Feral Honor Talent Revamp 9.1 Suggestions

Hello all,

So Blizzard announced they’re making changes to Honor Talents (also known as PvP Talents) in 9.1, focusing mainly on updating/removing/replacing talents that are seldom or never picked.

Feral is struggling a lot in PvP with a number of mechanical and design issues which are non-issues in PvE and which could be resolved through the clever use of Honor Talents.

See my suggestions and rationale for changes further below, but in general I think all specs and classes need to feel that their toolkit and mechanics feel really powerful and smooth (kind of like Rogue, Mage, Paladin and Warrior right now). I think these suggestions below would make Feral incredibly fun to play.

This, all in all, would make it so that you have the following viable Honor Talents to choose between:
Fresh Wound
Malorne’s Swiftness
Thorns
Nature’s Adept
Strength of the Wild
Savage Momentum

So likely builds would be:
Default: Fresh Wound, Malorne’s Swiftness, Nature’s Adept
Casters: Fresh Wound, Malorne’s Swiftness, Nature’s Adept/Savage Momentum (depending on their amount of CC preventions)
Melees: Fresh Wound, Malorne’s Swiftness/Strength of the Wild/Nature’s Adept/Thorns (depending on their amount of CC preventions and whether or not you’ll be targeted or not)

2 Likes

Why I can understand the reasons for wanting these changes and I personally like the bleed play style, you are making a substantial shift in the damage potential of feral while also removing the potential of the bite playstyle that some liked.

You are basically asking for a melee class to have improved dps while not sat on the target, while also getting additional cc on targets via a slow, additionally giving rooting and slowing effects as a baseline on 2 spells, 1 affecting multiple people, also get their pvp aura to be a baseline effect.

Your basically making a ranged class at this point with all these tweaks and while we might like being unkiteable gods i doubt other meles would.

I’d personally want less movement clearing abilities and more baseline protection in cat form so we can stick to targets and tank a few hits, which would be better in both pvp and pve content. The ranged chicken has more survivability in burst than the cat…

No one likes it. Historically it is not what anyone played feral for and for the sake of the game offering a variety of different playstyles it should be reverted to what it was as there is no longer any class filling this niche. “”""""“Bite-playstyle”"""""" is also degenerate, it is a gross simplification and homogenization of classes that happened.

Leader of The Pack is not a PvP-aura. It is a passive we’ve had since forever. Literally since vanilla.

We used to be the highest movement and it was a niche we were allowed to have, now we don’t have that and most others have more than us without it being their niche even. We just need powershifting back. I don’t think root-break on sprint abilities is needed.

Being squishy in cat form is fine, because we should have high mobility and can get around. We also have bear form which is VERY strong. We have a good amount of self-heal too, defensively we are doing well.

1 Like

The people that like the ‘‘bite playstyle’’ can go play a Rogue. Since that’s evidently what they want to play.

2 Likes

It’s not like any of the suggested things would disable a bite focused build, it just wouldnt be so mandatory.

Yes, this was always the Feral niche. Our defensives mostly requires us to not be in Cat Form. This is one of the main reasons Feral DPS is so abyssmally low in PvP.

Yes, this used to be the case and was completely balanced. I dont see why it couldnt be the case again.

Hit and run (or forced into Bear) was always the Feral playstyle. But ranged? No, absolutely not. You still need to be in melee 90%+ of the time to be able to maintain your bleeds and chug in the shreds/fbs to actually score kills.

If youre refering to Powershifting (and not just Dash/Stampeding Roar) then that’s just not going to be viable.

Feral needs mobility and proper slows to actually be able to deal damage.

Not going to really happen, ever, nor was it ever the Feral class fantasy.

I dont think allowing Feral to just sit Cat Form when under pressure is a good design.

1 Like

You cant take my statements as separate talking points, your raising the point that you want all these changes which would completely make druids solo gods. You cant also look at previous expansions in isolation without considering the vast changes every spec has had this expansion.

Every class is balanced around burst and dps, both giving and receiving.

  1. Removing the bite focus build
    You are removing the health reduction talent, while also buffing the passive damage of our bleeds, so they would need to nerf the bite damage to offset the damage done by rip and rake.

  2. Ferals niche while not sat on the target
    Yes it has been its niche in a few past expansions BUT when it was our niche we also sacrificed almost all of our burst to do so and this is a complete burst meta at the moment for all specs, in addition slows were much more easily applied so even if you did shift you’d be hit by more and more making it much harder than it is now.
    We also had much weaker self heals and couldnt top ourselves in a few seconds.


