Blizzcon Discussion (Level 100 Talents/Game Mechanics/etc.)

[aggixx]

Going to try to keep all feral relevant Blizzcon information in this thread.

Keep in mind this is an extremely early preview and most of these things can and will change. Some tooltips and developer quotes are hardly a substitute for in-game hands-on play, but that's no reason we can't discuss our thoughts and impressions.

Level 100 Talents

Feral:

Lunar Inspiration
Passive
Moonfire is now usable in Cat Form, generates 1 combo point, and costs 30 energy.

Bloody Thrash
Passive
Thrash now also spreads Rake to other damaged enemies.

Savagery
Passive
Savage Roar is now passive.

Guardian:

Spoiler: show

Guardian of Elune
Instant 1.5 sec cooldown
Requires Bear Form
Instantly converts up to 60 rage into up to x absorption for 15 sec.

Replaces Frenzied Regeneration.

Malfurion's Tenacity
Passive
Increases your Armor by 200% of your Agility.

Bristling Fur
Passive
After using Enrage, the next attack against you will deal 50% less damage.

Restoration:

Spoiler: show

Moment of Clarity
Passive
Omen of Clarity now lasts 5 sec, instead of 1 cast.

Germination
Passive
Genesis now also extends Rejuvenation by 1 sec after hastening it.

Rampant Growth
Passive
Swiftmend now consumes Regrowth or Rejuvenation, but has no cooldown.

Balance:

Spoiler: show

Sunfall
Passive
Entering Solar Eclipse will transform your Starfall spell into Sunfall and reset its cooldown.

Zenith
Channeled
Targets all enemies within 60 yards and accelerates the caster's Moonfire and Sunfire effects, causing them to deal damage at 400% of the normal rate for 4 sec.

Equinox
Passive
Lunar and Solar Eclipse now last until the other is triggered, instead of ending at 0 Balance Power.

Game Mechanics

• Hit and Expertise removed. Hit and expertise soft caps are baseline for melee and ranged.
• Replaced with Amplitude (crit damage), Readiness (CD Reduction), and Multistrike. Also 'rare' secondaries such as Cleave and Movement Speed. The trinkets from this tier that have the same names were basically tests - the actual stats themselves wont necessarily be as OP.
• DoT snapshotting removed.
• Position requirement for abilities removed (sub rogues and ferals rejoice), Backstab removed entirely. However, there is still a 3% chance to be parried from the front so min/maxers will WANT to be behind. It just wont ruin your day anymore.
• Gear scaling is roughly 6% of what it currently is - the itemlevel of the gear is the same, but the stats on the gear are downsized.
• More dynamic trinkets - such as UVLS - are an idea he likes and wants to see more RNG-centered things that make the game more fun. On the other hand, he also likes trinkets with just base stats - such as +int +crit, nothing else. He likes all the current iterations and hopes to see them all through; On-Use, ICD, and RPPM.
• Haste breakpoints are not a thing anymore, the remaining time in the dot after the last tick will do damage equal to its time as a percentage of the tick speed.

Sources:
Level 100 Talents
Discussion with Senior Technical Game Designer Kris Zierhut

[aggixx]

Some thoughts...

Savagery: I have a strange suspicion that this is pretty terrible as far as DPS gains are concerned. It does reduce the difficulty level by a very significant amount, but it's not going to offer much benefit in terms of bleed uptimes; even at the very beginning of the expansion we have no troubles keeping fairly high Rip uptimes, and we have no indication of them changing Ferocious Bite to be anything more than the pathetic amount of damage that it does now.

Lunar Inspiration: Assuming Nurturing Instinct is as it is now on live... this is pretty much terrible; Moonfire does pitiful damage because we have no nature spellpower. It seems likely that they would change Nurturing Instinct to increase all spellpower instead of just Nature, as they primary reason it isn't that way already is to prevent us moonfire weaving... which they clearly are ok with. If it does do reasonable damage and is useful for more than just spamming while we're out of melee, I'm very interested. That would essentially mean one more bleed to manage (a second rake, basically). Hopefully they would be smart enough to make it work with Primal Fury. Also continues the trend of them giving us a (quite stark) "easy" talent and a "hard" talent... surprisingly, to even more of an extreme than they ever have before.

