Feral Druid Development Notes for War Within Alpha Build #4 - Ferocious Bite & AoE

The War Within Posted 10 days ago by Jaydaa

We’ve been playtesting, and iterating, and reading your feedback about Feral.We hear that you’re sad to lose the combo of getting AOE value out of Ferocious Bites cast with Apex Predator, and we do want Apex Predator to be an appealing AOE talent. Since we also want to bring significance back to maximizing Tiger’s Fury windows, we’re also not happy with compelling you to overwrite Rips benefitting from Tiger’s Fury with Primal Wrath in AOE to deal damage with Tear Open Wounds. So we’re trying a different version of AOE gameplay by restoring Rampant Ferocity and removing Tear Open Wounds.This retains the rotational clarity that’s a priority for us - in AOE you’ll maintain Rips with Primal Fury and spend additional combo points and Apex Predator procs on Ferocious Bite. The bonus to Rip and Rake damage from Predator will remain single target, as we don’t want this to feel like a maintenance buff in AOE and would prefer to keep its role funneling damage into your priority target.One side effect of this change is that Ferocious Bite and Rampant Ferocity will become a higher percentage of your damage dealt in AOE. We know that part of feeling like a bleed-focused spec is seeing your bleeds being a big component of your damage dealt, and this change will reduce that. We’re still committed to bleeds and DoTs remaining a critical component of your gameplay and rotation.

The War Within Alpha

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Comment by islanddeac"We know that part of feeling like a bleed-focused spec is seeing your bleeds being a big component of your damage dealt, and this change will reduce that. We’re still committed to bleeds and DoTs remaining a critical component of your gameplay and rotation."

We know that you want X increased or maintained but we're going to reduce X. Hopefully by us throwing in the meaningless last sentence that is contradicted by the announced changes above it you'll be fooled and won't be as mean to us for doing the exact opposite of what you've asked for.Comment by NameRedacted"we know you want your bleeds to be a big part of your damage. So we're making your bleeds secondary to biting" most brain-dented thing ive ever readComment by nizgAm I having a stroke reading this?

You're pushing Bite spam into AOE rotation aswell on top of ST rotation.

But also you're "commited to bleed playstyle". This is direct contradiction. Bleeds are getting pushed into irrelevancy even further.Comment by MonkeyTrollI like this change, biting is fun. chomp chompComment by ShiromiHow fun: We know you like the bleed-playstyle, so we weaken the bleed-playstyle and we are buffing the bite-style (which also is less useful, because the range of RF in comparison to ToW is just pityful - but you are no retpaladin, you don't deserve the evoker-range as meele)!

But we know you love the bleed-style, so we will surely buff it ... promise ... just like BFA ... or SL ... or DF, after we gutted it with S1-"balance" ... we WILL buff it and make it useful ... trust us ... it is just alpha ...

/sComment by Acel"We know that part of feeling like a bleed-focused spec is seeing your bleeds being a big component of your damage dealt, and this change will reduce that. We’re still committed to bleeds and DoTs remaining a critical component of your gameplay and rotation."

We know that you want X increased or maintained but we're going to reduce X. Hopefully by us throwing in the meaningless last sentence that is contradicted by the announced changes above it you'll be fooled and won't be as mean to us for doing the exact opposite of what you've asked for.Comment by LenrisiaJust fire who ever is in charge of feral pleaseComment by Lunae067What the....?
Ferocious Bite was removed from Mastery, okay, we support bleed-style feral woohoo. Let's go Mastery-Haste, bye bye Crit.
Make AoE with Primal Wrath and Tear Open Wounds - both scaling with Mastery and Haste. Perfect.
Then, remove Tear Open Wounds and give back aoe Ferocious Bite which does not scale with mastery or haste so won't damage as much as now.

