Are you waiting for 5CP for your rips, or are you using it at 4 CP?

Critting a shred when you're sitting at 5 CP is basically wasting 1CP worth of damage. The second I started doing this my DPS went from about 700 sustained to 800 sustained, and I'm only up to gruul's gear (and still need a garona's and FCS ring)

Also remember that specific bosses have higher armor than others. Aran has 0 armor, and I can hit just shy of 1k dps on him. On bosses like Curator or VR, that have 9000+ base armor, you lose a lot of damage.

And yell at your warlocks for CoR. With 5/5 imp demo + Screech, you're still taking out more AP.

Some of your gear is suboptimal for starters. Get 2pcT4 its a massive increase in DPS. I suggest trading in your shoulders or legs for it (shoulders are probably better since the T5 legs are fantastic). Get the Shapeshifter's Signet as well.

Living Root of the Wildheart is a piece of crap. As is the skyguard cross. For easily obtainable trinkets get the Bloodlust Brooch and Crystalforged Trinket.

Sockets should be 8 Agi gems except for 2 Yellow and 2 Blue gems to activate your metagem. Its very rare you'll find a socket bonus worth getting compared to the Agi gain. I would keep the gloves gemmed as they are as well as the chest (though replacing the 4 Agi/6 Sta gem with a 5Str/4 Agi one would be sweet). Change all your other sockets to 8 Agi.

Toskk has a nice DPS calculator at
The Druid Wiki » ToskksDPSGearMethod
which will give the relative value of stats for your current setup. Very useful.

I haven't had any luck with the trinkets, 25/41 badges for bloodlust and it's impossible to get a pug for a herioc, and still no luck on the hourglass, so not much to go for as of now man.

All the theorycrafting i did resulted in a 4cp cycle only being better than a 5cp cycle at about 6000 ap and with very low crit values. The difference was pretty minimal overall though.

Edit: The above statement is discussable as it highly depends on your stats, however i suggest using 5cp rips (IF you don't have a mangle-bitch) as it will be the best cycle in most cases.

I'm usually using 5cp rips and (depending on the fight and buffs) get about 1100-1300 dps.

I find this thread has been a godsend for increasing my cat form dps. I have a request though. The Enhancement Shaman Collected Works Theorycraft vol 1 thread has taken all their agreed upon information and keeps the very first post of the thread updated with all the relevent information.

Can a moderator please make this thread more efficient by editing the first post for the convenience of future readers?

Crystalforged is better than the hourglass and I see you have the exalted Ogri'la bracers already so you can get it pretty easily.

If you lose Rip uptime because you decided to do that, you lose optimal DPS because Rip is better DPM than Shred, even when that shred crits. When sitting at 81 Energy with 7 seconds rip time still up, shred might be an option. At 42 energy when rip is running low, it is not a good option to shred right away

That's very debatable (as evident by the number of people that have disagreed with me on this very point) Hourglass has one major advantage and that is stacking with Bloodlust. I still personally prefer Crystalforged because I can guarantee it's timing on rip-mangle-shredxX

What fights should I really be looking at to have a decent gauge of dps? I see you guys all saying you do such-and-such sustained dps, but I just don't really get a chance to dps in a sustained manner at all. We're working on Kael - so for example:-

Lurker - I dps Lurker then tank the melee adds - not sustained dps
Hydross - I dps Hydross then tank nature/frost adds - not sustained dps
Morogrim - I dps Morogrim then help to gather up adds - not sustained dps
Leo - probably the only fight where I actually get to dps
FLK - usually tanking an add then dps - not sustained dps
Vashj - tank the Naga as they run in, dps Vashj in phase 1 & 3 - not sustained dps

Al'ar - phase 1 tanking then ember tanking in phase 2 - no dps at all
VR - Yes I get to dps but his high armour and immune to rip means low dps
Solarian - dps Solarian then pick up the agents when they spawn in bear form - not sustained dps
Kael - obviously not sustained dps.

We don't really run Mag/Gruuls any more.

Will I start to see a change to this in BT/MH? I mean I don't mind much really, I feel pretty useful, but it's tricky to look at a WWS where I maybe did 500dps on a typical dps/add tank fight and actually see much value in that.

Yes, you will be tanking trash waves in MH, then DPSing the boss most of the time, same as in BT, there are a lot of single tank fights.

However I find I have DPS problems. My WWS parses are showing a 10-14% miss rate and I have 5% to hit from gear and no feral skill yet (I hate shadow labs =/ ). My DPS is floating around 750, but my T4 is gemmed for tanking, not DPS. Once I start to get more T5 and can get my T4 for DPS, it will help, but I do not think it will be a huge help.

I really focussed on tanking gear previously though and its only recently I started to see how important DPS gear can be also.

