You cannot discount some dps loss while repositioning before and after a feral charge due to hit box sizes, boss mechanics and where you end up in the mob after the feral charge. Specifically, going back to BWD where we had zero distance FCs, if you did a FC on Nef or Ony you did have to reposition quickly to get out of stun range. While good execution limited the impact, it was not a zero time impact. Another good example was Cho'gall, where a lot of times the feral charge put you right in the middle of his body far forward enough that you would be unable to hit him without backing up a little.

I think we can characterize this into several categories. Obviously on a boss who behaves like the training dummies it is very predictable and you can simply strafe to the side and FC back in with no other considerations of positioning or timing. On bosses such as Nef, Ony and Cho'gall post FC there is some additional movement to reposition in order to avoid a negative fight mechanic. For a large hitbox boss, with no other positioning constraints, you have 28 seconds to adjust to the edge of the hitbox without impacting dps - we do this on lots of bosses already to avoid cleaves etc. As we move into the new content it will become clearer as to when we can use FC and what if any positioning adjustments we will have to make before and after. But we should not be so naive as to assume that it will have zero impact on the timing and dps benefits we will get from the FC.

From a timing perspective, I spent time simming this in Mew a few months ago, testing the various abilities to see which should be guarded from running out. This is where some of the current logic in the Mew script and my Ovale script came from (although I noticed that there are some small differences between the two, so I am not sure which is correct). Once the PTR goes up and the actual behavior of the set bonus is fully understood, I will retest and see if the existing guards on when to run out still apply. Given the increase in relative value from getting two free Ravages, I would expect some changes, both in when to run out (good chance it will be more aggressive) and when to cast the two Ravages. For example, right now it will try to cast Ravage during TF but at a lower priority than Rip, Rake and SR. Perhaps using both Ravages during TF will move up in priority, but that is hard to say until we do the sim work. The work on how long it takes to run out and FC back in are obviously extremely helpful in determining when it is optimum to run out, so I hope people continue to find ways to measure that. As I recall, most of my work was done with an assumed travel time of 2 seconds, but given the discussion here, I will look at testing in the 1 to 1.5 second range.

Personally, I do not like this set bonus as it is very situational - and I think the 4 piece set bonus should not be so situational. That said, I despised the T11 set bonus since it encouraged us to avoid leaving cat form at all costs, and the T12 4 piece set bonus is clearly situational enough that I have seen some feral cats who are not using it, so it is business as usual for our set bonus.

Well, this set bonus went from meh to really amazing. It's really not as much as about the overall DPS increase but an additional on demand burst without too much requirements.

Even on Patchwerk fights, using FC with zero latency with predictable landing spots has been a marginal DPS increase (especially with haste stacking as we are today, as the faster white hits will produce more OoC.) . You also needed to be near the outermost of a boss' melee range ring and run out in a straight line. This makes movement just for the sake of feral charging for ravage very very annoying. Let's look at the heroic fights of Fireland. The "dumbing" down made it usable on every single fight as oppose to just some.

This is kind of like the DW vs 2H frost argument Death Knights had before they buffed DW significantly in 4.2; in Sim perfect world DW was marginally higher, yet every Death Knights were 2H Frost just for the fact that it is better in practice.

I've tested this set up myself... and it is pretty good. Reasonable amount of flexibility, Thanks.