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Feral PvP in 3.2....
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Post by
Lightrain
Yes, it took a huge hit. Burst is how feral kills things. Nerfing it 2%, plus an additional 9-12% from resil, is too much.
I'm hoping that this doesn't affect 3v3 as much, because 2v2 seems to be an instant 300-600 rank loss due to nerfs.
Post by
Thuya
I posted in the other feral thread before I saw this one, so I'll make a comment here too.
It really seems like it's going to be a LOT harder to kill any sort of geared healer without catching them off-guard or having them make some sort of mistake. I haven't done arenas in 3.2 yet, but I'm a little worried.
PvE is not even an issue, but that resilience change sure seems to have affected us a good portion, since we lack the same type of stunning control a rogue has, or the MS debuff. I suppose only time will tell...
Post by
Kramp
Allic lock/disc/feral is a decent set-up. Bleed/Dot all over the place and set a kill with Berserk/Maim.
Our peeling habilities are quite awesome with that set-up.
Post by
Lightrain
I finally got to do some 2v2's. I'm not happy.
I went from being able to force a shaman to use earthshield 90% of the time, to not being able to scratch his nuts with water shield up, and we all know that shaman will throw an earth shield/rip tide up on his partner and just sit and drink to his heart's content if there isn't enough stress....
3v3 isn't too bad. I'm definitely glad they didn't screw that up too badly, but I'm still not happy with it.
The major problems with feral now.
-Sustained damage in PvP has gone down the tubes, and shred literally does 20-30% less damage to resil wearing people now(I'm not joking, it's pathetic now).
-The only threat we can put out against a healer is during berserk, which is on too long of a cooldown, and that won't be changed for PvP's sake.
-Bleed damage took a big hit as well, which sincerely lowers our damage yet again(our only unmitigated damage).
-Plate wearers are a joke now. We can't stress them. Pre 3.2, I was pumping 20-30% more damage than warriors in PvP, which, with interupts, MS, and overpower, sounds pretty fair. Now, I'm lucky to be doing 10% more damage, against a warrior with less gear than me using the same healer type. I'm not even going to talk about DK's or paladins.
-We still lack an interupt that doesn't have a DR.
-We have returned to the all powerful "support" class once again. We can support damage, that's harder to keep off than other classes, or we can support with healing. We can't take on similarly geared healers anymore unless the healer are wearing zero resil.
So, blizz screwed us out of 2v2 ratings. Luckily for us, they didn't screw us out of being a good support dps(although rogue still can lock us down way too effectively). My total distaste for this whole issue. We've been reduced to not being able to kill, or even stress a descent healer with similar gear to ours by ourselves.
Post by
pelf
While you're talking about your feral druid in arenas, I have some questions perhaps you might answer.
Looking at the spec that profiler has for you currently (
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGMsfbdbeRGfuVk0E0z:pVmzVM
), I have some questions/points I wonder if you might respond to. Please read this as me asking from a point of un-knowledge, not questioning your choices. Educate me :).
No Primal Precision
Do you find Expertise to be not useful in PvP? I was thinking it would be nice to have this passively to mitigate the natural dodge and parry people have. Obviously attacking from behind is optimal, but do you find that you have a chance to be behind as much as you do in front? Is it just a question of choosing from tons of good talents? Obviously the second effect is also synergistic as if you DO miss, you don't take such a massive energy hit.
Nurturing Instinct
It was my instinct (lol) that this would be a very useful talent so that I could boost my survivability in cat form when I'm guaranteed to have a healer. However, I was looking through druid profiles where the main talent specialization is feral with a gear score of 2500+ and a 3s arena rating of 2000+; very few of these cats had NI. I was curious why. Ideas?
Primal Tenacity
While this was a lol-no-duh talent to me, I also ran into a lot of those druids that didn't spec into this. Huh?
Running out of points.
I see you have 2/3 PotP, 2/3 PI -- there are just so many PvP-useful talents in Feral that it's impossible to get them all but still get OOC in Resto. Is this what you are sacrificing filled talents for (OOC)?
