Shifting Perspectives: State of the class, part 2 - Feral
by Allison Robert 
Nov 6th 2008 at 10:30AM
Our assessment of new and altered talents and abilities for feral can be found here.
LOLBARETANK: My main is generally specced PvE feral, mostly for the purpose of tanking in 25-man raids, and I've been really happy with the changes made to bears. Going into patch 3.02, if I had to describe our biggest problems, they'd be:
- 1). We really only scaled with respec to stacking stamina and agility past the armor cap. More stamina was always nice, but a high dodge rate in conjunction with high armor was an unpleasant recipe for constant rage starvation (unless you were tanking something like Brutallus, in which case your rage bar hit 0 only after you died or he did).
- 2). AoE threat was pretty weak. I used to have a small, bitter chuckle when DPS protested that Swipe would be sufficient to hold aggro in the event that they developed a hankering to AoE two seconds into a pull. One word: Hyjal.
- 3). The constant, maddening problem of staying defense-capped in PvE gear. Many Druids resented having to PvP for gear that would enable them to stay crit-immune versus level 73 raid mobs. There was no +defense on leather of any kind past the Heavy Clefthoof set, we had to walk 15 miles through driving snow to get it made, and once we got it we had to share it with other bears. Those were bleak times, children, very bleak times indeed.
Where my bears at?: Very happily, all three issues have been dealt with. #1 is always going to be a quirk to some extent as we don't scale with nonexistent +parry or +block, but Natural Reaction -- and the increased damage done by bear tanks -- has gone a long way toward addressing the rage starvation issue. Swipe's increased damage and the abandonment of its target limit has made AoE tanking a joy rather than an absolute nightmare. And Survival of the Fittest now provides 6% crit reduction (you need 5.6% to be crit-immune to mobs three levels higher than you, which is what you'll face in raids), which is a blessed, blessed relief from the hell of pulling out a calculator each time you wanted to replace a piece of +defense gear. While most bears probably lost about 10K armor in the transition to patch 3.02, and it was a bitter pill at the time, it's unlikely to have had measurable impact on your 5-mans or raiding. With the damage and HP of raid mobs now considerably lower, you probably won't notice the difference, especially if you're 3/3 Protector of the Pack and in a full group. With that said, mob damage and HP exist in thoroughly un-nerfed form at 80.
Armor, armor, everywhere: Blizzard is eliminating bonus armor contribution from cloaks, rings, and trinkets while expressly stating that our armor will somehow be altered to remain the same regardless. A commenter on EJ notes that at the Naxxramas-25 level this is a loss of 15,800 armor from the rings, cloaks, and trinkets that bears are most likely to want. This won't ship with Wrath, so we're still not sure exactly what armor you can reasonably expect to have at 80. As John writes, they're going to have to be pretty careful with how they fix this, because any increase to Dire Bear's armor modifier will wind up affecting all specs in PvP. But it will have to be fixed in some capacity unless Dire Bear's modifier (as John calculates) is bumped all the way to an astronomical 690%, which is what we'd need to make up for the armor loss; bears cannot tank without the armor to compensate for our relatively poor avoidance.
Is a 690% armor modifier going to fly for resto and balance PvP? Doubtful. Most commenters have concluded that a feral talent change will likely accomplish this. In general I think the change will ultimately be for the better as it indirectly addresses another ongoing feral itemization headache. Without this change going live, I 100% guarantee that bears in progression-oriented raiding guilds would still be rocking Badge of Tenacity heading into Naxxramas.
And that, my friends, is what we call game balance.
And yet there's a slap in the face: Why is there no "Boing!" sound programmed to accompany Feral Charge-Cat?
Faster, pussycat!: Cat damage has improved, but not extraordinarily so in comparison to other raid DPS specs. The single biggest increase to your damage is going to arrive with Savage Roar at level 75, at which point you will finally start scaling more in line with other DPS specs. As many have observed, it's essentially a version of a Rogue's Slice and Dice, although more Druid-specific; the +40% AP benefit from Savage Roar is significantly better for us than the +30% attack speed from Slice and Dice would be. Most of our damage in cat form is, and will continue to be, from yellow attacks affected only by energy gains and not by attack speed. As any Rogue will tell you, once this buff is up, you should never allow it to drop. This means your DPS may suffer relative to casters on high-mobility or multiphase fights (e.g. Illidan, Kael'thas), but assuming a 5-CP Savage Roar, you've got 34 seconds to get another one up.
