Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists
Frost DK
Havoc DH
Restoration Druid
Augmentation Evoker
BM Hunter
Fire Mage
Mistweaver Monk
Protection Paladin
Assassination RogueSubtlety Rogue
Elemental ShamanRestoration Shaman
Affliction Warlock
A Massive Undertaking (or a Druidplicated Problem)
We had the first fundamental talent tree redesign in Dragonflight since Mists of Pandaria. As a result, this expansion has been a dramatic one. Functionally revamping every spec in the game is a big job, and, unsurprisingly, it wasn’t finished in a single beta cycle. Druid, in particular, had a very rocky beta cycle, and many of the issues still haven’t been addressed.
Druid was one of the first classes shown on the alpha cycle, and the tree had some NOTABLE issues. The Feral Tree was a mess. It had a small number of nodes, pathing which further reduced your choice, and some particularly uninspired talents. It went a large portion of the cycle without getting any changes, let alone meaningful changes that addressed the core problems; you can see more detailed complaints in my initial review of the tree here.
Now, it’s important to note that these issues weren’t unique to Feral; they applied both to other Druid specs and particularly the Class Tree section of the talent tree; this will be important later. Fortunately, very late into the cycle, changes finally came through that addressed the Feral section of the tree. While not a perfect change, it did go a long way to fixing some of the more glaring issues we’d raised. Sabertooth was redesigned to fix its major problems, build-a-Berserk was eased up on (though not entirely), and along with various other problem talents being either adjusted or removed, there were some pathing improvements.
These changes didn’t affect the Class Tree, which remained problematic going into the expansion. Three-point talents, bad pathing, the issues were widespread. These issues still haven’t been addressed to this day. The tree has improved slightly over a couple of changes, but many of the problems we raised with the Class Tree have remained issues across the entire expansion.
Vault of the Incarnates
Vault of the Incarnates was the first tier of the expansion, and it, of course, came with a new M+ season. This tier was the first proper stress test of the new talent systems, and it came with tier sets. Tier sets had taken a couple of expansions hiatus until just the tier before, so this was the first expansion that had started with tier sets in a while.
The tier set was reasonably dull, but was enjoyable simply because it played well into what most Feral druids liked. With it being the first tier, a slightly dull tier set wasn’t a problem since we were already stress-testing the new talent system anyway!
Feral in the MDI
I’d predict that this tier will remain notable for Feral for a long while for one primary reason: this was the first time ever that Feral showed up in the Mythic Dungeon Invitational! It was the first tier ever that Feral was a top-tier M+ option!
Feral showing up was due to Dragonflight’s changes to the talent tree: pretty efficient AOE and massive priority damage from a combination of Primal Wrath, Apex Predator, and Rampant Ferocity. These combined factors resulted in a spec with decent AOE but INCREDIBLE funneled single target. I don’t think it’ll be controversial to suggest that this was likely Feral’s best M+ season ever, and one that I suspect may not be soon matched.
Raid performance and Single Target
Unfortunately for Feral druids in other areas of the game, our MDI debut (I’m leaving it like that Hippo doesn’t count) came with a bit of a cost. Our newfound funnel and AOE capabilities weren’t as applicable in the raid. Traditionally, I’d say that a spec with decent single target and good AOE is a spec that excels in raid, and in fact, I think I said something very similar to that in my pre-Vault Feral prediction. Unfortunately, Feral’s AOE was somewhat backloaded, and required a few too many GCDs to get going in raid. What happened was you’d set up your AOE and then the adds would be dead. With that taken into account, this ended up being a mediocre tier for Feral. Unfortunately for us, the start of the tier mediocrity was probably the best part of the tier for us.
Talent Drama
Before I continue with this section, I think it’s important to note that the causes of the changes I’m about to discuss were essentially all accidents; I don’t believe the end result of what happened to Feral’s Playstyle in patch 10.0.5 was intended. This patch was, I believe, intended as a buff that didn’t drastically change Feral’s playstyle in the end, though that was a fair way off what ended up happening.
