Feral Druid Mid-Expansion Retrospective – Hero Talents, Current Issues & Season 3 Wishlist

Looking back on the War Within so far, how has each spec fared? Guiltyas, our Feral Druid writer, recaps the spec’s trajectory in the War Within addressing Hero Talents and current issues while looking to the future with a Season 3 wishlist.

Frost DK

Feral Druid

Beast Mastery Hunter

Brewmaster Monk

Outlaw Rogue

Demonology Warlock

Arms Warrior
Fury Warrior

Feral Druid in the War Within So Far

Whenever talking about the path of any particular spec nowadays, we really need to distinguish between pre-dragonflight and post-dragonflight. The new talent tree’s were such a drastic shift for so many specs that it would be negligent not to start there. Feral is in an interesting position in that I believe that this period for feral has been it’s on average worst performing period in terms of pure numbers but I truely believe that in terms of playstyle and gameplay the spec is in an incredible spot, I wouldn’t personally say its the best the gameplay has ever been but I would say it’s near to the best.

Since the end of Dragonflight, not a lot has changed for Feral, unlike some specs, Feral’s hero talents are almost entirely passive, almost purely number changes. They do have some minor rotational impact due to the talents they enable but for the most part if you’d accidentally not selected one you wouldn’t really notice. I think it’s a bit of a shame that the key feature of the expansion when it comes to class design is so bland for feral but ultimately it could be worse.

Feral’s performance and representation across the entire expansion have been pretty consistent. In fact, perversely, I think that both its highest and lowest points are at the same time. Feral’s performance can be summed up largely in a single fashionable world – mid.

Season 1

In the modern game performance is heavily siloed between the two main pillars of PvE gameplay, Raid and Mythic plus. Specs can have drastically different levels of performance and representation between the two different game modes, they have different demands upon class tuning.

Feral’s historically been on the stronger side in raid while being on the weaker side in M+, in The War Within this has largely been inverted, this expansion Feral’s been pretty strong in M+ and very mediocre in raid.

Nerubar Palace had a fascinating balance of development; we started out with Wildstalker being clearly dominant in single target, but with two different builds being playable, a standard build with Apex Predator’s Craving and Brutal Slash, and a “Far Left” build without Apex Predator’s Craving or Brutal Slash. It’s pretty uncommon for two builds that far apart to not only be playable but largely balanced between each other. This trend continue din the raid across the patch, in fact getting even more extreme, by 11.0.7, there were realistically three different talent builds across two different hero talents that played distinct talents, had their own distinct rotational quirks.

While the tuning and talent balance was fascinating in terms of absolute performance, Feral wasn’t at its best this tier. This is a consistent problem Feral has, it really lives or dies by it’s single target performance, even when Feral AOE is strong it typically requires set up and is either more sustained or requires cooldowns. Typically by the time that Feral has its AOE set up to burst other classes have either already obliterated the adds, or it’s a low enough target count that Feral is largely ineffectual. Feral’s uncapped AOE excels on high target counts and with cooldowns. The spec is inflexible when it comes to AOE and so it relies on single target for its raid performance. For Nerubar palace, its single target was on the poorly tuned side, and as such, the living or dying by its single target leaned slightly towards the dying side.

While raid had uniquely balanced hero talents in M+ there was a single dominant hero talent. Druid of the Claw was clearly and significantly ahead. Initially I think a lot of feral’s had the vision that wildstalker would be a sea of vines, but this is never really how the procrate played out, you never really have more than 3 or 4 vines even on the biggest pulls.

In another contrast with raid performance, Feral in M+ was on the stronger side for season 1. The problems I described earlier for Feral’s AOE in the raid don’t apply in Mythic+. The target counts and AOE duration are both higher, and as a result, Feral actually gets to use its AOE tools. While not strictly a meta spec, it was decent, especially by the standards of Feral’s typical M+ performance.

The season as a whole was a somewhat mixed bag, Feral didn’t really stand out as a good spec but it doesn’t stand out as a bad one either. Ultimately, Feral existed as it always does, a solid choice across multiple forms of content, but ultimately overshadowed by better specs in its role and class. It would be wrong to discuss Feral’s performance and representation without considering that earning representation can be difficult as a melee spec on a class where a ranged spec, a healer and a tank also bring all of its tools. As long as everything Feral brings is also brought by the other specs that it shares the class with, Feral will be overshadowed if it’s not tuned exceptionally.