Predatory Instincts vs. Protector of the Pack vs. Infected Wounds
How on earth do you decide between these? IW seems like a must to alleviate the issues with lag and range. PI -- is the AOE damage reduction useful? How often are you getting hit with AOE spells? I guess that counts for stuff like CoC and Dragon's Breath as well as actually 360-degree things. PotP seems almost like suicide if you don't fill it out since you're literally giving up on full percentage points of damage reduction. Thoughts?
Natural/Master Shapeshifter
Do you find that the extra mana cost reduction is unnecessary? Do you find that spending 5 points to get that plus extra damage/crit isn't worth the loss of the other points you'd have to sacrifice from Feral?
That's all I can think of now. I've been getting back into PvP a bit and I was trying to figure out a spec I'd be comfortable with. I also have questions about your glyph choices, but I have to leave work now, so that will have to wait.
Post by
Lightrain
While I can't see that link(not sure why), I do have 2 points in Nurturing Instinct and 3 points in primal tenacity. If you have a good healer, you are actually doing rather well on mana as far as shifting goes, less against rogues and warriors, but warriors you can sit on for a while in cat or bear and not have much issue with it.
Check my armory, it should have a spec attatched to it that makes more sense. I chose 2/3 PotP because I need the survival. My healer is a prot paladin, so I get focused quite often. So I have 2/3 PotP and 2/3 Predatory instincts.
However, as of 3.2, I'm tempted to change my spec to 3/3 Primal Instincts, because the burst in PvP against 800-1000 resil healers is, by all meaning, retardedly low.
If you go zero PotP, you can put 1 or 2 points in Natural Shapeshifter, but you need 2 points minimum in PI for burst, or you will be useless. Having IW helps a lot against druid/warrior. By a lot, I mean A LOT. It also helps against priests and paladins as it forces them to use more mana. Having a slowed enemy is a MAJOR benefit to feral druids in PvP.
As for Precision, you only need it for debuffs, and while it could be useful for the cost reduction when you get avoided, you can't afford the points. 90% of your burst damage as feral is(or was....) shred.
Post by
Katsudon
They are balancing things around 3's now, and i think its pretty much assumed that you need to carry a MS class with you now, esp since they started spreading MS to more classes. So while your comp is hurting especially bad in 2's, its probably not as bad in 3's if you grab one of the many ms classes available now.
On another note, they should probably give us a MS. Or a cat version of kick. Both would probably be a bit overpowered but at least 1 of these is needed if they expect feral to be able to pressure a healer.
Post by
176018
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
pelf
Check my armory, it should have a spec attatched to it that makes more sense. I chose 2/3 PotP because I need the survival. My healer is a prot paladin, so I get focused quite often. So I have 2/3 PotP and 2/3 Predatory instincts.
I fixed the link. Some of the stuff I said was just questions, not questioning you. For example, you
did
have NI, but I was asking why people I looked up didn't. If you reread what I asked but don't read it as me asking about your spec, it might help.
WTF, lol. because R/M/P really needed to be buffed? : P
Clearly.
Post by
176018
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
pelf
i've never been on a high rated arena team as feral but i've done some arenas for funsies and a lot of BGs and, while i'd love the MS bonus, it's pretty hard to find anywhere to take those 5 points from... probably the reason the expert pvp kitties skip it as well.
the damage reduction talents win out by a small margin for me, IW in particular since it not only reduces incoming melee damage but the slow makes it easier not only to stay in melee with someone but to wiggle around into shred position more often.
These have been my thoughts as well. The thing that made me so curious about this is the stuff that I saw when looking at specs of ostensibly highly-rated ferals.
Post by
243785
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Lightrain
To Pelf- Ya, I assumed you were still asking why it wasn't there, which I thought was odd. I use it because it reduces MS effects on you in cat when you get a burst class on your behind and are trying to finish off a healer. It's almost required because of how burstable a cat is when not stunned with an MS on them. Well played ferals try to stay in cat form as much as possible without endangering their life, so 2 points in NI is amazing if you are playing with a durable healer that a lot of melee won't want to focus on.
I dont mean to bug. but a druid is a support class. If you wanted to be Mr. Uber dps then you should have rolled a rogue/mage/huntard. It takes a ton of skill to play a druid effectively and I commend those that do :) I left my druid when lich came out for a different play style (rolled a DK which you've flamed me before). I agree with you that feral is missing something... possibly more interrupts or something like that. But their dps was insane.
