Agility is already better than Strength pre-2.3 in most (if not all) common gear setups given current ingame itemization, the 2.3 changes make it even markedly better. It might not seem clear because it is widely recognized as common knowledge amongst Druid theorycrafters (or consumers of said crafting) and sort of skimmed over in the post, so I can see value in explaining it in more detail.

That graph (or a similar one) is on Toskk's page. Including the graph in the original post with Toskk's permission would probably be a good idea.

While you mention that 4 CP is almost as effective as a 5 CP rip I think you're conveying here that people should use the Mangle, shred to 5 CP then rip as their standard option when they should not.

The optimal cat form DPS cycle for a bleed vulnerable mob that won't die within 12 seconds is as follows:

Mangle
Shred to 4 CP, if you crit on 3 CP then you will get bonus damage on 5 CP for free.
RIP

Furor

Rinse repeat.

The important things to remember for this cycle is that furor will pay for a mangle immediately after your RIP finisher without having to wait for energy and will allow you to keep your 4 CP RIP cycle as close to 12 seconds as possible, wasting no energy to crits at 4 CP and taking 5 CP RIPs as a bonus.

There are also a few other things to look for here like 2 piece T4 proc which if it procs near or after your RIP means you don't need to furor as you will gain the energy to mangle at the same rate and you can furor during your cycle or after your mangle to get the energy you need for 4 CP within 12 seconds.

This method also allows you to control your energy "bleed", energy regen that exceeds your 100 energy limit, very well as the more you crit the less you need to shift and the easier it becomes to maintain a 12 second rip cycle. With tools like SCT or other debuff monitors it becomes quite easy to predict excess energy which can be converted to shreds as you meet 80 energy or will achived 100 energy within a second or so.

It is often wise to execute a shred when you're sitting at 80 energy and about to tick to 100 as OoC can cause energy bleed over 100 and if you're wearing 2 piece T4 it can proc at any time. It is better to be sitting at 58 energy than get to 100 and proc 20 energy that immediately bleeds.

Overall this is a good post and I like it.

Your cycle screams all species of odd to me. You don't need to complicate things that much and your comments about 2t4 procs near the Rip meaning you don't need to powershift just eventuates in the standard "(mangle on first contact only) shred to 4/5, wait for energy, rip, mangle, repeat" cycle. Timing powershifts needs to be completely dynamic dependant on how many OoC procs, 2t4 procs and special crits you're getting. Crits at 4cp don't waste energy, they waste cp, which is perfectly acceptable if you're still mid-cycle and in danger of energy spillover.

edit: The main benefit I can see of waiting for ~80 energy before Rip/Mangle is to make sure you have enough time to Shred up enough cp to minimize Rip downtime as much as possible IF none of your specials are critting and OoC/2t4 aren't proccing.

After the powershift/Mangle you're now sitting at 0 energy at worst, or a partial tick amount of energy at best (due to the changes in energy tick mechanics). Whereas a Rip/Mangle at ~80 energy means you'll have ~30 energy leftover (80 - 30(Rip) - 40(Mangle) + 20(tick)) from the inevitable tick that would have happened in that time.

Now, if that Mangle doesn't crit, and neither do your next 3 Shreds, you need to wait 14 seconds before you can build up 4 cp in the former case (i.e. lost Rip uptime) and only 10 seconds in the latter (no loss in Rip uptime).

Another problem with powershifting after Rip is that you need to make sure you are as close to 30 energy as possible before Ripping or you'll waste energy powershifting. Not to mention that it's unwieldy to time perfectly due to client/server travel time until 2.3 /cancelform changes are in place.

Thank you for writing this thread dukes, I had started reading the first 30ish pages of the Feral Druid Dps and the Bear Form Itemization thread and this is a much clearer summation of the things important to Feral Druids.

In the 'talents to add' section you don't mention Intensity, now I am still leveling my Druid, but I was going to take Intensity for the reasons described here.
Similar to the Cat form dps cycle, could you add a Bear form threat cycle? From what I understand from my guildies, it's:

-In a low rage situation: Mangle, 3x Lacerate, repeat
-In a high rage situation: Queue a Maul whenever possible, then interrupt this Maul with Mangle or Lacerate depending on cooldown, then requeue Maul.

The reality of the DPS rotation is that complex when you take all factors into account. You "loose energy" from lost CP because it's not being included in building to the next round of finisher and the only time you should ever shred at 4 CP is when you're about to bleed energy. Alternatively you can quite easily call it loosing CP but I prefer to think of it as lost energy, that's just me.