Bloody Thrash: Assuming current Rake damage on live servers... this is just absolutely ridiculously broken. I suspect they'll nerf rake, or have the rakes applied via Bloody Thrash do x% of normal damage, or something to balance it. This is definitely a huge boon to us and will really make us absolute cleaving beasts, as if we weren't already fairly good at it already. Hopefully we can avoid inheriting all the clunky aspects that Enhance has with Flame Shock and Lava Lash... like having to target the mob that has rake on it or does absolutely nothing, /shudder.

Edit: I feel like it's maybe more than a bit ridiculous that your choice in one tier of talents could be the difference between 3 buffs and 5 (assuming Thrash)... so one choice pretty much turns us into an assassination rogue level of difficulty, where as the other pushes us even further away from almost every other spec in the game in difficulty, as if it wasn't already complicated enough.

Really not sure who thought that was a good idea. I mean hell, I'm up for playing Lunar Inspiration, I like a challenge, but having it in a tier with an alternative that is so blatantly polar opposite is just absurd.

[inferiorlol]

I drooled a bit when I saw the Bloody Thrash talent. What if we would have that now, mohahaha.

I see a lot of whine about having to keep SR up so I guess the first talent would satisfy those players. As for dps increase I agree with what is said above. It is of course very hard to predict how things will turn out. Maybe it is good for pvp?

The Moonfire one obviously has to scale your moonfire damage or something. It basically adds another rake. Might be fun.

I guess it will be balanced such that SR is the best if you are bad at keeping up SR, Bloody Thrash is best on aoe and Moonfire one is best single target.

[Treeba]

As you point out these will likely all change somewhat between now and release. It's also something we'll have to wait until beta to really evaluate. We don't know how all of our other talents/skills have changed and what/if any of our abilities they removed. That being said... I really like all 3 talent and their potential implications. Perma SR is a little boring, but can also be really nice with the right FB changes.

I would also imagine it's safe to assume they'll make it so moonfire is benefiting from AP/Agility/Mastery in some form. They aren't going to let it hit for 4000 (or whatever the equivalent is in 6.0) damage.

[aggixx]

Also, I guess they didn't learn their mistake from this xpac then? Yeah, let's add another CP generator which costs even less energy! What could posssssibly go wrong?

Presumably it won't scale with mastery so you won't have that awkward direct damage scaling issue, but still. That said, I guess they wanted to have it lower so you can have that "aww yeah spamming that moonfire key" feel that you couldn't really have it cost as much as shred ("Spamming that moo... oh damn I'm out of energy, well this sucks").

PPS: It better get reduced by berserk! Unlike that junky Death Coil symbiosis (grrrr).

[Stenhaldi]

They need to remember to make moonfire only grant the combo point in cat form. Otherwise we could shift out to cast it for free (well, cost of 1.5s out of form, which is probably worth it).

Edit: make it scale with attack power instead of agility too (nature spellpower comes from agility). Otherwise we could still shift out to cast it just for the damage.

[aggixx]

Good points, I think the appropriate solution would be to have Moonfire change to a different spell ID while we're in Cat Form and have that moonfire scale with AP (and not interact with Nurturing Instinct in any way).

[Kraineth]

I think unless the Touch of Elune talent is changed to be a benefit to single target damage (such as MF scaling with AP) then all of these talents seem pretty lackluster for single target fights. Most dps specs have a talent for single target, a talent for AoE/cleave and then a utility talent. Or no AoE talent and a CD or an "active talent" that is better than their passive single target boost.

The passive SR talent seems like blizzard trying to appease people who say that feral is too hard and this talent is obviously going to be great for them, but why do dedicated ferals have to lose a talent slot simply to make the spec easier for people who can't play at the level the spec demands.

I'll definitely agree that the Thrash talent is pure gold for cleave/AoE, no qualms there.

Overall it looks interesting, but unless Touch of Elune is more than just a ranged CP generator that does crap damage, things look pretty boring to me.

[Sibylle]

I kinda like the idea that we could have a ranged ability that'll also generate combo points. My raid is not very melee friendly, we're often asked to stand by in a certain phase whilst ranged are still fighting (Thok... Jin'rokh hc last tier...) so the talent would offset that.