In my opinion, many of the changes in 10.0.5 were pretty positive as stand-alone changes. Rearranging the tree, in particular, was a great set of changes; however, as a whole, I think this is pretty high up there in the list of least fun iterations of Feral (it doesn’t beat the Sabertooth era). Dropping Bloodtalons to spam Ferocious Bite and Shred as much as possible with Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane and Lion’s Strength was a dark period.
The Sign of Things to Come
Another thing to come to light in this tier that would later rear its head, was the interlinked mess of Feral’s talents and damage profile. So much of our damage was (and to an extent still is) mainly coming from the same sources in both AOE and Single target; Rake as a primary generator, Rip through Primal Wrath (and Tear Open Wounds), and Ferocious Bite through Rampant Ferocity (and Apex Predator).
Aberrus
Unfortunately, after a mediocre tier in Vault of the Incarnates, we transitioned into what I believe is the worst Feral tier in the game’s history. There were several reasons for this: some not-great class changes, poor tuning, and an awful (tuning and gameplay-wise) tier set.
Berserk Redesigned
Hey, this was pretty notable! For the first time in the game’s history, Berserk was reworked! Berserk was initially added as a Wrath of the Lich King capstone talent, and until this tier, it had remained largely the same for that whole period; the energy reduction number had changed, and the duration had changed, but it was essentially the same ability. I think that all in all, the changes were pretty good. It’s still not quite to my taste, but I can appreciate their goal; in any other tier, I think this change would have been far more celebrated. Unfortunately, this change had a big clash with the tier set.
The Tier Set Debacle
It’s hard to describe how frustrating this tier set incident was; upon the first show of this set, I was CERTAIN that this was a placeholder and would be changed. It was just too simple, too dull, too uninspired, and too (frankly) poorly designed for it not to be. As PTR went on, this opinion didn’t change; nothing was done to it, and eventually, it just went live, dooming Feral to a tier of irrelevancy. I could write this whole post about how awful this tier set was; I mean, COME ON, it might as well have said, “Gain % agility on auto attack.” What exacerbated the issue was the combination of the Berserk change with the tier set. One of these might have been okay, but both of them together just felt frankly TERRIBLE to play with. I know it’s become a bit of a cliche to say something feels clunky, but goddamn, if clunky isn’t the word to describe how this felt, it’ll never be the word for anything.
A Tangled Mess and The Fix
As we noticed in Vault of the Incarnates, Feral’s damage profile was slightly tangled up. Whether you were doing AOE or Single target, your damage was mainly coming from the same sources, so a buff to single target (an area where Feral was PARTICULARLY struggling this tier) would also be a buff to AOE. I’m not sure exactly WHY Blizzard was so concerned about buffing AOE, considering we were far from excellent in M+ or Raid this tier, but alas. 10.1.5 was where they aimed to do something about this issue. They added a new talent Dire Fixation that aimed to buff single target without buffing AOE, giving them a single tuning knob that they can play with. At the same time, they also started the somewhat laborious job of splitting out damage sources; Rampant Ferocity was changed from being a direct result of Ferocious Bite to being a separate damage source, now opening the possibility for Ferocious Bite changes to impact only single target. These are both great changes made shortsightedly. To start with, Dire Fixation, while it accomplishes the core goal, it does it badly; by making it a talent, you either a) make it a mandatory talent, or b) you cap the usefulness of it as a tuning lever. While I’m grateful for the talent, it’s currently FAR too strong for the section of the tree it’s on, and I maintain that it should be a core passive instead of a talent. There’s no universe currently where we will not take this talent in raids, so you functionally just lose a talent choice. The other issue that will arise in the next tier and beyond is that while separating Ferocious Bite and Rampant Ferocity were good changes that give new tuning knobs, they haven’t been used since, leading to Rampant Ferocity instead being a non-option.