Season 2

Season 2 brought a new tierset, a new raid, and new M+ dungeons, we also got some minor aura tuning. The tierset is a significant change. Your tierset can define the season; a good tierset can make your tier, Feral in Ammirdrassil, for example, and a bad one can make it miserable, Feral in Abberus, for example. Tiersets are an enormous part of your tuning, and sometimes gameplay changes between a tier. Feral’s tier set for season 2 was pretty dull, this applies to a lot of tier sets this tier, but Feral’s has no gameplay impact. There are two points of impact of this tier set, it had a considerable knock-on effect on Hero talent balance, and it had a massive impact on the spec variance.

For season 1, I heavily praised what I think is a fairly unique balance between multiple different builds and hero talents. A contributor to that was the tier sets’ disproportionate impact on Druid of the Claw compared to Wildstalker. With the change in tier sets, this went away, and the hero talent decision in raid went from a reasonably well-balanced choice to a simple one: In raid, you play Wildstalker, and in M+, you play Druid of the Claw.

The RNG is another factor of the tier set, Feral has always been a spec that had fairly minimal dps variance and pretty solid rotational variance, Omen of Clarity, Apex Predator’s Craving, Primal Fury means your rotation has a pleasant amount of variance in terms of the buttons you’re pressing and the resources you have available without a significant fluctuation of your dps. With the tier set introducing two additional layers of RNG this has changed significantly. The tier set has introduced significant levels of DPS fluctuation with minimal gameplay impact, and it’s causing a lot of frustration. Historically when I’ve felt I’ve underperformed on a fight I’ve checked to see how I misplayed rotationally, now I check my Winning Streak! uptime, I check my Apex Predator’s Craving procs, my Big Winner!!! uptime. To go along with this, it’s unfortunately also very undertuned on single target, in fact it’s so undertuned that it’s, if not the absolute worst, one of the worst tier sets available for any spec this tier.

Tier set RNG and Hero talent balance are specific raid issues, in M+ feral is probably the strongest it’s ever been, the tier set that’s so undertuned on single target is tuned pretty highly on AOE where you get significantly more Apex Predator’s Craving procs due to target counts, where the buff it provides impacts more of our damage breakdown. While once again, when discussing Feral’s relevance in M+, we have to note that it’s overshadowed by moonkin in the meta, I think this is the closest Feral has ever been to being a meta spec. If you were to consider comps as a whole, I think a comp including feral might be the 2nd strongest comp in the game.

Unfortunately, while feral is excelling in M+ in the raid, the spec is particularly mediocre. The bosses it’s best on are the single target bosses, and it’s at best middle of the pack, and as soon as you look at any fights that aren’t single target, it sinks rapidly to the bottom of the pack. This has only gotten worse as the tier went on as well, not due to anything happening to feral but because its’ been consistently overlooked for buffs, While the spec started the tier looking okay, as people have progressed and gotten to later bosses with more emphasis on adds, and as all the specs below it have been progressively buffed past it; Feral has languished and now sits close to last on the raid rankings (I keep writing dead last because I forget aug exists, sorry guys).

Current Issues for Feral Druid

I enjoy a lot of things about The War Within Feral Druid. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable spec to play, and despite its mediocre performance currently, it’s engaging enough that I still love to play it. Despite how much I enjoy the spec, there are obviously still issues with it.

Raid Buffs, Utility, and Melee vs. Ranged

Druid has an incredibly powerful raid buff; however, while that is positive for Druid, it is not a huge benefit for Feral. Feral has a long-running historical problem of being the melee spec among a tank, a healer, and a ranged spec. It’s always easier to fit the other options into any particular raid comp, there’s less competition for the healer or tank spot, and its always easier to fit in an extra ranged than an extra melee. This isn’t a new problem, and to a degree while its easier to fit guardian into a comp, its also something Guardian struggles with. Ultimately, it’s not an easy problem to solve universally, but I think some additional utility is warranted.

Tuning

It’s been a long long time since Feral actually excelled at something in the raid, ostensibly the area where we perform the best is single target, but we’re consistently middle of the pack there. The changes in Dragonflight that gradually decoupled our AOE and single target were mostly a success, but those tools haven’t been used effectively. Feral suffers under the weight of negative community perception, I don’t think this is an accurate perception. I think there have been multiple periods across the last three expansions where Feral has been good, but this perception will never change unless the spec excels for a period. Enhancement shaman is a prime example of this, Enhancement shaman used to share a similar perception to feral but they had a few tiers of being overturned and that perception shifted.

