is feral fun?

[thatoneguy 1]

someone said on the forums ferals are a hard spec to learn/play. i like playin for fun, but i also dont want to be kicked from lfr's or flex grps 'cuz my dps is on the suckery side. At low lvls its fun, but seems iffy at lvl 90 and havin to deal with 69k buttons to push just to get 5k dps.

 

question is:

 

would it be worth my time/affort to actually play a killer cat?

 

Thanks for inputs and tips.

[Omnae 8]

Hard for anyone but you to say what your time is worth or what you find fun.

 

Feral isn't terribly hard to learn but decently hard to master got to be able to micro manage well.

[Krazyito 521]

Yep. Feral is easy to understand what you should e doing for general sense, but to be amazing and competitive it takes a lot of skill and practice.

If you just want to play for fun, anything in flex/LFR you do should be sufficient as long as you're keeping up

[Akraen 230]

Feral is easy to understand and slow.

 

Like truly slow. If you can't sit back and let auto attacks happen without pressing anything, then feral isn't for you.

 

Which is sad, because back in Ulduar it was as tense and fast-paced as frost mage is now. Oh look and now I main a frost mage instead of a feral druid.

[Tarazet 144]

You don't actually have a lot of buttons to press, but each one really counts and sometimes you have to squeeze them into a really short window of opportunity.

[Paloro 39]

It really depends upon what you want from a class.

 

Feral is all about planning ahead.  If you mess up, you won't see it until 15-20 seconds later.  This is especially difficult when you have a multiple target situation or you need to switch targets on the fly.

 

As the others have said, feral isn't hard to learn the basics, but it is very difficult to master.  This can be frustrating, but it makes you always want to improve your gameplay.

[Tarazet 144]

It really depends upon what you want from a class.

 

Feral is all about planning ahead.  If you mess up, you won't see it until 15-20 seconds later.  This is especially difficult when you have a multiple target situation or you need to switch targets on the fly.

 

As the others have said, feral isn't hard to learn the basics, but it is very difficult to master.  This can be frustrating, but it makes you always want to improve your gameplay.

 

One thing that I do like is that since 5.4, Feral has been less rigid when it comes to build. Before, it was SotF and DoC or you can't do the best DPS in all situations, period. Now you have more options, though Incarnation is still pretty bad. If you want to provide healing competitive with any other hybrid healer or especally if the encounter has high raid damage on a 90 second timer, take Ysera's Gift and NV. If you just want the simplest rotation and great AoE DPS in most situations, plus outstanding utility, take SotN and HotW. If what you care about is single-target sustain, and you don't mind a higher skill cap, do FoN and DoC and enjoy the John F---ing Madden rotation.

 

And don't be surprised if you get called on occasionally to remove poisons and curses (as I did progressing on Horridon), use a particular Symbiosis ability to survive a deadly boss mechanic, soothe an Enrage effect, root a problematic add, or Rebirth a dead raid member. This is one of the benefits and drawbacks of being a hybrid healer, but you'll be a better kitty if you can do these things if asked.

 

One area that is still pretty rigid is glyphs. Glyph of Cat Form, Glyph of Rebirth, and Glyph of Stampeding Roar provide such outstanding benefits to a raid that if I use anything else, I really feel like I'm gimping my utility. Glyph of Cat Form is so good that I even use it as a tank.. because if I'm not tanking, I can survive the raid damage better as a cat!!

[Maethor 0]

Honestly, I think 90% of what gets people about feral is that feral is one of the only builds that you do not want to spam your abilities.  Most builds just have a rotation they go through and you are constantly doing something.  Feral on the other hand actually rewards you for not doing that.  If you energy starve yourself and use an ability every time you have any energy you will lose a decent amount of dps.  

 

You actually should be pooling energy most of the time so that when you have a trinket proc or something like that you have the energy to refresh your dots quickly.  The same goes for filling your energy bar as well though, you never want to fill the bar.  This makes it a fine balancing act where timing is key.   You constantly have to be aware of procs and what is going on.

 

This is really counter-intuitive in wow because it is so different than anything else a dps would normally do.  Most classes are mashing a button on nearly every GCD/chance, but doing that as a feral would be really bad.  If anything it actually feels more like a healer/tank than a dps a lot of the time.   

 

It is actually one of the things I currently dislike about it is the slower paced careful thought and I have been thinking about going back to boomkin on my druid.  Its just I normally play a healer so playing off spec is what I like to do to relax and feral is just as stressful as healing. 

[Pandalishis 1]

Played well, yes, feral is quite fun, but it's the sort of fun that comes from mastering a spec few others do and the pride that comes with it. It's the sort of fun that comes from catching someone in /i saying "why are you inviting feral? They suck." and then busting that guy's balls on DPS meters. But it's also the sort of fun that comes after weeks and weeks of practice, with each raid being incrementally better but still frustrating because you know you messed up. It's the sort of fun that comes from micro-managing stats, trinket procs, and timing. Feral is not "rawr rawr rawr" fun, but a sort of "I say old chap, do you care to see whether intelligence leads to better DPS?" Personally, I love it, but it's taken months to get to that point.

 

PS You get to be a fire kitty if you want. That's tons o' fun imho.

 

PPS Feral's not-so-fun on movement-heavy fights, which is why I'm gearing up my boomkin off-spec.

[Tarazet 144]

Played well, yes, feral is quite fun, but it's the sort of fun that comes from mastering a spec few others do and the pride that comes with it. It's the sort of fun that comes from catching someone in /i saying "why are you inviting feral? They suck." and then busting that guy's balls on DPS meters. But it's also the sort of fun that comes after weeks and weeks of practice, with each raid being incrementally better but still frustrating because you know you messed up. It's the sort of fun that comes from micro-managing stats, trinket procs, and timing. Feral is not "rawr rawr rawr" fun, but a sort of "I say old chap, do you care to see whether intelligence leads to better DPS?" Personally, I love it, but it's taken months to get to that point.

 

PS You get to be a fire kitty if you want. That's tons o' fun imho.

 

PPS Feral's not-so-fun on movement-heavy fights, which is why I'm gearing up my boomkin off-spec.

 

I'm not sure about the very end of that.. ferals are awesome on movement-heavy fights. They run faster than other classes, have a sprint, a gap closer AND a raid-wide sprint.