Is it the same? That implies that it used to be the full damage reduction for only one point, which would have just been silly. If that's true, then this change is just a fix of a dumb mistake on Blizz's part, not a nerf. Either way, it appears to be 12% for 3 points, still.

I haven't run the numbers for lvl80 yet but at lvl70 rip was by FAR the best ability in terms of damage per energy - so why would you ever leave it out ?

Rake being buffed is very welcome, AFAIK all of Rake is considered bleed (at least the initial part also ignores armor) so the damage with mangle up is pretty much:

(1351 + 0.19*AP)*1.1*1.2*1.3 = 2318.3 + 0.326*AP

Shred, as a comparison is:

(742.5 + 0.161*AP)*1.1*1.3*1.2 = 1168.0 + 0.253*AP

This is before crits though (which will do little for Rake but wonders for shred) but even with 50% Crit it looks like this:

2513.9 + 0.353*AP for Rake

1868.8 + 0.405*AP for Shred

For AP < ~12000 this already means more damage for Rake than Shred and this is not even considering that Rake is 35 Energy vs 42 Energy Shreds (assuming Ferocity).

So i guess we'll have to find a way to implement Rake in our rotation now.

Edit: Totally forgot R&T, fixed now.

Edit2: Also keep in mind that shred is modified by armor so rake will probably surpass it by a fairly big margin under realistic conditions.

Yes in the last beta patch 1 point in it got you the same mitigation as 3 points, it was just the bonus AP that scaled.

I think this change is just that it now scales mitigation too and that it is still a 3 pointer. MMO champ lists it as 1/2 on their front page but the updated talent calc is 3 points.

That was just an incorrect tooltip, 1 point only got you 1% per party member. You needed 3/3 for 3% per party member.

Thanks for clearing that up, Vaccine and seminarca. Whether it was a bug before or not, the updated tooltip behavior seems more reasonable anyway.

@Malazaar:
That math is very helpful, thanks. I'd like to add though that based on your numbers with 50% crit, your mob only needs to have ~13% armor reduction before rip scaling will once again overtake shred's in terms of damage per GCD (relevant only during omen of clarity procs I guess -_-). In terms of DPE, rake gets just over 1% of your AP per energy, and shred gets .96% of your AP per energy, again at your 50% crit numbers. So clearly rake is a winner.

I don't really understand what you mean when you say "i guess we'll have to find a way to implement Rake in our rotation now." It seems as simple to me as "use rake if we need to use a cp generator and rake is not ticking." Am I missing something?

You want to make sure rake gets the full benefit of mangle. But i guess with all the recent changes (and the buff to mangle) we will be back to perma-mangling anyway.

Also here's a complete table of Damage per Energy numbers relative to AP.

This is with 15% Damagereduction through target armor and 40% Critrate.

AP	Claw	Rake	Mangle	Mangle Imp	Shred	Shred RnT	Rip	Rip +4s	Bite	Bite RnT/Agg	Pounce	Ravage
5000	32.47	118.46	60.54	67.27	71.52	85.83	224.22	298.97	131.26	212.15	85.80	77.44
7000	38.40	137.56	72.40	80.44	85.29	102.35	252.82	337.10	158.94	256.88	96.10	90.13
9000	44.33	156.67	84.26	93.62	99.06	118.87	281.42	375.23	186.62	301.61	106.39	102.81
11000	50.26	175.77	96.12	106.80	112.82	135.39	310.02	413.37	214.29	346.34	116.69	115.50
13000	56.19	194.87	107.98	119.98	126.59	151.91	338.62	451.50	241.97	391.07	126.98	128.18

(RnT = Rend and Tear, Agg = Feral Aggression)

Rake is far superior to any other CP-building move, the gap between Mangle and Shred is a lot smaller now (especially with imp mangle) and Rip needs the Glyph to surpass a fully talented Bite.

Edit: Running preliminary numbers i would propose this 'cycle':

- Keep up SR continiously (preferably with 4+ CP)
- Rake every 9 seconds (make sure you have the energy in store)
- Mangle every 18 seconds (if you have the glyph and no other mangle/trauma source)
- Rip every 16 seconds (assuming the glyph)
- Shred in between whenever possible

According to my napkin math this is very close but doable (in terms of CPs) with 40% crit. No room for FB though.

Edit2: Those numbers for the finishers above are all for 5 CPs.

It's consistent with how other classes' skills work - I've been betaing my hunter as SV, and a Lock and Load proc while Explosive Shot is on cooldown has exactly the same behaviour as you've described there. Not going to comment on how easy/hard it would be to change because that'd be entirely dependant on how Blizzard's back-end code is set up.

What energy did you assume for a Bite? I assume 35? Can you add the dmg/energy ratio for the "bonus" energy->dmg conversion of Bite? Thanks.

Numbers for other CP versions of FB would be good. The cycle above seems to me like there'd be some wasted combo points every second cycle (since SR lasts 2 full rip cycles). It may be worth it to throw in some lesser combo point FBs if they turn out better than shreds.

Don't forget the value of Pounce's stun, and the complete inability of the attack to not land if you're hit capped. Since I open with Pounce while leveling right now (I just hit 77 in Zul'Drak), I have 0 downtime, even to heal myself, since I take less damage than iLotP heals me for. It's also a lot of fun to be able to stunlock mobs from 100% to dead. Pounce leading into Maim for more shreds is much more fun than spamming mangle, too.

