The Beastlords' Den

It's clear most people want a change to feral swipe.  The real question is what change should be made.  I'm going to leave this poll for a week or so, vote and feel free to post feedback.  Obviously no matter what changes are made to feral swipe it needs its range increased a bit more.  What I really wan to get at is what change do most beastlords want to see.  Do you want to see the skill improve as a DPS AA, do you want to see it gain some utility as a means of DEaggro for us?  Please don't worry about specific numbers such as hit rate or damage or aggro figure, for now please just let me know what direction you'd like to see feral swipe go in.

Add DEaggro to it -  This idea has merit.  Beastlords do generate too much aggro for their damage.  Also beastlords lack any form of taunt or jolt ability that all other melees have.  My main concerns are the refresh time on feral swipe.  I think 1 minute for a DEaggro ability is good, but feral swipe misses a lot.  I've had streaks of 14 straight that missed.  If DEaggro were added to feral swipe I think it would have to have its hit rate bumped up to almost 100%.  Also if DEaggro were added to feral swipe it'd have to be a decent amount as it's only useable once per minute and using it actually generates some aggro on its own.

Have it lock out kick -  This idea also has a lot of merit.  I know a lot of beastlords envisioned feral swipe as our long awaited "flying kick" upgrade.  Kick is low dps and you have to click it a lot.  I know a lot of beastlords that don't even click it now because they don't feel its worth the button slot on their hot key bank.  This option would have feral swipe block out kick and do a little more damage than using kick + feral swipe currently does.  

Change Feral swipe to a DEaggro skill -  This basically just removes the damage from feral swipe and has the skill turned into a DEaggro ability.  At the momment feral swipe only does ~1dps on average.  Losing the damage from the ability and having it hit 100% of the time and remove a set amount of hate is an option.

Other -  If you vote for other please list your suggestion in this thread.

Don't get me wrong, I like getting an extra attack through Feral Swipe; however, I'd gladly invest another 3 to 6 aa's to have Feral Swipe refresh 2 or 3 times per minute and have some aggro-reduction component added to it.  Changes like that could make Feral Swipe a winner.

I would like to see feral swipe as a pure deaggro skill, it should have a faster reuse though and a way higher hit rate, otherwise it would be useless (again).

Assuming we don't get a deagro of some form in OoW (a disciplinellike evade is my choice, but a spell or AA could work too), then making this a deagro is a good alternative.  However, it needs to refresh a lot more often ro be usable.

Well my preference is to keep Feral swipe purely damage. a 1 minute deagro button is not going to be that helpful in my opinion. It would probably be like -400 hate. Over a minute largely worthless.

Before people say how much we need deagro, I think there should be better ways for us to get it. Like a self proc buff or similar, and we shouldn't need to burn 9 aa's for it. Basically something that only works every 60 seconds isn't going to be that helpful to me unless it is a lot of negative hate, which would possibly be unbalancing.

Also if Feral swipe is to grey out kick then 2 things should happen. The damage should be tripled at least, or the timer reduced to kick preferrably. And Feral swipe should become a "kick" skill so kick modiferes work on it. I actually still use kick because of the runewarded belt from PoTime and I find myself hitting frequently and usually for 50+.

Shere Khaan

I dont have Feral swipe because I hear it is crap DPS and I cant afford a hotkey slot for it.

Feral swipe should be changed to something that makes it more useful.

Either

A. It greys out kick, but does the same DPS as current feral swipe plus kick. This will save a hotkey slot, compared to kick and feral swipe being seperate.

B. Make it be pure de-aggro. Perhpas -300 hate on impact and -100 hate every tick for 5 ticks or something. Total is -800 hate over 30 secs, with 1 min reuse.

C. Up its chances to hit, lower its damage, but give it a good chance to stun mobs, even high level ones. So its sort of a super bash.

QuoteBefore people say how much we need deagro, I think there should be better ways for us to get it.