I could keep answering all the points but simply put, we’ve never been great in bgs and in jungle cleave we have always been fairly good.
The entire pvp landscape has shifted to the point that half these changes would be broken and would sizeable changes to core ability damages to make it work in your iteration.
In your idea you are giving feral especially in low target pvp which is already doing fairly well the following.

50% slow thats spammable on multiple targets
100% damage buff to abilities that do around 20% of our damage
A free PVP option slot as the aura is now a passive affect and would completely screw up pve with it being baseline.
a 2min AOE speed buff and root and slow clear and a personal clear on a possibly 45s cd.

Honestly I want a change to the old bleed play style but as it is now your changes will not work without heavy tuning of practically the entire spec in addition to absolutely screwing over a lot of classes and really screw up the meta if you were to give them all that.

Why wouldn’t I? I go through them one by one and explain why they are irrelevant / not a problem.

Never said they aren’t.

No they wouldn’t. Feral needs a sustained damage buff in PvP.

I have no idea what you’re trying to say here. Maybe rephrase this?

I guess you mean our niche was to sit on targets? I’ll have you know Feral had alright burst in both MoP and WoD. Not the best, but OK. And that’s the case right now too.

In SL slows have been unpruned to levels that haven’t been seen since… MoP? Sub Rogues got their slows un-nerfed. Warlock legendary slow etc.

So uhm, you’re just incorrect.

Yeah, not true.

Cenarion Ward, Tranquility, Nature’s Vigil / HotW (the old one), baseline Rejuvenation, Healing Touch instead of Regrowth… did you really play these expansions?

Feral’s been excellent in rated BGs on multiple occasions. Where are you getting this nonsense from?

No, it hasn’t - and no it wouldn’t. If you compare what Feral has (and hasn’t got) to what Ret, Warrior and Rogue has you’d be surprised. Especially if you take the usability of the toolkit into consideration as well.

Feral needs considerable unpruning and un-clunkification.

Well that’s a good laugh. Do you play the same game as everyone else? The best Feral team in the game barely qualifies for AWC (second to last AWC there was no Feral at all in AWC). The highest rated Feral on ladder is #40, and just for some fun numbers - there are less than 100 Ferals above 2.4K, do you want to know how many rets there are? (hint: it’s triple the amount)

Feral is not “fine” in low target PvP lmao. Feral is not fine in any PvP atm.

If you want to spend all your energy on maintaining a 12sec slow on multiple people, be my guest. That’s not going to be particularly effective though and is not going to win you any games.

Sounds like an excellent change considering Feral DPS is trailing by more than 20% compared to other melee specs, in PvP.

It wouldn’t “screw up pve”, it would fix PvE issues and it could be re-tuned to not be broken, as I wrote in the text - if you had actually bothered to read it.

And having free PvP slots is not bad, fyi, (see Ferocious Wound as an example, it’s a horrible, almost mandatory, passive that accomplishes nothing except cement a bad playstyle).

I guess you’re thinking about… Tiger Dash? If you’re honestly sitting here and whining about Tiger Dash in PvP then I have no idea what to say. There’s just no discussion to be had. You don’t grasp simple concepts (such as Wild Charge being a mandatory pick no matter what) and there’s no point in futher discussion.

False.

It would make Feral viable. Such screwing up, huh.

1 Like

We’re pretty good 1v1, not best there either, but quite fine :))

Haha okay, I’ll give you that. 1v1, the unranked casual form of PvP that doesn’t matter :slight_smile: That’s where Feral “shines”.

Mate some of the highest rated 2s and 3s players are playing feral in this season… with a few at over 2700 rating, so an already really strong class in the smaller pvp areanas are going to get a wave of buffs?

Most of the recent expansions have prefered rot comps and therefore boomys over feral in rbgs and resto has been rather good.

Also in regards to the self healing half of that stuff would be miniscule your rejuv would heal for maybe 1-2 % of your health per tick with most of the time needing to kite to pillars to get regrowths or healing touches off, usually just casting regrowth into rejuv into cat form.

We did used to have instant cyclone and in form too but it was really strong and this is back in mop and wasnt brought back due to how strong it was and how the meta shifted away from cc locking targets

One of the main reasons to bring a feral was to heal up after fights because warriors and dks were heavily in the meta and the aura used to do a lot and thats also when rogues had their auras too. Also dont forget that at the time feral was one of the only mele classes that had the majority of its damage ignore armour so we were great vs plate wearers which were heavily used in the meta.

