Feral Q&A.. Possible new art in forms!Follow

Seems like we might get to customize how we look in different forms.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/11829579415-feral-druid-need-a-fair-chance-at-visual.html

From GC himself. And maybe even having pieces of our armor show in form. That would be sweet!

edit.. heres the whole run down.

Customization options
New art for forms, customization per form, and even the possibility of showing some gear in a form is all stuff we are talking about. When we have a firm plan we're ready to unveil, I'm sure you'll hear about it. (Source)

Feral Q&A (Source)
1. Feral Mana Pools are very limited, is there a planned fix for this?
en you're in a form feels like it's enough to let you occasionally use that mana for something. We think you will probably still go dry quickly if you're healing a lot (which ultimately isn't something we want Feral to do a lot) or if you're chain shapeshifting (which is also something we don't want you ideally doing a lot, but recognize sometimes you need to -- dealing with a Frost mage perhaps.)

2. Protector of the Pack limitation mechanic - not very fun, what was the thinking behind this and can the limitation be removed?
I've avoided this debate for a long time because it seems to really, really upset people that they can't do something they really, really want to do in a very niche case. Bear isn't designed to be something you run around solo to kill things in, and even if you want to do so anyway, your damage reduction shouldn't be a big deal. It's designed as a tanking talent and "solo tanking" is sort of nonsensical. Bear itself works fine without it, and in fact you can even tank just fine without it as long as you aren't doing progression raiding. (If it affected your dps or something, I'd be a lot more convinced.)

3. Feral talent point usage in resto tree, means we have to focus too many points on a non-feral tree, also very difficult to get all the "tanking" talents offered, no room for pvp choices in a tanking build - is this intended?
We designed the new Feral tree with Omen as a trade-off. If we ever moved Omen around, we would also juggle Feral talents. We don't want you to be able to get all Feral talents and OoC. You can be a good bear, good cat, get good PvP talents or get Omen. But you can't do it all with one build.

4. Swipe / Thorns combo (360') Aoe. Is it possible to get a 360' upgrade to our bear form aoe ability?
We don't think too many druids are having trouble using Swipe in its new form. A little difference among class abilities that are otherwise very similar is probably good for the game.

5. Feral Itemization issue 1: Too much Armor on some earlier tanking weapons compared to 25 man naxx gear is this intended?
Do you mean you're going to keep using the older weapon instead of the Naxx bear staff?

6. Feral Itemization issue 2: Not enough "Armor" trinkets in game making them invaluable to druids, basically once you have these trinkets you will not grab anything else unless you reach armor cap. - Can more armor trinkets be added, with different usage stats?
My suspicion is you are still over-valuing armor compared to other defensive stats. I realize you don't want block or parry but that doesn't mean it's armor or nothing.

7. Feral Itemization issue 3: Tanking gear - PVP gear seems to be better for tanking, more stam, why is this the case?
PvP gear pays a lot more of its item budget on resilience than it did in BC so you're going to be giving up something else (like Agi) to use it. Also make sure you are comparing PvP gear to PvE gear of the same item level.

8. Kitty AOE - Kitty form basically has no aoe ability, which limits damage output in multiple mob situations - we would have to switch to bear / caster which would mean taking a chance on pulling aggro or doing minimal damage with hurricane. Are there plans to add kitty form aoe?
Hurricane and Swipe do pretty good AE, certainly better than rogues have (on which cat was modeled).

9. Cat charge being linked to Bear charge. - Why is this the intended mechanic for these two attacks?
We think this would encourage quickly shifting from one form to another, which is something we have actually taken pains to discourage (RIP powershifting).

10. Berserk - The current version of Berserk feels weak now that the immunity to all snares has been removed, and its cooldown is too long. - Is there any way the snares functionality of berserk can be restored?
We thought it was too good if it broke all snares and granted such a great dps increase.

11. Savage Roar - Is it possible to have it persist through shifting?
Same answer. We don't want to add anything else to the class that encourages you to say go cat, use an ability, then go back to bear. Changing forms is cool. Changing forms to buff yourself in one form then going to another isn't what we're going for. If you're a cat and shift to humanoid to heal or decurse or bear to survive when being attacked -- that's cool and what the Feral design is all about. It's when you start to chain several shifts together that we get uncomfortable.

I use cat in short bursts when I feel like the opportunity to survive is there, but this seems to indicate you want people staying in cat OR bear for extended periods.
No, that's not exactly it. Using cat in short bursts is awesome. Shifting out of feral to Innervate or Rebirth is cool, even if you immediately go feral again. Where it starts to cross the line is being a bear, going cat to hit a button, then going back to bear to benefit from the cat button. Doing feral charge bear, shifting and doing feral charge cat is not what we want. Anything that starts to feel like the old powershifting (changing just to generate mana) is what we're trying to avoid.

If it helps, think about it this way: shifting once in a small window is cool. Shifting several times in a small window is less cool. (Source)

Infected Wound
Infected Wounds is a disease, so it can fail, which shows up as a miss in combat logs. Stacking hit should fix the problem if it seems to happen a lot. Poisons have the same issue. (Source)

Balance high PvE dps at level 70
I'm not sure which quote you're refering to, but we measure dps at a point in time and over the course of several minutes (and even longer if it looks like a caster might run out of mana). For PvP we obviously focus a lot more on the short-term dps.

Moonkin dps does seem to be pretty high right now on Live, but we believe that is partially an artifact of so many groups AE'ing their way through the nerfed raid content (and Hurricane doing serious damage now). We'll have to see what the Starfire + Wrath numbers look like at 80 compared to our own testing. (Source)

Healing as a druid
In our minds, your go-to spells when healing anything bigger than a 5-player group are Rejuv, Regrowth and Lifebloom. You are probably not benefiting your raid the most if you are chaining Healing Touch on the tank while the paladin is trying to keep everyone up with Beacon of Light.

Healing Touch, Swiftmend and Wild Growth are all very useful spells. But they are intended to be used in smaller group or when something unusual happens in a raid. If the entire group takes a lot of damage at once, that's a good time for Wild Growth. If a melee dps class is very wounded and you don't have time for the bloom and Swiftmend is on cooldown, go for the Healing Touch.

Nourish is supposed to be a Flash Heal -- fast but expensive. It may be too fine a line for a class that already has Swiftmend and a (much improved) Regrowth. (Source)


Edited, Oct 30th 2008 9:10am by Cunk

edit #2 - Source is mmo-champion

Edited, Oct 30th 2008 9:24am by Cunk

Thanks for all this, that must have taken a bit of work to get it all, so thanks.
I like the idea of armor showing, simply to find the most outrageous piece of space-style outland gear and wander around with glowing shoulders or something.

Good that they aren't nerfing boomkin before WotLK goes live, waiting to see what the effects are at 80.

No, they be pants. You are looking at other parts of your gear that lay over the pants. Such as cloaks and tabards. Get nekkid and just put on some pants. Then you will see the are not in fact skirts and you are not in fact a cross dresser.

Then take off pants and dance for a bit. Because you are a weirdo. Just not a cross dresser. :)


edit: i kan haz spellinz

Edited, Nov 3rd 2008 7:04pm by Horsemouth

Some are kilts, but there are also pants.

I hope this covers more than just Bear and Cat. Got some great looking gear and other than the staff, can't see any. Which I know is more than our Feral Brothers and sisters get.

Edited, Nov 4th 2008 3:50am by Micros

Large numbers of pantless taurens dancing about with thier staves swinging all over the place is the first answer to "how can you go wrong?" O_o