I mained feral druid all bfa and this spec has been garbage in the release and after a very discreet adjustments now its just bad, bad in everything, pve or pvp.
In pvp 2v2 and 3v3 ladders the first ferals u see are on the positions 97 or 96, because feral just doesen’t shine in anything.
In mythic + i just can’t do mythics above +8 with 432 ilvl because im a feral and nobody will invite me for that. “are you feral?” is what i get asked and when i say “yes” i see the decline notification on the chat…
And no, i won’t re-spec i really like this one and i enjoy a lot but it’s really frustrating seeing how every patch feral is IGNORED, they know the performance of the spec is extremely disappointing yet blizzard won’t give the slightest change to the spec.
Tried a Paladin in pvp and i wanted to cry when i saw how absulrdly easy it was to play in comparison and how i made the double of damage and utility with half the effort…
I agree feral has something off. After super fast gameplay feral had in legion I wanted to main one. And oh alas, 1st the energy regen was like watching paint dry and now while I might do some damage, it feels like slow-motion scenes from Matrix compared to fast-turbo gameplay of Legion.
Have you tried joining those communities that people advertise here ? I have heard those seem to be relatively easy going with what people spec into and play as.
I think it is because blizzard doesnt know what to do with druid.
If they buff it it surpasses every other class.
If they nerf it they make it worthless.
Feral is very hard to get right.
Give it to much damage and it will one shot people(which a stealth class shoud but that doesnt mather to those on are on the recieving end)
Give it to little damage and you got current feral.
Think about it like this:
If feral was good how would pvp look:
Prowl>kill enemy>shadowmelt>repeat.
I mean night elf druids are even in there current state very strong.
And that is after blizzard nerfed them into the ground.
There getting the warlock threatment:
Nerf until broken then slowly rebuild and oeps we made it too strong again.
We just want the DH treatement - broken in all content . Rogue is strong in all content even so its a stealth class - pretty sure some feral buffs wouldnt be too hard to balance.
Well now you are comparing a whole class. If so, druid has been very good in every aspect aswell, restoration for m+ and balance for raiding. If we are talking specs, Subtlety is down there with feral in terms of how many plays it.
But i agree, feral needs a buff. But I’m afraid you have to wait for Shadowlands, same goes for Subtlety.
Legion feral was never super fast, it could be fast if you specced for it, but generally it was never the best option.
I think they should scap this whole slow gameplay in favor of a very fast one, i mean, you are a cat, you should be fast, you should be raking and shredding, and all that stuff, the first iteration of feral in legion was really bad, that’s what they need to avoid.
Make it so, dots give you a chance to do something with your spec.
Personally, i think any dot, that doesn’t have a mechanic attached to it, is a bad dot, every class with dots as a part of the rotation should have something to do with them, other than keeping them up because damage, either, they reset abilities, or they unlock an ability that needs a proc to use, anything, just do something with them.
This is a general suggestion, if you have dots, you should have some mechanic attached to it, other than just damage.
To fix feral they need strong bleeds in short time. In BFA bleed just tickles. Also remove savage roar etc - they don’t need too many things to keep up. Give them raw damage. Build up time for feral DPS is way high - also target switching also suffers feral DPS lot.
Or just remove core mechanic bleeds.
Even with 5 combo points ferocious bite don’t hit hard like templar verdict spells.
Blizzard always has had ‘special’ overpower on new classes in order to make them more popular and encourage people to reroll them. 1st Dks, then monks, now DH’s. It is tactical, it is not ‘random’ - it is actually intended. Although admitted Dks were killed off by mid Cataclysm. Dhs are still strong one expansion later.
Ferals do a substantial amount of damage. That’s not the problem with them. And ferals can do +18’s and more. I’ve done a +16, and I’m not particularly good at Feral in M+. I have no doubt that ferals are perfectly viable in M+.
The problem with Feral is that the spec has been hollowed out. This has been the case for ages.
Its main selling point used to be its versatility and its speed.
The speed selling point was undermined first by the monk, and then by the Demon Hunter. Ferals have thus lost that selling point.
The versatility was cut twice over. First they split feral and guardian and gutted the bear form aspect of feral, and then they made it easy to respec for everybody. Thus feral lost both of its unique value propositions.
Blizzard have thus far failed to provide an alternative niche to make up for this.
To make matters even worse, the last 6 raids, at least, have been very hostile to melee. Generally you want a ret/DK/Warr for the massive AoE, rogues to cheese mechanics, a monk (ideally that’s the tank or a healer) and a DH for the debuffs.
Any more melee than that is bad. Just plain bad.
Now, you can absolutely defeat virtually every encounter with more melee than this, including a feral, but it’s a lot harder and you know what the community is like… bunch of muppets going “If it ain’t easy to kill Mythic Azshara with this class then it doesn’t belong in my M+8 group, brah!”
Ferals are perfectly viable, but they’re not very good either. They need an identity again.
Feral used to be the hybrid type of class, now a mage heals himself more than a feral does. I think feral is just underwhelming in absolutely everything they have just because the other specs of druid were strong with that. Nerfed cyclone, nerfed powershifting, etc…
Feral is like enhancement, that spec that blizzard forgot that exists.
. Rogue is strong in all content even so its a stealth class - pretty sure some feral buffs wouldnt be too hard to balance.