Amirdrassil
This tier started far better. To begin with, we got a tier set to be happy about! This is probably my favorite tier set of the last few expansions; it plays into what I’ve been saying for years. Feral Frenzy is a great button, and the most enjoyable period of Feral CDs (love qualifiers) for me was Legion with Ashamane’s Frenzy and the damage amplification artifact trait; this was basically the same thing, and I loved it. If Feral’s core gameplay was more polished, this might have been close to the top 3 favorite Feral playstyles of all time. I’ve been saying for years that I’d love it if Berserk was removed and Feral Frenzy was our primary CD instead. With the 10.1.5 and 10.2 tuning changes and a fantastic new tier set, we went into this tier, optimistic that the previous tier debacle wouldn’t happen again.
Friction
While this patch came with some much-wanted quality of life, giving us Innervate in Cat Form for the first time ever, it did come with a weird bit of commentary from Blizzard. First things first, I do love that Blizzard communicated this with us, I’m very appreciative of it, and I don’t want this to be a shit on Blizzard section. A pain point of Feral for a long time has been that it feels like Feral, somewhat uniquely among druids, gets punished more for using their utility than other druid specs; we couldn’t Innervate in Cat Form, we can’t Rebirth in Cat Form. We’re melee while all of our utility is shared with a ranged spec. Hell, while it might not be super relevant, THIS expansion Balance also gets to bring unique utility to M+ (Taunt treants) that Feral doesn’t get. We’re told that we can’t get Rebirth in Cat Form (even with a proc) because there are ways of playing around it; I’m not sure the gameplay is particularly meaningful. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but for me at least, Rebirth taking me out of Cat Form just means that in 90% of scenarios, I just don’t press Rebirth. There are few more frustrating feelings in raid than when someone dies, I cast Rebirth, someone else gets it off first, and I’m just standing there like a dummy in my transmog. I’d love to have a better idea of precisely what fulfilling gameplay this restriction fulfills so that I can better understand the perspective because, as it is, it’s just somewhat frustrating. Feral already feels like it’s fighting against the current for spots, why does it have to do it wearing weighted shoes.
A Decade-long Streak…
Amirdrassil will remain a notable tier for Feral for a long time. It was the first time since Garrosh that Feral made it into a world-first comp on an end boss, and the first time since Odyn that Feral made it into a world-first comp at all (Congratulations to Smacked for breaking the streak). I don’t know if this was a precisely decade-long streak, but it’s pretty close to it. What’s so interesting about Feral showing up now is that it’s probably an expansion or two late. I don’t think this is close to the best tier for Feral in the last three expansions; that prize probably goes to Sanctum or Sepulcher (or any of the previous expansions’ tiers). Feral showed up mainly due to a historic under-performance for Resto, Guardian, and Balance.
Hopefully, Blizzard will draw the connections here and realize that’s the case. People want to play Feral, but it’s hard to justify bringing it when everything it brings is brought more conveniently by its feathered sibling, and as long as it brings nothing unique, it’ll live or die by how well Boomkin performs.
Conclusion (and Minor Complaints)
Augmentation (A Somewhat Petty Complaint)
This is a somewhat petty complaint, but for good or bad, competing in logs is something I enjoy doing; Augmentation and Blizzard’s failure to fix combat hooks have been very frustrating. Something like 15-20% of Feral’s damage breakdown in Season 3 of this expansion doesn’t attribute correctly to Augmentation, and inflates a large portion of logs. Power Infusion and Windfury Totem are bad enough, but just piling on the issues essentially kills a significant portion of the competition I enjoy, and that’s frustrating. Even more so when it feels like favoritism is being applied to what gets fixed. Feral bugs have lasted since 10.1.5, while Rogue bugs introduced in 10.2 are fixed within the first few weeks.
The Core Gameplay Loop
One negative about the expansion (the last few expansions) is Feral’s core gameplay loop; while some aspects are good, the overall is spoiled by a few little problems. Bloodtalons is excellent, but you automatically proc it with the regular rotation, generators do minimal damage, Ferocious Bite dominates the damage breakdown, and snapshots don’t matter. All of these problems essentially go back to a straightforward problem: energy availability.
