Feral Talents still have HUGE issues: Constructive Feedback

Even after changes, Feral talents still retain lot of issues.
Mostly due to connections.

  • Why do I have to pick AoE talents to get Single target abilities?
  • Primal Wrath (AoE bleed, no uses in single target) is necessary for Lunar Aspiration (single target DoT)? Why?
  • Infected Wounds is very bad slow. 20% is basically nothing. Even in WOTLK Feral has 50% slow (and also increases time between attacks of target). Why not make it 50%? And why not tie in healing damage reduction? To relieve Feral of necessary PvP talent, same as DH, which can pick it from talents as well.
  • Infected Wounds shouldn’t buff Rake damage. Buff it baseline to reasonable amount.
  • Adaptive Swarm feels alien to Feral. Doesn’t feel it has place there. Replace it by Mangle or something like that that feels more ferocious rather than deathly themed ranged glob that you cast at target far away. Thematics matter.

Also whole Druid class tree is unchanged and still retains all of it’s issues.

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Im fairly happy with the new cat trees but when I look over at the spec tree I get depression.

We have to deal with terrible HOTW, even more terrible and weird Furor or crappy Nature’s Vigil as last tier talents, in PvP we get completly gimped with the removal of incap roar since I dont see it competing with Mighty Bash in any way. When I compare this with Warrior Class Tree or Rogue Class Tree…

Why arent Predatory Swiftness and Infected Wounds more upper talents? They literally define the spec since ever.

Why is Convoke still a thing? It feels so uninteractive to press.

I do love that we maybe finally have some good AoE potential even when mobs are dying instantly due to FB having the option of AoE biting, and Primal Wrath consuming RIP for more instant damage, and that we went away from the very terrible old version of Sabertooth.

Still, Feral shapes up to look insanely good imo, both for PvP and PvE. The Dummy already feels great to test on with the new talents and I love that Shred does more reasonable damage now too, and all the big bleeds ALONGSIDE big bites feel great, although tuning could easily ruin that over.

3 Likes

you mean class
Feral is a spec
Druid is a class

Happens, its early in the day.

Some good points, although I don’t think Adaptive Swarm is as unfitting as some think.

Lunar Inspiration being where it is is strange when you will not use it in AoE - you will use it in single target or very few targets.

Infected Wounds definitely needs to be 50% like a normal slow, if it is only 20% it makes our movement speed pointless, because we’re moving the same as everyone else (when they slow us by 50%). It also needs to be on SHRED and NOT on Rake so we don’t have to reapply Rake to reapply the slow. Buffing Rake dmg is also not ideal for PvE-purposes.

And another HUGE problem is Sudden Ambush. Now at 50% chance to get buffed Rake it’s going to feel so bad not to get a buffed one. Remove this whole talent, no one wants it and it removes the possibility of having a strong baseline Rake. Absolutely terrible talent. Stealth and Berserk buffing our Rake is more than enough, we get to play with the concept and it is cool, but Sudden Ambush just ruins it - especially when you need to stack the Mortal Strike-effect in PvP or reapply for the sake of the slow.

They should just rename it to Insect Swarm and leave its workings as it is.

You don’t. You can create a pure ST build without touching a single AOE talent.

LI’s usefulness isn’t restricted to pure ST.
That said, I’d be in favour of a 3-way swap of LI > MoC > Protective Growth.

WOTLK was a very long time ago. The game has changed.

Tuning is yet to be done, but complaining about a talent that increases an ability’s damage seems quite weird.

Please quit claiming to speak for all feral players. You don’t. There are plenty of us who enjoy commanding a swarm of insects in a very druidic way.

I never claimed otherwise.
My question was:

I also gave examples further down.

Exactly. In AoE you never want to have Moonfire and in single target you never want to have Primal Wrath, meaning locking Lunar Aspiration behind Primal Wrath is antisynergy.

I think it should be on both and I agree only Rake is kinda bad. Especially because you may want to reapply Slow and not screw up your snapshotted Rake.

100% agree. It’s probably not bad anymore, but it still is unfun.

Insect Swarm has historically been Balance Druid ability. And it doesn’t fit Feral. For the same reason why Starfall, Starsurge, Starfire etc. don’t fit Feral either.

Realistically, it is. Tab targetting to DoT with Moonfire is DPS loss. In otherwords: it’s useless to have it since you don’t want to press it, because you don’t want to have lower dmg. From DPS standpoint. If you love the lore of tab targetting and applying Moonfire and you don’t care about your output at all, then yes, it might not be useless.

Some classes got way stronger. Why should Feral get weaker?
And it is. Even with adaptive swarm (which requires higher maintenance than Mangle) Feral DoTs are weaker than they used to be. On the other hand Rogue has much easier application of poisions and thus keeps target slowed very well.

Nowhere in the sentence is mentioned any player.

There’s a spec for that. Balance Druid.

There might be plenty people enjoying power of friendship and little magical fairies flying around, but that wouldn’t disprove that those kind of stuff would feel alien to DK for example.

2 Likes

You gave an example of something that isn’t purely a ST talent.

Tell that to the people who use it in 2 - 3 target cleave.

It isn’t weaker. I’ve been running dungeons on beta all evening. I’ve been top dps in every one except the one where I was 2nd to a DH. (Not that relative output is relevant at this point because there’s still tuning to be done, but with the current talents and tuning, feral is one of the strongest specs.) You’re still talking about SL and BfA in a conversation about DF.

If Mangle requires less maintenance, it must be totally brainless. I’ve just been casting swarm on myself off CD all evening (unless I happen to notice I’m already at 5 stacks and cast it on someone else, but that’s rare).

There’s a class for it. DRUID. Or are you trying to claim druids aren’t connected to nature?

