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I've recently been able to switch from bear to kitty because I switched guilds. However, I'm getting pwned on the meters and I'm wondering if I'm missing something. I know feral AOE is incredibly weak atm but my question is:

Would I be better off (All of these options include SotP up)
1) Swiping- Just going in there and swiping my lil paws off.
2) Mangle/Rake- Tab target mangle/rake on everything.


I've been able to do these on H.Mal, and tbh I didn't write down what attempt I had tried what, so looking over my logs didn't help me. I mainly went with swipe (and saving Zerking for Black phase). Tab targeting wasn't going very well, and because they are all so closely grouped, clicking was about the same. That means that my mangle/rake attempts were pretty bad b/c I was actually reapplying on some mobs. I did try a full rotation on a single add+swipe (instead of rip upkeep) but those seemed to be my lowest numbers and I was pulling threat.

My next question is about hit-
Now I've read the forums and they all pretty much agree that hit is a bad stat. But ever since I've equipped [Unheeded Warning] my melee damage has been incredibly high (Generally going 1. Rip 2. Rake 3. Melee, with melee and rake switching on some fights).
I get that the DoT is our damage and Hit doesn't effect the dot, but I'm wasting so much energy! It's killing my upkeeps and the 'fill' of my dps. The only Hit that I'm using right now is on +20agi blue gem slots (agi/hit gems) and the hit trinket on Nef attempts b/c they make me kick (plus the hit that's on the tier). But has anyone seen any reason for using hit?

I guess I really just want to make sure I'm doing it right. 4.1 we'll get the bonus to swipe, that might bring me more inline with some of the others on the AOE fights. Once I can pay a pally to salv me on the pulls, I can start using zerking right off the bat which should help for single target ^_^ Thanks for any and all help!

Logs:World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
CharDev:chardev 8 - WoW Cataclysm
Edited-Forgot CharDev

I'm going to preface this by saying that I don't play feral at all, but I am fairly proficient at dotting on Maloriak without missing mobs or doing unnecessary clipping.

What I recommend that you do to properly test your dps with dots is to look into binding both Target Nearest Enemy (by default on TAB) and target previous enemy (default shift+TAB) to two very accessible buttons. Both of those keybinds target the nearest enemy if nothing is targeted BUT they scroll through targets in different directions. Think of it like a list of targets, and you are able to scroll through them in both directions.

What this means is that if you start on Dark Swill #1 you can use either one of those functions to get to Swill #2, and 5 presses will get you back to Swill #1 after cycling through all of them, however, having both functions keybound allows you to "reverse", if you go too far in one direction. Using mousewheel up and down is ideal for this in my opinion since you can carry on doing whatever you normally do with your left hand, and scrolling through targets on the wheel feels very intuitive.

I've tried some options for HC Maloriak fight.
Swiping, berserk bear mangling, mange+rake rotation.
Only option that really works for me is rake rotation on all mobs when someone else applies bleed damage increase debuff. Extra energy/gcd could be spend on swipes and you have time to move out of pools.

Custom nameplates with debuff widget help a lot.

If you want to maximize your dps, you want to berserk right away and then save your next two Berserks for the green phases. You also want to stop using Tiger's Fury 30 seconds prior to the start of the green phase and use Tiger's Fury right before you push Berserk so you buff as many Swipes as possible. It has been found that Unheeded Warning does not buff Swipe. Swipe accounts for upwards of 20% of my dps on this fight in general so I'd be inclined to recommend using a different trinket, such as Fluid Death or Unsolvable Riddle and in the latter case making sure you synchronize Unsolvable Riddle's on-use with Berserk. As for the black phases, unless the Swills are all grouped up in a corner for some reason, I would not Swipe. What I do is Mangle/Rake one add and Mangle/Rake + 4CP Rip another and then switch to a third (Mangle+Rake) and then 4CP Rip the fourth... and then keep rotating.

I went and found out how to make my Tidy Plates show my debuffs, which helped immensely. I switched to a tab+click method which I found to be the best way to get through everything and Rake/Mangle. My DPS went up roughly 1200-1500 just by dotting every thing up (From low 15,000 to 17,200-500).

@Petitourson
You can actually get off a Zerk at the start of the fight (I save it for when all the swills are grouped up) and the Green phase. I might try out the hit trinket, missing on multidotting really sucks.

Next question, do the same rules apply for larger packs such as the abberitions? It seems like I would be able to get more dps out with Swipe because there is a 'timer' for how long I can dps them which would make my dots somewhat useless?

In bear form when should you use Swipe/Thrash instead of Mangle/Lacerate? Does Swipe/Trash only do more DPS if you can hit at least four mobs? Five? Is there a magic number?

In bear form, thrash always does more DPS than lacerate for any reasonable amount of AP. This is on single targets. Swipe will likely overtake lacerate as well for single-target DPS and threat around the point where you are geared in normal mode firelands gear and working on some heroic gear.