Also if you brought the feral pvp aura into raiding of course it would make feral almost a requirement, a 4% heal every crit every 6 seconds in a raid would be nuts let alone giving every raid member 5% bonus crit.
Also our passive healing in raids is already fairly good just with resto affinity

Also you keep on being inconsistent as your mentioning you want baseline talents that will affect pve and pvp and yet youll only bring up my points in relation to pvp when it suits, disregarding pve.
Your also giving our overall damage about a 30% buff, possibly more with the correct trinkets due to the bleed buffs, and especially as we can use sabertooth to keep the bleeds going, with the potential to use the now 50% slow and using balance affinity and oath lego to now stay in the sweet spot where mele are perma slowed, cannot get into mele range with the feral and cant snare them either or change in the case or warriors as dont forget the conduit that keeps movement out of cat form.

Are you… not reading what was written? Feral’s are massively underrepresented at high ratings (especially relative to the number of people playing it).

Yes, but you said Feral’s never been good in BGs - which is patently false.

Yeah, HotW being a 45sec duration buff, or Nature’s Vigil really made it so you had to run behind the pillar to hide. And HT being on PS really made you heal for nothing… right.

Feral healing has always been very strong, at least up until Blizzard introduced default dampening in 2s and swapped HT for Regrowth.

Instant Cyclone was removed mid MoP and I don’t think anyone is arguing for instant Cyclone to return.

However, Feral (and other specs) need more utility and CC back - that’s just the simple truth of it. The utility/CC imbalance between specs is simply not acceptable right now.

And if they’re doing a global Honor talent revamp then now is the time.

Moreover, the changes suggested aren’t even that major (it’s not like it’s a complete shift of the spec as you somehow try to make it out to). It’s basically just “add a few mechanics to already existing abilities”.

Main reason to bring a Feral was to heal up after fights, in order to counter DKs, Warriors and Rogues?
DKs, Warriors and Rogues being meta in MoP?

What game are you playing? What are you on about?

Again, you are completely missing the part where I specifically said in my original post that it can be re-tuned to not be oppressive or somehow mechanic-breaking levels of overpowered.

However, having something that makes Feral mandatory in raids wouldn’t be a bad thing given how horrible the community stigma is related to Feral.

Not that it really matters anyway though. This is a thread about PvP, PvE issues can be resolved - as I pointed out in the original post.

No. I’m being consistent. You, however, are bringing up a million falsehoods time and time again.

You have consistently disregarded my initial statement in the original post that LotP should be tuned to not be overpowered and somehow used “LotP would be OP!” as some sort of strawman for your entire basis of argument. Well, that in combination with a million falsehoods related to what PvP in the past has been like.

What? How would trinkets increase your damage more with bleeds than a burst based bite build? How?

You know that bleeds don’t snapshot with trinkets right?

I’m getting more and more mind-boggled by your senseless claims by the minute.

Related to the damage increase: Feral needs a damage increase. Considering Ferals are doing <2K DPS (very often around 1.5K DPS) when most others are doing around 2.5K DPS.

And again you are completely disregarding the fact that I said that the exact % number can be tuned to be balanced. It’s as if you didn’t even read the post - you just read your own imaginary version of what you want it to be (i.e. a strawman).

I mean… this is laughable.

If you seriously think running around min-maxing charge range with balance affinity and Oath legendary is going to be a viable competitive build then I’m just done. PvP shouldn’t designed nor balanced around cheesy 1v1 builds that don’t work against 90% of the specs in the game - and most certainly don’t work in any competitive scenario.

I’m just done. You have no clue.

1 Like

We literally have multiple glads in 2s and 3s running as feral…
Look if youve not played since mop when we were so stupidly broken then i can get where your coming from.
But if you cant make it work while we have a ton of people on the leader board in BOTH 2V2 and 3v3 as feral and your asking for major buffs thats your problem.
Heck running blood talons, swarm, your 100% base bleed buff while also popping trinkets during the swarm window then its going to be crazy damage. Youd likely be hitting around 13k+ tick and possibly more…

You cant buff your cc while also granting additional baseline cc and buffing off the target damage all in one go…

Lets also not forget we are very likely to get 2 legos in this expansion so vs mele comps having both mele at perma 50% movement while we are basically at 145%/156% while no longer requiring globals to shift in and out for slows/ root removal and give free slow and root clearing as an aoe would be so broken. In addition getting free pvp talent slots and with the buff to swarm your likely getting a large boost to your sunfire and moonfire every minute for 10 seconds i could see it being viable.

