This. So much this. I was really excited reading the class philosophy. Then seeing what Blizz seems to believe this actually should entail was a huge letdown.
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So, from a PvP perspective:
Feral loses SI, loses 1sec of Mighty Bash, Stampeding Roar automatically takes you to Bear Form, and Bloodtalons is still as clunky as ever (use Shred, Rake & FB within 3 seconds to boost next Rip by 50%). HotW is nerfed to the ground (only +35% healing) and is on the same talent row as Mighty Bash (i.e. dead talent).
What do we gain? Barkskin and 1x utility in Typhoon, Incap Roar, or Vortex - all locked behind the mutually exclusive affinities (making Roar or Vortex mandatory).
Affinities will still be plaguing the spec. Powershifting will still be missing. Sabertooth will still be removing Rip from the rotation almost permanently. Bloodtalons is even more OP and possibly even more clunky than before. Our defensives will be as bad as ever. Our heals that should be baseline are still missing or locked behind affinity talents (Rejuvenation and Healing Touch). Hibernate is still not on Predatory Swiftness. Our CC will even be worse due to Mighty Bash losing duration and getting a longer CD, and Incap Roar being on Incap DR (thus DRing Poly and Freezing Trap and thus being useless in most Feral comps).
I am not entertained. Whoever is in charge of designing Druids clearly doesn’t play Feral, nor PvP.
I sure hope they didnt get to unpruning Feral yet and this isn’t all we’re “getting” (*losing).
It feels like Blizzard is trying to reign in Resto utility/cc and caught in them doing so Feral is getting shafted because it happens to share abilities.
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I can only hope all this was stripped down for something they are still working on.
As it’s stands the spec that already brought almost nothing unique got gutted.
Paper ripping noises
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Removal of SI for Feral is a kick in the nuts considering how “powerful” Feral survival is.
Just remove the damn Bloodtalons already, it’s never been a part of core Feral abilities. It always makes the other talents look bad and perform worse. Whats the point of having 3 talent row if you literally take 99,9% of time Bloodtalons.
Remove it, replace it with Leader of the Pack.
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I’m saddened to hear about feral. I’ve played the spec since Vanilla, for 13 years, however I switched to rogue at the start of Eternal Palace and haven’t looked back.
I have way more utility, an energy system that works way way better, talents that are damage-centric, I’m naturally good in pvp, I have Sin for st, and Outlaw for cleave/aoe fights making playing a rogue fun, engaging and useful.
Feral is slow, predictable, requires skill to eek out decent damage and is punishing for small mistakes, all whilst providing next to no utility.
Feral has sadly been backed into a corner, the devs don’t know what to do with it, it’s just a rubbish rogue and has been for quite some time.
Here are some suggestions:
- Bring back Leader of the Pack. Make it feral only. 5% melee crit bonus to raid/party. BAM. Instantly desired again in groups.
- Make feral the fastest most mobile spec in the game. It’s a cat for god’s sake, zipping around the place should be standard.
- On that same note, make Stampeding Roar feral-only too. Give Vortex to guardians, and typhoon to boomkins. Sorted.
- Sort out the mess that is swipe/thrash/target swapping for bleeds in aoe.
I think the main thing to fix is to make feral desirable for groups and raids again. That is the biggest issue. Blizzard have plenty of creative people, time to get creative with feral!!
If there’s any decent changes, I might come back to the spec!
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Fun fact, rogues takes less dmg while falling down than druid in cat form.
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Give feral leader of the pack and i promise you there will be NO group/raid even WB farm group without one. 
They did it for a few hours before it even comes live, then they reverted the change.
But blizzard dont wanna do it, they dislike feral or:
Druids have 4 specs, if you utilize one of each you will end up inside a raid with lets say 2 good dps specs, 1 guardian and 1 resto. Means 5/20 will be druids.
Im suspecting the same thing with windwalkers, since they have brew/mw in a good spot they just neglect ww as a choice to not make a raid world of monkcraft.
Are you playing feral in bfa? Cause it most definetly isnt the same playstyle as it was in legion. I WISH it was. In legion snapshotting your bleeds was the most importsnt thing. Now your bleeds are trash and you dont even use rip more than once in single target cause a simpleton talent is 30% stronger than its competitors.
Feral certainly isnt fine. Its gameplay is horrible. Wow isnt just about the numbers, gameplay matters too. And its garbage.
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Target swapping for bleeds isnt a thing. Sadly. Since primal wrath there is no point in spreading your rips for aoe
Seems that was it. What we see for Feral is, at least in broad strokes, what we will get.
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Bay @Finalboss is starting his alpha class testing with Druid on Monday. I’ll definitely be watching, hopefully it’s not as bad as it sounds.
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Feral is fixable without adding new abilities and just tweaking old ones. Scale up bleeds, change the sabretooth to not refresh rip. Those are 2 changes definetly wouldnt fall under the major category but would 180 the feeling of the spec. So there is hope still, even if it looks grim rn.
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since I don’t want this thread to die: make powershifting great again!
and also I like the idea of removing BT as a whole - it just brute forces us into picking it again for the whole expansion…
I heard someone make the suggestion of giving us Wild Charge baseline and since we’re losing out on SI and get Barkskin in return that means we could have another row of defensive abilities we could choose from, which would be nice - I mean… all the other melee classes have their mobility tools baseline too, so why wouldn’t a feral get the same treatment? (i.e. Rogue step, DH dash, Warrior charge, Windwalker Roll/FSK etc.)
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in 9.2? Like in Legion oder BfA.
what have the changed with Sabertooth? Sounds like its now terrible in Shadowlands?
Feral has the worst combo generation gameplay in the game, yet BFA resolves around full energy fat bites. Talk about counter-logic gameplay.
The entire bleed snapshot gameplay would be nice, if bleeds actually mean something.
Also , there is a HUGE difference between the skillcap or a DH and a Feral. I just don’t see good feral gameplay being rewarded, compared to basic DH with mistakes.
Hopefully the AOE nerf to DH and Outlaw will kinda try and change the unacceptable M+ situation atm.
A fix would probably be to completely remove CC from DHs and make dungeons require hard CC. And then we have the rouge and monks, unwinnable.
And this has been going on since early Legion.
It’s just not rewarding compared to other mele classes that require less of everything. Give a top tier DH a feral and tell him to make a perfect opener and snapshot the rip and rake. His tiny brain would explode.
The class can go 2 ways, either make bleeds scary and make FB a filler finisher, or get rid of bleeds and make feral into sub rogues. Going in the middle JUST doesn’t work.
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M8 i wasnt talking about dmg. Feral dmg is fine. And alpha isnt the time to look at dmg anyways. I am talking about FUN GAMEPLAY. And sabertooth is the cancer that kills feral in its core. Along with the staggering nerf to bleeds we got in bfa in general. The first row talents are just a mess! Predator in the st row when its the aoe talent? Lunar Inspiration is dead. Brutal slash is a single target dps increase in the aoe row…
Competitiveness means nothing if the spec feels horrible to play.
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Dont make feral sub rogues please. We already have sub rogues… bleeds being strong again is the only answer!
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DH and Outlaw gameplay is beyond terrible, it’s 2004.
feral dmg is not fine, and alpha is the place to fix the core mechanics of the game.
I remember back in BFA alfa and beta when everyone were thinking the same thing about ferals. Oh the devs have time, they will buff the damage. They didn’t. For a second expansion in a roll, are we playing for 3rd ?
I am all in for a fun gameplay, but u’ll end up gathering herbs in flight form if you think that’s important for the endgame.
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