Bloody Thrash will be a no-brainer for add pack fights if it stays in its current form.

The only one I really don't like is Savagery - don't de-complicate my spec, it's what makes it interesting! Unless of course they'll add more complexity otherwise. In fact, all of these really need the context of the other abilities we'll get between 90 and 100, and what abilities might be taken away (remember that discussion about ability bloat). Maybe it'll all miraculously make sense then.

[Treeba]

Not talent related, but still interesting. A member of Vigil posted these on MMO-C after claiming to have a long conversation with a developer. Don't bet the farm on it, but somethings to start thinking about.

-Hit and Expertise removed. Hit and expertise soft caps are baseline for melee and ranged.
-Replaced with Amplitude (crit damage), Readiness (CD Reduction), and Multistrike. Also 'rare' secondaries such as Cleave and Movement Speed. The trinkets from this tier that have the same names were basically tests - the actual stats themselves wont necessarily be as OP.
-Vengeance changed to increase tanking abilties, rather than pure AP. He wants Tank DPS to be roughly 75% of a DPS' output.
-DoT snapshotting removed.
-Position requirement for abilities removed (sub rogues and ferals rejoice), Backstab removed entirely. However, there is still a 3% chance to be parried from the front so min/maxers will WANT to be behind. It just wont ruin your day anymore.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/138 ... is-Zierhut

He later mentions an Alliance racial reworks for more passive buffs vs. the Horde's active buffs. And he also confirmed reforging is gone.

[Alpheus]

I agree that it is still too early to say what kinds of ramifications these talents have. They're based on a "world" that lives in lvl100 raids with the WoD strategies and metagames so putting it into context with our current raid/ability models is just going to give everyone the wrong impressions.

That being said, I for one would like to express a sigh of relief that this is probably the first expansion where development has acknowledged the concept of "bleed spreading" for ferals and "absorbs" for guardian druids (This was previously a taboo, made mute by arguments such as "You're not a <insert class>").

I'm curious to see how the feral rotation will change with the next expansion. I'm pretty sure that we won't be thinking of DoC and HotW as we did in MoP-times and all the "under-the-hood" changes that Treeba hinted on will most likely have a greater impact on our experience than early-drafts of T7 talents.

Anyway, WTB high-quality feral models.

[Cerise]

I was just drinking my morning tea when I read these talents on Mmo-champion. Needless to say, I spit out my tea when I saw Bloody Thrash. Holy shit! Every time I saw my friend play his DK, I wanted to have a copy of his disease spreading abilty.. and omg here we are.

Right, back to reality.

Savagery: PVP talent. In PVE it would free up some energy. Might be good talent in the start of the expansion if we don't have the energy to keep rake/rip/trash up. Otherwise the energy goes to Bites, which is a bit meh.

Lunar Inspiration: Another DoT. Reverse of the situation above, this talent increases energy spending. Might be a good talent for later in the expansion when we have high levels of haste. It's hard to say more about how this will fit into the rotation without information about its scaling.


Personally, I hope Savagery is cut and is replaced by something more interesting.

[Scryms]

I hope Lunar Inspiration will be the best talent for single target, and we'll have to manage Moonfire dot as well.
Because let's be honest, if we have to play with Savagery and they remove Dot snapshotting it's going to be boring. Get Rip/Rake up, spam CP generator, dump CPs on FB, win. Meh.

Well, it's obviously too early to talk about this anyway, but I would be sad.

[Stenhaldi]

Something to note about moonfire is that even at 30 energy, it isn't going to be the most efficient CP builder unless something big changes with our spell crit. Even if it benefits from Primal Fury (and it's quite possible it won't), it'll crit a lot less frequently than other CP builders.

[Alpheus]

Something to note about moonfire is that even at 30 energy, it isn't going to be the most efficient CP builder unless something big changes with our spell crit. Even if it benefits from Primal Fury (and it's quite possible it won't), it'll crit a lot less frequently than other CP builders.

And don't forget it that it probably won't work with DoC unless it is classified as a melee ability (which would be silly)

[inferiorlol]

-DoT snapshotting removed.

Really? Doesn't this almost completely trivialize our rotation?