If you aren't doing Morogrim as a DPS, there aren't really any sustained DPS fights out there before Hyjal/BT (due to a lot of fights needing 3/4 tanks). Once you get into Hyjal/BT you can use Rage Winterchill (dependant on death and decay, which sometimes is a complete cock like our one last week where every single one was on melee), Anetheron (dependant on whether you have to tank infernals, but if you don't it's one of the best benchmarks), and Teron (but make sure to sort by dps, not total damage). All the other fights have something like mad AoE's (council/shahraz/kazrogal/azgalor/archimonde), effects that make them immune to damage for periods (najentus), damage increasing effects (akama/ros) or are just generally a bit of a bastard for dps (supremus/bloodboil/illidan).

Here is the >WWS parse, I am Accalia<

I can't seem to click on my shred to get a more detailed break down, however what you suggested must be the case. I logged out in my "dps" gear also. I usually go with a...

Mangle > Shred to 5 CPS > 80 energy > Rip followed by a speedy mangle before rip ticks.

Its rare I get to 5 CPs and my mangle buff has dropped, if it does drop early and I have 4 CPs I wait for 80 energy and start fresh with Rip > Mangle > shred to 5 cps etc.

I also have run Kara every friday but 3 since we downed Illhoof and I still have yet to see a staff drop. It has dropped 2 of the 3 Fridays I have missed. Bad luck, but very frustrating =). I also know I need to work on my Lower City rep for the ring, but I simply am struggling to motivate myself to go back to SL. I have 4 characters, 3 of which are exalted with the Lower City, my current char being only revered.

Any suggestions on what I may be doing wrong are welcome, I think some of it is my gear and sockets etc. However I see ferals getting to over 1100 DPS, and surely that sort of huge difference is not just from gear!

No battle shout. No shaman. Did you have Blessing of Might + Salv (and if not, get 10 minute ones off your paladins instead of wisdom/light or similar). Neither natural shapeshifter or any real use of Powershifting.

T4 level DPS gear, with using the badge of tenacity for DPS? Replace all the 12 stam gems with 4agi/6stam or 8 agi gems (they're both just as good for tanking when it comes down to it). Using a flask of relentless assault is probably worse than a major agility (120 AP vs ~40 AP + ~3% crit). You have an 8 hit gem in your chest (4hit/4agi is a lot better), 15 resillience enchant on chest (+6 stats), and you would be better off working towards the PvP mace too, as although it might take a while, it's a guarenteed thing rather than waiting for a drop (and it's better overall too).

You have 19.59% crit in that gear, not in form (which is 30.59% in form). Unbuffed I have ~41.5% crit and ~3.2k AP, as well as being at the hit cap. There's a big difference in gear there. In fact, just looking at my armory (which is currently tank gear) I have better AP, crit and about the same hit in my tanking gear compared to you in your DPS gear, with a flask on (yes I took off MoTW from mine).

About the WWS: Hosted parses (i.e. those uploaded direct to wowwebstats.com) have a lot more information than those generated and hosted separately.

My T4 gear is geared to tanking. I had no choice but to put 15 resi on my chest to reach Crit immunity. The gems I did not look at for ages but it should not be a problem to regem to anything I want. I used the flask because it was our first time there so I did not want to chain chug agi pots if we wiped over and over. Until we start getting more Vanquished stuff I cannot totally gem my T4 for DPS though. Sadly right now Defender is very very rare for us, I have 1 item, while Hero drops multiple times every run with Champion just behind.

As for the trinkets, the Badge of Tenacity is there until The hourglass of the Unraveller drops, which I have been putting off because I truly hate CoT 5mans after farming them to death on alts =).

I wanted to T2 mace. I was 400 points away from getting it. Then my nephew bought me items I did not want or ever will need (moonkin and healing arena gear), he was just messing around - he is only 6. I talked to a GM and he said I was shit out of luck. 4 weeks later a guildy gets his points back after making a mistake in buying ret gear insteald of Holy. I repetition to say "hang on, this isn't fair!" And a GM replies saying yes it is possible, but now it was too long ago so you are shit out of luck. I really am poor at PvP and I am not going to bug more friends to carry me for another 8 weeks in PvP for the mace. Just cannot bring myself to do it.


I can see that there really is just a massive gear gap. I will definately see if I can work on regemming my T4 to be a bit more DPS oriented (as after all 8agi is fine as a tanking stat also). I just am now really tired of these older instances, like Kara and BM with their random chance to drop items. My rogue did nothing but black morass to reach exalted and I still have never seen the hourglass drop. It is very disheartening, especially as it is just dull now.

Oh and in that parse, yes I was in the tank group. So I got no buffs. However the boss seemed lightly armoured, and in fights where I actually DO get Salv and A shaman, I seem to do around the same DPS anyways. I also thought that powershifting currently returns very minimal benefits due to the energy tick reset. Without it being worth it to powershift, I also didn't believe natural shapeshifter to be worth the points. However my spec is very old, I did not look for a while to see if I could change it somewhat to improve DPS, I will check it tonight and compare it around.