Feral is an energy combo point spec; the entire purpose of this spec archetype is resource scarcity. You will always have a set amount of energy, so the problem you’re supposed to solve through gameplay is how to use resources most effectively. When energy is functionally infinite, this isn’t a problem, and all the other little intricacies of the spec fall apart. Raging Fury means that your infinite energy is converted into 100% Tiger’s Fury duration, close tuning between Ferocious Bite and Rip (because of AOE ST entanglement) means that you’re never going to replace a Bloodtalons snapshot, infinite energy means that you’re using so many finishers that Sudden Ambush ceases to be a concern. Infinite energy breaks down all of the little decisions you make as Feral.
I believe this is the number 1 issue for Feral in terms of gameplay, and I really don’t think there’s a way to solve it without making it an entirely different spec. I’ll go deeper further down, but really, this is the major thing that I think needs to be addressed for The War Within; it shouldn’t be something alien or difficult to solve because we’ve existed in the game where this isn’t something that breaks the spec, so hopefully over TWW development we can look back at the past and solve some problems.
Dragonflight as a Whole
Dragonflight’s been a pretty interesting expansion from the perspective of Feral druids. It’s an expansion with many firsts for the spec, the first real MDI slot, and the first World First slot. Despite these firsts, I think it’s been, on balance, one of the worst expansions for Feral druid in terms of performance across the last few years. I believe that in all of the previous three expansions, Feral has been better in terms of performance than Dragonflight, yet Dragonflight is the expansion for firsts.
It was an ambitious expansion with a vast amount of system and philosophy changes, and despite many of my complaints in this post, it does leave me hopeful for the future. This expansion has seen a revitalization of communication between Blizzard and the Community. I see complaints that Blizzard is only paying lip service and taking feedback but not following through on it, but I disagree; it’s unreasonable to expect every piece of feedback to be actioned. The game is massive, and people have different opinions; all you can ever expect is feedback to be taken on board and considered, and I believe Blizzard has done that with this expansion.
Looking Ahead
What would a retrospective be without a look at the future (don’t question it)? With The War Within alpha coming up sometime in the first half of 2024, I want to explore the remaining problems with the spec and my hopes for The War Within.
Remaining issues (The Class Tree)
The Class Tree has been one of my big bugbears for Druids across the expansion. Druids were in what now has shown itself to be a bit of an unfortunate spot; our trees were some of the first to be released by Blizzard, and comparing them to some of the newer trees, it’s clear that philosophies have changed. Since that first reveal, the trees have had VERY minimal changes made to them. There’ve been a few extra links drawn and a couple of new talents added, but the core structure has remained the same. Hell, it even still has a 3-point talent left, the only one left in the entire game, I believe.
I understand that Druid is a complicated class to solve with one tree. You need to satisfy four different specs and roles, and that’s not easy, but it’s just been a failure. No druid likes spending up to 4 points on abilities they won’t use. If I want to help out my raid and pick up Innervate, why do I have to spend points on Starfire, Sunfire, and Moonkin Forms? That SUCKS. I guess you can argue about Moonkin Form being a useful point because of Wild Charge, but come ON. If I want to pick up dispel I have to put points in Rejuvenation and Swiftmend? All of these suck, and there needs to be a better approach to it. I don’t know if it’s bundling these abilities into an “affinity-style” package or to make them baseline, but something has to be changed here. For some of the abilities, notably Resto and Guardian ones, I think you could make them interesting for the DPS specs by buffing the strength of them a lot so it felt meaningful to press them, but I don’t think you’re ever going to make a Feral Druid happy about talenting Starsurge (or a Balance Druid about talenting Rip).
