That's reasonable. I have it proccing closer to 50% due to haste effects on the raid, but I don't have specific data that shows this. I do think that it's entirely dependent on what a bear wants, and from the reports of ease of tanking it doesn't sound like an extra 2k armor is needed anywhere for survivability due to the short lengths of fights and the nerfing of physical damage. Still, having another trinket that is close to being on par with badge is going to be valuable as progression occurs in WotLK and it's another option.

I'm guessing it's going to be incredible for AoE tanking though.

Do you have numbers on which idol wins for Mangle spam? Rawr 2 is still doing Shreds, but even so it has [Idol of Feral Shadows] ahead of [Everbloom Idol]. The next two idols are [Idol of the White Stag] and then [Idol of Terror]. I'm sure Mangle spam will bring the Mangle Idols closer to the Rip one, but does it allow them to surpass it?

Rawr 2 for cats is not up and going yet though. For instance I can drop talents in Primal Precision and I remain at the same DPS points.

Right, I assume it's some issue like that that is undervaluing the Shred idol and expect that it's undervaluing the Mangle idols too, but I'm not sure how to figure out by how much. [Idol of Terror]'s proc mechanics are well known, but I can't find much info on [Idol of the White Stag]. Probably because no one took it seriously as a cat idol before this patch.

It looks like I had another circular dependency creep into my spreadsheet for [Idol of Terror], but I can get what it's value would be when no idol is equipped.

In max dps gear the value of idols for Mangle spam by my estimates show

1) [Idol of Terror] (~38 dps)
2) [Idol of the White Stag] (~34 dps)
3) [Idol of Feral Shadows] (~30 dps)
4) [Idol of the Raven Goddess] (~13 dps)

Note this is only for personal dps at 70 and of course depends on other gear. Raven Goddess will be best for raid dps by far, but it's hard to quantify it. Assuming other classes get the same or better DPS from crit rating, it would only take 3 melee in raid to make it best.

To clarify, it would only take 3 melee or hunters to make it better. And you can now likely count all tanks as at least half a melee for those calculations.

Im suprised there havent been more discussions about a kitty dps rotation, with the changes to Tigers Fury and the new rake and fb numbers. say we're running with 4p t6 sunwell level do you think now its worth keeping 2pt4? And what sort of rotations should we be looking to use including timing of TF?

I've been giving cat mangle-spam some thought. The point must be to keep rip going, while also using FB reguarly. So we need 5/5 FA, imp Mangle 3/3 and RnT 5/5.

It seems to me, that the only way you can get all these points is in a cat focused talent build (while still at lvl 70 anyway). In a bear focused hybrid build which I'm using, it must still be a lot more effective using the old shred rotation.

Thoughts?

The majority of that discussion has been happening in the http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26297-d...ew_discussion/ thread.

Mostly it seems to be a set of rules rather than a rotation as such.

I'd say that you dont need FA for this.

Build i am considering for the upcoming weeks of Sunwell Farming: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The point in Brutal Impact is there purely for M'uru, but i may skip it if the adds wont be as big problem.

If you want OOC, then i think purely cat form build is the only possibility.

The PvP armor situation has already been discussed. It was probably left alone in order to preserve PvP balance (at least, as much as possible with the new talents and game mechanics). While S4, and even S3, are probably better for PvE tanking than T6 now it doesn't really matter. Content has been nerfed so hard that you can get by in your "subpar" tier gear just fine.

For 70 I decided to spend most of my talent points in the feral combat tree. At 71 I’ll switch over to Omen of Clarity.

This build is intended to maximize survivability for tanking, with Primal Tenacity thrown in to increase survivability in PvP.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Notables:

I skip Feral Instinct; Primal Precision; Predatory Instincts; and Rend and Tear.

I could see an argument for scrimping a point here and there for either Rend & Tear or Feral Instinct. (I’m often in the company of a prot pally, so am rarely doing much in the way of AoE tanking.)

