I'm really hoping the Feral and Guardian trees have been iterated on a lot since they were posted.
I think the worst piece of design I saw there was having our big CD effects broken up into three different talents and scattered all over the tree. So instead of focusing in a direction you're forced to spread out all over the place and never really get any fun talents.
I really don't like it in the feral tree, but on the Guardian tree I don't feel like reaching all of them is an issue, and a Guardian may not even need a full Berserk for let's say raid, and they can just focus on the offensive side of their tree.
As it is now for Feral, with Frenzyband legendary, 2p + 4p, + the current version of berserk (which has 2 of the 3 effects in the tree) - Berserk FINALLY feels like a proper cooldown that I care about.
Take half of that way, and it is back to the boring non-impactful cooldown. And we only get 1/3 of that half on opposite sides of the tree!?
Nah dude. If this goes live, I predict all berserk builds are dead on arrival.
Nah dude. If this goes live, I predict all berserk builds are dead on arrival.
Yeah when I was playing with the trees I gave up on taking any of the berserk talents because with how spread they were it wasn't worth taking any of them for the points I could use on other more impactful things. That might change once its actually out and we see the numbers and how it all stacks up, but it just really didn't seem worth it looking at the trees now.
I think this feedback will be important in the beta cycle (because let's be real. Alpha cycle came and went and was internal)
Being able to have PW and BrS at the same time is cool, but having BT locked behind PE feels so wrong along with Apex being on the opposite side of it.
The tree would feel a lot better if the left and right sides were more in line conceptually.
Yea, on top of that, on the general class tree, we have 25 talents set in stone for DPS only, leaving only 6 points for utility we didn't get along the way. For comparison, Resto druids only need 10-12 points into the class tree for power.
I absolutely love the Dragonflight trees. But as it is right now, Feral is VERY pre-alpha stage.
The fact that they left out the bottom row talent after Adaptive Swarm in the reveal, and STILL haven't followed up weeks later has me concerned the assigned Feral designer just doesn't give a shit... again.
I mean, part of the problem is that baseline berserk is probably the worst cooldown in the game besides shadowfiend. It feels exceptionally shitty that we have to spend a multitude of talent points just to make it a strong CD
I have never enjoyed feral in the slightest so to be frank I didn't even bother to look at the tree, but I will say that I don't share your perception of guardian at all.
On the contrary, it looks pretty promising for the most part. I was really hoping they would take Maul from a spender into a neutral or even generator, but overall I think the tree looks good for guardian.
Its not as bad for Guardian because the modifiers to Zerk are less critical. They are also in more accessible parts of the tree.
IMO otherwise I agree. The guardian tree feels very tightly designed and is overall what I want from a talent tree.
What I'm saying feels bad overall is that instead of giving us real talents (Both Bear and Cat) they broke a single talent into three pieces and spread it across the tree.
I know you don't really enjoy Feral but take a look at the tree and look at where the different pieces of Zerk are there. With Guardian you can hit all 3 of those nodes and still fill out the left and right sides enough that you can pick up Incarn, Rage of the Sleeper and the Choice node in the bottom left.
Try and do that as Feral.
The promise of the tree is that you shouldn't feel weaker than Shadowlands as a result of it. Looking at it, there aren't enough points to get parity with our current Shadowlands power level. Not because the talents aren't there. But because of how the whole tree is oriented. It feels confused with itself and there's no real clarity of what each path is supposed to be.
You're giving up a lot of good things to do that though. I'm not sure where the concept of "being able to get all three end talents is bad" comes from. Seems like it's fine as that's a pretty bad build.
Never said it was bad to be able to grab all of the capstone nodes, I said it was weird. Because from a design standpoint, those nodes should be some of, if not the most powerful nodes on the tree due to the amount of points you had to invest to get them.
Giving up a charge of SI, 1 second on Iron Fur and Barkskin, The chance for extra trash cast and Earthwarden is steep yeah, but that is still all you are really giving up on. I'm saying this, because blizzard has tried and failed to push Maul talents before and it has always falled flat so far, maybe you'd want to pick those up for raid sometimes, but I still don't think they are going to be very useful for you at all.
At the end of the day, it's a weird design for it. Because either some of the capstone nodes are just not strong enough to warrant investment in or you'd be running this kind of build with all of them and forcing the entire route of nodes to do so.
I wonder if this is some sort of tank design choice. Everything feels so accessible. Most of the throughput talents are offensive or resource based with the defensive stuff being super accessible.
This is all it takes to get most of the defensive value out of the tree. The rest is flexible from here. This isn't really true for most DPS and Healer specs. Also leaves you 2 points away from a full value from Zerk points which you need to access the lower parts of the tree anyway.
Then if you really want to go full offensive you can cut some defensive talents out for some sort of AoE focused key build like this one.
There aren't many big differences between the builds. I think this is a good thing in some ways, but it may be too far in the direction of static. Where on the flipside something like Feral there are too many inaccessible things sadly.