Umm, you play a beastlord, right? Sorry, we have several spell lines that allow us to get snap aggro. Slow, dots, incapacitate, flash of light. All those are very nice to get instant aggro over every caster or puller. But the problem still is that we do way more aggro per dps than any other class i know and either giving feral swipe a deaggro component or change it into pure deaggro is one possible way to correct it.

By better ways to get it, I'm sure they mean better ways to get DEaggro.  Spending 9 AAs and waiting until 65 doesn't work for some.  Also the 1 minute reuse time is an issue.  This is why I said ignore the actual numbers for now.  We'll come up with functional numbers if deaggro is choosen as the way to go.  For now I just need to see where most people stand.  Atm it looks like most want to see it atleast help shed some aggro, but this obviously isn't the only answer to beastlord aggro problems.

I think Feral Swipe would be great if it hit everytime.

For novelty value I do keep Feral Swipe in my 7th hotkey slot and I, as a Troll, prefer to use SLAM over KICK. This is partly because I agree kick is negligable as dps and highly unreliable (not dissimilar to Feral Swipe on that point).

I agree change is needed but I like the idea of occasionally getting a crit for 512 dmg from nowhere. However, on that point the infrequency of this landing at all does make it feel like it came from nowhere. I often wait for it to refresh before using Bestial Fury and  on one random encounter I got a 1014 crit which made me chuckle.

As for the main negative issue I find with this skill, has anyone noticed that mobs seem to return more damage for successfully riposting Feral Swipe than a normal hit. I found mobs that hit for 200 average hitting me back for like 400 dmg when I used Feral Swipe, and this isn't an isolated incident.

I would like to see a "subtle" change in the chance to hit on this. Give it a respectable minimum damage, add 2 further tiers reducing refresh from 1min to 40 secs to 20 secs, and hit every time like an unblockable move. Smacks of Mortal Combat "Finish Him" special moves only without the joystick waggling. Otherwise 9AA is just too much for a dps skill that can only be used once in synch with Bestial Fury.

As for deagro, Bst will always cause agro issues, in our guild we often do preslowing on raids or even in group fun if not entirely replacing the need for a shaman, so much so I have reverted to using Dispell to pull in PoFire to save cleric mana. I don't want to have a Gar (oops sorry - Ranger) ability. They have Jolt but I still see more Ranger deaths than Beastlord deaths. Getting hit by mobs once in a while isn't so bad if you use LT proc augs and work on your defensive skills, and it's nice to make them Plate Tanks work harder for their money =D.

I'm echoing the same sentiments.

Make it 3 levels of Feral Swipe 3/6/9, each with increasing levels of de-aggro (rank 3 is like rogue evade or a necro fd in terms of deaggro amount) and faster re-use (60 seconds, 30 seconds, 10 seconds)

overrides or replaces kick functionality

and lastly, this is important, SAME RANGE as normal melee. I don't need to plant my face up a mob's ass in order to swipe it if i can bash it with my fists from this far away.

Quoterank 3 is like rogue evade or a necro fd in terms of deaggro amount

Not asking for too much there, are you...  :roll:

Having it give a hate decrease along the lines of jolt... or even less since it would be mana free, would be more than acceptable.

QuoteI think Feral Swipe would be great if it hit everytime.

Doesn't it hit everytime?  and just does random damage.  I haven't really payed too much attention to it.

I like the deaggro idea, makes alot of sense if you can put it into the context of roleplaying.  Though I don't know if a skill with a 1 minute reset is really going to offset a minutes worth of damage and hate buildup.

It definitely doesn't hit everytime.  I have initial parses on the boards somewhere and other numbers laying around, but I think my best (worst) streak was something like 14 in a row for misses lol.  Feral swipe is less damage over time than kick.  8P

You want to have some fun proving that it misses alot, just target yourself then hit the feral swipe hotkey. I accidently did this the other day, (now I find it quite amusing), nothing like punching yourself for 512 points  of dmg( damn thats a stupid thing to do).

