I've been reading and rereading all the pertinent threads on this forum and some of the relevant feral blogs out there (hail ThinkTank, Fluid Druid, Feral Aggression and others!) - i give respect where respect is due - but with all the changes that occured over the last couple of days (damage of dots went up and with it the value of mastery, the latest ninja buff of our damage coefficients and other imminent changes that are bound to happen) I'm still unsure on many things and I'd appreciate some answers for things as they stand now. I'll just get on with the questions, I hope I won't ask nothing too banal.

Before the changes getting to hit/expertise caps for kitties was pretty essential, are those caps still as relevant or do we try to maximise agility>>mastery>crit/haste with reforging and geming? I suppose it's better to reach all the caps through reforging since we can't reforge into agility, so we should fill up most of (or all?) the gem slots with agility? What is the unbuffed crit softcap in cat form (around 65% crit?) and I assume that crit is more essential than mastery or even haste up to that point? When do agi/haste or agi/crit gems come as more beneficial than pure agility gems, if at all (considering socket bonuses ofcourse)? Because RSV values using MEW put agility way on top of the other values. I guess we're back to Mongoose and agility enchants on cloak and gloves too.

How do skull bash and feral charge interact? (Sorry for being obtuse here, but skull bash is currently broken for me on live and I haven't done any PTR or Beta testing). Is skull bash just another gap closer or is it a viable interrupt? (do you have to go at a distance to use it as interrupt or can the interrupt be cast at close range?).

Getting to rotation.

I suppose this is an ideal opener, since ravage after FC might give us aggro? Clipping dots was a big dps loss for majority of WotLK and many of us have grown close to perfecting the rotation, but with the new TF mechanics I'm not so sure what's the right thing to do now:
1) using TF on cooldown (assuming low energy) and clipping rake and/or rip;
2) trying to sync TF so we can buff the next application (every second one?) of rip/rake, with maximising dot uptime; or
3) we use TF on cooldown and we let bleed uptime drop until TF is up (I'm sure this option is unacceptable);
4) buffing dots with TF only when doing so doesn't seriusly hurt our dot uptime (at how many seconds/ticks of our two bleeds would that still be acceptable?)
5) something else.

I also play bear and while I must admit that I haven't read as much on bears as I've read on cat, I'd still appreciate a few rotation/priority tips for AoE and single target tanking. For example, do we use OoC procs on Mangle, Maul or something else entirely? Do we use pulverize only when the current buff is about to drop or do we use it when we get 3stacks of lacerate up? I'm relying on Kalon here, so I assume we're reforging haste, but is it better to reforge to mastery or dodge?

This is a plea for some preliminary guides.

Did anyone consider starting the battle stealthed, using ravage> run out +fc > insert cycle > ravage again?

pro's:
you won't cap on energy using that early TF.
a free (almost always) high hitting crit.
early sr freeing 1global to use another shred while stampede is up.

con's:
no ff up yet to boost the dmg even more.
having to run out and possibly loosing dps due to less normal melee hits.
?

The way i understand the dot situation is that "clipping" no longer exists. The buff timer is refreshed but the tick timer does not stop. This would lower the DPE value of the ability so "clipping" more than a single tick i would think would become noticeable. Personally I was not using TF to increase dot damage i was using it to shell out more FB when all necessary buffs/debuffs were in place and had ample time to tick. Basically TF when low on energy and shred spam and end with FB, i was finding that with the energy bar increase and the buff to haste (restoring more energy) i could get out two rotations of shred x 3-4 > FB (using the glyph so i didn't waste any energy) before having to pool energy to refresh rake. Just my observations on ptr and live. Before 4.0.x i was doing about 6-7k on target dummy self buffed, now doing between 7-7.5k (before the ninja buff cuz the servers are offline )

I often find myself with 5cps, at high energy, Rip about to fall off, and TF coming off the cooldown. Should I be wasting CPs and shredding to dump energy, then TF and Rip?
Also, berserking during heroism is even a worse idea than it used to be. You simply can't get rid of all that energy. Too bad we do it soon after the pull when I have all my procs :(

A remark about AoE damage in 4.0.1:

Based on some quick target dummy numbers (only self-buffed), rake, with no mangle, does roughly 11 times as much damage per energy as swipe on one target. Hence it would appear to be worth spreading rake over all targets on any AoE pack smaller than 12. There are, however, complications such as lost autoattacks from switching targets which would bring this number down slightly.

