tunah

Yes.

 

Alandriel

It's 75 more damage, 1/3 the time. That's ~33 more dps with the mangle buff. I was running at ~850 dps last night on boss fights, figure 60% yellow, 10% buff to yellow damage, and now giving up 2pc T4 for 4pc T5 cost me ~51 dps to give me back ~33.

 

Valerian

Yeah I had added the 75 damage to the wrong part of the formula in the spreadsheet. It turns out to be about 125 AP which is quite good, but still not on par with T4 bonus especially considering you only give up about 20-25 AP equivalent by keeping two T4 pieces.

 

Meddler

Quick query in terms of optimising dps/mods - what are people using in order to determine when the mangle debuff is on a target? Until recently I've been using Dotimer with a mangle bar up however I've just started raiding with a guild that includes another regular feral which resulted in some periods of either both of us having mangle up or neither which is pretty unsatisfactory. Anyone got any advice on a mod that'll just do a simple and clear 'Mangle is on/Mangle isn't on' indicator?


Apologies if this has been discussed somewhere already, had a hunt without success.

 

Boevis

I use Chronometer for my own durations, and debuff filter for the debuffs of other people specifically. It cannot track duration however. I'm honestly not sure if something can anymore.

 

Erusdruidum

I'm a big fan of debuff filter for other's debuffs as well. Started using it about a week ago and I've had only good experiences. You just need to add in "Mangle (Bear)" and "Mangle (Cat)" as buffs to track and voila, you've got it.

I don't think anything can track duration of others-applied debuffs via the API, but something could probably do it by syncing with the client of the person who applied it. It would be quite handy, but I've not seen anything like this.

 

angral

http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/2786/

Natur enemy cast bars can track just about anything with a timer on the screen. The problem of course, is that you rapidly get overloaded with timers for abilities you do not care about unless you go and do some editing.

 

Solstice

If there's more than one feral in the raid I just set my focus to whatever's being dps'ed and filter out non-druid debuffs. I use Pitbull unitframes for this but I expect most other uFrames have a similar feature.

 

Marling

I set up Elkbuffbars with a group to track debuffs on my target - haven't done much testing, but seems to do the trick just fine. The bar doesn't reset when reapplying before the last one ran out, but the timer does so its all good. Its nice to have a set of timers to watch mangle/FFF/rip (as well as my HoTs), rather than just watching for when it drops off.

http://wow.tachyonsix.com.nyud.net:8...dge!v$1!f$.png

 

dukes

I use a combination of Quartz (buffs -> target -> debuffs on) and Pitbull. Quartz tracks my own debuffs that I apply, and Pitbull tracks all debuffs on the target (so I can see when mangle is up if theres another feral in the raid).

 

Myk

The newest version of xPerl shows debufs on the target and a little number as a count down. It looks similar to the [5] Sunder Armor, but the number counts down. I use Natur to track my own, but the debuff would show up again, if someone else applied it, but I'm sure it would be tedious to find the mangle among the other 30ish debuffs on a boss fight.

For practicality, you have 2 optoins.

1) Do the proper dps rotation, and the mangle debuff will always be up when you need it/expect it to be there.

2) One of you becomes Mangle Bitch. They actually won't be able to do the proper dps rotation, but you, in turn, will be able to use shred and rip constantly. Though, I don't know if your dps buff would be worth the loss in his dps.

 

Feorthas

Actually, the 'Mangle Bitch' can perform the proper rotation as it should attempt to keep mangle up 24/7 anyway. And yes, the buff to the non-mangling individuals' damage is pretty damn large considering mangle only costs two less energy than shred (yet shred has a larger multiplier). This gets compounded when you look at the topic from the perspective of "one of us was probably tanking earlier and is wearing tank gear whereas the other may be wearing dps gear; the loss of damage that the 'Mangle Bitch', wearing tank gear, may be experiencing is vastly outweighed by the increase that the dps-geared feral is receiving".

I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.

My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.

 

Verdan

If you have 2 Ferals in raid DPSing (seems unlikely) the lesser geared cat needs to supply the Mangle and keep up the rotation.

 

Myk

Well, actually, proper rotation does not keep mangle up 24/7. You let it drop for a few pulses while waiting to rip/mangle at a high energy amount. But you are the above poster are right about 2 full-time-feral-druids being unlikely, so the previously-tanking-druid can be mangle bitch and just not wait for as much energy.

 

gophermunchr

Going back to a few pages before, +weapon damage increases our base 55dps weapon using the ring enchants as well as the ogri'la trinket. Does this also apply the weightstones?

 

Grizlock

Afraid not, although I thought I remember reading somewhere that we got the crit bonus from the new one? I just tested it on some cheap weight stones.

 

Mooncrow

Yes, the adamantite weightstone adds to our crit rating, but not catform weapon damage.

 

mitsukurina

The thing is, though, that ferals are not the only ones to benefit from a mangle debuff. Assuming you have a few rogues stabbing away, would it not be better to keep mangle up 24/7 even if it didn't yield a maximum return for the druid alone?

We tend to run with two ferals, one almost exclusively DPS and one OT/DPS. We're fairly similarly-geared, so it would be interesting to see, assuming we're both DPSing, whether it would be better for us to share the burden of using mangle, or if it would be better to have one sacrifice some DPS in order to maximize the other (i.e. become the Mangle Bitch).

 

Boevis

I looked at the rogues in your guild, and I can't help but think half of them are using an arena/pvp spec right now (hemo? premed? ugh) However, when a rogue is using Sinister Strike/Hemo or Mutilate, their main finishing moves will be Rupture (the DoT) and Slice and Dice. Especially for the Rogues that use Serrated Blades talent keeping mangle up 100% is going to be well worth your OT druid's damage loss.

