2 Points:

Knockback ... It is very frustrating, especially with casters. I can see it being "banned" from instances in much the same way fear was. The other tanks i've run with find it just as annoying. Only the water elementals ranged frost nova spam comes close in terms of making the tanks job harder.

DPS ... Would it be possible to code Nightcrowlers optimal cycle rules from his simulation into an Addon - or does it require information not available to LUA? A simple prompt box with "Mangle", "Rip", "Bite" etc would take a lot of the strain out of the cycle even if it would turn Cat dps into a Guitar Hero like mini-game.

Do you have an optimum time to use Berserk? I would think it would be right after using TF, or if you knew TF wouldnt come available during the berserk period.

And when you say doing it by hand, is that on your personal simulator, or the one posted? Trying again, I was able to maintain 4.8k sustained over 5 minutes, with that number achieved within the first 20 secs or so. Again this is without berserk. Part of this my be do to keybinds. Its going to be a right pain to try and do this on movement intensive fights, or where we have to pay close attention to anything going on.

This is incredibly effective for solo grinding too.

My (then 63) bear was sitting in telhamat when the patch hit. Recalling the swipe change, and fond memories of killing 10-12 mobs at once when I leveled my main frost mage, I gleefully rounded up a few buzzards and swiped away. Rage Heaven! Mauled every hit. Ground 1/3 of a level in less than half an hour killing packs of 6-8. While I hit the trainer for 64, I stopped by the auction house to grab a glyph of maul. After loading it up, I went back to my friends the buzzards and starting clearing them even faster (also equipped braxxis for some extra mitigation). Now I didn't even need a potion or a heal to take down as many as I could round up without starting to reset some. I think my biggest pack was around 14. The second time I was grinding, there was some poor nub mage killing buzzards one at a time, and then watching me. I laughed when I realized he was frost.

I'm thinking that it's going to become much easier to find tanks from now on.

EDIT misread.

I usually try to use Berserk when I have a large amount of energy to burn through.

So yesterday I got to DPS on something that actually lived long enough for me to try things out (Felmyst).

I found that pretty often I had rip, mangle, and rake all going, had 5 combo points, and 60-80 energy, mostly due to having to run out if someone got encapsulated, having an OOC proc or getting 2t4 procs.

Has anybody done the math on what's worth doing if you have more than 40 energy and more than 2s left on rip? My guess is that it would be best to shred even if you're already at 5 CPs but that probably depends on how long is left on rip. Dumping all your energy and combo points for a FB (big as they can crit now) isn't worth it.

Also, is the best strategy for Tiger's Fury to hit it whenever it's not on CD and you have less than say 15 energy, or to save it for after a FB so that you can get combo points quickly to put rip back up ASAP?

At 40 seconds I would wait to rip, chances are you will be under 100 energy by the time rip expires.

I have pulled my rotation from reading about the rotation at level 80. With the exception of savage roar the rotation is the same, with mangle as a filler, omen, 2T4 there is energy for a bite between nearly all rips. From what I understand we do NOT want to dump energy into ferocious bite, I agree; we want to use as little energy as possible to bite. To prevent excess energy I only use Tiger's Fury after a FB up until I have one combo point up and rip active and energy <=40, otherwise I will wait until after FB is used then pop TF.

The numbers quoted below are a guide line for shred as a filler, I assume mangle would have slightly lower energy requirements as it costs roughly 75% the energy, slightly higher if you do not have improved bite as you don't want to lose any rip time. Because bite scales well with gear, and there's many talent points it would be rough to calculate a definitive answer of when its best to use bite. The kitty dps calculator could help give a guide of when to use it by writing a rotation.

For rough numbers on variance, omen procs - 6% 10 second internal cd?, 2T4 - 4% on hit no internal cd?, natural regen 10 energy per second, 50ish percent chance your attacks will give two combo points, windfury and mongoose procs, Tiger's fury availability... and of course FB damage compared to rip. The only sure test is getting a buffed group together and using the target dummies in major towns.

My apologies if the posting of specs is poor practice, the three below either have full FB talents or none. I use the three specs below to test dps. I highly advise the first spec as it has all the talents needed to tank and all the kitty talents except for FB so you can work on your rotation for WotLK.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - Hybrid, nurturing instinct (heals in cat) can switch to feral instinct (swipe damage). Has all kitty talents except improved FB.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - Kitty: (mangle rotation) a loss of 6% dodge, 12% more damage taken, and 10% armor in bear, last stand for imp. LotP, 1/2 nurturing instincts, 30% bite crit chance, and 15% bite damage done.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - Kitty: (shred rotation) If you don't have 2T6 this will be better. I think mangle is better with 2T6.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26297-d...19/#post932275

Expertise > Hit > Agi=Str > Haste, as a general rule of thumb, iirc.

today i was tanking sethekk heroic (damn mount) for the first time after the patch. Two days ago i did sethekk with our warrior tank while i was dpsing. Even though both runs went pretty smoothly (everthing else would be very sad),
I encountered a couple of issues while I was tanking(of course we didnt cc at all).