Bear swipe also does slightly more damage than cat swipe for zero energy cost but a substantial autoattack cost. I haven't done the math on this yet.

Addendum: A 2 CP rip (no mangle, no shred) also does about 13 times more damage per energy than swipe on one target (with 2pc tier 10), so if rake crits on any target, it's definitely worth using rip before moving on.

Of course this is highly dependent on mastery. I have 20.37 (63%) mastery.

We've always been kinda forgiving when it comes to the expertise, but what are you guys running atm for it? Near the cap? capping? I'm about to reforge and re-gem but I'd like to get some opinions on what's a good expertise count to shoot for. (I have a 4pc T10, but lacking the H25 Rotface gloves, I kept the crafted pants) I'll probably pick up the 251lvl tier pants for now, and toss a token on when I get it. How much higher from that should I aim for?

Reforging, I've heard conflicting reports on what I should make my primary on gear stat between haste and crit. What have you guys found to be better?

Thanks for helping a noob kitty.

I tried to figure out tanking, because i am a tank since i am lvl 80, and i love my cute bear form.
I also tried Icc10 man today with some HC as well.
Single target tanking is awome, boss fight is easy ou generate lot of threath, no porblem at all, what i do is feral charge, ff, lacerate, maul, lacerate, mangle, pulverize, skull bash, and fromt that on i start ofer from lacerate. (i do use shull bash as well)

However aoe tanking i found hard a bit. I went in POS hc, and the tunnel, and the pack of mobs was hardish. i tried this: feralcharge, swipe, maul, than i had to change target cause i missed some i also tried charge, maul swipe was same result and if i did charge, change target, ff, swipe, maul was bit better still not perfect.
Anyone found out any good?

Also reforging is a bit confusing. so what shal i drop? haste, crit? well i changed some haste to mastery so i have no 9,09 mastery. what you think how much is the optional?
My choise and thinking was this: ill need critical to get mastery special buff, so i keep crit and drop some haste.

An other question is a bit off but still i do liked old name plates now they acting weird. if you do not aggro them you dont see sometimes i doo see sometimes if i had 100 aggor and i lose they grow... It seems good but i still find it a little bit weird.

I also think this is the point where we need to make choices, that are not that : Rip just drop, TF comes in a few seconds, do I have to wait?
* if you refresh now, you loose a 15% buff on 11 tick, ie 1.65 tick
* if you wait and dump energy in N shreds tou loose one tick each 2 seconds, plus N*(1+C) CP, C being your crit rate
It doesn't worth it if you wait for 3.4 sec (you have already lost more than 1.65 tick)
It can worth it if you wait less thant 3.4 sec, but you loose combo points. With some testing I found that a 35energy FB hits for 6, a shred 3k5, so we can (very) roughly estimate the cost of 5CP as 2k5 damage, maybe 5k if you FB at 70 energy. My rip ticks for 4k5, that means 1CP provide the same damage as 1/4.5 tick. Hence, each lost CP reduces the maximum "time to wait" by 2/4.5 sec = 0.444 sec. That mean that if you get 2 shreds or more, it's a loss. If you get only one shred and don't wait more than 3.4-(1+C)*0.44 sec, it's safe.
This is a really really bad approximation, and it depends on the current level of my gear (mor mastery means the ratio betwen Rip ticks and CP price is bigger). But we can say that the maximum time to wait before refreshing rip in this scenario is about 2.7 sec, with current crit rate. I won't be more precise thant that when dpsing a boss anyway :p

Regarding Hit/Exp:

It's pretty easy to see right now how strong Agi and Mastery are, and haste/crit lose their relevance because we'll want to gem straight Agi, and reforge straight Mastery.