I had the same thing on my parses actually, very high miss rate, 10-13% on a lot of stuff, despite having around 70 hit rating. I'm going to focus on it a little bit more and see how I go, it seems an easy way to boost dps by 10%, frankly.

I understand the mangle/shred/rip cycle and such but I've never really powershifted before, or heard an explanation of how to get the most out of it. Can I get a basic explanation? Do you just shift out/shift in when your energy runs dry (probably 4th combo point?) How often do you find yourself doing it? I tend to use my mana on fights where I dps (tranquility, battle rez, innervate, a quick self-regrowth or shifting to bear to taunt/mitigate unavoidable incoming damage...) so I'm just skeptical on how valuable powershifting is for overall DPS gains, or rather if it is a wise use of mana to do so. I'm not in Hyj/BT though so I don't know how fights are there...

Naj, Gorefiend, Reliquary, and Maybe mother shaz are going to be the fights that you have a chance to do pure DPS. But pure DPS really isn't the reason to bring a druid today

95 hit rtg = 6.02%
+ 20 feral combat skill = hit cap.

Once I made this happen, my dps became competitive with the rogues and locks. I'm still learning energy management, and have been using:

Calculator
Agil vs. Str

I feel pretty content if I'm top5 on the meters...a feral druid simply should not out dps most other classes (so long as their gear,skill,knowledge is comparable)

Yeah I do understand that David, my point is that I'm just trying to have something to compare to. My sustained dps on Void Reaver is only 513dps, which seems very low, although as mentioned earlier he has high armour and is rip immune, and I was also a bit lax at using trinkets properly on that fight. I'm just trying to make sure I'm doing as much as I can and not slacking really - I understand my value to the raid in other ways.

FCSR seems to be a big thing to give up, particularly when having so many attacks dodged, I just don't know if I can actually handle that grind to exalted LC. In fact, I do know, and I can't.

[e] Also, guys, you're making good points, and I'm not trying to have a go, but tidy up your punctuation/capitalisation etc before Kaubel smacks you round.

Well, see it like that. SL and Sethekk Halls are two very interesting instances on their own. SL teaches you to multi tank properly but it is kinda long (which means more rep though) and SH is pretty fast and one of the easier heroics. The fact that the mobs are running around with low armor is a big bonus since it's always fun seeing big crits in bear.

And with all the new badge rewards they promised in 2.3 you will be using your time efficiently if you work on that, too.

Well I can do at least 1 SH run to get my epic flight form sorted I guess and see how painful that is. It's more that I scarcely really have time to log on for enough raids let alone run heroics really, but the new heroic rewards certainly are another reason to get up off my butt & do some at the weekend or something. And as far as multi tanking goes, Shattered Halls did that just fine, thanks.

With the changes to the energy tick system, powershifting has changed a bit recently.

The basic premise is that you shift out and in when you're low on energy (<10 for decent gains). Furor will give you 40 energy straight up, so you end up gaining around 30-40 energy dependant on what you started with. It always used to work like this, with a "perfect" energy gain as long as you shifted in between energy ticks, making the maximum of 40 energy gained very easy to do.

Over the course of two minutes or so, you could easily get around 180 energy (5 shifts worth, minus a few per shift for "imperfect" shifts) if you were paying attention. 180/42 = 4 extra shreds (168) with a bit left over for dodges/etc. 4 shreds at around 1500 damage each = 6000 extra damage without crits, or ~13000 damage with (50-100 DPS or so), plus 4-8 combo points (probably another 30-40 dps on it's own).

The system has changed slightly to reset the energy tick to when you shift back into form (i.e. it's now an individual energy tick instead of a global one). This means you have to be quick on shifting form, or else you'll waste some more energy than before. Depending on how good you are at timing it and how much energy you started with, you should gain anywhere between 20 and 35 energy or so. Lag inherent to the game along with reaction time makes it vitually impossible to be gaining the "maximum" 40 energy that you might have in the previous system. On average I estimate the gain to be around 25 per shift (assuming normal amounts of lag = loss of 10 energy, plus 5 energy wasted on average from before the shift), instead of the previous 35. It's a pretty big change, but it's still worth doing if you do it right.

If you find you have mana problems, you can always use mana pots (I carry a stack or two of the combat mana pots - they stack to 10 and are free with battleground tokens). If you want to skimp a bit, make sure you have a healthstone (saves the 900 mana for regrowth), get Int and Spirit buffs, and try and combine shifts for things like innervate/combat res with your cycle/powershifts, instead of just doing it blindly. You'll also find that shifting to bear in BT/Hyjal is pretty useless, as either the things hit so hard you'll get gibbed in dps gear, or you'll get gibbed before you can react. Having faith in your healers should be an obvious thing, and (as I've said in previous posts) you shouldn't ignore stam as a DPSer (after all, you don't do any damage whilst hugging the floor).