#1 - May 4, 2018, 1:54 p.m.
Feral Druid feedback- BFA
Feral seems to be little changed from the baseline Feral in legion other than in a few areas, It’s little secret that my preference for Feral is oriented more towards the slower bleed focused playstyle of early legion and latter expansions so bear in mind my feedback will be coloured by this.
Talent Layout
A recent dev watercooler introduced an interesting idea, that talent rows which are choices between AOE and ST aren’t good design.
I agree with this, it’s not particularly interesting as it makes talent rows very binary. This is something the current Feral talent tree suffers from (Brutal Slash and Predator as the biggest culprits).
Having talked about this with other respected members of dreamgrove we have a proposed idea for a new set up talent tree (Big credit to Xanzara). We assumed blizzard wanted to keep a passive in each row so it’s set up that someone can choose an almost entirely passive set of talents or a set where almost every talent gives an extra ability. Obviously this is just something some people discussed and put together but it would be interesting to see blizzards take on it. It really is something that i think would improve the specs talent options and it would be interesting to see more discussion about this.
https://i.imgur.com/nSd8RXn.png
Underperforming talents
Tiger’s Dash and Renewal are the talents here that I think would most be considered underperforming.
I can’t think of any fight this expansion where renewal was a good choice and it really doesn’t make sense on the row its on, It is the only healing talent competing on a row of mobility talents. With the changes to Regrowth it isn’t even a comparatively strong healing option, It is approximately twice as strong as an average regrowth on a 90 second cd. This talent existed through legion and stayed underwhelming. I’d like to see this changed or replaced.
Tiger’s dash is a new addition for legion replacing displacer beast, it replaces dash. As it is at the moment it appears to be strictly worse than Wild Charge. The ability itself is ok though a little weak but the opportunity cost for taking the talent is enormous as it replaces dash and also means you miss out on Wild Charge. It makes no sense that the talent is on a 45 second cd compared to the 15s cd of Wild Charge while also meaning you no longer have dash as baseline. Feral mobility is a luxury, unlike many classes we have extremely high base move speed, tiger’s dash just doesn’t seem like a good option in a world with Wild Charge. I like the talent but it needs a buff
Boring Talents
Blood scent might be the most boring talent ever created. For all intents and purposes it is a talent that gives you 10% crit. And that’s it. It’s extremely boring and hopefully it can be changed or replaced. We’ve seen other classes get legendaries baked in as talents, potentially behemoth could fit in blood scent’s place? It remains a passive but makes the talent not criminally boring!
Sabertooth is another example of a boring talent, while the talent is semi interesting in cleave scenarios in single target it is a talent that actively removes thought from your rotation. This talent existed throughout the entirety of legion as a new addition and outside of PvP has seen almost no use. It’s not a strong talent and its not an interesting or enjoyable talent.
Incarnation, this is entirely my own personal opinion, but incarnation is an extremely boring talent for Ferals. There are a few reasons I think this, to start with I believe that overly focusing throughput into long CD abilities that have a big impact on damage (which incarnation certainly does) makes the rotation outside of the cds far more boring as it becomes less impactful. Incarnation in particular doesn’t make you play differently, it just becomes 30s of spamming.