One option for scrimping points would be 1 fewer point in Infected wounds; 1 fewer points in furor; 1 fewer points in Survival of the Fittest since my gear easily gives me sufficient resilience/defense.

What are others thinking? Suggestions welcome.

For PvP are folks focusing on damage or survival?


Also, what are folks using for stat weights in Rawr and Lootrank.com?

I suspect the AC and agi nerfs have played havoc with my bear tanking set and gems.

Does mangle still increase shred damage? It doesn't mention it in the tooltip any more, but I tested on the dummies and it seems to buff shred, I just want a confirmation. If that's the case, should we still use mangle if there is a warrior with Trauma in the raid?

My DPS gear is 2xT4, badge, PvP, S3 staff. I have 2xT6, but it is gemmed for tanking so I am not using it. Our guild raided BT yesterday and while some people had their DPS increased up to 1000dps compared to pre-patch, my DPS was only about 200-300dps higher than I used to have. So, I ended up pretty low on the charts (7-8 vs 2-4 pre-patch).

I guess part of this was my confusion about using mangle in my rotation. Sometimes I would use it and it would not show up as a debuff. I am not sure if that's because trauma was up and mangle debuff did was not applied or because my new UI wasn't displaying debuffs properly. Basically, I would try to keep mangle, rake, and rip up and shred. I'm specced Shredding Attacks, RnT, OoC, no imp. Mangle.

In short: Does Mangle still buff shred? If it does, when I Mangle a mob with Trauma, is Mangle debuff applied or is it discarded because they do not stack? If if mangle does apply on top of trauma (even though they do not stack), should I keep it up anyway?

For lack of a better term, Mangle and Trauma are both Bleed Enhancers. Shred takes advantage of a Bleed Enhancer, so having either Mangle or Trauma up will work just fine for you.

So last night's Sunwell had me at about 2200 dps sustained with the aforementioned rotation, which is vastly inferior to the rest of the raid. What gives? Also, it seems clear to me that if you have 35-40 energy, a bite will always be more dps than a rip. I was getting 7kish consistent crits, with 9-10k peaks against low-armor bosses, which doesn't take a mathmatician to determine is more than a full-duration rip, while also benefitting from armor penetration, et al.

I'm not new to feral dps, and I had several Brutallus parses over 2100 (with manglebot, obviously), but it seems to me that these buffs are minimal, at best. Anyone have a different experience?

Very simply: Savage Roar.

I don't think I had a 5pt bite below 6700 last night, even on unsundered mobs, and that's with 3/5 Feral Aggression only. Also, to address the SR issue, I definitely think that might be a major part that was lacking, for sure, but it still felt like my dps was particularly low.

You need to remember that SotF not only reduces chance to be crit, but increases stats. +2% to stats per talent point, what else could be better since you are going for survivability? Primal Precision is +10 Expertise, again rated very high for TPS. RnT is huge for TPS as well, with it and any sort of bleed Maul hits like a truck. Overall it looks like you traded some of the best threat items for PvP talents. I'd also reconsider Shredding Attacks and KotJ.

I was asking some of these same questions in the WotLK thread as well. Mobs just die to fast for such a long cycle. I'd appreciate any input on my post and possible spec/cycle I posted here:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26297-d...24/#post939940

Hello here, i want some confirmations about the difference in dps between mangle/rake/shrek/rip cycle and mangle spam/rake/fb one. All that i read in this topic don't answer very clearly which dps rotation is the best with a dps template (so with R&D). Mangle spamming, with low energy cost mangles thanks to improved mangle and 2p6 can be better than using shred ?

Thanks for your answers

I think there's no "mangle/rake/fb" cycle. The mangle spam cycle is the same as shred cycle regarding finishers, but due to higher number of combo points you are able to add FB finisher from time to time while Rip keeps ticking. You can do this even in Shred cycle but probably less often.

If you are using the rip glyph, Rip will still be more damage than bite, even with maxed out RnT (assuming you use the saved energy on a partial shred).