However in my experience, I've been running ~40 under hit cap, and ~100 under Exp cap since the patch went live, and it's definitely causing me some issues. The new priority system coupled with:

1. Losing OOC procs to misses and dodges
2. The changes made to "queuing" skills making it harder to reapply bleeds and such if they miss
3. There seems to be some sort of bug wherein Rip falls off the target 1-2 seconds before it actually should (Glyph of Shred-related?)

Those seem to emphasize the importance of hit and expertise. In simulation, it may very well be better to not be at hit/exp cap, but how spiky and unpredictable our priority rotation is, anything that stabilizes the rotation would help tremendously. It's all about how comfortable you are with fixing your rotation on the fly. A good UI definitely helps, and as of now that's an issue.

A few tidbits I've noticed from raiding tonight:

> As mentioned by Stenhaldi on the previous page, Rake is extremely good in multi-target situations and when movement is necessary. During our H LK kill last night, I found myself tab-Raking ghouls and Valkyrs whenever I had the opportunity. Given the current state of Swipe, it's not worth it to use it in any realistic situations (especially if the mangle debuff is present on multiple mobs).

> I cannot find any practical use for Glyph of FB in near BiS gear. Combo point generation is spiky but extremely fast; there hasn't been a instance where I wasn't able to reapply bleeds within 1-2 secs after they fell off, at most. I am finding myself almost exclusively waiting to pool energy to 70+ energy before FBing. I can see why the glyph would be beneficial in lower tiers of gear when our rotation and CP generation are more predictable and stable (when energy is NEEDED to get the CPs for Rip, SR, etc), but at current gear levels I find the glyph pointless.

> Timing TF to be used with Rip is much more difficult than I thought it would be given wasting combo points burning energy before using TF or otherwise having excess energy right after using TF. I've been using TF with Rake (much easier, as it produces, and not consumes CPs) and especially FB (as you'll be at 70+ energy instantly).

Logs, if anyone is interested:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Rip and rake are absurdly high compared to melee. Haste is very, very underpowered at high levels of gear, especially so in situations where constant movement is required.

Is it known yet if Shred damage is increased by Mastery ("Effects that increase bleed damage also increase Shred damage.")? I've been trying to test it, but since we can only get mastery in small doses (and with lots of other stats muddying the mix) it's tough to get a good test in.

Very good point. But actually, You are wrong about all the same name spells are always defaulted to bear form ones when used in a macro unqualified. While most shared name spells do really behave like that, there are definitely some exceptions where unqualifed spell name gets defaulted to a cat ability.

I am almost sure this defaulting has something to do with spell id. When we look at Mangle, we'll see bear's spell id (33878) is bigger than cat's one (33876). But bear's Swipe id (779) is less than cat's one (62078). I have used both these abilities in macros and I always have unqualifed "/use Mangle" to be defaulted to bear ability and unqualified "/use Swipe" to be cat ability.

I suppose, that when we press "/use <ability>" macro, WoW macro engine always resolves <ability> as the usable ability having the biggest spell id.


Right now I am concerned about Stampeded Ravage.

I've made some simple tests (huge thanks to Gurrshael for solution!), and am now convinced that neither of these macroses work properly until I have Ravage spell from my spellbook somewhere on a bar. Whenever Ravage is even on one of my hidden bars, both macroses work perfectly. As soon as I take it off my bars, macro'ed Ravage becomes inactive and unusable. This is really weird. There was a bug recently on beta, when "/use lifebloom" was not working due to it being substitued on the fly with Tree Form empowered version. This seems to be the same issue that is still unfixed.