Also I feel this needs a tweaking, either make the reuse time shorter, the range bigger, or make it hit for full amount everytime, As it stands now it was probably my biggest waste of aa.

Well started thinking and seeing everyone's post (mine included somewhere else).
We all agree the range is riduculous with feral swipe. I know this might get tossed but how bout replace this with our kick. Same timer and all as our kick with a deaggro added too it. That way we wouldnt have to worry bout the 1min usage and pray that the deaggro took effect.
Message could be you swipe your opponent into short term memory loss or some such. (im still on my first cup of coffee).
I dont know just a thought as i slowly come into reality its friday  :D

I have not taken Feral Swipe so far for the following reason:

I am hard pressed to find a hotkey slot for it on the first bank, where I can easily access it, I have kick there already.

If it would replace kick with a 4x stronger attack and same reuse, I would get it asap.

QuoteIf it would replace kick with a 4x stronger attack and same reuse, I would get it asap.

That's kinda what I'm suggesting. (Mug of coffee finally kicked in, yay)

Anyways, if it had damage up above kick and same reuse as kick and maybe with the deaggro component added to it (cause who is gonna mem another spell for aggro control) and also kinda make kick I dont know but unusable if you have feral swipe.

It might be a better option.

QuoteI like the deaggro idea, makes alot of sense if you can put it into the context of roleplaying. Though I don't know if a skill with a 1 minute reset is really going to offset a minutes worth of damage and hate buildup.

I don't think there is any question of reducing the reuse time if it is to be of any use as a deaggro skill. The only other option I see is to make it a massive deaggro that would be situationally useful, i.e. would put you to be the bottom of the list, on a long reuse timer.

While a de-aggro ability or spell would be a nice thing to have, I don't want it tied to Feral Swipe.  This is an aggressive, damaging attack, usually for more damage than my normal attacks (when the darn thing lands anyway).  Let's figure something else out for de-aggro, maybe a hate reducing proc buff thru spells or a new aa.  I tank a lot in groups or I will fill the role of saving a screaming healer from an out of control add in camp.  I don't want anything reducing my hate tied to an ability that is there to increase dps, I want more damage, not less hate.

As for what I would want on Feral Swipe, my wish list is that we could add two more tiers for successively lower re-use timers and I would want to see a stun component.  It doesn't need to grey out kick.  If you want to save a button just make a social that triggers both abilities.  Sure, it doesn't grey out while kick refreshes, but if you are a beast that still uses kick you've probably got the timing pretty much burned into the nerves of your clicky finger by now.

A lot of people want to give it a separate hotkey from Kick.  My first inclination would be to make a new hotkey with the first line as /doability # for kick and the second line as /alt activate ### for Feral Swipe.  Perhaps some delay just to be sure it works.

Now, the biggest problem with that is, now your hotbutton doesn't stay depressed until it's ready to use again, since it's a custom one.  But there's a way around that...since you need to make an Actions window button for kick anyway in order to put it in a custom hotbutton, just keep that tab selected all the time.  You'll be able to see Kick refresh and still use it as often as you want, and every minute Feral Swipe will happen also without having to pay attention to that too.  For a second I thought that there might still be a slight disadvantage to this...unfortunately I got distracted and lost it.  I'm sure someone will point it out if necessary. :)

Personally, I still have a hotbutton slot open and so if I do get Feral Swipe sometime soon it will probably go there.  Doubtful I will get it soon, but always possible.  My bard friend is bugging me to get Hobble...I keep doing LDoNs with him where he's the only snarer and he hates doing it...and in Ruj it can be death to let those bastards go unsnared.  But that's for (and has already been discussed in another thread).