Further issues are very present in the tree class-wide for Druids when you look at defensives; when Bear Form has been power crept out of being a strong button to press, there’s a problem. There’s a reason why Feral and Balance have shot to the top of the death charts this tier and it’s because those charts are mainly a display of what specs have strong passive defensives, and Druids have some of the worst in the game.
It’s clear that the way Class Trees have been approached has changed drastically since the original vision for the Druid Class Tree, and it urgently needs some tender love and care to bring it into modernity; it feels hyperbolic to say, but the philosophy has changed SO much throughout the expansion.
The ST/AOE Split
We talked about Feral’s damage profile on single target and AOE across the expansion and how Blizzard took steps to start addressing it. This needs to go further. There’s still a massive issue with tuning being hard to solve between Feral’s different abilities, particularly regarding bleeds.
I am a firm believer that a majority of the Feral community fell in love with the spec as a DOT spec, a spec that focused on snapshotting on strong bleeds, and the communication that we got from Blizzard in the beta made me believe that Blizzard had also finally realized that. However, as the expansion has gone on, Feral has become more and more about Ferocious Bite; snapshots don’t matter. Hell, I turned off my snapshot tracking altogether because you never make a gameplay decision around them.
Now, maybe the reason for this is that Primal Wrath and Rake are still a large portion of our AOE damage. They don’t want to lean into this and break both single target and AOE, but if that’s the case, these need to be split out further the way Ferocious Bite and Rampant Ferocity were.
There Should be a spec that appeals to everyone (Not all specs appealing to the average)
There are 26 DPS specs in the game. I believe that among those specs, there should be one that appeals to everyone. You may want to play a really mobile spec that presses a button on every global, and you have demon hunter; you may want to play a spec with big powerful single target cast spells, and you play, idk, one of the wizards. Currently, however, two playstyle archetypes are being heavily neglected: specs that focus on damage over time and are heavily resource-constrained.
Feral used to be both of those; I don’t think at the moment that there is any spec that focuses on damage over time as their primary damage source; even specs like Affliction Warlock, the quintessential DOT spec, only really uses DOTs as an enabler for a direct damage spell.
There are also very few specs that aren’t capped on GCDs; I used to love that Feral’s difficulty wasn’t mechanical, and having to press 20 different buttons in the proper order, but was instead in terms of decision-making. Everything about it fed that, energy as a resource doesn’t fulfill its job as a resource unless you have to think about it. Right now, I genuinely don’t think Feral’s playstyle would change at all if you just removed energy full stop, and I think that’s a shame.
I don’t think it should be controversial to say that everyone should be able to find a spec that they enjoy playing, but I don’t believe that is currently the case.
The Future of Feral
We haven’t seen the Hero trees for Feral in TWW yet, so we don’t have much to go on; we know we will be sharing with Resto druid and Guardian druid, Wildstalker and Druid of the Claw. It’ll be interesting to see what concepts are leaned into for either. I’m hopeful that we see further changes to the core of the class in alpha, but we’ll have to wait and see later in the year.
About the Author
My name is Guiltyas, I’m currently raiding in Pure-Turalyon, where I joined towards the end of BFA. I’ve played Feral Druid since Wrath of the Lich King when I first picked it up as a main spec, since then I’ve engaged in almost all aspects of the game, from RBGs, to Challenge Modes, to Arena’s, and of course to fairly high end raiding (around world 100 at the moment).
I’ve been an active and enthusiastic member of the feral druid community since discord heralded a new era of engagement among spec communities, I’m fairly well respected as a source of information and back that up with a long record of high end feral performance, I’ve claimed multiple rank 1’s across different fights in different raid tiers, I’ve obtained Gladiator in the past (legion season 1), and now have a long history of providing information and help about about Feral Druid.
I’m enormously enthusiast about the spec and you can find me talking about Feral (passionately) in a few different places, Twitter, my stream, and of course the Dreamgrove Discord!
I enjoy walks on the beach and this is really what makes me reliable on the subject of Ferals! I do not own a cat 🙁 but do appreciate them.
