Hey guys, this ain't it fam

Community General Discussion
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I’m uhh… I’m having difficulties with feral atm, I find the spec to be convoluded with some of the weirdest actual rotation of those I’ve played, it’s left me unsatisfied and wanting more for the spec, of everything, more impactful dmg outside of bite that feels so strange seeing as it’s actual damage is so different depending on energy or combo point overstack and it feels bad to not have consistent dmg and instead more of a “rough estimate” and rip which is so boring outside of the one proc it has if you run that build which you don’t single target and even in aoe only in the right season. More visuals other then the 7th darn red stripe across my screen, outside of convoke it’s so visually boring I look at other cclasses and get jealous, where my cool moon powers, my solar powers, my druidic shapeshifting like was promised in druid of the claw, but as it stands now all I do is turn into a cat and scratch, which can only be so satisfying.

I know the simple solution is just “switch” characters. But I just can’t really do that, this char is special to me, he was my first character ever (well that was on my brothers account when I was 7, but it was a night elf druid feral named gilvion) and I have alot of memories with him. And I’ve learned the game with him, he was the character I played throught my young years where the game was “fancy sparkles” to my teenage years when my understanding of the game began to now where I have raided with my first ever real guild on him and got to experience time and time again new things on him.

So I wanted to turn to you guys for advice, should I stay with him and maybe just switch spec, or would it be better if I make a complete switch and “jump into the cold water” or if I’m just whining and stick it out in hopes that the design gets figured out?

(I really appreciate any assistance and opinion in the matter, thank you)

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sincerely glivion. i dunno what to think about druid. when i decided to put a 4th char in my warband i was so uncertain. for plate (retri), cloth (destro) and mail (bm) i was sure. but leather was a puzzle. I mained back in legion a monk but now it never give my any emotion so i tried druid.
Not speaking about guardian cuz ill try in delve but i decided to go balance. And it was horrible. The rotation is so slow and convoluted and… not fun for me.
So i tried feral. Is fast is quick but jesus… as you said. only red scartch and “straaaap” effect.
But druid comes with so many features (heal, flight, good mogs - ok you dont see them) so i decided to endure. Until i tried to solo an elite. I was destroyed. So i reswitched balance and in 10 secs elite was down.
Result? i have a balance druid with a slow and unfun rotation and a feral with a quick and boring rotation.

I think ill give the leather spot to my horde monk. And im sincerely so disappointed…

Ofc im only speaking about my experience of solo player non competitive.

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You’ll play what Blizzard thinks you should be playing.

Remember when they once said “bring the player not the class”?

What a shame we believed them.

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I appreciate your input, and I’m sorry to hear that you had a similar experience as ofc, since it’s my main spec, I hope people enjoy it but, there are simply too many big issues with it atm, from the failure of the bear-swapping that was Druid of the claw to the insanely devided and frustrating rotation to understand or actually excecute.

That’s the funny thing, I don’t feel like it’s so bad atm, it’sfar from meta but I feel like I can contribute meaningful damage if I try but it’s just sooo much effort to keep up with others while just being jealous of their visuals in the meantime.

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No one can tell you definitively, but my advice would be to try the other druid specs, flirt with the other classes, and main whatever brings you the most enjoyment, but always keep your druid.

My druid was my second ever character, after my mage, but it’s always been my favourite. I play as a healer, but use feral for open world content and guardian for delves. Currently I’ve been levelling my alts, and it does feel like feral got left out when other classes got nice new hero talent mechanics and animations. My paladin and my fury warrior just look and feel awesome by comparison. I will always consider my druid my main, and I’m holding out for some dev love for the feral spec. Good luck whichever way you go.

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The Hero talents are another one that I would have loved to have a slight change, I wish wildstalker would’ve been between guardian and resto, and feral and boomie got chosen of elune, would’ve really helped with my visual issue.

ButI will likely follow your advice and try otherr specs, looking at balance rn. But I don’t hink I’ll ever fully get rid of him or ignore him, thank you fellow druid bro.

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Its almost impossible to balance the game to a level everyone will agree is acceptable and some visuals are always going to be flashier than others. best advice I can give is the advice I ive myself, as long as my dps or my tanking isnt causing an issue I could care less what “meta” sweat drenchers are doing.

Always remember we’re playing a videogame for fun. If someone wants to treat it as a full time job let them.

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Yeah the meta is also something I’ve felt has been done a bit dirty in regards to feral, but I typically adopt your mentality of, as long as I can contribute I don’t really care.

