In which Celestalon Responds to Feral Concerns about T20 set nerfs

Hi, this is gonna be a long one.Just wanted to start off with a quick introduction, some may know me some won't. I was responsible for maintaing the feral fixmy dps thread on mmoc for a good while before it eventually burried and IRL work took precedence. Otherwise I'm just an all round shitposter and high parser in the feral community.To cut to the chase here's the screengrab of a convo one of the Dreamgrove members had with Celestalon regarding the set nerfs: http://ift.tt/2stoAzQ of the big things to understand regarding this set that all numbers aside this set was bringing about a playstyle many were really really looking forwards too. More energy and longer bleeds would allow for a much more active playstyle in multidotting and single target scenarios. Allowing for us to really set up on multiple targets at once or push out more Ferocious bites, an ability that for the majority of legion has so bad that we recommend beginners to not even use it as the timings in the rotation are so tight that even experienced ferals struggle to get more than one cast per minute out of it.All in all this would have fixed a lot of the perceived problems about feral, and the classes sometimes painfully slow playstyle.Onto the numbers. Anyone following feral threads will note that I've been painfully upbeat about feral all expansion and pushed a gitgud mentality when speaking about the specc under performing. Which for the vast majority of players it has been, just because the top 10% of us are able to be extremely competitive doesn't mean the class hasn't been suffering.This set would have helped even the gaps, a rotation with more energy and more room for error would allow for mistakes with energy management that the average player will often encounter. Bringing a much more level playing field to typical players and the experts as it were.I agree that the set was overly strong but there are some other problems now. Not least the set bonus is now a direct watered down and worse version of the Blackrock Foundry set. Before it was at least a little different in how it played, now it's just a worse version.T20 http://ift.tt/2s0aDIv BRF http://ift.tt/2t35Rby change to the two set equates to around 1 free shred per minute, you know what also gives a free shred once approx 6-7 free shreds a minute ? Omen of Clarity, the 2 set change makes it completely unnoticeable due to variance in rng on OOC proccs. Whereas before it had the net effect of making your rip generate 5 more energy than it cost prior to the change, which is a pretty big deal when looking at council fights like sisters and demonic inquisition.The changes to the set as a whole push it not just to a weak set, but as it got nerfed in a similar fashion to warrior and hunter, whilst not being anywhere near as strong to begin with, numerically now places us from just about the best set on the vanq token, to the worst across the entire roster. To a point where we now want the t19 4 set at a high titan forge over it.I have absolutely no faith in blizzard on fixxing the root of the problem, and instead fully expect them to just nerf the t19 further instead to disincentive farming nighthold.We're at a point as a community where feral is at an all time low, we have a very small, but passionate community of players that have stuck through it thick and thin, partly due to a love of the specc and how it plays completely differently to anything else, and partially because every dog has his day. The hotfix to me feels like giving a homeless man a lottery ticket then snatching it off them after finding out they won £50. I was really personally excited for tomb, not necessarily because of the good numbers, but because more people were showing an interest in feral because of them, as a dying specc if even a few of those players tried the class out and stuck with it after tomb because of how fun it can be I would consider that a win. Discord has been more active than ever, formerly toxic posters have been helping anyone and everyone get to grips with Feral, and now it's just setup to fall flat on its face.To give you an idea of just how small the feral community is, I could parse top 50 on a given fight, I wouldn't even have a 90th percentile rank, whereas a comparable hunter would be in the 99th percentile. Not to mention how tight competition is for us, as the population is much more centred around the higher end as most ferals that don't make it to the higher levels of play end up quitting.In the greater community, perception of our class has been awful, even with many of our problems such as poor AoE no longer existing, and even being one of the better classes to bring now because of just how powerful brutal slash is. (which is also propped up by t19 2set to a degree). Many of the top ferals such as myself are tired shitless covering for blizzard and sympathizing with them, telling our followers how the specc is doing just fine if your good enough, and reassuring people that it isn't that bad. But now even in private channels of the top players and theorycrafters many of us are starting to look at other options after playing the specc for years.In conclusionIt feels like ferals are in a spot like demo warlocks were in HFC where blizzard just don't want people to play the specc. We've received little to no changes to gameplay over the course of legion, and only flat buffs to prop us up. A set comes along that alleviates a lot of the game-play issues the class has only for it to be gutted. A huge blow to a small community that has left players feeling as if they've been kicked while they're down, shortchanged and cheated by nerfs to an under performing specc.Numbers are important, but the game-play and play style changes were huge, and I'm sure many would have preferred having class numbers tweaked to balance in this instance over the first.I appreciate that I haven't particularly engaged with Celestalon's response directly as that was well covered in the conversation. I just wanted to highlight the main issues and why Ferals are making a big deal out of this.TLDR: Read the damn postTLDRTLDR: Fuck.I also want to say that whilst I find Celestalon's comments contemptible I appreciate his willingness to engage and hope this trend can continue.