Mangle is always your #1 priority in terms of doing threat. Lacerate should only be done when you want to keep the stack up or are replacing a pulverize. Thrash should otherwise be used on cooldown. If there are two or more targets it is much better to swipe than lacerate unless you need specifically single target DPS.

Hi everyone,

I have had a problem on Valiona & Theralion tonight. Gear is a mix of tanking and kitty gear, most ilvl359 with some ilvl372 pieces. My WoL log shows a 90% Rip uptime, but the ticks are incredibly low (resulting in only 8.4% of damage done by Rip overall). I was using Ovale with Leafkillers scripts, afair the 1.3.1 version. All other fights of this night have shown normal Rip ticks. Any clues what could have caused this? I don't recall Ovale telling me to only cast 1cp Rips or anything, it felt like the normal rotation. Testing the newest script 1.3.2 on a dummy afterwards showed normal results.

I'm normally healing and helping out with a bearkitty spec if the signups require it, so gear/dps might not be perfectly fitting.

WoL log: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

For comparison a log from a month ago, the last time I dps'ed on that fight, with near similar gear: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

There is a bug being reported by many cats that has rip not getting any AP and doing only base damage. The cause is unclear; usually restarting wow fixes the issue.

ETA: link to official bug report
[BUG] Druid Rip - Forums - World of Warcraft

I wonder why I see that much bears (all of them?) with 130 Agi enchanted on their weapons. I know, agility is a strong stat, but why don't they use windwalk?
First of all, windwalk provides 15% movement speed, 130 agility doesn't. Movement speed is what anybody wants, right?
Second: Windwalk is 600 dodge rating, which is 3,4% dodge (pre-DR). 130 agility is 0,53% dodge (pre-DR), 0,4% crit and 260 AP.
Third: Wndwalk has no internal cooldown, I often see it refresh itself on my warrior, at least on multitarget. I usually have a 20-40% (depending on fight) uptime of it on singletarget fights, so to ease this it has an average uptime of ~1/3, so subtracting the agility-dodge, it is about 0,6% dodge + 5% movement speed vs 0,4% crit and 260 AP.

Is the boost for Savage Defense via 0,4% crit and 260 AP really superior than the 0,6% dodge and 5% movement speed?
I really do have a hard time to believe this...

Most bears worth their salt have Earthen Vitality on their boots, whose 8% movement speed increase does not stack with Windwalk, so you'd only get half the effect. Besides if need be, bears have an on-demand 60% speed boost in the form of Stampeding Roar. And finally pure dodge procs have limited use against magic-heavy bosses while agility will always help your threat generation regardless of the damage type, not to mention that Windwalk procs off of your melee strikes and not when struck which reduces the likelihood of it proc'ing at the right time, i.e when you take a string of melee hits bunched together.

Hi forum, Erm well I'm new to the forms but I'll introduce myself as Hairybolz feral tank, 6/13 HC in a guild named Immanence on Kazzak alliance.
Now i've been having some trouble with Rawr so I need some real advice from you guys. I pretty much read a few guidelines here and there on what I should focus on. So I stack (mostly) on agility and try to keep stamina over 175k for hc raids as well (trying to get over 180 just waiting for those epic trinkets hehe) I also try to get and keep gear that has mastery on it so I dont wear my set for tanking because of its' low mastery points.
Now my real problem is with my Expertise and Hit rates. They are terribly low and I feel like my dps and aggro is suffering.
I find it very difficult to do timed ZA runs with my guild mates who have sick dps and I just cant keep up. I'm not sure im doing something wrong but I aoe and single target mangle everyone I need. still I find it hard to control the aggro of a big group.
Now my question is, should I reforge a little to hit and expertise? will it help me at all?

Sorry if I'm maybe asking some stupid questions, but actually I played only bear as feral and since Monday I’ve got my first cat spec.

My talents may look a little bit weird, but I wanted to do a real damage spec together with being crit immune because of some tasks like collecting adds in the first phase at nefarian until they are at zero energy and drop. (Please feel free to criticize talent mistakes, I’m really new to this and want to learn! Also if crit immunity is not worth it just please tell me.)

First I tried to play the cat without being hit capped because it is mentioned on the first pages of this thread. But at the training ground in stormwind I stood behind the target and I had a lot of hits that just missed, so I wasn’t really able to keep up the bleedings and had big energy problems. After that I reforged to reach the hit cap and finally I was able to test seriously, the damage increased from 10k DPS to 16k DPS what was quite fine for a first try. But anyways I often have serious energy problems but no idea what I could do against.

My starting rotation/priority looks like this:

1. Mangle
2. Savage Roar with 1CP
3. Rake
4. Tiger's Fury & Berserk
5. Shred until 5CP
6. Rip
7. Shred until 5CP
8. Ferocious Bite

After these initial attacks I try to keep all bleedings on the target, use Tiger's Fury and Berserk on cool down and have a 5CP Savage Roar, but I am lacking on energy quite often. Because of that there are always a few seconds where I have to wait for energy only doing white hits.

