I'm still staring at a few different things with all of this, because even with the wrong cycle it shouldn't have been that much of a different. I was breaking the parses into 45-50 second periods in order to look at threat for individual tank periods. For that period that I was talking about, you hit much higher tps but you had a very nice maul crit percentage (talking 20% higher than your other crit percentages, negative to looking at shorter periods) while mine was in the 13% range, much lower than usual. I went back and found a few of your other tanking periods and you had more like 100 tps difference.

Either way, doing the 1m, 3s rotation I was getting much higher tps than RAWR indicated, so I'm not 100% sure if I'll be following rawr's recommendation again. I know before they where way too high, but now they seem low.

Question... Anyone tested whether AP multipliers (HotW and Unleashed Rage) affect AP from debuffs that increase AP against the target (Imp Hunter's Mark and Expose Weakness)? Rawr currently assumes they do, but it someone asked me about that today, and it occurs to me that they may not, and I never tested it.

Hello all, this is my first time posting here although I've been actively reading this thread mostly but generally anything about ferals i can find on here and its helped me a great deal with playing my own little furball.

Lately I've been experimenting a lot with macros, made a few quite useful ones too in fact. And some time ago it came to me that having a macro checking for the idol of terror proc and delaying mangle if it is active, using lacerate/swipe meanwhile, for sheer survivability by maximizing the uptime. Since they changed the idol it can no longer chainproc, and thus the mangle cd collides with the idol proc (proc lasting 10sec and cd being 6secondson mangle, you will mangle once during the duration of the buff and leave an inevitable 2sec downtime of the idol). I've been trying to find out how this might be possible myself and i found some info on a "GetPlayerBuff"-command, but it seems very limited unless combined in a complete addon - writing addons is way beyond me. Not been able to find an addon with this feature either.

Please don't tell me how bad this is for threat, because that much is pretty obvious, it'd mean mangling 2/3 less (if it procs off every mangle, which ofc isnt true but for the sake of the argument). But I'm simply wondering if it would be possible to run a check through your currently active buffs, find "Primal Tenacity" and then use lacerate/swipe until the buff is gone and then mangle, to maximize dodge.

Thank you for your time, any ideas for improving my own are ofc welcome.

I usually raid as resto, but looking at these forums I've become very interested in feral dps and tanking. I only have access to kara/ZA/uncontested dps gear, and so I've noticed a lot of my pieces are armor pen. I have pieces like the ZA 3-timer armor pen ring, sunrage treads, hex lord staff, and ZA armor pen chest. A feral friend has said that stacking armor pen is not very useful for ferals, but I'm confused by this since everything i've read about armor pen is that it is better the more you stack. I can get over 1k armor pen while keeping hit cap and 2pt4, but would it be better to replace armor pen items with more balanced stats? For example shadowprowlers chestguard or nether shadow tunic in place of the shadowtooth trollskin cuirass?

It varies alot, by gear. Yes, ArPen does get better, the more of it you have, but it's certainly not the best stat for us. Use Rawr to find out which items specifically are best for you.

While it is possible to check whether a buff is present in a macro, it is *NOT* possible to choose whether or not to mangle. If you want that, you'll have to do in manually.

In case the first post can be updated or a Wiki is ever made, I believe there's an small rounding error in the main Bear post:

The improved Grace of Air is 88.55 agility.

Fixed. Not sure how I got 90 originally, 77*1.15 is definitely 88.55. With SotF (*1.03) it's 91.2. Neither would make it 90.

It depends on where any rounding occurs (88 * 1.03 = 90.64). That's where 90 probably came from.

This should be simple enough to test using a 5 point rip. You should be able to predict the tick value of rip with and without Imp Hunter's Mark. Don't even need a base AP. If HotW doesn't stack with imp hunter's mark, your rip damage will increase by 4.4. If it does stack, your damage will increase by 5.28 per tick.

Greetings fellow ferals!

This is my first post on these forums but I have been reading such threads for awhile, trying to assimilate the information pertinent to my favorite class in WoW. I use Rawr for all my gear/theorycrafting. I am a 4t6 feral tank.
I also enjoy creating macros to smooth the operation of my various roles in a raid. I have a moderate understand of those macros but I am here posting a request for assistance. Would the community here please provide me some feedback and criticisms on the following 2 macros/main bar setups.

Case 1: This is the macro I have been using until recently.

