Thoughts on Beta Ferals

[Fairweather Pure]

For PvE, I like it. I like it a lot.

Both Cat and Bear are strong. I am DPS specced atm and really, really enjoying DPSing as a cat. I've done 5 Instances so far, and our new skills are very fun. We are very powerful and able to DPS with the best of them.

Savage Roar is a fantastic ability.

Finishing move that increases attack power by 40%. Lasts longer per combo point: 1 point : 14 seconds

Keeping this up is essential to doing top level DPS. It is the most important cat skill in the game for sustained DPS. 40% more AP makes my standard melee DPS go from 409-434 to 553-579. We can keep this on ourselves pretty much every single fight. Our AP effects everything from white dmg to the strength of our Bleeds, so the importance of this ability cannot be understated.

The other major changes to cat are as follows:

King of the Jungle

Instantly grants 60 energy, 30 sec cooldown

This skill is also incredible. It allows us to chain attacks and combos. Since Ferocious Bite has been significantly buffed, it's a good strategy to rack up 5 combo points, hit Tiger's Fury, and FB then go to the next target. For trash I am alsmot never waiting on energy anymore. It took awhile to get used to using the skill all the time, but once I did, it has changed the game for me.

Rend and Tear

Increases damage done by your Maul and Shred attacks on bleeding targets by 20%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Ferocious Bite ability on bleeding targets by 50%

FB is now my preferred finisher. With the AP from Savage Roar and the increased crit chance (not to mention how short a lot of these fights are in Beta), FB can almost be spammed under the right circumstances. Rend and Tear ensures a much better chance for crits. My highest FB crit so far has been 10.5k on a cloth boss in UP. That was with Savage Roar active on my cat at the same time. You just have to remember to get in a rake early so that your shreds hit for max dmg now. Remember that the Mangle buff has been changed to affect bleeds only.

A typical fight now will be:

Ravage > Rake > Savage Roar > Shred > Shred > FB

You can add a Tiger's Fury in there to get in more shreds, and of course, you can add the next skill...

Berserk

When activated, this ability causes your Mangle (Bear) ability to hit up to 3 targets and have no cooldown, and reduces the energy cost of all your Cat Form abilities by 50%. Lasts 15 sec. You cannot use Tiger's Fury while Berserk is active. Clears the effect of Fear and makes you immune to Fear for the duration

With only a 3 minute cooldown, the hardest part is to remember to actually activate the talent! Once this is activated, you can chain shred for 15 seconds. Our DPS absolutely goes through the roof for these 15 seconds. If you need to burn something down fast, this is the tool for the job. For 15 seconds, you are Godly.

Berserk is also above average DPS for Bear. If you have 3+ mobs, instead of burning one down with cat Berserk, I find it's best to go Bear Breserk. Mangle has no cooldown and hits 3 targets with crits around 3500-4k. A single round of Berserk Mangles can hit 3 mobs for over 12k dmg, and you can spam it for 15 seconds. I also have the glyph of maul that allows maul to hit 2 targets. We can certianly toss out the DPS in bear when we have to.

Also, we can use Barkskin in forms now. For 12 seconds, all damage we recieve is reduced my 20%. With a mere 1 minute cooldwn, it's a great skill to hit as a reflex if you should ever draw aggro. It's also nice for PvP. Survival Instincts gives us 30% more HP for 20 seconds, is usable in cat form, but has a 5 minute cooldwn. Still, it's a nice ability to have and can play a key role for survival in certian fights and situations.

My only major complaint is MANA. We just do not have enough. I have less mana as a feral at level 80 than my feral has at level 70. Furthermore, all the spells we cast have more ranks and cost significantly more mana. I can only buff 7 people with mark of the wild, and I am oom. I can shift a total of 6 times and be oom. I can cast rank 15 Healing Touch 4 times and be oom. You can tell Blizzard wants us to be in an animal from at pretty much all times. It is a very hard adjustment to make, especially in world PvP and BGs.

I look forward to doing some tanking in the coming weeks, and I will report on that later. I have actually been DPS for quite a few Druid tanks and it has gone really well. The same rules apply, so if the Bear is adding Mangles and Lacerates, it removes steps from a cat's DPS rotation and we can conentrate on nothing but our biggest hitting moves.