Game on,

A lot of custom UIs have data in that window or on a different tab.  You'd have to keep checking back or change UIs or something if you did that.  Also one of the big upsides to feral swipe was this "big damage potential" for things like runners and the like.  If you tie it to the button then you can burn it when you don't want to.  Would suck to accidentally burn feral swipe then activate BF/Frenzy.  Minor, yes, but issues still.  Hehe just have your bard friend buy you a bunch of SBDs lol,  with the changes I think hobble has moved even further down the list for most.

either drastically reuse the reuse time, or make it land EVERY time if its gonna be a minute long reuse. tie it with kick, up the damage a bit, make it hit every time you use it, and keep it at a minute reuse and i think itd be fine.

QuoteA lot of people want to give it a separate hotkey from Kick. My first inclination would be to make a new hotkey with the first line as /doability # for kick and the second line as /alt activate ### for Feral Swipe. Perhaps some delay just to be sure it works.

What us the /dobility # for kick??  Better yet is there a complete list with all the /dobility commands???

The /doability is tied to where you have it in your skill selection.  For some it'd be /doability 3 or /doability 5, etc.  Try it out some and you'll have it.  8)

I would prefer to keep Feral Swipe as a pure dps move -- dps is the only reason why I bought it, even if it is unreliable. Instead of adding a deaggro component to it, I would rather see an increase of accuracy with it so it connects more often (a parse from yesterday shows it was 72% misses in a five hour run in Kod'Taz... weee, 9 AA well spent :roll: ) and a minimum damage set for it.

I use it in conjunction with kick, so personally I'd rather have it work with kick instead of greying it out for a minute -- if it can be made into a more reliable form of dps then I could live without kick, but I would prefer to maintain both :)

The range definately needs some work, especially on large mobs. On smaller mobs (ie, a Noc in GoD), I can be well outside of melee range and still land a Swipe, which seems like a bug to me. On larger mobs (ie, gods in Time/PoP), max melee range is too far away for it to connect.

If it is decided to push for a change to a non-damaging deaggro move, then I would suggest that the AA points be refunded so we can each decide if we want to keep it or not. Personally, I think a deaggro ability should be added as a separate ability from Feral Swipe, but that's just me :) One possibility is to have a second AA for deaggro that is tied to Feral Swipe -- if you use one, the other is greyed out (maybe even for twice the normal delay), thus you can't have your dps and your low aggro all at once. I'm sure there's lots of ideas for it :)

I do not want to see Feral Swipe lock out kick or changed to a deaggro.  I focus primarily on dps and although agro can be an issue it is something I have learned to work around.  As stated above, Feral Swipe has a chance to miss, and even if the damage were increased to compensate for locking out kick this would not really be a true fix as you would still have the same chance to miss.  I would rather have kick and Swipe.

I do believe that the range, reuse and percentage of hits should be looked at.  Although, I doubt there is any way to fix the chance to hit with how much melee mitigation NPCs have now so perhaps adding an AA to lower the current 1 minute refresh timer would benefit most.  Would still have same chance to miss, but at least we would have more attempts.

I'm with Moslow on Feral swipe.

I don't have a problem with it missing, i do have a problem with it hitting for less than kick, min 100 dmg would be ok with me. It would be nice if the reuse timer was maybe the same as our nuke refresh (lower is even better of course)

If agro is a problem, (which it isn't for me) well we need to look at other ways of controlling it. I personally believe the spell casting subtlety AA would be sufficient as an ability to loose agro or rather, not get it in the first place. After all most agro issues will be caused by our DoT's and slow.

Don't get me wrong but yes other classes have these abilities, but I honestly don't think we need them. Just my take based on my playstyle.

If we are going to get an agro lowering ability, please, no more hotkeys or spells. My spell slots and my hotkeys are under big demand as it is. Furthermore If the beast 'evade' ability were to be given to us, i'd like to requrie some skill to use, not just simply push a button. I'm starting to ramble so i'll leave it there......

Cheers again Tastian for your work in our community.

Fibbs

SCS is not a solution, tell me if you know of any Shadowknight that has Spell Casting Subtlety AAs. A passive, always on AA isn't an answer.

What we need is the option to reduce aggro when we want to.

