... kinda! I had Monday off from work for the Christmas holiday; it was glorious, but I did not end up writing a post. Additionally, since I made a post late last week, I covered all the interesting PvP bits from our exploits. As a recap - we hit about 1850 with my season nine gear then queued into a war+rsham team that farmed us for a bit. It was lame, but largely due to them being 2100 rated and having season 11 gear.

Let's talk a little bit about MoP and Feral. I, having re-upped my subscription, am back to trolling the wow boards (Druid boards mostly - if I go into the arena boards my blood pressure spikes and causes me aneurisms). It seems like a lot of Ferals are concerned about abilities being removed or changed to Guardian-only and the talent tree choices in general as it pertains to Ferals in PvP. I, on the other hand, am extremely excited for the Feral builds in MoP, and here are a bunch of examples:

  • We are losing Survival Instincts and many Ferals are concerned that our survivability will be lackluster.
  • Our first tier talents offer no choice for competitive PvP - we will still need Feral Swiftness in order to get behind people and land Shreds.
  • Our fourth tier talents offer no choice for competitive PvP - we will be forced to take Wild Charge for mobility.
  • Our sixth tier talents offer no choice for competitive PvP - every Druid will be taking Disentanglement.
I tend to agree with the sixth tier argument as every Druid (Feral for sure) will be taking Disentanglement for PvP, but I argue that this solves a lot of problems otherwise. For instance, Disentanglement means that Tireless Pursuit is no longer a valid talent selection - why would we want Dash and Stampeding Roar to break roots when we could just break them with a shapeshift? One could make the argument that allowing StR to break roots for your partners might be useful, but I contend that that is for what healers are.

Okay, so you're nigh-unrootable again, what does that have to do with the rest? Well, Wild Charge is useful for getting or swapping to targets, but if we are difficult to peel then we might not need charging in general and might opt for Incarnation which looks to offer hilariously powerful damage when coupled with Berserk (I am already imagining comps like Rogue+Feral+Healer where the Rogue provides lockdown and the Feral sets up for Incarnation+Berserk to land with a Shadowdance... scary). I do not think that many would pass up Wild Charge, since it can be used as another defensive cooldown in Caster or Travel form, but the extra damage is definitely some may be willing to try out because of Disentanglement.

Additionally, the change to Mangle/Shred interaction means that Mangle-spamming will be 80% of the damage of a Shred, cost 5 less energy, and not have a positional requirement. More to the point, there will be no reason to NOT use Shred, but in situations where getting behind your opponent is not simple, Mangle-spamming will be roughly the same damage. That means that Feral Swiftness is less useful, and my argument is that it would be optional to the point where I would be taking Displacer Beast because of the added survivability. Already, with the loss of Survival Instincts, I have picked up 3 "new" talents which improve survivability and I contend that I have not given up any damage in doing so. In fact, I contend that I have made myself more rounded for dealing damage by focusing on Mangles rather than Shreds.

We all know that this is not the final pass for Feral in MoP, but if things end up playing out this way, I think we can all be excited about the unique role that Ferals will bring to PvP in MoP. Essentially, we will have control, be hard to control, and deal decent damage. If nothing else, Typhoon, Demo Roar, Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Bash, and Wild Charge will allow us to effectively control an opposing team, and if our survivability and damage are up to snuff, we will be a strong piece of many 3s comps (particularly ones with strong damage and control like FMP or EbolaCleave).