Well yes, but that implies that feral has some visuals at all, I really can’t stress this enough, outside of convoke and bite the effect is always a red stripe either in front of you or around you, hell feral frenzy and rake have literally the same animation and the only difference is they copied the rake swipe, made it smaller and did it 5 times and called it a day. And I can’t tell you how excited I was for Ravage from Druid of the claw, but again it’s just another red stripe cross in front of my cat with the rake animation.

The Feral visuals are abysmal, the worst of any druid spec, and I can prove it.

Druids have always had an issue with their animations due to their forms being mobs so naturally not having an insane amount of animations. However throughout the years the others either got updates where they need no form, like resto, or got a glyph allowing them to use their out of form appearance, like glyph of stars for boomie, orrr a new model entirely that is available to swtch things up, like runebear for guardian.

Balance even was aknowledged for having a bad issue with them and got the entire visuals update and new model animations of the boomkin to accomodate them, like they didn’t have a choice but boomkin form. However Feral is still stuck with the same animations with no possible other solution. You can change the look of the cat, and even some of those are locked out but that’s just FOMO so no worries there, but it’s still just cat form.

Give me something blizzard, give me lunar/solar empowered claws, or add some corrupting claws with some green, or hell even keep the same animations and give us a reason to actually go into bear form for variety in our dps rotation and have the change in visual be there.

But give us something, like an updated model or a visual effect change of some abilites to have atleast the swipe be something other then a straight line, give a jagged one for rip with some hard red outline to make it pop. Or give me back the werecat to have some different animations if I choose to use it like we had or like guardian has.

And keep in mind, at no point do they have to do all of it, although that would be cool obviously, but give me ONE of those options pleeeassee

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As I said in one of my posts, just stop caring, yk? I am playing feral as optimally as i pawssibly can. I am snapshotting bleeds with tiger’s fury. I am micro-managing frenzy cooldown to line up for bursts, I am utilizing nature’s vigil etc.

Whatever is the best build that does the most damage, no matter how annoying it is to play, I’m doing it. At some point, something will change, different talents will be ran.

I am a druid one trick. I can’t play other classes, I just can’t. So, I am the best I can be at my class. That means adapting to the meta and showing others what feral/balance is capable of when played to near perfection.

Last night for example, i managed to parse 92 on one of the normal bosses without aug evoker, no PI from priest, no enchants, no food, no flask, no potion. Nothing! So yea, that is how I keep myself engaged. Just try to play it to near perfection with whatever the best talents and playstyle is atm, even if it’s annoying. Because at some point, something will change.

I played venthyr boomkin on mythic sylvanas progress when it was meta. Was it fun? HEK NO! Does it make for a fun story now? Yea, for sure!

So yop, my advice is…just stop caring and try to play it as best as you can! Hit your sims and if other meta classes outdps you, not your problem, you’ve done all you could. :blush:

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Quite an interesting perspective, thank you, and I’ll definetely consider that possibility.

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Oh, I got you.
I’ve always played healer since my WoW journeys began back in TBC. Mained one for a loooong time, first Priest, then HPally, then Monk. After a while (around Legion), I got bored of maining anything, because changes kept happening too fast for my taste so I swtiched to a group (2 or 3, 3 this expac) of characters that I play whenever I feel like it. So I got quite a broad perspective on many different specs. Lemme compare my 3 “mains” now :

  1. Warrior - same as always, you can count at least 1 spec to be decent as it’s one of the original classics (Warr, Mage, Hunter) that never get nerfed into the ground unlike others. A safe bet. And fun to play - the other night I was doing a +7 delve on the last boss, when at 50% HP Zevkir (or w/e his name is) spawned and the only reaction he got from me was “chuckle stay put, I’ll be right with you bad boy”, finished the boss and proceeded to beat the living cr*p out of Zev, too. He left and left me a present. So yea, typical Monday for a Warrior, I’d say.

  2. Warlock - high survivability, simple rotation, pet. Doing delves with her is easier now (with better gear) than my warrior. It’s just safe from afar and you have buttons to peel mobs off you. Or just nuke them into oblivion. Easy to quest with, too.

  3. Druid - I always play one healer out of habit, this time it’s a druid. Resto is the same as always - derping around jumping, putting hots on people. A little more involved than in previous expansions but 90% the same. Since you are a healer, you cannot die, I even quested with Resto till lvl80, not bad for a healer.

