yes! i'm a big fan of this as well.
Toward the beginning of BFA I had to talk a couple groups into taking me as a feral and then did the most dps in the dungeon. It’s not because I’m a great player I think it’s just that people sometimes overestimate the dps difference even when a spec isn’t doing that great. It’s not going to be that big of a deal until you get to very highly competitive gameplay. Also there are many ferals doing very well in high key dungeons right now. With these changes I think it seems like it could be even better. People are correct Blizzard has mistreated feral for while. I’m happy we are at least starting to see some positive changes.
YEP trial YEP world 68 xD
So I've been playing a feral DPS since WOTLK, and have never had a problem earning a spot in raiding or high-level M+ keys. Playing a feral well is more difficult than many other specs and I think that has diminished the perception that feral has in the eyes of players. I've been told on many occasions that I've changed a players' mind on feral DPS... It's unfortunate that the perception is what it is. To get a spot as a feral DPS you need to be exceptionally good at your spec... whereas other specs can get away with less. As for Shadowlands... I am disheartened to see that Kyrian is looking like it will be the default choice for a feral DPS that wants to be optimal. The covenant ability, obviously modeled after symbiosis, completely missed the mark as to why symbiosis was fun. For one, symbiosis wasn't being touted as a big DPS cooldown. The fun part of symbiosis was having access to other class abilities and figuring out which ones would be most beneficial for given encounters. Having a covenant ability be a boring version of symbiosis is very frustrating, especially when you compare it to other covenant abilities... This might just be me but I am also not a fan of my new DPS cooldown being something that increases another players overall DPS. When I press my DPS cooldown I want the benefit to be for me.
Feral hasn't been good in a while over the expansions, it has been viable for the most part but plagued by awful mechanics, namely too many things to juggle for basically no reward. They haven't really fixed any of those issues either, they just ironically reincarnate every single expansion because no one wants to sit down and actually fix the class. Which I can't really blame Blizzard for, cat players really love what they love and will play it even if it's awful usually; style over substance. But I don't see Shadowlands as particularly special or notable for improving the class at all either.I'm no fan of the new Bloodtalons just as much as I didn't like snapshotting of the previous version or even worse, that it was tied to our survivability in Regrowth. It feels really forced, like they want you to rapid fire attacks and refreshes but it just doesn't feel good to do. It feels more like you're just gaming the system to get your proc. I still stand by the idea Bloodtalons really just should be a button that you, the druid, control in the same vein as Tiger's Fury. But then that's just another button to control for no real reason other than to combo it into finishing moves so there's got to be a better solution that isn't "do stuff to force a proc" and "hit (another) button". Even with Battle for Azeroth buffing Mastery: Razor Claws our bleeds just kind of tickle things anyway, Bloodtalons or not. Ferocious Bite feels great with it now, the critical hits are nice and big. But the important bleeds also still feel way too slow on their ticks, really Circle of Life and Death feels like it would be better as a talent in the place of Bloodtalons and honestly, back when it was a talent and not a legendary effect, it felt good.Sabertooth isn't exciting but it makes everything less tedious too and with the nerf, they should just make its refresh mechanic baseline like the energy restoring effect of Soul of the Forest. These are basically non-optional anyway and way, way more interesting things like Predator and Lunar Inspiration might finally really find a home if they knocked out the super boring basic throughput stuff that in virtually every case is almost always superior. If they want to "switch it up" (actually just do what we know works) and make Feral more exciting, make Feral Frenzy and Savage Roar more the focus.As a Feral druid, I'm not super stoked about Shadowlands, it just seems like another expansion where we exist and don't get many fixes. Battle for Azeroth felt like nerf after nerf to us and a few little "fixes" sprinkled in like bandaids on a deep wound. Legion wasn't how Feral classically played at all but it wasn't a bad spot for us. And no, I don't want a full overhaul of the spec, Blizzard just needs to sit down and focus on what made it good and fun, get rid of a ton of the extra auxiliary complexity baseline and added interactions of talents, and make it not tedious. As of right now, there's no real reward for being good at being a cat and juggling as much as we do.I hope someone comes along and gives us the fixes we really need and just tosses a lot of the stuff that's just piled up and only been poked at with tweaks each expansion and hopefully that will come this expansion in the first major patch for it.
The change to blood talons and Sabertooth sucks hard, and snapshotting it still an outdated relic that hinders anything that isnt a Patchwerk-like boss. This spec is now twice as complicated, with no payoff. Who's the genius that came up with these terrible changes?
Thanks for all the passion you put into this article. Big up.