I was talking obviously about class design and it being weaker, not DPS.
DPS can be tunned, class design isn’t tunned and if your point is talking about DPS, you’re in wrong thread alltogether.

Obviously reducing target’s movement speed doesn’t increase your DPS. At least not directly. It’s sad I have to explain that.

Never said anything like that and you’re not reacting to what I actually said.

Which it isn’t. It feels good and smooth to play on beta.

So, maybe you should try to explain again. Druids are connected to nature. Feral is a druid spec. Commanding a swarm of insects is commanding nature. How is commanding a swarm of insects ‘alien’ to a druid spec?

Very valid points. I agree with all of it.
My biggest concern is also the Druid class tree right now:

  • Really underwhelming and bad final capstone talents
  • Rake stun not being available to all specs
  • Incapacitating Roar and Mighty Bash being exclusive
  • Multiple 3 point nodes
  • Huge lack of connections, making it difficult to transition from one part of the tree to another
  • Many utility abilities hard/expensive to reach behind “wasted” talent points (useless things for your spec)

The thing is, they just went out with the information that the major work on the talents trees is done now.

This means, we are stuck with what we have, and all we will see is nerfs to Ferocious Bite damage before release.
If we are lucky we might get some numbers tuned when season 2 starts.

Meanwhile, all my forum posts are completely ignored. Why do we keep trying? :slight_smile:

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Honestly, why are you being so difficult? He is mainly talking about the slow, and you are just straight up ignoring that. Feral has the worst slow in the game, and from a PvP standpoint, that feels horrible. Ferals should be good at kiting, and they’re not, just because of a bad slow. It would certainly make sense to buff it.

Again, why are you being so oblivious to the point he is making? Yes, commanding insects is very ‘druidish’, but it would still make sense to have it for Balance only. Feral is a spec that focuses on taking on different animal forms, primarily a cat - which focuses on a bleed-oriented playstyle, so how does it make sense that one of your main damage abilities is in the nature school? It makes no sense. Nobody’s saying that it’s bad for DPS, but design-wise it’s not very cat-like. Druid-like, yes, cat-like: no. Imagine playing Balance and having to use Tiger’s Fury in your main rotation to deal good DPS. Kind of the same thing.

Btw, I could say the same about Lunar Inspiration: it’s odd for a cat to have moonfire as a combo builder. Imo, Blizzard should try to get Feral back to a more distinct playstyle around bleeds and kiting.

3 Likes

EU Forums are generally ignored. I have Beta Access but I cant even post in the Beta Discussion Forum for some reason.

Takes literally 1-2 minutes of google to fix.

And there I was thinking ‘class design’ consists of many more aspects than what type of slow a class has.

I’m not oblivious. I’m disagreeing with his OPINION. (He’s entitled to have an opinion, even if it’s rather absurd. I’m entitled to disagree with it.)

It isn’t a main damage ability. I’ve been testing it on beta, and it does around 4% of overall dps. However, I don’t mind repeating that the core of what druids are about is their connection with nature. A druid that rejects their connection with nature, whether cat, bear, tree or chicken, is no longer a druid.

Not the same thing at all. Tiger’s Fury is distinctly feral druid. Swarm is general druid. (Thematically, it should probably be in the class tree rather than the spec tree, along with convoke, but since the class trees are supposed to be about utility rather than throughput, I can understand why it isn’t.)

Swarm is super fun to use as Necro Kitty and feels very druidic. I dont see the discussion needed here.

What I hate the most about current class and spec design is that they are all so tightly focused only on doing what their spec can. A fire mage does not unlearn what a Mage overall can do.

A druid should not unlearn all other things solely because he is a feral druid. He is still a DRUID that uses nature spells. So Adaptive Swarm fits perfectly.

Of course it is, but he was talking mainly about the slow, while you took that out of context and started talking about general class design.

I’m talking about how it buffs your bleed effects by 25%. So indirectly, it most certainly is one of your main damage abilities. It doesn’t deal much damage alone, but it makes you deal a lot more damage than without it.

You are literally disproving your own point here. You are using the fact that Blizzard has made Swarm a general Druid ability as an argument for it to be good design. Let me help you: Feral should be centered around physical and bleed damage. Balance should be centered around nature and arcane damage. Having some tools outside the main playstyle isn’t a problem, but having your playstyle revolve around a class-aspect that is inherently secondary to your spec is not good design imo. Both Swarm and Lunar Inspiration are obvious examples of this.

By your logic, a Balance druid not using bleeds, is ‘rejecting’ nature. It seems that you have trouble having a nuanced view on the opinions expressed here, so let me be very clear: I don’t have a problem with having Nature and Arcane abilities in my kit as a Cat. I have a problem with these abilities being the bread and butter of the spec (which Swarm by its design clearly is - your DoTs LITERALLY deal 25% more damage while it’s active.

Let’s take Mages as a simple example: Shatter shouldn’t be the bread and butter of the Fire spec, while Pyroblast and Meteor shouldn’t be the bread and butter of Frost. Fire having access to Cone of Cold, on the other hand, isn’t exactly a problem, while Frost of course should be able to utilize Fire Blast.

Then why do you write what you write?
You say it consists of many things, yet when I mention many things you ignore it and say “DPS was good”.

It’s fun to have strong bleeds, but that doesn’t need to be caused by ranged weird glob of Shadows that you send at the target. That’s not Druidic at all.

Nobody argues for that.

Well said.

1 Like

Ah, I see. What ‘should’ be is what you want to be.

Sorry, but that isn’t how anything works.

I also distinctly recall saying how much more fluid it feels to play now, but you choose to disregard that. Interesting.

Anyway, there’s no point in continuing this conversation. Discussion is impossible with people who can’t tell the difference between opinion and fact.