Changing one thing is fine but you cant widespread buff off target damage, give us more ability to clear slows and roots without globals and give us more powerful slows and more pvp talents free to use without nerfing other things would be ludicrous with how much that would buff us…

Your changes in isolation might be fine, but to ask for all of it would totally screw up the class balance

Jesus christ.

As long as there is more than 1 Feral above 2.4K rating Feral is fine guys. You heard it here first guys!

It’s not like there are R1/ multi-glad / tournament caliber players that could get glad on their spec regardless of its state or anything. /s

Laughable.

Maybe you should actually look up the people who you’re arguing against - Mr. World Wide Winner.

Sorry, but you are clueless.

We don’t have a “TON” of Ferals on the leaderboards. Please shut your mouth if you don’t know simple statistics or historic numbers.

Your stupidity is actually hurting my brain.

Ah yes, my 100% buff that I specifically said should be mutually exclusive with Bloodtalons and tuned to whatever makes sense.

Also, imagine thinking it’ll come out to 13K ticks. You’re a :clown_face:.

Additional baseline CC? Where have I suggested “additional baseline cc”. I never did such a thing. I proposed new Honor talents.

But yes, you can get more damage and unclunkify the CC of the spec “all in one go”.

Oh yes, let’s design classes based on something that may or may not happen :clown_face: :clown_face: :clown_face:

This is, once again, laughable.

You are so clueless it’s ridiculous. Do not speak about things you have no clue about.

Yes. Yes you can.

Especially considering that Feral is severely lacking considering the utility and damage of other specs and classes.

“No it wouldn’t”

1 Like

At the end of the day I’m basing it off what others have achieved, with some being able to crit their bleeds upwards of 6.5k before the buff to swarm so double that your looking at 13k+ as he wasnt even in the best gear.

But lets go by statistics of representation within the top 5k of players on EU servers. Also for context there’s 36 specs in the game so per spec if everything perfectly shared you’d expect a 2.77…% representation per spec.

Top 5000 - 2v2 9.52% are druids, and 2.21% Feral
Top 5000 - 3v3 7.66% are druids and 2.12% Feral

Top 1000 2v2 - Feral druids = 2.6%
Top 500 2v2- Feral Druids = 2.2%
Top 150 2v2- Feral Druids = 3.3%
Top 100 2v2- Feral Druids = 3%
Top 25 2v2- Feral Druids = 4%

Class - PVP 2v2 Top 5000 Representation - Total Representation

DK - 2.68% - 8.4%
  • Blood - 0.04%
  • Frost - 2.02%
  • Unholy - 0.62%
Druid - 9.52% - 9.7%
  • Feral - 2.21%
  • Guardian - 0.18%
  • Balance - 3.34%
  • Resto - 3.82%

Also I’ll include 3v3 as well 7.66% - 9.7%

  • Feral - 2.12%
  • Guardian - 0.08%
  • Balance - 4.2%
  • Resto - 1.26%
DH - 0.94% - 5%
  • Havoc - 0.78%
  • Vengeance - 0.16%
Hunter - 4.12% - 11.3%
  • BM - 0.9%
  • MM - 1.88%
  • SV - 1.34%

I could keep on going but these are just the first 4 classes in the list so I thought that would give a fair comparison.
Also don’t forget that Balance is performing stupidly well at the moment especially in rbgs at almost 15% of the top 5000 players so expect some of the top rated players are likely pushing on balance over feral.

I miss claws of shirvallah (where you could cast regrowth/cyclone without breaking form)
it sucks when I accidently hit a non-insta regrowth and I come out of catform mid fight xD

At the end of the day all you’re basing it off is a lack of reading comprehension.

No, no you wouldn’t.

Tanks are, 99% not a thing in Arena (with the disgusting exception of Prot Paladin).
Except Priest, there is no class which has two specs which fulfill the same role that are particularly viable at the same time.

Top 5000 is not even 2400. It’s an irrelevant measurement.

Bringing Druid representation into a discussion about Feral is also completely irrelevant.

2v2 is not balanced around nor is it a relevant bracket.

Why are you showing 2v2 representation? Do you not know that Blizzard a) doesn’t reward titles from 2v2 and also b) doesn’t balance around 2v2?

2v2 literally doesn’t matter.

What does Balance performing well have to do with the discussion at hand, at all.

Nothing.

“Also don’t forget that practically every melee spec in game except Havoc, Feral and Surv is performing stupidly well at the moment so expect some of the top rated players are likely pushing on those specs over feral.”

Jesus.

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