It feels insane to be like “you should just overtune feral”, but that’s what I’m saying.

Tier Bonuses

I genuinely, with all my heart, hope we never repeat the abomination of an experiment we had this tier. The experiment of generic tier sets across all roles was terrible. These tier sets are boring, uninspired, and not remotely balanced compared to past tier sets. This experiment sucked get rid of it.

Waiting to see your tier set and checking how it impacts your rotations, talents, and gameplay is one of the coolest parts of each tier. There just isn’t enough design space to have a 2pc that works across all specs and actually inspires and fascinates that spec. Every spec deserves some love and attention each tier, and the generic sets aren’t it.

It doesn’t help that, for Feral in particular, the tier set has had a massively negative impact on talent balance and largely pigeonholes us into a single tree and a single set of talents. It’s also a really cool theme that just feels wasted. RNG is good in a rotation, it makes every fight or every pull fresh, RNG that doesn’t have a meaningful impact on your gameplay just breeds frustration.

We’ll probably start seeing details of 11.2 in the next month or so. Historically, season 3 tier sets have been some of the most interesting ones. Hopefully, when we see the PTR, we’ll get more interesting sets that we can play around with.

Talents

The class tree is better now, but it’s still bad. It’s so obvious that the tree for this tier was designed to make decisions enjoyable for a resto druid, with all the generic talent nodes that for feral and moonkin are essentially just mandatory taxes.

Lycara’s Meditation this tier was also a mess, I understand the concept behind the talent and once again it seems something that was deliberately designed for Resto Druid. Still, for other specs it was a mess. I’m incredibly appreciative of the effort blizz put into band-aiding the problem we had with owlweaving and then bearweaving for the stat buffs. From a feral perspective this tree still sucks though, there’s nothing to get particularly excited about, I don’t love the fact that we nerfed my spells and I can talent into making them stronger again.

Hopefully, we revisit this and strip it down to the ground to build back up.

Feral Druid Hero Talents: Druid of the Claw vs. Wildstalker

Hero talents were the key feature of The War Within so any retrospective of The War Within will discuss them. Feral Druid’s two hero talents have been on a bit of a rollercoaster, but unlike a lot of specs, we’ve had a lot of choice in whether or not to play either of them. Neither of these trees have meaningful gameplay impacts by themselves but have at periods enabled different talents that differentiated them slightly.

Druid of the Claw
Druid of the Claw is our clear M+ talent choice, in season 1, it also saw some play in the raid as a single target choice supported by the tier set, but it’s very clearly the M+ choice.

Druid of the Claw pushes a lot more power into bite, and as such, in season 1, it drove slightly different talents. It didn’t play Apex Predator’s Craving; it played slightly differently from the other option. Of course, that’s not really applicable to this tier, which unfortunately has almost no distinction from Wildstalker.

This tree has the unfortunate distinction of having 3 really poorly tuned talents in choice nodes as well, Ruthless Aggression, Tear Down the Mighty, and Wildpower Surge. These choice nodes don’t really deserve the name because there’s not any choice, there’s a clearly superior option in each of them and you ignore the other.

Ruthless Aggression should be a clear single target option, it has absolutely zero scaling with targets, this contrasts it with Killing Strikes. However the talent is so poorly tuned that even on pure single target it’s not remotely competitive, it should be the IDEAL tuning knob for Druid of the Claw single target, giving them the ability to make it a more competitive option in single target while also allowing it to still exist as a strong option in M+.

Tear Down the Mighty is, while not QUITE as specifically single target as Ruthless Aggression, still pretty weighted towards Single Target, it competes with a talent that simply increases critical strike and damage of several of our generators. Feral Frenzy is unfortunately not a button at the moment that fills anyone with joy, it’s fine, and we do play it on single target, but its not a particularly high point of the rotation. Reducing the CD by itself, particularly by such a small number, doesn’t really make a meaningful difference. I believe that in order to make this compete in it’s choice node you’d have almost to triple the cooldown reduction. This should really just be adjusted to something more similar to the Ammirdrassil tier set; it doesn’t need to be a clone. Maybe it makes Feral Frenzy increase the damage of your next Ravage.

Wildpower surge is a bit of a weird talent, Ferals don’t really like rotational Bearweaving, and this talent is clearly driving for that. We’ve even been told that this isn’t intended to be a damage gain, but why does it exist if that’s the case?