"The bonus to Rip and Rake damage from Predator will remain single target..."
Predator was changed to give extra direct damage (scaling with haste) to combo point GENERATING abilities. Rip is a SPENDER (and doesn't have direct damage)

Really... just wtf....Comment by zolphinus"We know that part of feeling like a bleed-focused spec is seeing your bleeds being a big component of your damage dealt, and this change will reduce that. We’re still committed to bleeds and DoTs remaining a critical component of your gameplay and rotation."

We know that you want X increased or maintained but we're going to reduce X. Hopefully by us throwing in the meaningless last sentence that is contradicted by the announced changes above it you'll be fooled and won't be as mean to us for doing the exact opposite of what you've asked for.Comment by Gaski"we know you want your bleeds to be a big part of your damage. So we're making your bleeds secondary to biting" most brain-dented thing ive ever readComment by the9tailBlizzard really needs to write down what rotation they expect Feral to do in each combat situation and decide how the damage profile should look between bleeds, filler and combo point spenders. Then stick to it.Comment by halsinThere is not much to chew on this much information. Like are we still getting slowed down in terms of energy since now we need to be biting in between each application of rip with pw. Is wildstalker still gonna be used in tandem with rake and rip ? because with these changes it just makes it less appealing than druid of the claw ! Are we getting new talents ? Is predator gonna be reworked again ?

You guys just gave us leftovers info and just expect people to go in your way. Give us more...Comment by VirealAfter we fixed Feral from SL with ToW, we give you less energy in TWW to make Bleeds better.
No now you feel like in SL where the only thing needed to make feral work at all would have been RF. but now you dont want it and we give you shadowlands with RF instead of a wel lrounded bleed spec.
can we skip the step and act like it happened in SL and didnt work instead of making it in 12.0 back to 10.0 standarts? cause i wont wait for 13.0 to get to the point Blizz teased us like 6.5 years prio to 13.0.......
Comeon. dont bully feral again. if feral and assa sucks i wont buy TWW. no other specs give me the joy they do. caster? slow and rooted. fury? hell no. outlaw? do i look like a consume meth?.... re-tar-din?
lord or devil please take my damned soul and save feral.Comment by dreadmarblesIt would be nice to have like a c4 bomb type of spell. A pulsating bleed that you can trigger at any point into a huge bleedout execute or something. That way you could have a bursty option when you have to move a way from your target due to mechanics. Because so far, Ret Paladin's new range just makes the spec way too dominant compared to other melee.Comment by SmubroSometimes you win....sometimes you loose...or you play feral and loose all the time - but hey, thats for sureComment by NaturalnaThank you for clarifying feral needs a complete rework and dedicated developer that plays druid class as whole (all 4 specs on regular basis) not like these "guide authors, stramers and theorycrafters" who play only 2-3 casters/melee/healers/tanks and nothing else.Comment by rubenmsallesThank you for clarifying feral needs a complete rework and dedicated developer that plays druid class as whole (all 4 specs on regular basis) not like these "guide authors, stramers and theorycrafters" who play only 2-3 casters/melee/healers/tanks and nothing else.Comment by BeargodWe know you want feral to be the DoT spec.
We also know you want Boomkin to NOT be the DoT spec.
Your feedback is important to us.

So we're pushing DoTkin and Bite Spam.Comment by halsinGuys, i don't know why you are upset about this change ! It's still about Bleeds, we will weave bites in AoE to amplify those bleeds.
it's just way better than just spamming PW. We won't have the problem of overwriting TF snapshots either so it fixes another problem.
it does not mean that Bite and RF will do more damage than Rip in AoE it's just gonna be there where ToW was.
of course they would need to either rework Tear or just make it do more damage.
They also should review things about slowing down the energy since bite costs more but this is just tuning.
This change does not affect Wildstalker either because you would always have Rip and Rake spreading and guess what ?
not overwriting Rip with PW equals more damage !Comment by DevourlessI get we are a minority in terms of amount of people that enjoy this spec and play it (main since WOTLK) every expansion just seems like they are breaking our beloved kitties. Thoughts "Im a feral my bleeds are supposed to be my main damage output", just my opinion of-course. Blizzard come on....