PW without making Rip totally OP. The new talent Tear Open Wounds fixes that by enabling them to adjust the amount of Rip damage that it applies immediately.
It’s the same issue still - regardless of which ability “wins” or “loses”. If Rip does decent dmg on 1 target it will do an absolutely insane amount of dmg on 5 or even more targets. They need to separate them. Even if they can change the percentage of Tear Open Wounds, there is still an unnecessary dependance, but you are right, they can do some tricks there if they need to - but it still has the same band-aid drawback of things like Draught.
What makes the comments feel like the end of BfA? I wasn’t there
Only if the targets live for Rip’s full duration, which they often don’t. The issue in AOE was that Rip doesn’t offer enough burst damage, and buffing it to a level where it did offer that would have made it insanely OP in ST.
Tear Open Wounds isn’t a band-aid. It’s a tool to apply a few seconds of Rip’s DoT damage instantly, which is a far better solution than the alternative, which was to separate PW from Rip completely and would have made everything far more complex.
Not so much the comments, but nothing really changed for feral going from BfA into SL (small changes, but nothing that would make it competitive in anything but pure ST). That’s totally not the case going into DF. Of course there are a few things we didn’t get, but we did get most of what we’ve been asking for, and the spec tree is looking amazing.
I see, yeah, things are a lot better now. Lots of room for improvement, but feral has a complete package now, which is good.
It would be akward to have PW be its own separate DoT while also making sure you can’t have both Rip and PW on the same target, sure, but it would work out fine and it would be easier to tune. You could separately increase or decrease the instant dmg and the DoT and it would not impact ST at all. Tear Open Wounds and talents related to AoE would still be the same and give the same benefits
Yeah and it’s great we have fixed that, but it doesn’t mean PW needs to or should be tied to Rip. Don’t get me wrong either, for the sake of being neat and tidy and having a cool fantasy PW should be tied to Rip, but practically it is worse
That sounds weird tbh - and not what I’m seeing after the DF patch today.
Honestly, I don’t understand why you say this (and I was the first - I think - to suggest creating a new bleed for PW). The issue in AOE has always been feral’s burst damage, or lack of, and adjusting that doesn’t require changing Rip. It just requires changing the percentage and/or duration of Rip that’s applied instantly by ToW.
From the point of view of someone who likes digging into the talents, understanding how they interact with each other, and really getting a thorough knowledge of how feral works, what they’ve done is far more interesting and creative than what I originally suggested.
Do you know that Feral is at the bottom of the dps chart - or do you assume that it is?
Yeah, that’s what I mean by the piece you quoted, it feels good and RPG-like when things are connected. I would just solve the issue differently in a way I think would give more freedom (in developement) - but with eyes on the same outcome.
Edit: The freedom here being that you won’t need to balance multiple abilities every time you want to do anything to Rip itself.
But also, I can agree calling Tear Open Wounds a band-aid is not quite fitting, it sunk in a little deeper while I was cooking.
I have been conflating an issue a little bit, which is PvP-related; lacking Draught causes Rip to suck which means I must multi-dot, but I can’t multi-dot because energy and melee - opening up combo points fundamentally changes some things and I am still mentally in Cata / MoP sometimes
Hey guyz, i’m new here as a Druid.
I dont understand what’s the different between primal wrath and rip 
Can someone explain me this please ?
Rip is a long dot on single target.
Primal Wrath is AoE Rip that applies to multiple targets but with shorter duration and a bit of direct dmg.
Thank you mate 
Feral is the same it’s been since forever. Shred, rake, rip, watch timers, bite, repeat.
All the while your cat is stood there, gently pawing at the target.
You can spec into talents that give you more buttons, but they mostly just add another (de)buff icon or change timers. It’s just so static and mindless…
rogue is the same
warrior is the same
priest is back to being the same after 2 awesome Voidform Years
shaman is the same since WoD
Pala is just garbage since cata anyway who cares
Warlock is kinda the same
i mean whats ur point ?