It's hard to say how we are in PvP becasue there are still some classes and specs that are pretty OP. I'll test PvP out more later. For what I have done, I think we're the same we are now. IE: Great in BGs and open fights, but will be much weaker in Arenas, especially against certian combos.

In closing, I can tell you that cat form has changed a great deal. Out with the old combos and in with the new. I've switched from almost always using Rip instead of FB, to the exact opposite. I can plan the use of various skills and chain them together to perfrom some pretty amazing DPS in a short amount of time. I can customize my attacks for any Mob that Blizzard throws my way.

[masteen]

Nerf druids.

[lmnt9]

My only major complaint is MANA. We just do not have enough. I have less mana as a feral at level 80 than my feral has at level 70. Furthermore, all the spells we cast have more ranks and cost significantly more mana. I can only buff 7 people with mark of the wild, and I am oom. I can shift a total of 6 times and be oom. I can cast rank 15 Healing Touch 4 times and be oom. You can tell Blizzard wants us to be in an animal from at pretty much all times. It is a very hard adjustment to make, especially in world PvP and BGs.

No neeto gear to help with this? Maybe from the new profession?
I have always kept enough point to always have innervate, which helps.

Feral sound re-charged a bit - might have to switch back.

[sarlen]

Honestly I always thought it was a broken system when I can tank a heroic or shift out and heal it in the same gear. Feral should be melee damage, resto should be the healer and balance should be what ever the fuck that is. Ill gladly trade my healing ability while spec'd feral to be better at DPS.

[Bubba Grizz]

I have been playing my feral druid a bit more as of late. Not in the beta mind you. My feral is level 70 and I have been having a good time running around getting my shattered sun faction up to exalted. To be effective in instances and raids would I be better served if I focused on either Bear or Cat? And if so what gear should I look for to get them set up? I am really new at this resilliency and other stuff.

Also, I have a second druid who is 65. I recently spec'd him out as a Moonkin. I really hesitated for a long time but for me soloing as a resto pretty much sucked. I also didn't want to look like a freaking furby but I made the switch and I have found that I really enjoy it. I can solo fairly well with it and given the druid innate abilities I am able to survive most fuckered situations.

[Fairweather Pure]

My only major complaint is MANA. We just do not have enough. I have less mana as a feral at level 80 than my feral has at level 70. Furthermore, all the spells we cast have more ranks and cost significantly more mana. I can only buff 7 people with mark of the wild, and I am oom. I can shift a total of 6 times and be oom. I can cast rank 15 Healing Touch 4 times and be oom. You can tell Blizzard wants us to be in an animal from at pretty much all times. It is a very hard adjustment to make, especially in world PvP and BGs.

No neeto gear to help with this? Maybe from the new profession?
I have always kept enough point to always have innervate, which helps.

Feral sound re-charged a bit - might have to switch back.

They added a proc to ILotP. When you get a heal from the proc, you also get back 8% of your mana. It's not enough. It's not even close. All the new gear is rogue gear, hence no INT at all. Innervate is a base skill and has been for years, so not sure what you mean by keeping points for it, but casting that on ourselves does very little since we have no spirit. It's not feasile to swap out feral stat gear for INT gear because we would lose much more than any gain we would receive.

Honestly I always thought it was a broken system when I can tank a heroic or shift out and heal it in the same gear.

You heal while tanking? Even if my feral can still throw out some base heals and CC on live, do you feel we are OP? There are no feral druids in the top ranking Arena tiers. That's 5v5, 3v3, and 2v2. I do not think our current design gives us any sort of unfair advantage at all. Would I trade that ability for more DPS? It doesn't seem I have a choice. That is what is happening. For PvE, it's great. For PvP, it's really not. That is where we take a pounding. Six shifts and we're oom. I can shift, Cyclone someone, throw a rejuv, and have enough mana to go back to a form. I am now OOM in my form and have to wait to do anything else other than fight in form. Ice mages lock us down and destroy us. We cannot keep shifting out of CC like we once did, which was our only chance against them. (To be fair, ice mages are destroying everybody right now ) Compare that to say, Pallies. Those fuckers never lose mana. Have a ret pallie hand you your ass in a duel as they DPS and heal themselves at the same time. I die, oom, they have full mana. The same pallie then heals me to full health with double 14k crit heals. As we are now, when we are low on health it takes 4 healing touches to heal ourselves to full health, then we are oom. We don't even have enough to switch to a form after we have healed ourselves. Get used to eating and drinking in this expansion. At least we can do that in forms now.

