We are talking about 2 situations that are identical except for an added button that serves the same purpose of an existing one. If yours is fun, then mine is too. The depth of the spec comes from keeping dots up and managing whether you do Rip or FB next and managing Tiger’s Fury.
I just want a solid base for the spec. I don’t think we should have to choose PW f.ex, it should just always be in our toolkit. Moonfire is an ability that I think works well as something to opt into or out of. To me it seems you want things to be clunkier and less rounded for the sake of having talent builds that are specialized even to the point of basic dmg abilities. I don’t like that design and I think it is the wrong way to go. My design philosophy wouldn’t prevent having burst AoE in some form, it would make sure that you don’t have a build where you don’t have an AoE-button and one where you do. And also make sure that there aren’t many abilities doing the same thing.
While we appearantly, unbeliebably, don’t agree that BT is an abomination (which it is) we do agree on a lot, but we play a different game. BT is impossible to use in PvP. No matter how you change it will always feel like a waterslide made of broken glass. BT makes it so Rip and FB will always be terrible without it and that goes further since we also have TF so a non-TF Rip or FB will be painful not to the enemy, but to me seeing the number.
Brutal Slash also has issues such as breaking CC. We both think the fix is to buff Shred so we don’t need BS in single-target. Why not also have a decent Swipe so we don’t need BS at all?
I don’t care about burst AoE because I don’t ever need it. If it really is that important for M+ gamemode, then I think every spec should have it in some capacity, but I’m not an advocate for something I don’t know. My idea of getting burst AoE would be to get it through a CD. So delete Bloodtalons and replace it with Sickle of The Lion in the choice node with Feral Frenzy, with Sickle of the Lion being a separate ability with a reasonable CD, f.ex 30 second, 45 seconds or 1 minute, but 1 minute is too long or at least approaching too long for dungeoneering. So then you don’t have to have such a massive amount of regular damage buttons.
Why do I make the distinction between basic dmg buttons and cooldowns? Because basic dmg buttons need to be pressed consistently and during movement while paying attention to other players trying to kill you, whether that is an enemy in the arena or Billybob Hunterson not doing his mechanics. They need to be easy to press, whereas cooldown you use far less often don’t have to be as comfortable to press. Bloat in basic dmg abilities is the worst bloat.
Sorry for the wall and sorry for less than optimal coherency, I just have a lot of different thoughts
And this is the heart of the problem. We’re coming from totally different places, and while I accept that the things you need (as predominantly a pvp player) should be included in the tree, and strong pvp builds should be available, you have been dismissive of the needs of M+ players like myself. You’ve told me repeatedly that feral doesn’t actually need the things that I know it needs to make it perform properly in mythic plus, and I honestly don’t think there’s point in us discussing this any further.
If the devs actually do something to the feral tree (rather than simply letting the spec decay to the point where so few people are playing it that the community will barely notice if they delete it, which is something I wonder about), I hold out some hope that improvements will be with M+ in mind since that seems to be the most popular content at the moment.
I have NOT. I don’t play M+ so all I said was that I am not, usually, talking about fixes to M+. Normally I am talking about abilities that are problematic for our spec and general design philosophy or specific PvP needs. I do want feral to be fixed in PvE and especially dungeons - because even a regular dungeon is painful with our current base toolkit.
The discussion is perhaps muddied by me bringing in more issues at once by rambling. I was originally curious about you wanting Brutal Slash on top of Swipe because that is the weirdest, least fun and most annoying fix to anything ever. It serves the same function as both Swipe and Shred in a strange, frustrating and unfun way. I think we can have the base toolkit I described earlier and then expand on that in our talents - choosing to enhance our AoE-power or something else or a little bit of this and that. With the baseline toolkit I described feral would be functional without talents and then there is good room for talents to add to the spec in a way that we can fix our issues and do so without adding multiples of our regular dmg abilities. I think having more basic dmg abilities is not a good thing, we have plenty already.
If burst-AoE is necessary to perform in high M+ I am happy to say that every spec needs some sort of it, or to be absurdly useful in a different way to make up for their lack of burst AoE. I am talking about general design philosophy. Again, not dismissive of the need, but the idea of having Brutal Slash. I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem that some specs perform worse in different scenarios than others as long as they can be effective in EVERY game mode.
I think we disagree on the existence of Bloodtalons and on the inclusion of Brutal Slash / amount of ‘basic’ dmg abilities that makes sense to have. Then I want PW baseline while you are fine with an “incomplete” baseline toolkit. Except for Bloodtalons I think our ideas of feral are quite compatible.
I can’t continue a conversation with someone who says something and then denies that they said it.
I expected feral to be gone by the beginning of DF, to be honest, and yet they’ve thrown together a pretence of a talent tree for it. That has me confused, and uncertain of whether they intend to delete the spec or not.
Anyone else noticed how multiple specs getting blue posts after blue posts?
Feral hasn’t received any depiste tons of feedback.
Anyways, i don’t like BrS, it needs to go or not replace swipe and moved on the edge of the tree. There’s really no need for another builder if you can buff swipe/thrash.
Sudden Ambush is another one i have problem with, 3 points is too much, especially if I had choice i wouldn’t take this talent.
Berserker split into 3 talents, each in different placement in the tree. Stupid.
Instead of conduit powers bring back Fangs of Ashamane traits like Shadow Thrash, Ashamane Bite, Fury of Ashamane. There is a reason why ferals did so well in Legion and had intersting play.
Feral has basically one build that works, that everyone figured out in like a week after the talents released, that people like skillcapped have now posted a video about. Because it’s essentially the exact same build we play in SL.
Why even give feral a talent tree if one, the talent tree basically doesn’t have any connections whatsoever, and two, you put effectively mandatory effects like bt/ff and sotf at the end of both STRAIGHT LINES.
People say the holy tree is bad, mages are bad, but ferals literally don’t even get to choose, there is one single build that works and it seems like blizzard wanted all ferals to do that exact same build since they didn’t even bother making any connections in the tree at all.
We also just get less than other specs because of all the filler talents. While other people get to spend points in different passives and active abilities we spend 3 points in a worthless passive (Sudden Ambush) and we are forced to take Brutal Slash (which replaces Swipe…) and we spend 2 points each for “Improved Prowl” and “Improved Bleeds” that are also previously baseline effects that don’t even matter all that much. We get to spend 3 point to make TF give us 30 more energy, while other classes have far more powerful effects for only 1 point throughout their trees
Edit: Actually “Improved Prowl” is very big for the stun effect, but it’s not so big that it should be 2 points
Because with the new talent tree you can pick up both Draught and Circle which is such a big damage increase it’s mandatory for PvP and for raid bosses, i guess m+ is a different story but it’s just too big to ignore
And the left side of the tree is set in stone forever since Bloodtalons and Frenzy are literally mandatory talents
It would be a massive disappointment (such a big disappointment that I don’t have a word big enough to express it) when we have other spec trees to compare to, but I would live with it if they just fixed the problem of brutal slash replacing swipe. At least I could make something similar to the build I play at the moment. If it stays as it is… I can’t see any choice but to play something else. Whether that’s a different class or a different game, I’m still not sure.
I would take convoke rather than incarn because incarn, as it stands, is a wasted point, and it doesn’t compete in any way with convoke, but that would be workable, yes.
However, it’s still a very long way from the talent trees that are actually good, and we deserve a lot better.