Wildstalker
Wildstalker is currently our clear single-target choice, and in fact, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t play it anywhere. I was incredibly negative about the gameplay impacts of this talent before the expansion. It’s entirely passive, but I do like that it’s the more dot-focused tree.

Ultimately I think I was slightly wrong about the tree, It’s still not very interesting. It doesn’t really add a rotational high point, but the buffs to all damage have resulted in some interesting rotational complexities. It’s the most gameplay we’ve had with snapshotting in a long time. Trying to maintain 100% uptime on Tiger’s fury snapshots on Rip is cool and If I wasn’t also stuck playing with 11.2’s tierset RNG while being undertuned this tier I’d be delighted with the gameplay of the spec.

This tree has a HUGE problem with AOE, it’s just bad compared to Druid of the Claw, you don’t proc enough vines, and as a result the two choice nodes that have clear single target and AOE options just have you playing the Single target option in all scenarios, in a funny contrast to Druid of the Claw. My personal mental image of this tree in AOE was having a sea of vines around me, Swapping what target I bite for big vine explosions, and getting a huge amp from all the vines out interacting with Root Network.

Hero Talents as a whole

Ultimately both of these hero talents have the same problem, they’re not particularly fun or meaningful, If you had accidentally not selected a hero talent while levelling and didn’t look at damage meters I don’t think you’d have a very different experience this expansion. The two choices are just almost entirely passive, there’s not really any high points or low points. It’s just a bit bland, and for the key feature of the expansion, that’s a bit disappointing.

Season 3 Feral Druid Wishlist

We’re probably not far out from seeing content for 11.2, so it’s time to start thinking about what changes we hope to see in 11.2 and going forward. I’m pretty happy with Feral at the moment from a gameplay perspective. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best it’s been in a long time. I will say I wish it still had even less energy. We’re currently pushing 51 APM or so, but hey, ho, I can compromise on this point a little bit.

I’m happy with the spec. I don’t think it needs a full rework, but I do hope we see some tweaks to make it feel better. It has a few problems lingering around: tuning, AOE in raids, Brutal Slash as a button, Lycara’s Meditation, and the class tree.

As far as Tuning goes I think I’ve explained my hopes here already, ultimately the spec just needs to be tuned higher, It’s a spec with incredibly low representation for a long time, and part of that is that some people don’t gell with it rotationally, and that’s fine, but I can’t stress enough how many people I’ve talked to who have said things like “I wish I could play feral in raid but I just can’t justify it”. There are people who do want to play this spec and its position in the druid class, and as a melee as a whole is doing a disservice to people who do want to play it. I’m not saying that you can’t play it and perform and get Cutting Edge, Hall of Fame, or Ahead of the Curve as Feral druid, I did after all, but community perception of the spec makes it harder to do so. Just give the spec something it excels at in raid.

A big part of the reason why feral is as close as it is to dead last in raid statistics is its single target tuning being mediocre. However, the flip side of this is that their AOE, where they are tuned well, is designed in such a way that you can never really apply it in the raid. Our AOE is a) very reliant on target counts for more reliable Apex Predator’s Craving procs, and b) requires significant setup. You need to apply Primal Wrath, you need to build combo points again to start spamming bites, or you need access to your CDs. By the time you’re able to leverage your AOE, however, everything is usually dead. Our AOE requires too much setup to impact burst AOE in raids, but that’s fine, we have the PERFECT button to fix this – Brutal Slash. Brutal Slash feels like it should be the ideal burst AOE button, and in the past it has been, Legion Brutal Slash hit targets for about as hard as Ferocious Bite, with a much longer CD, back then it was a bit easier to tune this against single target Brutal Slash because of how those talent trees worked. Currently, Brutal Slash is not a very interesting button; it does insignificant damage with a very low cooldown, the fix for this talent is so simple, massively amp its damage and increase its CD, make it an actual meaningful burst AOE button instead of just Swipe with a CD, its bizarre that Swipe essentially doesn’t exist and Brutal Slash is this noodly.

My last main consideration for 11.2 is the tier set, so far this expansion we’ve mirrored the same pattern as dragonflight for Feral, tier sets in season 1 are dull but fine, tier sets in season 2 actively make the spec feel worse and are also undertuned. Hopefully we’ll continue to follow the same pattern and Season 3’s tier set will knock it out of the park.

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.