I was pushing 2100, and we were going to push for duelist in 2's this season, but I'm not sure it's possible now. We did have descent luck last night, and I'm not sure if it was just the matchups or an adjustment in our strategies or what, but we managed a descent win/loss streak.
As for the high level players, we were getting matched up against 2400 rated teams and winning pre 3.2, now we pretty much always lose to them.
-----
Just so you know where I'm coming from. With this "mini nerf", which didn't affect PvE geared ferals in BIS or close PvE gear more than 2%, PvP geared ferals, probably taking anywhere from 5-15%(or more) nerf just from this "mini nerf", combined with the resil buff, is LITERALLY nerfing PvP dps by 20%. I'm NOT joking. It's a horrible, horrible nerf, and is why I don't feel anywhere near as viable as pre 3.2, when my dps was pushing 130-140% that of a pvp geared warrior in similar gear. The DPS difference is what made us viable.
Not having an viable interupt without a DR, not having an MS, we NEEDED the extra dps capability(and DK's still out dps'd me in every match, and still do after their supposed "nerf", which was actually somewhat of a buff according to a lot of DK's and have an insane amount of interupt). Now, we don't have the dps, and lose a MAJOR chunk of viability.
Maybe Pelf is good at the math, and can tell me how big of a nerf from pre 3.2 this base ability nerf is with 7100 self buffed AP and 50% crit(using grim toll and berzerking enchant) added to a 10% across the board nerf from resil. I won't lie, I went from critting disc priests for 5800 to critting them for 3800, and Rip used to crit for 3.8-4.3k, now around 3k. The ones I catch at least, but I don't catch them as often as before because they aren't as impressive.
Edit- Forgot to mention, all this change, and healing is still the same against feral dps. Cylcone used to be a wrench, now it's a crutch as far as ferals are concerned.
Post by
pelf
Thanks for taking the time to answer me, Light ;). For the math, maybe parra, heckler or aa will peek in here.
Post by
Katsudon
and i think its pretty much assumed that you need to carry a MS class with you now, esp since they started spreading MS to more classes.
mini-MS
for mages... WTF, lol. because R/M/P really needed to be buffed? : P
Unless it stacks with rogue poisons which i doubt, but am not confident in saying it doesn't, there's no change to RMP there. Shadow priests got a mini MS as well. So you can grab a MS from war, rogue, hunter, priest, mage now which is half the classes.
Post by
Kaitain
and i think its pretty much assumed that you need to carry a MS class with you now, esp since they started spreading MS to more classes.
mini-MS
for mages... WTF, lol. because R/M/P really needed to be buffed? : P
Unless it stacks with rogue poisons which i doubt, but am not confident in saying it doesn't, there's no change to RMP there. Shadow priests got a mini MS as well. So you can grab a MS from war, rogue, hunter, priest, mage now which is half the classes.
It sort of comes down to the ease with which the effects are applied, and whether they can be dispelled and if so how easy that is.
Post by
Lightrain
IMO, shadow needed a little something extra. Frost mages however, are more than powerful enough to handle a lot of different classes. They don't need another buff, they need to learn how to play.
Post by
176018
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Lightrain
What I don't get, is why each set of gear shows an increase in resil. Why didn't they make it static like in TBC? That's where their problem is IMO. They started with the resil cap, and made the fights longer at the start of the arena seasons. Then, as you got more gear, it became harder to last longer, so it progressively changed strategies to a more burn oriented design.
Now, in WotLK, they started us off with low resil, and are increasing it to the max. This is causing problems because it's basically been a burst/zerg from the start, and the learning curve isn't there. We are just starting to get into resil levels where clothies and leather wearers are getting more comfortable with their survival level, rather than always worried about getting 2 shot by a PvE geared DK, who up until now didn't need much resil.
The QQ is shifting, from burst, now to healers either lasting too long, or not lasting long enough, while the undergeared morons are still QQing about burst becuase they just hit their alt to 80 and it can't survive for beans, while the ret paladin that 3 shot him seems to not take any damage at all.
Post by
pelf
I would say we can all agree that some of their choices with Wrath were dubious at best.
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