Feral Druid Blog post discussion

[Tinderhoof]

In an effort to keep all discussion that is going to be generated by the impending blog in a central location I'm creating this thread. I know this is going to be super exciting for everyone. What I would like to ask everyone to do is help me do the following:
- Lets keep all discussion here in this thread. Starting new threads will just fragment discussions and make information harder for folks to find.
- I'll make sure the first post is updated with information from the blog, and with any dev responses we get. You won't need to copy and paste bits an pieces from the blog to here. Just talk about what is exciting or concerning to you.
- Let's keep this discussion civil. It's ok to not be pleased with what they have to say. By all means explain in detail why you feel the changes are lacking. Just please don't make anything personal so we can keep the discussion lively and useful.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/199569 ... 11-11-2015

Summary

• Savage Roar:

  Making Savage Roar optional in the talent tree in Warlords worked well to open up gameplay opportunities. We’re taking this approach further by flipping it around—Savage Roar is now a talent choice matched against two compelling alternatives that cater to different play styles.

• Jagged Wounds (new talent):

  Passive
  Your Rip, Rake, and Thrash abilities deal the same damage as normal, but in 33% less time.

• Affinities (Talent Row):

  - Affinities provide two benefits: first, a passive ability that is useful at all times, even to your main role; second, access to multiple key abilities to use in associated shapeshifting forms. To give you a sense for how choosing your Affinity will impact gameplay, regardless of what form you’re in, here’s a look at the passive abilities they grant:

  • Balance Affinity
    • Astral Influence: Increases the range of all spells, abilities, and autoattacks by 5 yds.
  • Feral Affinity
    • Feline Swiftness: Increases movement speed by 15%.
  • Guardian Affinity
    • Thick Hide: Reduces all damage taken by 10%.
  • Restoration Affinity
    • Ysera’s Gift: Constantly heals the Druid, or allies when the Druid is at full health.

  Unlike Heart of the Wild, Affinities are not temporary buffs. This enhanced access to an off-spec, delivered through a cleaner game mechanic, empowers Druids of any specialization to make interesting situational combat decisions.

• Infected Wounds snare is now attached to Rake, instead of Shred.

Tweets

Q: Are ferals supposed to be swapping to Moonkin after they dump energy to cast while regening energy in Legion?
A: The version of Moonkin Form granted by Balance Affinity will have a cooldown to prevent using it rotationally.

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/status ... 1556204544

Q: What is the reasoning behind keeping feral automatic stealthed rake stun in PvP? It makes for uninteresting gameplay.
A: Incarnation no longer affects Rake in Legion.

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/status ... 0499346432

Q: why does every boomkin ability have a 45yd range but not other ranged classes so far? tooltip bug?
A: Every Druid spec has the benefit from it's associated Affinity built in.

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/status ... 2571874304

Q: If I'm playing Feral w/ guardian affinity, could I perform a 3rd tank role in encounters using a 3-tank strategy?
A: The intention is that any Druid with Guardian Affinity can tank something, as long as it's not overly hard-hitting.

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/status ... 1986317312

[aggixx]

FYI it's scheduled to posted at 5PM PST.

[Polihayse]

Is anyone going to be in the IRC channel?

[Zstriker]

doubt anythig special will be on blog, same abilites, as they stated `feralz is fine`
only interesting there could be a talent preview

[Tinderhoof]

No more negativity with out feedback on something.

[Bysket]

No matter how good or bad these changes are, remember we still get those bad ass feral and guardian character models with the artifact!

[Elamari]

Did anyone else see the typo in the monk blog post that had a line copy and pasted from Guardian Druids?

[ShmooDude]

Did anyone else see the typo in the monk blog post that had a line copy and pasted from Guardian Druids?

Yeah, noticed that, found it funny.

[aggixx]

Is anyone going to be in the IRC channel?

Yep! #moonglade on irc.quakenet.org for anyone who doesn't know.

Edit: http://webchat.quakenet.org if you don't have an IRC client.

[Istaro]

Jagged Wounds ("Your Rip, Rake, and Thrash abilities deal the same damage as normal, but in 33% less time.") sounds like a talent that allows a greater focus on bleeds vs. FB—sweet!

[Rayen]

"We’re taking this approach further by flipping it around—Savage Roar is now a talent choice matched against two compelling alternatives that cater to different play styles."

Hmm that's interesting. It's really going to boil down to which does the most dps imo.

[Tinderhoof]

At this point we really know nothing. It's all going to come down to talents.

[Kraineth]

Sad to see SR made a talent, hopefully it isn't on the same tier as Jagged Wounds, taking both would be a lot of fun I think.

I didn't really expect for them to have passives tied to the affinity talents, I'm assuming each spec cannot choose its own affinity.

I was really hoping to see the rake stun removed and made a pvp talent, as well as the removal of the % dmg increases to bleeding targets.

Bear moonfire seems a bit weird, hopefully they aren't removing Faerie Fire.

Thrash for bears says it applies lacerate to the targets, not its own debuff. I wonder if that means anything for cat thrash.

[Kojiyama]

As expected, not really anything interesting there from a pure Feral ability standpoint. They are clearly taking the approach on designing and balancing talent choices, which is fine IMO. As long as the talents are well done, our core abilities are not really a problem.

Jagged Wounds, for example, is certainly something that could be helpful on short-lived targets, for example. Multi-dotting becomes very strong and it decreases the duration threshold where Rip is useful on adds.

I am pretty excited about the Affinity concept, to be honest. The passives are interesting. Balance clearly seems like the natural choice in most situations and 5 yard extra range to all our attacks could be absolutely amazing as a melee class. I would be interested to know if it also applies to the AoE radius on Thrash/Swipe.