ArP rating is already a the worst stat for us and adding more bleed damage with the buff to Rake will make it even worse. With just ArP from sunder/FF, boss damage reduction is closer to 20% for low armor bosses and 27% for high.

Crit ratings will also be higher raid buffed - around 45% in blues and a few over 50% in epics.

Glyph of Maul 'works' now, in that its hitting 2 targets. Its too bad Blizzard never figured out/implemented a fix to allow cleave/frontal multitarget attacks to not break cc because the dmg output with mutlti target maul, berserk and swipe is quite amazingly fun right now....

On the PTR, rake's initial hit doesn't seem to be affected by mangle. Anyone else noticing this? DOT portion definitely is.

I paste here the message of ghostcrawler in the us beta forum, you can see the topic here: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> On the Protector of the Pack nerf

Be prepared for bear nerfs in the next builds

I've been doing some testing with Rake in the new build, and all I can say is: wow. Unbuffed, at lvl 77, in full T6, stanchion, and immortal beast, the tooltip shows 223 initial bleed dmg + 1934 over 9 second. It actually deals more, though*. I hit for 255 (crit for 578), with 3 ticks of 767 afterward, for a total of 2556 bleed damage without Mangle. With mangle up, the dot ticks for 996, but the initial damage doesn't increase, for a total of 3243 bleed damage with mangle. That's guaranteed damage** against every target regardless of armor level. Compared to Mangle for pure damage, a non-mangled Rake deals a little less than a crit Mangle on a faerie fire'd lvl 76 mob (I was testing on the ghosts near the Argent Stand in Zul'Drak), if it lives for 9 seconds after you apply Rake.

It's a little harder for me to test the relative damage for Shred, because I have the Shred glyph, giving 20% more dmg to stunned/incapacitated targets. Since that's the only way I can get a shred off on mobs while soloing, it skews the results. I'll see if I can go test this on the target dummies. For reference, though, against a bleeding, stunned, mangled, FFF'd mob, I crit shred for around 5.1k.


The new buff to Mangle is also very nice. I was barely breaking 2000 on Mangle crits against these ghosts this morning, and now I'm regularly breaking 2500 on crits.

* Why does my rake deal more damage than the tooltip suggests?

** One drawback I've found with rake is that the initial damage is so low that mobs can outright block the entire attack. As you all may have noticed with Lacerate, a fully blocked attack also prevents the bleed from applying. This is rather annoying, because these mobs that can block my rakes aren't wielding shields...

Re: Swipe "chaining"

I just tested it in the 'undead pit' in the catacombs beneath Utgarde Keep (@70 on beta and with premade 80), where they constantly spawn and there are lots of undead mobs wandering in close quarters. Swipe did in fact chain, aggro'ing mobs that were not already on me and beyond the initial swipe range. Note, if you are trying to replicate, they have a very short 'leash'.

However, it was also very annoying because mobs would also be "behind" me and not in the swipe arc. So while the new swipe is comparable than consecrate for threat, the frontal arc limitation is rather annoying.

Note: The threat was just insane. The Zthreat meter had me at around 15,000 tps at one point. Note, this is all anecdotal, I'm not trying to math it out and figure out threat values.

Looking at the current patch note a full rake timer is our best move. The new dps cycle will be:

4SR/5RIP or FB/5RIP or FB

to build combo points:

build 4 cp
wait about 80 energy:
use SR
build 5 CP
RIP
build 5 CP
use FB if you have less than xx energy or use RIP.


XX energy is a function of your crit rating, ap, talents and the "residual" number of rip ticks.
To build CP the best choce is:
start with mangle and keep it always up
rake and keep it always up
shred in between.

With good timing and mangle glyph you will do 2 rake (9 sec) each 1 mangle (18 sec).

A simulation soon

I'd be interested to see how rake, mangle, shred, rip and FB scale with crit rate and armor reduction. In particular how they'll look with lvl 80 blue stats vs lvl 80 Naxx-25 stats. My suspicion is that even with low armor penetration on current gear mangle, shred and FB are going to do more damage than the above 40% crit rate/15% arpen would indicate, and would become significantly more competitive. Especially given that rakes and rips cannot crit.

Any suggestions on actual values of lvl 80s starting Naxx vs lvl 80s through most of Naxx? I'd take anecdotal evidence at this point. The harder part for me is figuring out the raid debuffs that could be going on. Also, how valuable is something like executioner here?

About the dps circle you mean 4SR and then "use FB if you have less than xx energy or use RIP" or they are 3 different circle that you think are very close and you have not simulate yet?

It seems to me that there is quite significant difference in FB and Rip scaling.

Rip: AP*0.3 + 3204
FB: AP*0.35 + 1570

Rip is multiplied by 30% (mangle), FB is multiplied by basically 100% (with R&T, your crit chance is 100%). This is quite big disparity. At higher gear levels, with Rake buffed, i dont see Rip being used at all.

@Malazaar Your mangle-values are without 2t6 right? So with 2t6 mangle and shred are on par, meaning mangle is the better one because we generate combo-points faster. Anyway this buff is great for arena.

@nightcrowler Can you simulate a 5SR n x 5FB cycle with only rake and mangle as cb-generators and with 2t6 and fully talented FB? I think that will be the easiest cycle to maintain on bossfights when the dmg lost is not so great to a shred/RIP cycle.

FB will probably become the desired finisher to use based on current modifiers. However, the AP requirement for FB to be better than rip will be different based on boss mitigation.