[aggixx]

I wouldn't say completely, but it definitely does remove what is probably the most difficult part of our rotation. We abuse DoT snapshotting harder than almost any other class, if not all of them.

Frankly, I'm surprised they let us keep the BitW thing for an entire expansion, it's a bit ridiculous of a mechanic. While it can be fun sometimes, it makes the spec waaaay more RNG and gives you the potential of doing shittily just because you couldn't get a damn proc the whole execute. If they removed that... I would be ok with it I guess, but removing ALL DoT snapshotting? What does that even mean? I guess our dots update dynamically with mastery and AP is a given, but What about DoC, isn't that ability the essence of snapshotting mechanics?

Definitely not going to be a popular move in the feral community, that's for sure.

Also worth mentioning, this isn't 100% confirmed going to happen as the source is just some person on MMO-Champion, but is seems pretty likely that he's not making stuff up.

The thread also mentions that haste breakpoints are going away, although that doesn't surprise me much considering they're removing reforging as well.

[JTF195]

In their current form, I think it would make more sense to swap the talents around some.

Maybe put lunar inspiration in the same tier as doc, and savagery on the same tier as hotw.

Just a thought.

[Stenhaldi]

Well the level 90 tier is supposed to be a hybrid, "perform roles outside of your main role" tier. There's no reason for Savagery to be there.

That said, at this point, feral DoC belongs in that tier only superficially. It needs (and I've been arguing this for a while) to be changed so that its healing is actually meaningful.

[aggixx]

Well the level 90 tier is supposed to be a hybrid, "perform roles outside of your main role" tier. There's no reason for Savagery to be there.

That said, at this point, feral DoC belongs in that tier only superficially. It needs (and I've been arguing this for a while) to be changed so that its healing is actually meaningful.

Could swap Lunar Inspiration with Heart of the Wild. Would be a little weird but I do think it would make more sense than the current pairings. Of course there's other specializations to consider so I doubt they would do that, but one can wish.

[Sibylle]

Fewer gems/enchants and no reforging *gulp* Not sure how I feel about that! I actually enjoy fiddling with my gear and min/maxing.

P.S. I have a WoW-only Twitter account now so if you'd like to connect, I'm @Revnah

[Leafkiller]

I think removing DoT snapshotting is desirable. I rank that above any other change they could make for the feral class. There are several reasons for this:

• The (stated) design goal for dos for each class is +-10% based on player skill. DoT clipping alone accounts for more than a 10% variance in DPS.
• In order to effectively carry out DoT clipping you need AddOn support to know the relative strengths of the DoTs.
• The focus of the game should be on the encounter mechanics and not require moment to moment adjustments to the rotation.

Yes our rotation will be simpler than it currently is. But that will simply make it closer to other classes rotations and it will still be one of the more complex rotations in the game. There will still be the need to maintain the DoTs and SR, and there will still be the questions of when to optimally use our various cool-downs.

Keep in mind that we only started clipping DoTs in the last two expansions, and only starting doing it aggressively in this expansion in concert with developing far more sophisticated tools to measure the relative strength of the DoT ticks.

[aggixx]

It's still up in the air whether it'll even happen, there has been no on-stage mention of it whatsoever.

Honestly as long as I can play Lunar Inspiration Dream of Cenarius I'd be fine if they "remove" DoT snapshotting... but a Savagery snapshotless feral is an abomination compared to how feral plays now.

[Treeba]

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status ... 1132152832

GC tweet on snapshotting.

[baver]

I know they just add some new talant that sounds fun for now and just want to see what ppl think about them etc, but so far im not impress my anything about ferals.

Realy hope they start a beta early so you could jump in and see where they going will all this "to hard for new player so we make it easy for everyone" mentality. because that what it feel like. Clipping bleeds is the only thing that makes a good feral good in dps, If they remove that i dont see how you will ever see any diff from a decent feral to a good when it comes to dps.

Also dont see why they would bring up addons that tells us what to press, dont addons that tells you what to press already exist for all classes more or less? I dont use any addon to see how strong my bleed is and i dont realy think its needed. And even if it would need it we already need timers for our buffs and bleeds so dont see why one extra addon would make or break it

About the talants it feel like there is one aoe talant, one multidot/singeltarget talant and one for new players. not that intresting for me tbh