Possible changes for Feral Swipe...

[Tastian]

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.

[Skratchen]

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.

[Dummkopf]

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).

[kukana]

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.

[Shere Khaan]

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

[bham]

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.

[Dummkopf]

Before 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.

[Tastian]

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.

[Kunriis]

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

[Gourgeous George]

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.

[flush]

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.

[Rhaynne]

rank 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.

[mrowrr]

I 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.

[Tastian]

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

[psycattik]

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.