Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Class Feedback - Feral Cat Druid Edition

So Blizzard dared to ask players to fill out a questionnaire regarding the current state of their particular class. I've seen several interesting posts about it around the bloggosphere actually, and here comes one from Eldhorn (Love), my resident feral cat druid, as it was posted on the class forums.

Feral DPS PoV
(Thanks for listening to all this feedback. I commend you for this herculean labour you took upon yourselves)

What type of content do you focus on? [PvE/PvP/Both]
Only PvE

If PvE, what type of PvE? [Heroics/Raids/Other]
All kinds. I love questing, raiding on as high level as possible and doing 5mans.

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters.
Not being able to see any progression on my character. Can't I even adorn my tusks with diamonds, or at least in some way see that experience and a life of fighting has made a difference? I look just like the little cat cub I once was, and that is, if not boring, then at least not very interesting.

What makes playing your class more fun?
Special play style makes feral a special snowflake, and that in itself is enjoyable. The high mobility, interesting utility and our durability is what makes me keep loving the class.

What makes playing your class less fun?
Feeling like me being a very dedicated feral is a burden to my friends and guildies is not something I enjoy very much, but that is how it has been for quite some time. I make sure to do my job, and to do it quite well, but they always have to accommodate for my special needs. I can't deal with my own shortcomings (big one being pos. requirement) as well as other classes can.

This far in Cataclysm there is also the issue how bringing several melee can be so very cumbersome to the raid. It is not a purely feral issue, but it does affect smaller raiding communities a lot. As a feral I can bring a lot to the table, but it very rarely feels like I can make up for me not being a Balance druid instead. DPS numbers go up and down (to be fair "the best" has stayed pretty much the same all through tier 11 and 12, but that is another question and thread), but a melees value has been pretty much his interrupts or a gimmick fight where mechanics force ranged to suffer movement. As it is now almost everything can and should be dealt with by a ranged, since they don't suffer as much from movement (a ferals forte) as we suffer from having to go toe to toe with something that will either burn us to a crisp or require a heroic healing effort. This does not seem to be a "right now" issue, but rather a design philosophy for this expansion, and ferals suffer quite a lot since we have positional requirements on top of the already heavily burdened melee role.

How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)
Too much emphasis on Shredding. I don't want to deal all my damage up front. It's useful on some encounters, and big numbers are fun - but having to find ways around problems is generally more fun than only having one single road available to us.

What’s on your wish list for your class?
  • Revamp of Feral Charge Cat so that it is as useful in raids as Charge is to warriors. Right now it's very hard to use, as some bosses actually have an overlap between Out of Range and Too Close, or the charge just puts us somewhere where we definitely don't want to be.
  • Skullbash cost and untalented cd lowered. Make us spend talents somewhere else (or change the talents), so that it feels like we gain something by spending the talents, instead of making up for a disadvantage. Doesn't matter if the only change will be how we think of it in our minds, since that is still where all our fun happens.
  • Increase the range of Stampeding Roar so that people don't have to touch me to hear my inspiring growl. They're not deaf, I hope. It is useful, just on a -very- varying scale. Gathering on some fights equals suicide.
  • Move Combo Points onto the feral instead of on the target. I have no idea of what the pvp ramifications are, but it would make our clunky target switching more intuitive and fluid.

What spells do you use the least?
  • Thorns
  • Healing Spells while dpsing (obviously, but doing more than actually dpsing adds depth e.g. Enh Shaman and Healing Rain)
  • Claw. It can safely be removed from the spellbook as it is.
  • Entangling Roots (Ever since the glyph was changed)
  • Prowl (Not used at all in a raid environment. A bit sad, but understandable)
  • Remove Corruption (Could be used? Hard to make raid encounters not require certain classes and specs though)
  • Soothe (Same as above)
  • Nature's Grasp (Purely a design issue. No fights need me to root anything that is chasing me)
  • Maim (Less effective than any other solution, due to its high cost in terms of dps)
  • Cyclone

You probably read hundreds of pages and thousands of posts before mine, but I still appreciate you reading this, a lot.

Eldhorn out.

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