As I understand this, the macro chews up alot of rage. It will use Maul when there is sufficient rage and randomly use Mangle and Lacerate. It is spamable, creates good threat but I suspect it is not ideal as the mangle and lacerate debuffs often wear out before being refreshed. Secondly the UIErrors frame is reporting unavailable attacks due to cooldown and insufficient rage. Thirdly I am unsure it provides snap aggro for picking up an add or runner. Fourthly it does not work very well when I am an OT or rage starved; likely due to the fact that Maul uses up the rage I would have received from a normal white attack. I wish to optimize an attack for threat...so I came to these forums...read the majority of this thread and came up with the following:

Case 2: Tried this macro on a Zul'Aman run.

Beside this button I placed Maul and Swipe so that I could substitute those attacks depending on the amount of rage I had available and if the situation allowed for Swipe not breaking CC. I found that my Threat per Second dropped significantly but the debuffs for Mangle and Lacerate were usually properly applied for full duration. Rage generation was no longer a problem since i could not keep pace with double/triple spamming keys (macro, maul, swipe) but the DPS classes complained about the lower threat. Not sure how this affects things but Maul has a 6 yd range where others normally have a 5 yd range...does this mean it is better for snapp aggro/add control?

I would like ferals who use any similar attack routine to post their observations, their experiences and their macros to help me out of this bind. Something to eliminate the error spam would be appreciated too.

Oh and I rather liked this little macro as a bonus:

Case 3:

Thankyou in advance.

There simply isn't going to be a macro that will work properly that will allow you to spam it without tradeoffs. The best thing I can think, if you really want to go this way, is to have a
/cast maul
/cast lacerate

type of macro, which will be good in most situations where you're not rage starved. Even then, it's situational and there are times where you'll want to do something else.

The problem with the castsequence you have for ZA is that it isn't optimal almost any of the time. It relies on you spamming it and only it, but if you do anything else or have a bad sequence of misses, it drops. It doesn't guarantee you'll do mangle when it's up, it doesn't guarantee you'll keep lacerate up. And if you do want to splice in swipes, it is very suboptimal in overall threat.

Honestly, my gut reaction to all of this was 'why use a macro' for it. There are a total of 4 attacks that you can use at any time. Maul is spammable no matter what, leaving mangle, swipe and lacerate. Is it that complex to monitor debuff timers and cooldowns? It seems like it just needs training of muscle memory.

You are spamming:
#showtooltip Mangle
/castsequence reset=6 Mangle(Bear)(Rank 3), Lacerate, Lacerate, Lacerate
/startattack

Along with swipe?

First, what I found with using /castsequence is that its not spammable. If you aren't waiting for the GCD to be up then I found I was causing delays and thus, lowering my threat. In other words, you have to wait for your GCDs. Second, you won't be able to fit in lacerates and swipes.

If your intention is to get a stack of lacerates rolling, and then utilize 4 piece t6's set bonus to swipe damage to utilize the increased swipe damage, then you might want to use
/castsequence reset=6 Mangle(Bear)(Rank 3), Lacerate, Swipe, Swipe

Again, from what I have found, you cannot spam that.

Alternatively, I haven't really played with castrandom too much, but it seems you can include that as your lacerate/swipe spam tool, but I wouldn't let mangle to be randomly cast, ever.

Yes, you can spam the castsequence, no problem there at all. Only problem is whenever you want to put FFF or DR up, you ideally want to replace a lacerate/swipe, whereas with that you have to insert the FFF/DR, which means lowering your TPS slightly by not using Mangle when it's off cooldown. I personally get around that by dropping the reset time to 1sec, and continually spamming it, except for when I want to FFF/DR, and only doing those on the last ability in the cycle.

Personally, I've found using the cast sequence macro is very spam-able, with little loss of lacerate stacks or tps.

/startattack
/castsequence reset=6 mangle, swipe, lacerate, swipe

You might lose a stack of lacerate every once in a while, but its not going to be a huge tps loss and will quickly be built back up.

If you are tanking trash near a sheep, I use a second macro that just replaces swipe with lacerate (most of the time I just position myself to be able to swipe).

Throw in a /cancelaura Blessing of Salvation, /cancelaura Greater Blessing of Salvation at the top of the macro, and you're good to go. You can probably put in a /cast Maul if you want, but in rage-starved situations your tps will drop considerably. Better to just put maul on its own button and use it when rage isn't an issue.

Admittedly, using each ability manually with cooldowns and stacks in mind could probably net you a little bit more tps, but I find that this macro lets me pay more attention to my surroundings and boss timers.

Edit: Fixed because I mis-understood reset=X

Because there seems to be misunderstanding, reset=X means it resets after not being pressed for Xsec, not Xsec from the start. It's resetting during the GCD on the last swipe because it goes back to the start when the last spell in the sequence is cast.

Right, unless you set the reset time really low (1sec or 1.5sec), and replace your last lacerate/swipe in the sequence with a FF/Demo, giving it time to reset.