But here comes the tricky part - you can’t do delves as a healer, it will take F-O-R-E-V-E-R. So I needed another spec for that. I’ve always played Feral as a levelling spec before (on my other 3 druids lol), so I skipped it this time and picked Balance this time. Honestly, it’s just a slower, more squishy version of the Warlock - you take way more damage, have less defensive CDs and hit just as hard, even a little harder than the lock. At ilvl600, I’ve seen Full Moon crits in the 1.3 mil range, whereas my lock’s Chaos Bolt (at the same ilvl) crits for 1.2 mil. But Chaos Bolt auto-crits… so … Balance is a worse (and slower, my god these cast times…) version of a Destro Warlock.

All that said, doing delves with Balance is not bad, you have roots, AoE roots, Cyclone if you take it. It takes about the same time as my lock but it’s way more “hairy”. I don’t know why but Balance takes so much damage, even regular mobs can take you to 50% HP easily, perhaps it’s the long cast times and the need to dot mobs first, which also takes time. Whereas warlock is just Wither-Chaos Bolt - loot mob. Something is not right with the spec, feels clunky, hopefully Blizzard fixes it at some point. But it is playable. And you get a Fairy Dragon pet and a lot of Moon and Star particle effects. :slight_smile:

Try it, you might like it.
And despite what guides tell you with the stats priority, I’m taking Haste and Versatility, because it fixes the two main issues with the class - slow cast times and squishiness. At least somewhat.

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Damn I really appreciate the tons of effort this must have taken. And that’s actually quite a good idea, to have a smaller sized group of psudo-mains that each have a fun playstyle and can give the player a break of one if it gets too tiring.

I also have a tendncy to healer, not played too much but I have been curious about other roles and healer instead of tank for me, so I’ve healed a few seasons, not too many and they were alright.

might try to find 2 dps an a healer for my psudo-mains and simply include this feral as one of them, thanks for the suggestion. :dracthyr_heart:

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Only took me 10 years to come up with that, so you are welcome lol. It gives you something new to play each day, based on your mood. You don’t feel tied to anything and you can still play your favourite spec while trying others. The only downside is that you gear them a little slower (since there are 2 or 3 now) but I don’t give a damn about that. Fun is more important.

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Couldn’t agree more ^^

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Guardian is so much better for general content and it’s a shame because I really want to play feral, but it feels mechanically wrong and unrewarding to play.

I think they need a rework.

Get rid of Thrash dot, work with RIP mainly and modify the skills like this:

Thrash/Swipe = Adds 1 stack of Rip on each target it hits.

Brutal Slash = Adds 2 stacks of Rip on each target it hits.

Primal Wrath = explodes remaining RIP damage on all targets and applies “Claws of the eternal moon” to them.

Claw of the eternal moon = RIP can now be stacked 8 times on target, does arcane damage and cannot fall below 5 stacks unless dispelled.

Shred= also applies RIP to the target

Ferocious Bite = Also applies “Claw of the eternal moon”

Tiger fury = Passive - Finishing moves Increases haste by 3% per combo point for 6 seconds. Max 5 stacks.

Berserk= Remove the extra combo points effect from the skill and make it function like the old adrenaline rush from rogues, on roids tho.

And there you go, an exploding arcane dot killing machine that would probably feel real nice to play.

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That sounds awesome, holy sht, my lord… I beg. I vote for Deusvult for Feral designer please. The general design adresses most of my issues, you did it. Obviously the tuning is one thing but in general it’s asstounding what you were able to achieve in mere moments of coming up with a design that the actual designers couldn’t in years.

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it no longer a bite spam spec

its a bleed spec, from what ive heard from other ferals you would play it similar to a Sin rogue, Bites only when they are fully in a bleed as a spender

in pvp most feral i play against just bleed and sit in bear form kiting

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Unfortunately I am unaware of how feral plays in pvp, but in m+ and raid you dot up the pack with rake,thrash and rip ideally, then use bite or ravage as a aoe until the bleeds are almost off cooldown and then rinse and repeat with a few exceptions like feral frenzy.

But that’s the issue with feral, it’s not a full bleed spec or a burst dps spec, it’s this weird hybrid that atleast for me, leaves me unsatisfied in either aspects but somehow things are happening on the meter so it won’tget changed.

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Appreciate the fact that you like the idea, maybe one day ill start my own gaming company and put some of them to good use :sweat_smile:

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when i played feral in SL , that was the most fun spec i ever played
i was necro so i had necro swarm and i would just bleed and swarm

then in DF it was a bite god, i hated that version.

not played it in TWW, but if its both like a hybrid , i can imagine it would be annoying