That being said, it slightly confuses me that Thrash and Swipe are not listed in our core abilities. (Thrash is clearly still present as per the description of Jagged Wounds, though.)

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but the Resto and Balance changes seem very interesting to me. I'm very happy the Resto mastery is something more synergistic with the Resto gameplay focus. Flourish is a pretty cool talent conceptually. I am happy to see Balance moving away from the current Eclipse bar as it was really a very limiting and non-engaging mechanic that lead to too much emphasis on UI elements.

[Fortybones]

Guardian, feral, and resto affinity passives can all be achieved currently in game with talents/glyphs, and they can all had at the same time. This makes what seems to be the highlight of the druid class changes, a bit lackluster: "you're getting stuff you already have now, but less." Of course, this is just talking about the passives, perhaps we'll get some really awesome fight that caters to going boomkin for part of it, like ignoring 3rd wave of adds on Iskar to nuke the boss. I just hope that the talents that affinity replaces are awesome.

[physcx]

Whelp, we'll see when beta hits and talents / abilities are known but I think we're going to have to be extremely vocal about things if they aren't synergizing well. I'm particularly concerned about scaling with haste (crap benefit from lust), dumbing down the class by having a higher dps talent instead of savage roar trivializing the 10s+ planning ahead aspect of feral, incarnation being essential due to stealth ability mechanics still being too strong, and other classes having utility abilities that are vastly superior to ours (cheat death to solo soak, cloak, grips).

[Istaro]

Guardian, feral, and resto affinity passives can all be achieved currently in game with talents/glyphs, and they can all had at the same time.

Since I think it's a safe assumption that we won't be able to pick the feral affinity, hopefully there's still a way for us to get Feline Swiftness—ideally, base i.e. baked in to cat form.

[Annalese]

The Moonfire mention for Bears stood out for me too, along with the lack of thrash/swipe under feral - granted, they're not going to mention every single spell (especially if they haven't finalized whats being shuffled around).

These talents pretty much have a chance to eliminate L15 / L30 / and potentially L90 talents for feral as well (with Affinity, what reason would we need HOTW for?) - I wonder what it means for the L100 talents: Will they let us cast moonfire in cat for combo points? Will Claws of Shirvallah survive when it has very little use outside of pvp?

And yeah Kraineth, I hope that SR and Jagged Wounds won't be on the same tier, but we'll just have to wait and see what the next iterations of beta brings.

Istaro: I imagine that the affinities will be baked in passively for the appropriate specs.

[Bluewulf]

Not sure how I feel about them sticking with Bite/Shred requiring a bleed on them to do max damage. I was hoping they might etch that out, but at least its confirmed we are getting a passive type of perk for affinity rather than having to leave form. It will be interesting to see how we can use that extra range to our advantage

[aggixx]

Istaro: I imagine that the affinities will be baked in passively for the appropriate specs.

Seems to be the case, Balance has all its damaging spells listed as a 45 yard range.

Not sure how I feel about them sticking with Bite/Shred requiring a bleed on them to do max damage. I was hoping they might etch that out, but at least its confirmed we are getting a passive type of perk for affinity rather than having to leave form. It will be interesting to see how we can use that extra range to our advantage

Yeah, would be nice if that could be removed. Doesn't really provide much interesting gameplay.

There's both a passive and an active component to the affinities, in case you didn't catch it. They only listed the passive part.

[Thandorr]

The lack of actual changes is frustrating of course, but the upside is that our gore gameplay won't be changing at all. Hopefully they can deliver on bringing some meaningful choices to talents that highlights our strengths and lessens our weaknesses, or else we'll be doomed to be the least represented melee again.

[Lynxx]

Well, it is all going to depend on what these new talents are. If they really allow us to modify our gameplay, then we wont need changes too much on the core abilities. Savage Roar as a Talent choice is exciting as much as it is scary. What if it is always the top DPS? Suddenly there is no point. We will know more when we get a glimpse at what they are wanting to do with our talents in the big scheme of things.

[Istaro]

Istaro: I imagine that the affinities will be baked in passively for the appropriate specs.

Seems to be the case, Balance has all its damaging spells listed as a 45 yard range.

Yeah, I don't want to get my hopes up yet, but I also saw that as a sign that I just might be able to realize my dream of having both Feline Swiftness and Displacer Beast . . . unless Displacer Beast is a talent in a row that also has a throughput talent, in which case realistically it might as well not even exist .

Certainly this is all just us spinning our wheels until we see the full talent tree, but it's fun to talk about.

[Annalese]

https://twitter.com/brandaustin/status/ ... 5213864960

"Are ferals supposed to be swapping to Moonkin after they dump energy to cast while regening energy in Legion?"

The version of Moonkin Form granted by Balance Affinity will have a cooldown to prevent using it rotationally.

(Not my twitter, just popped up on the feed)

[Treeba]

Well, it is all going to depend on what these new talents are. If they really allow us to modify our gameplay, then we wont need changes too much on the core abilities. Savage Roar as a Talent choice is exciting as much as it is scary. What if it is always the top DPS? Suddenly there is no point. We will know more when we get a glimpse at what they are wanting to do with our talents in the big scheme of things.

That's always the way it is though. It will ultimately come down to how close are the talents tuned. Even when the tuning is close sometimes fight mechanics dictate talent choice for us. We might get to switch a lot, or we might switch hardly ever. They are increasingly hesitant to make real changes mid-expansion cycle so it will be very important that we offer tons of feedback during beta so we have as many viable talents as possible.

I kind of wish we could just get them to put the beta up now. Even if they can't officially start it for a few weeks, letting it be datamined would give us a much better idea of what we're looking at.