This is thoroughly false. Really. Stop saying this sort of thing until you actually try it. No matter how big the boss is, the distance between how far you can melee them and how far you have to run to leap, is the same.

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.

Seems they changed the 4-piece to no longer involve feral charge.

source

Interesting. Adds a little to the TF glyph at least. I wonder if it's Stampede or a different effect, as if it is it prevents you using the existing Stampede effect during the opener with TF like normal, would have to use it prior to TF.

Yawning made an experimental version of Mew that includes the changes (it assumes the FC Ravage is separate). I did a very basic set of tests and came up with the following (quoting what I posted on Fluiddruid):

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.

On a boss like Ragnaros, it went from 0x Ravage! to 1x Ravage! every 30 seconds.

Edit: Thanks for the correction.

If you couldn't feral charge the boss, it'd be 1x Ravage! every 30s (or 27s, depending on how the glyphs sim out).

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.

No, this is an argument based on ease of execution, not RNG-based mechanics not playing out in practice as well as they do in simulation. Using mid-fight FC is a DPS upgrade, assuming it's usable at all. Spoilering civilian's results from testing on a PW style fight (the training dummy).


At a 1.3 second gap between swings, there's no way you can continue to justify not using FC mid-fight out of anything aside from apathy. It's just not that hard to pull off successfully.

After spending a few weeks refining my feral DPS rotations, I encountered the following issue.

In the earlier days, at lower crit and haste levels, you would maintain your debuffs and then wait until you are just about to cap your energy, then refresh something(usually Savage Roar) and that would be it. However, now, when I'm getting more and more Firelands Heroic gear, I maintain Rip, Rend, Mangle and Savage Roar, still have 5 combo points and I'm 8-10(or more)seconds of any of these things running out.

What do I do? I tried throwing in a quick 35 Energy FB but I wouldn't get the combo points back in time to clip Rip. Do I simply keep shredding at 5 CP. Or do I simply refresh any of these things anyway?

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

Should Rake be clipped as close as possible to expiration? Or should I let it expire and re-apply (instead of refresh) to get the initial damage? Or is that initial damage encoded into the refreshed duration?

Reapply when there is less than 3 seconds left, the Cata dot mechanics means it will extend the next one to allow near 100% uptime. The initial hit happens regardless (as you could tell with 10 seconds on a target dummy).

In fact, you will refresh your rake differently each time you have to refresh it.

If the rake you're going to refresh is a TF buffed rake, the best thing you can do is wait for the dot to end completely and refresh it as soon as the last tick ticks. But if it's a non TF-buffed, than you can refresh it from 6 seconds remaining.

It's not a great dps gain though, but at some point, you'll climb the dps meter line by line only with that kind of small detail ^^

Coming around with a bug report for Shred and Mangle effects. As you all well know, Shred damage gets buffed by bleeds and bleed increasing effects. That list includes Mangle, Trauma, Hemo, Tendon Rip(Hyena), and Stampede(Rhino). Shred damage is working as intended for Mangle and Trauma only. For Hemo, TR and Stampede(assuming) we are not receiving that buff to our damage.

Any feral that has been relying on Sub Rogue or Hunter pet to keep up their bleed debuff has been unintentionally tanking their damage.

There is a Bug Report on the official (US) forums here: Shred not getting the mangle buff - Forums - World of Warcraft

And as for proof, here's a quick snippet of logs:

[12:35:00.336] Reesi casts Shred on Raider's Training Dummy
[12:35:00.336] Reesi Shred Raider's Training Dummy 14410
[12:35:02.177] Reesi Rip Raider's Training Dummy *13045*
[12:35:02.800] Reesi casts Rip on Raider's Training Dummy
[12:35:02.820] Raider's Training Dummy's Rip is refreshed by Reesi
[12:35:03.989] Reesi Rip Raider's Training Dummy 6333
[12:35:05.298] Vexate casts Hemorrhage on Raider's Training Dummy
[12:35:05.298] Vexate Hemorrhage Raider's Training Dummy 4127
[12:35:05.298] Reesi's Mangle fades from Raider's Training Dummy
[12:35:05.298] Raider's Training Dummy afflicted by Hemorrhage from Vexate
[12:35:06.082] Reesi Rip Raider's Training Dummy 6333
[12:35:06.788] Reesi casts Shred on Raider's Training Dummy
[12:35:07.028] Reesi Shred Raider's Training Dummy 11127

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Presumably the Rhino pet debuff is also not working. I only tested with a Hyena and assumed Rhino would be the same. Additionally... Who raids as BM, much less with a Rhino? I also believe the same bug is happening with Glyphed Maul on secondary targets, but I haven't had the chance to test that out yet.

Gotta wonder how long it's been that way?

Mangle Effects. Mangle is not a bleed. Hemo debuff is not a bleed without the glyph. I'm talking the 1 minute debuff that increases bleed damage by 30% which increases Shred damage as dictated by its tooltip.

This bug has nothing to do with whether or not the target is bleeding. Hemo overwrites Mangle. Mangle overwrites Hemo. It's worse for the Feral to upkeep his own Mangle than it is for a Sub rogue to push Hemo (I think?). Hemo being on the target and not mangle causes Shred to do less damage. Tendon Rip is easier to control with Mangle, but the Hyena will apply it when Mangle is sub 15 seconds, give or take. Refreshing Mangle that early is a slight DPS loss.

Good sub rogues hemo every 24 seconds to keep up the bleed with the glyph. Since hemo overwrites mangle, this means you don't get the benefit from the talent unless you overwrite hemo with a mangle every time it is applied.

I came to these forums because I was wondering why my DPS on my alt feral was terrible tonight. We had a sub rogue in the raid and I didn't mangle even once because I thought he was doing me a favor. Now I know he wasn't.

I found some 4.0 and 4.1 logs on WoL in which the bug also is apparent, so it's very likely been this way since patch 4.0.1 a year ago.

Which is kind of silly, as i remember testing stuff on a target dummy a year ago with a hunter to see if a hyena would be useful to take to raids; I only looked at bleed damage tho, not at shreds

Anyone else depressed by kitty performance on the PTR ?
Any comments or analysis yet ?

If you're talking about Simcraft, I think it's broken for Feral. It still lists Glyph of shred in the profile. At the top of the page it says:

Player Druid_Feral_T12H unable to find glyph shred

So I assume due to the Glyph of Shred name change it isn't taking into account Glyph of Shred/Bloodletting.

I noticed that. But also been seeing some live feeds, and comments from other people on the PTR, and it seems Feral is performing badly all around.

I can't vouch for how good those players are or what their gear is compared to other players, but it looks like we are on the lower end of the dps meters right now.