#0 - Feb. 27, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
The PVE sustained dps changes preliminarily look very promising and first I'd like to thank you on behalf of the PVE feral community for working towards a much needed balancing solution. Since the best time to address concerns/implement changes is in the development phase particularly before a major content patch, I wanted to take the opportunity to address an additional question I haven't heard anyone from Blizzard specifically address and would love to clarify once and for all where Blizz stands on it.
With all the changes in the works, has the removal of the positional restriction on shred been discussed/debated amongst the devs and if it has (or hasn't) been when feral concerns have been discussed, what is Blizzard's stance on the matter? Do you feel it's fine as it is or might it merit revision?
There is a precedent with a comparable class (rogue) having an ability like Mutilate for example tweaked to have this cumbersome positional restriction removed. It seems like a reasonable thing to consider for feral as well given the numerous parallels between these two classes.
Note to anyone chiming in on this topic, I am NOT advocating running around continually facing a boss and getting parries all day (e.g. being lazy or plain bad). However, on movement intensive encounters (3 drake sarth), encounters where you cannot get behind a boss (Thaddeus), our encounters where the boss continually flips around to 'spit' something on someone in the raid (countless) not having the option to shred without positional restriction can be detrimental to maintaining a dps cycle and lifting the "must be behind target" restriction would go a very long way towards making feral dpsing more bearable (catable? :P) but not more simplistic.
It additionally would have effective usage in PVP, but since I don't PVP on this char I won't presume chime in on that except to say that all anyone has to do to avoid a feral's main attack in pvp is simply strafe/move :P. On the PVE side of things that I am really addressing, I love the current state of the dps "rotation" and find it continually engaging and fun to maintain and don't think it merits being "simplified" (in a more traditional sense of removing buttons to push) at this time.
I do think however, that instead of "simplifying the rotation" as many have suggested/requested that perhaps this seemingly minor change to our primary attack would make things easier without needlessly dumbing things down and making things stale. If a feral chose to be in front of the target more than was necessary, their dps would suffer due to avoidable parries, but otherwise on fights where it's unavoidable the demands of playing a melee class would suddenly be much more forgiving.
In short, does Blizz think that the Shred positional restriction is:
A. Fine (and if so, why?)
B. "Maybe" is worth looking into
C. Antiquated and definitely needs to be removed
D. Not necessarily antiquated but still merits removal due to the PVP nerf to the glyph of shred and the nerf to Maim as it's no longer a needed/desirable means of balancing feral burst
And no matter what the official stance is any sort of clarification into the reasoning behind it, whatever it may be would be tremendously appreciated and insightful. All that most ever want is to not feel like they are in the dark on things they care about.
Thanks as always for your hard work and any response is greatly appreciated!
Edit: Added a new question based on this thread's feedback.