Is this normal, or am I doing something completely wrong? Additionally my gear is not BIS, but anyways I think 15k DPS might be too less at Magmaul for example. It would be nice if you could make some suggestions.

There seem to be a lot of things that you can change gear-wise and rotation-wise that will yield minor to moderate dps gains. Getting to know what your stat priorities are and how much they are worth relative to each other would be a good place to start. The first page of this very thread has most of the information you need in order to reforge, re-enchant and regem your gear optimally. In essence, you're way too low on mastery and sacrificing agility for secondary stats is strongly advised against. Rotation-wise, you want to postpone Savage Roar and have Rip be your first finisher. You also want to keep away from Ferocious Bite outside the 25% HP execute range and keep Shredding at 5CP instead, while also pooling your energy proactively when several timers run out at the same time, all of that should help resolve the bleed downtime you mentioned. As far as your spec goes, Primal Madness has tested out as showing little to no dps gain and should be the first talent to spec out of when building a hybrid spec, as opposed to Blood in the water unless you're on tanking duty in the execute range.

This is the opening rotation that I *try* to maintain...although, circumstances can change things:
0. Fairie Fire
1. Feral Charge to Target after pull
2. Rake
3. Mangle
4. Shred
---typically at this point in time, unless I got a OoC proc, I'll be very low on energy ---
5. Tiger's Fury
6. If at 5 CP, Rip, if not, Ravage!, then Rip, then Ravage! (if I didn't use it earlier)
7. Shred if I have energy
8. Beserk
9. Savage Roar, if I had been able to do Shred, otherwise Shred
10 (and on). Shred, Shred, Shred, keep rake up, keep rip up, keep savage roar up, use TF on CD, use Beserk on CD

I have to be very careful with this rotation though, because it is very easy to pull aggro off the tank....

This does not take in to account 4t11...

No, Danorager's opener suggestion was dead-on. Yours neither maximizes bleed uptime nor Ravage damage. Also, you don't want to delay Rip and cause downtime in order to sync it with Tiger's Fury. Refreshing your bleeds during Tiger's Fury on the other hand yields higher dps provided you didn't just apply them. The jury is still out on whether Rip at any point of its duration should be clipped during TF but for Rake 9 sec (or less) remaining has been simulated to be the magic number.

It's worth delaying rip by up to 2 seconds, possibly 3, to synchronize with TF. At 3 seconds you'll lose 3/22 = 13.6% (or 3/24 = 12.5%, if bug applies) of rip damage, not accounting for the small amount of energy saved, and gain 15%. If you do this you'll also lose at most 1 shred during TF, or 15% shred damage which is approximately 2.5% rip damage.

This means in most cases it will be worth using rip after TF in the opener. The same isn't true of rake; a similar analysis (which also takes into account the saved energy, which is significant for rake) indicates that it's only worth delaying rake by 1-2 seconds to synchronize with TF. Better to open with rake.

Whenever you delay refreshing Rip beyond the last tick, which is carried over to the next Rip cycle if refreshed in time, you generate downtime equal to the time it takes you to re-cast Rip plus your latency and you open up the possibility of getting dodged or missing, adding another GCD (or more if out of luck) worth of downtime. Furthermore if you get an OOC proc right before TF comes off cooldown you may not be able to get your energy low enough so you don't waste any of KotJ's 60 energy. I trust you also have lightning-fast reflexes and can press both your TF key and Rip almost simultaneously as soon as TF is available. All these seconds and fractions add up and that's why this has been tested out as dps-neutral or a slight loss over the course of a fight and not worth the hassle of refreshing Rip outside of the secure post-penultimate tick refresh path. Do not delay the Rip refresh especially if you have high latency. I will not mention other possible priority conflicts like clipping Rake during TF.

Greetings all, I have a question regarding gemming for bear tanking. Recently, i have built up my tank set for our progression group (kitty dps being my main spec) and was wondering at when and IF to gem for straight dodge. I.E. would gemming 67 Dodge chimera eyes be more beneficial than gemming the 67 agility chim? Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but i have yet to find the topic. Thank you much.

Regarding the claim that it's been tested, I will remark that a simulator result is only as good as the script behind it. For a long time simulator results concluded that it was never a damage gain to refresh rip during TF. This ran directly counter to simple estimates; my position was the same then, and is now pretty much vindicated.

I won't claim to be correct here; I'm not planning to go through this argument again. I only wish to recommend keeping in mind the first sentence when reading simulator results. It's easy to find simulator results that only apply to the particular parameters of the simulation or script.

With 4t11, I assume you Mangle instead of Shred before the initial Rip. Do you Mangle 3x before the initial Rip or is it better to just Rip with 1x or 2x Mangle if you've already hit 5CP?

edit: More generally, what's the priority for starting (or renewing after it's dropped) the 4t11 bonus? My intuition says that getting the Rip rolling is more important, but I guess it comes down to the value of one tick of Rip vs. 1-3% extra damage across the whole Rip + 1-3% extra damage on a couple of white hits?