Within the next 24 hrs we will be making an adjustment via hotfix that will cause Omen of Clarity to always trigger when Faerie Fire (Feral) is used on non-player, non-pet targets. At the same time, Omen of Clarity will no longer proc from Gift of the Wild. This change is intended to smooth out Feral DPS gameplay for most players and resolve many of the social and gameplay challenges that were created by the so-called “Bearweaving” combat strategy. In many situations, Bearweaving not only increases the mechanical complexity of the class to a degree far above what was intended in original Wrath of the Lich King it also places a strain on the raid to keep up with the Druid’s added threat generation, with said impact continually increasing as the Druid becomes more adept at optimizing the rotation.
When crafting this change, it was a goal to ensure we did not “nerf” or decrease the effectiveness of the Feral DPS spec in PvE at all. It was also a goal to not increase the effectiveness of Feral in PvP, where the spec is already strong. Our final goal was to raise the relative skill “floor” for the class without too greatly increasing the output of Druids’ playing at the very highest levels before this adjustment. With this adjustment we expect that the best Feral DPS players in the world may expect somewhere between a 5% and 10% damage increase depending on the encounter while no longer requiring shifting into bear form to optimize output and will provide an even larger percentage increase in the damage output of those players who were not employing the Bearweaving rotation prior to this change.
As always, we are hesitant to make major adjustments to the basic playstyle of many classes, but we feel that this is necessary to bring the gameplay of Feral Druids much closer to the intent from the original Wrath of the Lich King and make the spec slightly more intuitive and approachable to the majority of players.
We appreciate all of the feedback we’ve received since launch on this and many other topics. Thank you!