Hey, they mant to do a redesign and I'm fine with that. I just hope they don't break us in the process. For PvP, we are really hurting in arenas.

The way Ferals are set up now, and have been since our class patch, is that large mana pools are required for our class to remain somewhat competitive in PvP. This latest redesign is attempting to shuffle things around, but it's painfully clear that Blizzard is still unsure how to approach our mana issues. I think shifting should be free for ferals.

[Bagar-]

Had a feral in 3/5 t7 with assorted 10 man pieces / badge pieces in Naxx10 tonight. We cleared plague (patch down lols) and DK wings and on overall he was SECOND. As our main tank.

These weren't scrub pug dpsers either. Had two mages, an elemental shaman, a boomkin, a ret paladin, and a frost DK offtanking that all play their respective classes (except DK obviously) on live and know their shit. We're all guildies, except the feral druid and the other healer we had.

It's pretty broken imo. I think he sustained about 2500 on Patch.

[Fairweather Pure]

I know Blizzard is planning on taking away the 4 mob limitation on swipe. Has that gone live on Beta already? That is going to fucking rack up the DPS right there. It will be unlimited rage and spammable.

I specced pure Bear tonight, have yet to tank anything yet though.

[Zaelath]

I think shifting should be free for ferals.

If you got that, there would be no "breaking CC" component to it.

I'm going to have to be a bit more careful on my bear about pulling w/ hurricane and shifting about a lot in certain fights though...

[sarlen]

My only major complaint is MANA. We just do not have enough. I have less mana as a feral at level 80 than my feral has at level 70. Furthermore, all the spells we cast have more ranks and cost significantly more mana. I can only buff 7 people with mark of the wild, and I am oom. I can shift a total of 6 times and be oom. I can cast rank 15 Healing Touch 4 times and be oom. You can tell Blizzard wants us to be in an animal from at pretty much all times. It is a very hard adjustment to make, especially in world PvP and BGs.

No neeto gear to help with this? Maybe from the new profession?
I have always kept enough point to always have innervate, which helps.

Feral sound re-charged a bit - might have to switch back.

They added a proc to ILotP. When you get a heal from the proc, you also get back 8% of your mana. It's not enough. It's not even close. All the new gear is rogue gear, hence no INT at all. Innervate is a base skill and has been for years, so not sure what you mean by keeping points for it, but casting that on ourselves does very little since we have no spirit. It's not feasile to swap out feral stat gear for INT gear because we would lose much more than any gain we would receive.

Honestly I always thought it was a broken system when I can tank a heroic or shift out and heal it in the same gear.

You heal while tanking? Even if my feral can still throw out some base heals and CC on live, do you feel we are OP? There are no feral druids in the top ranking Arena tiers. That's 5v5, 3v3, and 2v2. I do not think our current design gives us any sort of unfair advantage at all. Would I trade that ability for more DPS? It doesn't seem I have a choice. That is what is happening. For PvE, it's great. For PvP, it's really not. That is where we take a pounding. Six shifts and we're oom. I can shift, Cyclone someone, throw a rejuv, and have enough mana to go back to a form. I am now OOM in my form and have to wait to do anything else other than fight in form. Ice mages lock us down and destroy us. We cannot keep shifting out of CC like we once did, which was our only chance against them. (To be fair, ice mages are destroying everybody right now ) Compare that to say, Pallies. Those fuckers never lose mana. Have a ret pallie hand you your ass in a duel as they DPS and heal themselves at the same time. I die, oom, they have full mana. The same pallie then heals me to full health with double 14k crit heals. As we are now, when we are low on health it takes 4 healing touches to heal ourselves to full health, then we are oom. We don't even have enough to switch to a form after we have healed ourselves. Get used to eating and drinking in this expansion. At least we can do that in forms now.

My response was about PVE not PVP, I'm not really a big fan of PVP I have never even been in an arena. My comment was about my ability to heal as a main healer in a heroic or regular instance in my DPS gear. Mind you its dependent on which of my guilds tanks Im with but it just seems a little broke when I can be the healer or the tank or the dps with the same gear and no respec.