The problem with mangle being up and sequence being stuck on lacerate is easily solved by setting sequence reset also on an modifier, for example ALT. That way, when you press ALT and the macro, it will mangle right away. If mangle is not up, you will get an error message and the macro will get stuck on magle.

I use 2 versions of tank macro, one with mangle and 3 lacerates, one with mangle and 3 swipes.

I think having spammable tank macro is important. It improves your situation awareness, at least for me its the case. If the macro is good, meaning it does allow you to do all the things you need.

I remain a bit confused as to the reset functionality on the castsequence part of the macro.

My desire is to keep the Mangle debuff up as often as possible, Get (and maintain) a stack of 5 Lacerates within the first 30 seconds of the fight, have a Demoralizing Roar and a Feral Faerie Fire up in that time as well. As for the rest of the attacks I wish to optimize my threat with Maul or Swipe (if rage starved) and have a snap aggro attack available for any adds that go for my healers.

I believe Astyrlian may have hit on the issue I found with the castsequence command line and the GCD of my attacks. Could any of you shed some light on how I might refine the macro? Here is what I can put together:

Button 1 (Fight Opener): Enrage and cancel Blessings of Salvation [instant cast, produces 20+ rage]
Button 2 (Pulling/refresh every ~30 sec): Feral Faerie Fire [rage free cost, CD=6.0, duration 40 sec.]
Button 3 (Used when needed ~30 sec): Demoralizing Roar [10 rage, GCD=1.5, duration 30 sec.]
Button 4 (Used when I have lots of rage): Maul [substitutes on next attack/instant, 15 rage/plus rage lost from next white attack, GCD=0]
Button 5 (AE attack, high damage, medium threat): Swipe [15 rage, CD=2.5(swing speed)]
Button 6 (spammable macro): Mangle/Lacerate/Lacerate.

Now what type of reset value would I attach to this macro-button-6 ? I have tried reset=6.0 sec but that does not seem to produce the results I desire. Any clarification would be appreciated on the best sequence and the exact meaning of the reset value.

Mangle/Lacerate/Lacerate/Lacerate
Mangle/Lacerate/Maul/Lacerate
Mangle/Lacerate/Swipe/Lacerate

The reset value specifies how long, in seconds, you can not press the macro button before the cast sequence resets to the start. If you have it set at 6 seconds, it means it will take 6 seconds of not pushing the button before the cast sequence resets to the first item in the sequence.

As stated by Astrylian, what you probably want is something like
#showtooltip Mangle
/castsequence reset=1 Mangle(Bear)(Rank 3), Lacerate, Lacerate, Lacerate
/startattack

And then making sure that if you swipe, you swipe at the last part of the cast sequence and not anywhere else. This will allow you to spam that button as you see fit, then insert swipes at the end of the sequence. You can maul as you like as well; it won't affect the spamming of that button.

Personally, I have 4 macros for my threat cycle:

1) Sequence of Mangle, Swipe, Swipe, Swipe, with a 1sec reset
2) Sequence of Mangle, Lacerate, Lacerate, Lacerate, with a 1sec reset
3) Maul + /click macro #1
4) Maul + /click macro #2

I use 1/3 or 2/4 depending on whether I want to lacerate or swipe. I use the one with Maul in rage unlimited situations, and the one without for rage limited situations. Using a /click to the other macro means that they share the same sequence, instead of having independent sequences, so I can swap between them depending on rage, without breaking the sequence.

Then I just hit FFF and Demo in place of the last swipe/lacerate in the rotation, and don't hit the macro til it resets back to mangle.

In terms of placement, I have them arranged in a square like so:
4 2
3 1
They're on 2/3/F2/F3 for me. Since the /click references an actual button name, not a specific macro, I can swap the positions of 1 and 2 depending on whether I'm going to be primarily swiping or primarily lacerating on any given swipe, so I can just comfortably spam 2 or 3 (depending on rage levels) for the primary attack in that situation, but still move my finger up a bit for the secondary attack. I'm actually probably one of the few people who regularly move buttons during combat; I swap 1 and 2 back and forth all the time, such as between ground and air phase on Felmyst, or between single and multitarget trash pulls. I don't expect many other people to do that though, as it's kinda crazy, and risky (though I've still never accidentally dropped one of the macros, knock on wood).

I'm also toying with the idea of making my FFFs, Bashes, Swipes, and maybe even Mangle target my mouseover if I have one, or default back to target if not.

When you are doing Mangle, Lacerate x3, and mauling when not rage starved, what is the average threat you build on a boss like...gorefiend, in a gimp group? That is, if you don't mind me asking.