"Sorry, but no. I drastically prefer Sabertooth to wasting combo points to maintain a dot. Especially because it was damn near mandatory to do 5 point rips to get reliable bloodtalon procs.Dots are boring, especial Feral Dots, ESPECIALLY RIP that doesn't interact with anything but bloodtalons and exists entirely as a DPS tax on a feral druid.If Rip had a shorter duration, MUCH higher damage and didn't just work exactly as a Tax that will forever make Feral Druids ass on short encounters, then you'd have an argument." (sorry, new to posting and not sure how to properly quote another post)I completely agree. I've mained Feral for years and I've always personally felt that building a ferocious cat fantasy around long-term sustained dot damage feels ridiculous, let alone how boring it is to spend all your energy and combo points on maintenance dots. I don't mind having dots to maintain, but I very much like the option to have them be, like they are in many other of the game's specs, a smallish percentage of your rotation and your output. I like that I have the option to stack haste and crit, pick up Moment of Clarity and Sabertooth, and I both put out great numbers *and* feel like a ferocious predator by pouncing with Bite and getting that great animation. I'm not saying that the class needs to absolutely be only my way to play or only the more dot focused one, but I do wish people making these articles would recognize that there are multiple ways to play this spec. I mean, when simming, every single time for almost the entire expansion, MoC simmed significantly higher than Sabertooth, and yet every single guide suggests it's the only valid talent choice to make. This article does make a good point in that Sabertooth and Bloodtalons do seem to provide contradictory playstyles, and that Sabertooth is very strong on single target (although Predator is also incredibly strong on multi-target adds). I wish that, instead of nerfing or removing Sabertooth, the devs would make the talent choices surrounding it more about dot/direct playstyle rather than ST/AoE. This seems more in line with what Bliz has said they intend with the talent system in the first place; instead of providing the choice to be relevant or not in specific content like Mythic+ vs Raids, Bliz should tailor the talent trees to provide player choice in how they want to play their class. Maybe if Lunar Inspiration or Predator was replaced with something that, as the above poster mentioned, empowered Rips damage (maybe by multiplying damage when other bleeds are active) and shortened its duration, it would allow both the plate spinners like this article's author and spammier, high energy, direct-damage dealers like myself some satisfaction.
I was very sadly feral was suck dps. I don't person play bala spec.Love feral and thier skins.But, I try read this. Will better in SL? I hoped...
I'm still not sure why they won't just give us Leader of the Pack back, it was our defining ability in BC, and having it ONLY as a PvP talent seems rather lackluster. To me LoTP should be a baseline ability that only the feral side of the Feral / Gaurdian tree carries. I wish blizzard would spend some time and go back to the old Cata / WoTLK / BC / Vanilla trees and take a harder look at those to pull out some things to better distinguish ferals. Maybe give us mangle back and don't let bear Mangle do the bleed % improvement. The point should be that there should be a point for bringing a feral druid instead of just having a guardian tank and right now there just isn't one. Our utility is garbo, and the community outlook on feral is "Why are you not a boomkin?". I get that resto is in a good spot and so Blizzard is happy that at least one of our specs is working, it just sucks as a feral dps to know that if I don't have my own key, my chances of getting in on others is lower simply because I chose the melee DPS spec.
Don't hunters have pets that bring this: https://www.cuckhead.com/battle-for-azeroth-hunter-pet-guide#hunter-pet-family-list-ferocity ? That seems like more utility in the pet alone then the whole of Feral druid
You forgot Netherwalk on DH. Thats an immunity.