Prophets and Talon Lords were a huge problem because of the known issue with Swipe. First the talon lords stun you before you use at least 3xswipe. After that the prophets fear which can not be countered every time given the current speed you rush through those heroics at the moment. Mobs are scattered now and gaining aggro was a huge pain. Basically we had about 3 deaths (single persons no wipes of course) because of that.
I know this is a situational problem but this is basically the problem people have been talking about 1 or 2 pages back in theory. A warrior can get fast aggro with TC + shockwave (enough to get through the stun) and then break every fear keeping all mobs on him.
Although it wasnt a huge problem which could have caused a "really" slow run, I was still somewhat disappointed in me, seeing our warrior tanking and then comparing it to me :/.

Seeing how this affected our group on the somewhat "easy" sethekk run, this could become a major issue on more difficult mob groups in wotlk.

Oh and another thing. Did they change fear mechanis somehow? Because the main issue on that sethekk run was that after a fear the mobs would scatter and go for other targets (probably second on threat). I don't think that was the case pre3.0? Sorry if I am completly wrong on this but other people on our run noticed it as well.

I have an Idea for a mod. I would just like to put this out there for you guys to think about
I’m pretty sure this will work
I’m just going to call it green light.
Using just this post by nightcrowler

Use Ferocious Bite if Rip timer > 10 seconds
Use Ferocious Bite if you have less than: 68 energy and Rip debuff counter: 8
Use Ferocious Bite if you have less than: 40 energy and Rip debuff counter: 6
If RIP left time is <4 seconds: wait for RIP to expire (do RIP if you are going for 100 energy)
How the mod would work would just like a class debuff timer but as your attack bars all in 1
I will trying to make it clear on what I’m talking about by use nightcrowlers post from above

So here we go


Use Ferocious Bite if Rip timer > 10 seconds
As this rule states above. The mod would do this
The mod attack bar would Show all attack red but Ferocious Bite as green (pretty much giving you the best option of attack)
by what nightcrowlers had posted

Use Ferocious Bite if you have less than: 68 energy and Rip debuff counter: 8
As this rule states above. The mod would do this
The mod attack bar would Show all attack red but Ferocious Bite as green (pretty much giving you the best option of attack)
by what nightcrowlers had posted

Use Ferocious Bite if you have less than: 40 energy and Rip debuff counter: 6
As this rule states above. The mod would do this
The mod attack bar would Show all attack red but Ferocious Bite as green (pretty much giving you the best option of attack)
by what nightcrowlers had posted

If RIP left time is <4 seconds: wait for RIP to expire (do RIP if you are going for 100 energy)
As this rule states above. The mod would do this
The mod attack bar would Show all attack red as well but rip as orange then turn green when energy at 100
(pretty much giving you the best option of attack) by what nightcrowlers had posted

So what this would do is more or less it takes the need to watch a class timer all the time or debuff mod to get you rotation up because they are more or less calculated on the fly now so if the attack is green use it red dont and orange best option for next attack then there enough energy

Free you up a bit and it would not be a golden rule of attack but give you more freedom
And give more time to see other things that are going on in a boss fight like keeping yourself alive

Ive tanked heroic sethek post-patch. From the sounds of it, not to be harsh, I think you were trying to overuse the new swipe. Remember our existing attacks havent gone, infact they hit harder. What I did was instruct the group to kill the prophets first, and queued up a glyphed maul and mangle to land on him at the same time, i then did the same with the talon which meant that every mob in the pack had a maul on it because of the glyph. Started swiping after that, and being feared / stunned was no issue at all because they were all definitely on me anyway.

--

Edit: Just saw a post on the beta forums that they're adding 10% armor to all the lvl 83 raid bosses in northrend. Their reasoning behind this is what they believe to be a balance issue. According to their internal testing, rogues were too far infront of caster dps classes, and have reduced the miss chance penalty on titans grip to soften the blow for fury warriors. No compensation has so far been provided for feral drudis, but my gut feeling (since a decent proportion of our dps is bleeds) is that we'll be fine. My real worry is how it will affect bear tps/dps, perhaps armor penetration on leather tanking slots just became more valuable?

I've read through the majority of this thread, and run my prospective gear through Rawr, but with the threat aspect of Bears not quite working at the moment - I had a question about current badge gear options. Are the rogue chest/legs superior to the feral chest/legs, for tanking? It's basically a int + haste for hit trade, if I'm seeing it right. Rawr values the 'feral' items a little higher, but without taking threat into consideration. I suppose that holds true for most any of the current badge gear - trading the intellect 'feral' gear for the rogue 'hit' gear, with armor being normalized.

Am I missing a fundemental mechanic that makes the 'wall of stats' far superior to simple agil/stam/ap/hit items? I understand that with BoK, the Str might be more AP than the rogue equivalents, but the +hit should cancel that out until capped. I'm primarily a mage, who is spamming heroics on druid (as resto), to build up a feral set to amuse myself with. Thanks for any insight.