Feral Druid Changes Coming Soon

• Energy regeneration rate increased by 10%

• Rip damage increased by 15%

• Berserk duration increased from 15 to 20 sec

• Brutal Slash cost reduced from 30 to 25 energy

• Swipe cost reduced from 40 to 35 energy

• Thrash cost reduced by from 45 to 40 energy, and damage reduced proportionally

We’re reducing the energy cost of Thrash but also proportionally reducing the damage. The goal is easier ramp-up time in AOE situations, while avoiding causing Thrash to be added to the single target rotation (since it’s close to Shred’s Energy to damage ratio), which we think wouldn’t make for a better overall rotation.

• The spec’s hidden 50% increase to Haste secondary stat value reduced to 25%.

This helps alleviate a secondary stat scaling issue, and both the Energy and damage loss should be overcompensated for by the increase to base Energy regeneration rate plus the other changes listed. We eventually want to remove this hidden bonus entirely, but since players have already made gearing choices based on Haste being their best secondary stat, we don’t want to upset that in the short-term, so we’ll do this in two parts.
The sum of these changes is intended and expected to be a increase in Energy income, pacing, and damage in all situations.

Other issues we’ve been talking about (future patch timeline):

• Better consolidate Energy-increasing and heavy pacing-impacting talents into the same row, and reduce the pacing impact that a single talent hasThe goal is to reduce the Energy/pacing swing between different talent builds, which allows us to bring up the bottom without letting the highest Energy/pacing talent build with endgame/late expansion gear to get near overflow range
• Better separate Single Target talents and Multitarget Talents into their own rowsThis is slightly more of a challenge on Druid specs than most specs, due to Druids having only 4 throughput talent rows (compared to most specs having 5), but it’s a goal we have for all specs.
• Provide better AOE talent optionsEchoing suggestions – a combo-point spender is a possible direction. There may be an additional opportunity to do something with Thrash here. It functions as an enabler, but could be doing even more for the spec.
• BloodtalonsBloodtalons does a great job at adding complexity to the rotation, but we’re not sure the method in which it does that is right for the spec long-term. Bloodtalons asks you to frequently cast a Regrowth in exchange for its buff, which in a group/raid, means either you’re required to keep an eye on group/raid frames (which is a lot to ask) or you make a macro to mindlessly cast Regrowth on yourself (which isn’t great).
• Remove the spec’s bonus to Haste secondary stat (currently on live 50%, soon to be 25%) entirely. Re-adjust Energy/pacing to compensate.Mentioned above, but now that Bleeds scale with Haste, it’s both no longer needed to make Haste a relevant stat for Feral, and is also contributing to expansion-wide scaling issues.
• Remove cat form’s 40% bonus to auto-attack damage.This contributes to feedback that abilities don’t hit hard enough and have low Energy to damage conversion ratios.

Note that as we’ve mentioned before, we’re watching overall class tuning and plan to make a general tuning pass later next week.