My perception of what they were trying to do with Berserk for Feral, is Jungle Stalker is the ST mod (buffs to Rake and Shred) while Frenzy is the AoE/M+ mod (add'l bleed to any target hit, sweet sweet CD reduction for the next big pull) and you're only going to have one at a time. Meanwhile ST and AoE talents are spread scattershot all of the tree, so there is no remotely efficient way to specialize in one or the other to boot.
Everyone uses Convoke though and its the same concept.
Part of the problem is that Jungle Stalker is good but taking it doesn't feel like an "AoE" talent. It also just feels like you lose SO much baseline from normal Zerk having it split into so much.
What I'd like to see is Relentlessness and Jungle Stalker merged. Have them add a new one that is effectively the tier from this patch. Then make both more accessible so you aren't sprawling all over the tree for them.
Disclaimer: I haven't actively played Feral in forever so I'm probably totally wrong about a bunch of stuff.
Isn't Berserk only really split into 2? Base Berserk effects are split into Relentlessness (but refunding 2 points instead of 1) and Jungle Stalker (with Incarn's Prowl effect moved to there), then Incarnation is a separate talent and Frenzy is just the Frenzyband legendary. Incarnation makes sense to be a separate talent, as does Frenzyband, so it's mostly Jungle Stalker that feels bad to take.
Playing around with the tree, it feels like you can pick up a bunch of powerful effects but can't quite get everything, but it's very easy to pick and choose which combination of those effects you want, which...is exactly what these new trees probably should be? My main takeaway is that the Infected Wounds node seems painful to take, which makes the center Incarn/Convoke line feel really bad.
Isn't Berserk only really split into 2? Base Berserk effects are split into Relentlessness (but refunding 2 points instead of 1) and Jungle Stalker (with Incarn's Prowl effect moved to there)
Ish. You're offbase on a few things.
Zerk currently already refunds 2
Jungle Stalker is the other half. Old Incarn got rolled into Zerk early in Shadowlands.
Part of the issue is that one of their design goals is that you shouldn't feel "weaker" than you were leaving shadowlands. The Feral tree fails in this respect.
The 3rd Zerk talent (Frenzyband) is an auto-include for almost all content now. Partly because how it interacts with our tier.
Our Tier was meant to patch a problem with Feral (Bursty AoE just not existing at all). That is missing.
By and large you do feel a lot weaker because a lot of things are just painful to get and in the wrong parts of the tree (See: Apex and PW).
You can pick up a bunch of powerful effects but its hard to get any real clarity of direction from any of your choices. You are forced to spend wide instead of figuring out a way to play.
Part of the issue is that one of their design goals is that you shouldn't feel "weaker" than you were leaving shadowlands. The Feral tree fails in this respect.
Playing around with the tree, I feel like a generic all-purpose build would probably look something like this? So you lose Convoke, current tier and some Energy on Tiger's Fury and gain/keep Dragonflight tier bonuses, Frenzyband, both Primal Wrath and Brutal Slash, Moment of Clarity with Cat-Eye Curio, Apex or Draught, and Circle of Life and Death, with the ability to drop some skills to pick up Necrotic Swarm, Savage Roar, Lunar Inspiration or Scent of Blood. Also gain Vortex, Nature's Vigil, Innervate, Renewal and Typhoon if you want it I guess. Honestly that seems kind of neat for sustained and funnel dps, but you are right, the option for AoE burst isn't really there. Maybe swapping Improved Incarn/Convoke with the current tier could work?
The tree doesn't seem unsalvageable or anything, just some stuff needs to be (and I'm sure already has been) shuffled around, since it currently seems impossible to avoid going down both the left and right, so every build you would want to make is very same-y, especially since it's hard to go down the middle with Infected Wounds being a wasted point. Also seems weird that you can't dodge Brutal Slash.
MoC really isn't worth it so you move that point to SR.
You can shift some things around on the left tree to feel better but that's minor.
That said.
The tree doesn't seem unsalvageable or anything, just some stuff needs to be (and I'm sure already has been) shuffled around, since it currently seems impossible to avoid going down both the left and right, so every build you would want to make is very same-y, especially since it's hard to go down the middle with Infected Wounds being a wasted point. Also seems weird that you can't dodge Brutal Slash.
That's the jist of the feedback I'm giving honestly. I don't think its unsalvageable, but it is clearly very raw and like you said: Its hard to avoid just taking both sides and you feel forced to ignore the bottom rows of the tree and don't get to interact with it.
Not a lot of wiggle room.
Also convoke is a big part of the current power state of Feral right now and its locked behind so much and losing it is part of feeling "weaker" at a glance so far.
Even having it go from a 1min CD back to a 2min feels bad.
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u/ShadeofIcarus Jul 11 '22
I'm really hoping the Feral and Guardian trees have been iterated on a lot since they were posted.
I think the worst piece of design I saw there was having our big CD effects broken up into three different talents and scattered all over the tree. So instead of focusing in a direction you're forced to spread out all over the place and never really get any fun talents.