I posted else where these thoughts, but I'll put it here for proper ridicule.

I've given FS a lot of thought and frankly I'd rather see it stay as a DPS skill.  If we need deagro, we should be given a deagro discipline (preferred) or AA that fixes that problem.

My dream for FS?

FS1 - High Damage replacement for Kick
FS2 - High Damage replacement for Kick that never misses
FS3 - High Damage replacement for Kick that never misses and has the stun effects of slam
FS4 - 20% chance to double FS, otherwise same as FS3
FS5 - 50% chance to double FS, otherwise same as FS3

We're a DPS class, this'll let us DPS more-better  :D

I bought Feral Swipe for the added DPS (such that it is), so I'd like to have it remain a DPS skill. What I'd like to see is a higher minimum damage and bump up the accuracy for the love of Sha! I wouldn't mind it missing as much as it did if it refreshed as quickly as kick does, but a minute refresh means that on most days I miss for ten minutes, then hit for 40, then miss for seven more minutes, then hit for 130, then miss for eight more minutes, then hit for 97, etc.

As for deaggro...*scratches his head*...I really don't know what you guys are referring to? Maybe I just don't DoT as much as I should, but I never have aggro problems in groups or raids with melee and spells. Given that I tank a lot for guild groups and frequently offtank mobs during our raids, the last thing I need is less aggro.

I believe it should stay a dps tool. A de-aggro tool would be nice, but not on feral swipe. You get feral swipe for the damage it's supposed to do. Besides adding the steady stream of aggro loss to an ability like that would make maintaining aggro when I need I'd prefer another way to reduce aggro. An aa or ability to wipe a bit of aggro or maybe it could give aggro to my warder... just something to control aggro. Feral swipe itself should be looked into though. There is absolutely no reason it should ever do less damage than kick.

One thing I see a lot of people misunderstanding is the DEaggro part of feral swipe.  People are not saying "add DEaggro to feral swipe and beastlord aggro issues are done".  It's one part of the solution.  Obviously feral swipe is available to only 65 beastlords and many have aggro issues before then.  

Feral swipe definitely needs some attention, but I think the lowered reuse time goes very much againist how feral swipe was intended.  It's a one shot, big damage (hopefully lol) swipe.  This could help with runners, when bursting with disc, and doesn't require the spam clicking that makes some beastlords not use kick (yes they exist).  The main reason the reuse timer is such an issue is because the skill simply misses a lot and does lower damage a lot.  It averages out to less damage than kick even in ideal situations and some that have the skill just don't bother with it currently.  If feral swipe had a min damage, landed a bit more often, had an acceptable range on it, then I don't think you'd see as many people concerned with the refresh.

I dont think feral swipe as a deaggro effect is the answer.  I can control my aggro just fine in melee.  its when I have to do some form of ranged kill that the poison dots just up and smack in the rear with aggro.  Id prefer to see feral swipe be pure dps and maybe increase the hit rate or reduce the damage spread, Either or would make me happy.

I also would prefer for this not to have a deaggro effect. I don't tend to have aggro problems and when I want aggro, I want to keep it, and not have to cut back on DPS to maintain it by not using this AA due to some added aggro reduction effect. In agreement with the last poster

Hm, I don't really think we need a deaggro ability.

On the other hand, I see no reason to get Feral Swipe as it stands.  Making it a more reasonable dps upgrade (and increasing the range) might work - if it has to replace kick/slam I wouldn't complain, as long as it did more damage than the combination of kick and Feral Swipe does now.

Quote from: kukana
FS1 - High Damage replacement for Kick
FS2 - High Damage replacement for Kick that never misses
FS3 - High Damage replacement for Kick that never misses and has the stun effects of slam
FS4 - 20% chance to double FS, otherwise same as FS3
FS5 - 50% chance to double FS, otherwise same as FS3

We're a DPS class, this'll let us DPS more-better  :D

I love this idea.

Also, make each level available at 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, and 65 respectively.