Abandon hope all ye who enter Ruins of Lordaeron: Feral needed....help. I'm the latest in a long line of people to observe that melee DPS without a Mortal Strike effect and/or a Rogue's endless bag of tricks -- feral Druids, retribution Paladins, and enhancement Shamans -- have traditionally had a hard time in arena. Feral's great strength is speed and resistance to snare that gives us an advantage over other melee...at least until the mana runs dry (more on this in a moment). Feral has, however, gained Infected Wounds, which is going to be particularly effective versus double-DPS teams in 2's. We've also gained a significant source of additional burst in Rend and Tear, Berserk, and King of the Jungle. This may result in more popularity for Feral/Rogue partnerships, especially as the IW debuff is applied automatically on skills (Mangle, Maul, and Shred) you'll be using anyway. Otherwise, the somewhat unorthodox but often successful technique in 5's of baiting focus fire while in bear form is likely to stick around.
I can has pwnage?: Has feral gained enough damage and burst potential to make them more viable in arena? And is that really the cornerstone of their PvP success anyway? The few high-end feral arena stars I've seen tend to spend a great deal of time out of forms Cycloning, healing, and rooting, but Season 5 feral gear currently lacks int, mp5, and spellpower. Feral mana regeneration, especially in rogue gear, is heavily dependent on the new version of Improved Leader of the Pack, which requires you to be in bear or cat form, and also requires regular crits (less likely against well-geared opponents).So I look at feral in arena as heading toward one of two possible fates, absent any changes to the spec or its gear (which is, I think, unlikely as Blizzard is still tinkering with a number of things). Either they've gained enough damage and burst at 80 to justify spending more time in forms, deemphasizing their caster form CC and heals, or their mana efficiency at 80 may very well turn out to be a problem. I think it was Ghostcrawler who stated recently that developers were actually concerned that feral mana efficiency was too strong (we can't be mana drained or burned in forms, and no one can dispel or interrupt the ILotP proc on health or mana), which I actually see as confirmation that they expect and want ferals to do better in arena. Either way, they're aware of the issue, and plans are in place to add reduced shifting cost to a deep feral talent.
Bear (har!) in mind that this is just for arena; feral has generally been stronger in battleground and world PvP, and I expect that to continue.
Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
n00bkas Nov 6th 2008 11:14AM
I'm pretty glad in my druid atm ;))
Fattybear Nov 6th 2008 3:18PM
Damn, and I went out and bought a Badge of Tenacity yesterday to make up for my T4 1400 armour bonus and 11k armour loss :(
Stealthfire Nov 6th 2008 5:05PM
While I highly, highly doubt that they'd ever do it...it would be interesting if we got a feral talent that allowed us to wear mail. We'd use hunter/enhanc gear, which generally has some int on it. It would give us all the armor and mana we needed. Of course, that would leave rogues as the only class using melee leather, and hunters/shaman/druid all using mail. And mail just doesn't feel druidy, ya know? So yeah, chance of this ever happening is next to nothing.
I love my badge...but I really, REALLY do not want to be wearing it into naxx. I get enough grief as it is. "Lol stelath u still using that blue?"
Zep Nov 6th 2008 7:15PM
What about a talent, such as what most other classes have, that converts one stat into another? Say, strength (which currently is overshadowed by agility) into intellect, at maybe 5%.
Rage Nov 7th 2008 9:11AM
Now that we can so call main tank how come we don't have spell reflect?
And can we please apply infecting wounds with swipe???
Rage Nov 7th 2008 10:55AM
OK, here is a question I have long wondered.
How come a Resto Druid or Ballance Druid can use Bear and Cat form while Feral Druids can't use Tree or Moonkin forms?
I'm not for locking down furry forms to just Feral but why do Feral's get punished?
Ballance can't use tree and Resto can't use Moonkin but they both have 3 forms they can use while Feral is stuck with 2 forms. It would be nice if all druids had access to every form but had to spec to get full benefits of forms. Honestly I don't care about that all I'm really after is Feral Druids should look different than a resto or ballance druids in cat and bear forms. We should be bigger and more intimidating.
I’m very interested to see how other druids feel about this so please reply!
Ymihere00 Dec 16th 2008 2:40PM
Agree Here Here!
Kibb Nov 20th 2008 7:50PM
I think ferals shouldn't get tree/moonkin because they enhance things that they are not specced into, but as a tree druid you need cat from because it is your melee dps ability, and you need bear because it is your melee tanking ability.
baisically, ferals don't need forms to enhance their healing/spell damage, but a resto druid has cat form because it doesnt enhance his melee dps, it is his melee dps ability.
ok i didn't explain that very well.
Hopefully this will make sense.
Ketorin Nov 11th 2008 11:28AM
I agree, Rage makes a good point because it would look better for a feral druid to be bigger and more intimidating... and it would be nice if we had another form, perhaps even different than the tree or moonkin.
Bearitall Nov 14th 2008 6:03PM
Hi guys, would any of you care to share a good PvE lvl 70ish tanking (and workable leveling) build that seems to be working well for you thus far in WotLK? Been gone for a few months and struggling to come up with a suitable build. Would appreciate it immensely.