Please note, that this is very specific, I wouldn't suggest 100% Mangle uptime for any group that doesn't include another feral druid and at least 2 "rupturing" rogues. Combat Daggers doesn't care a lick about mangle (all CPs are needed for SnD uptime) and even taking mangled+serrated blades on rupture, Combat Daggers is going to be a better DPS spec than Mutilate or whatever that Premed/Seal Fate and Serrated Blades/Weapon Expertise rogues are doing. If you have 2 Combat Swords/Maces/Fists then it may be worth considering 100% Mangle, and it would require exactly detailed spreadsheeting of the fight to determine if it's worthwhile.

Bottom line, most rogues don't rupture as their primary finishing move, those that do are probably gimping their DPS because of not using SnD or using an Inferior Spec to begin with.

As for the 2nd Druid, it's pretty much always worth it for a Bear geared druid to keep up the Mangle 100%. Because of the multipliers, the difference between Mangle and a Buffed Shred for the Cat druid is greater than the difference between Mangle and a Buffed Shred for the Bear

 

Fugazor

If they have CP (combat daggers rather do not) then they will use Rupture over Evi/whatever. Combat swords/maces/fists with x2 T4 can easily sustain 1cp s&d, 5cp rupture rotation and keep rupture ticking almost all the time. In any case 5cp Rupture does more damage than Evi even without mangle up (for combat builds that is when boss isn't cloth :P).

So keep mangle up for us please!

 

dukes

Using a mangle out of rotation is a potential 1.3k damage lost (crit). Even if you have 3 rogues, the gain that they get from having mangle out of normal rotation from a feral will in no way make up for that damage (especially as it will likely be 1 tick at most per ~15 sec rotation).

As for more than one feral, the one who isn't mangling should make sure they are paying attention to when mangle is and isn't on the boss, so they don't "waste" energy on shred. Even without the mangle debuff, shred is still more damage than a mangle, so it's not a pure waste if you happen to get a clearcast with 80+ energy and mangle isn't on (or you could just reapply it yourself).

We often run with 2 ferals, but even on bosses where it is obvious that one is in tanking gear and one isn't, we don't organise keeping mangle up. It's just one of those things that could bring a bit of extra rDPS, and I probably should get around to sorting tbh.

 

mitsukurina

Yeah, we're a casual lot, and we go out of our way not to force specs on our people. To be honest, we really only have one rogue who raids consistently, and he's a raid leader's dream, as far as sneaky folk go. I certainly won't claim to understand the subtleties of min/maxing rogue DPS, but I do know he's consistently our highest DPSer. And perusing our last WWS report, I don't see him using SnD at all.

Yes, that makes sense, for sure. However, I don't think I was clear in my first post -- on Gruul, the other druid is the hurtful strike tank, so he's definitely in tank gear, and probably (hopefully) keeping Mangle up at all times. However, on Mag, he tanks a channeller in full kitty DPS gear, and then transitions to DPS once his channeller is dead. In this scenario, we have two kitties in roughly equivalent gear doing nothing but DPS. In this case, it's a lot less clear-cut to me, which is what prompted me to ask.

Good point. I don't think I appreciated how much damage is lost by using mangle instead of shred. Considering we usually only have the one rogue, the easy answer is, it isn't worth it to sacrifice my DPS for his DoTs.

Yeah, I guess that's really the next step for us -- we just need to coordinate ourselves better before we can really start thinking about eeking that last little bit out of our DPS. Although, I guess the easiest way to coordinate would be to have one druid assigned to keep mangle up... Hmm...

 

dukes

First step is to get everyone doing decent dps on their own, tell them to ignore the other person and concentrate on their own timers. Once you have that down, whoever is doing worst DPS should be doing the mangles (in a normal rotation), while the others work their damage around the mangles going on and off the debuff list. Obviously if you have problems with this, you could just tell one person to always make sure mangle is up (rather than normal rotation) but I don't think you'd get quite as much total DPS out of it.

 

Mooncrow

I will second Dukes' comment that you have to watch closely when mangle is up or not if you're the one not doing it. Especially if you have the guy in tank gear doing it; likely their +hit is pretty abyssmal, so sometimes it takes them a couple tries to get it back on.

We just got our second feral geared up to an acceptable level, and started doing this, and I will say our combined dps went up a significant amount.

 

Boevis

Ex Magtheridon. 2 Prot Warriors, 2 Feral Druids, 0+ Fury Warriors, 1+ Hunter
What my guild does is I tank (Full Mitigation Gear) South, MT Tanks SE, other Feral tanks (Just enough to be uncritable gear) SW, other Prot tanks NW and NE with a MD from the hunter. The reason for my full mit gear is that I grab NW from the other Prot as soon as south dies (it's the first killed). The point of this? Using the ideal power shifting rotation, I switch to Rip-Mangle-Shred to 4cp-Mangle, and my counterpart switches to Rip-Shred to 5cp. Mangle Debuff is up constantly (except when I'm clicking). The same number of Mangles are used, except the better geared druid is using more shreds.

Napkin math for my own verification.
Beardruid: 2500 AP 25% Crit

2500/14 + 55.46 = 234.03
((234.03 * 2.25)+405)*1.1*1.3 = 1332.15
((234.03 * 1.6)+264)*1.1 = 702.3
1332.15-702.3 = 629.85 damage lost using mangle

Catdruid: 3500 AP 35% Crit
3500/14 + 55.46 = 305.46
((305.46 * 2.25)+405)*1.1*1.3 = 1561.97
((305.46 * 1.6)+264)*1.1 = 828.01
1561.97-828.01 = 733.96 damage lost using mangle

So not even touching crit rate, having Bear mangle twice so cat can always shred is better DPS.