You only ever hold your energy in the rotation if you have 4 CP, you are not about to bleed energy and Rip is still on your target other wise a few things happen:

Rip is not ticking on the target, you are loosing DPS and you're not building combo points to your next Rip. You use this method to make sure that Rip sticks to the target 24x7 and that your mangle debuff follows your Rip at all times or as above you're loosing DPS to not having Rip up and you're lossing DPS to not having mangle increase your Rip damage.

It's worth pointing out you don't execute a furor if you have 50 or more energy when you rip as you will gain the 20 energy on your next tick, execute mangle when it would be executed any way from furor, then furor for energy.

The options at 31 - 49 energy with 4 CP are:

1) To either wait two energy ticks to be able to mangle with your rip and loose 4 seconds of Rip on the target - Worst.

2) Execute Rip now and wait for the energy to fill - Bad.

3) Execute Rip, Furor and mangle immediately as Rip takes 2 seconds for it's first tick- Best. You can still catch up your energy with another furor if you need to in that cycle if you don't crit, 2 piece T4 or OoC proc.

"Cached" energy is a great thing and it's nice when you crit a lot and have OoC proc as you can just Rip then mangle, furor and shred and keep going but it doesn't always happen like that and your mana bar / pots / demonic runes etc with furor are what you use when you're not stacked up with it.

My apologies if these things have already been covered but the rating conversion page suggests the following:

Haste Rating: 10.5 rating grants 1% haste

Spell Haste Rating: 21 rating grants 1% spell haste

I thought that they were both changed to grant 1% haste from 15.7 rating or so, if this is indeed the case perhaps a notification should be written next to the link explaining this.


Secondly the Lower City head enchant's exact values are 17 strength / 16 intellect.

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Fantastic post. Great summary, and very useful. A few suggestions below.

I think it would be valuable to indicate which pieces of t4 are the most valuable to keep for the 2pc t4 bonus, since it is one of the most common questions people will have. Apparently it's helm and shoulders preferrably, then I'm not sure.

Re: Raven Goddess I know it's obvious but maybe add something about the fact that you have to be in a full melee group for it to be valuable. Since we don't get WF procs, I often see that the melee group in a 25-man raid is 2x dps warriors + 2x rogues + enh shaman. And the druids are in another group with a couple other melee characters, maybe tanks. In which case the benefit of the Raven Goddess goes way down. And maybe add something about idols for bears, with Raven Goddess being situational, and Brutality and Wild being quite good with a preference for brutality especially in infinite rage fights. In particular remind everybody that Ursoc is crap.

Re: trinkets, I thought the Darkmoon: Crusade was also quite comparable to some of the trinkets you quote (i.e. somewhere around 115-120 AEP). Maybe also add something about the 2 main variants of trinkets: user-triggered, and RNG-triggered - and how druids seem to have split opinions on this issue, with RNG-triggered trinkets often looking better on paper, but some druids preferring to have the control of when the on use effect is triggered as to not lose any on use uptime. Also in the summary maybe just say to check the list above, because some high-ish trinkets are not that good, e.g. Living Root.

In the summary, for feral weapon skill I would emphasise the sweet spot at > 19.5 rating (where you get exactly +5 weapon skill) which gives the best value for money (3% hit and some -dodge).

Maybe rephrasing the WF part in the summary to make it clearer, I would start with "WF doesn't proc in cat form, but wouldn't be overpowered..."

Finally maybe a bit of a newbish reminder, but re: enchants it might be worth reminding people that weapon "on hit" enchants don't work in forms, and that armor enchants/kits are not multiplied by bear form.

Mauls are "On Next Hit". Mangle and Lacerate are instant and don't ever come in the way of Maul (or vice versa).

Highest single target threat cycle is

Mangle, Lacerate (x3). Use excess rage to queue Mauls every single time.

Feral Faerie Fire might seem nice, but costs you a global cooldown. Similarly, Demo Roar seems nice but costs you a global cooldown and a Warrior's Shout will override it (Druid: -240 AP untalented, -336 talented; Warrior: -300 AP untalented, -450 talented). You might need these two in normal 5man runs, but it's unlikely you'll be using them on a raid Boss fight.

A question about trinkets. You do not list [Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium]. I always believed this to be one of the better Cat Form DPS trinkets available. Am I mistaken, or did you overlook this particular item?

I've been updating stuff in between doing work. Most of the points brought up should be sorted now. I won't list all the changes here (check the changelog in the last post for details).