Ferocious Bite is unironically more iconic than Rip. Rip is literally Rupture but for Cats, but Ferocious Bite has always been unique for Feral druid.then you could also say that Dash and sprint is literally the same, shred and backstab. Bite and eviscerate is following the same idea, a finishing move that does high dmg, the only difference is bite dmg get higher if you double the energy cost. so I wouldn't say that ferocious bite is that uniqueand Rip not interacting with stuffs? it snapshots, Tiger's fury and Bloodtalons, and used to snapshot SR too, the idea about ferals bleed is snapshotting and playing around it, or else they would have removed it a really long time ago when they remove snapshotting from everyone else.personally I was enjoying playing the spinning plate build more than current build, since I'm feeling great when my rotation good and manage to keep the plates spinning, the current build is just for me like a DH or a other melee spec that just button mash 2 buttons, I don't find it enjoyable to just mesh shred and bite 80% for the time, and every 11-15 sec refresh rake, that is just plain simple.imo, energy pooling and Pandemic and snapshotting is what makes feral unique from the other melee specs. taking a talents that remove those mechanics on one of your core ability, and even remove your a core ability from your rotation, and just the facts that energy pooling is pretty much nothing anymore because we have so much energy all the time, that is ruining Feral's unique traits
Was hoping this would help me choose a main - I guess it did to a point just away from the direction I was going to. Sad the cooler looking covenant abilities arent the best.
Feral druids are "clunky" and still not great / not well designed compared to what they should be. I've played one as an offspec for my resto druid most of expansion and am probably dropping it just to use resto-kittie now that they have added spells.WTB ability to make them awesome/fun.
Thanks for putting this together, and for addressing the problem with sabertooth :)
Thanks for the post but I thought this was coming from Blizz in hopes of more Feral changes/updates. Been nothing now for awhile and we have some pretty big issues. Namely "Why Bring a Feral" to answer. We are complicated dps for avrgerage results. We could easily pick up a Rogue and be more desired. Or DH :P So here is my hope to see more changes comes down from Blizz. More Blue posts plz. We can all talk till we are blue in the face about dreams, hopes, wants, and fixes but until the powers that be address them, we just wait. Still forever that meme spec, always left out cause we bring no utility that isn't covered by some other spec/class.TDRL: Why Bring A Feral?
So not only does this article understate the utility of other specs (for example ret will also have sac, bop, auras; or enhance getting windfury etc), but it completely fails to address the real competition: why would you bring a feral over a Balance druid? You did touch on the stamp roar and innervate stuff, but you really failed to mention this, even when discussing minimal-melee raid comps. You also totally failed to address mythic+, seriously you didn’t write a single thing about dungeons? One of the most prominent forms of content in the game, where Feral has been lacking.Mythic+ is where Balance druid pulls ahead in every possible way, even moreso in SL. Vortex+typhoon combo (we only get one, on top of roar they also got typhoon baseline through the new affinity system while we got… maim, which we already had; so balance already starts off with a free ability, before even counting stamp roar), on top of what they already had over feral: treants and ofc innervate. We could also look to Resto as a much better mythic+ druid spec, in which they can do everything we do and so much more (this is true for raids as well); an ideal mythic+ comp would only ever want 1 druid, so why would anyone bring a Feral? It’s true Feral might be considered at least average in terms of mythic+ utility, but underwhelming compared to Bal/Rest, and then you have classes like Rogue who have such a game-changing ability that they’ve almost been mandatory all xpac.Article is also missing Ferals awful rebirth, in which not only do we lose form to cast it (unlike Balance), but we are also in melee range meaning if a tank dies we can easily die before even being able to cast it. This I can understand leaving out of the article, but given how much attention it has received on the forums and discord, I think it deserved an inclusion, especially considering this platform you've been given to represent us. This form loss on casts also extends to Cyclone, which while a more niche ability in PVE, still favours Balance yet again due to Balance not having to use a global to reenter form. Also regarding defensives, out of countless opinions and discussion across disc/forums, you are the first person to prefer the Barkskin inclusion. You like the smaller defensive frequently, but you do realise 2 charges of SI @ 2 minutes gave a large defensive frequently? I’m actually baffled by this, Barkskin is considerably weak, we could survive almost any mechanic every minute, but now we can only do it once every 3 mins. I genuinely have not seen anyone with the same sentiment regarding this as you, I’m quite shocked but that’s your opinion I guess.I’m happy you put emphasis into the Sabertooth issue, this is simply the biggest gameplay issue, even moreso than BT changes imo, but again article barely touches on utility and doesn’t touch on mythic+, failed to do Feral's situation justice here.Melee raid spots are tight, and mythic+ spots are even more competitive. Balance pulls ahead in so many ways in SL (if we ignore tuning), while the other druid specs also cover everything Feral ever possibly could, and most melee provide something unique and valuable which Feral does not.