Now that's more like it. That feels like a reasonable dps on a boss dummy.

Well... so, in sake of setting some goal for my skills, what's the expected DPS I should aim for on the heroic boss dummy, unbuffed, in course of - let's say - 200 seconds long fight (I assume one Berserk during that)? I'm hit/exp capped, roughly 6500 AP, 45% crit.

I'm asking, since in said gear (of course raid buffed) I can do around 4,3k on Patchwerk, but I did only few hundred dps less in full blue gear. That's why I think my skills didn't follow the gear upgrades and I should work on my "conditional reactions" a bit. Poor heroic dummy ;-)

And while I realize it's maybe not the best place for asking - considering the buffs mechanics changes in WotLK, what's the best group composition for a cat nowadays?

With your stats you should be able to do ~3k sustained dps on the heroic dummy. There are two or three WWS logs by compareable geared ferals on the last few pages and they all do around 3k.

On the discussion of the "missing" 7 mangles above:

Make sure you have the "nb" crit box checked in the "colums" tab (configuring visible columns) when viewing the WWS. It will then properly display the number of crits, and if you check the other crit choice boxes, you get % crit, avg crit and max crit.

Edit: typos

From the 3.0.8 latest patch notes:

Rake: The initial damage from this ability is now properly considered bleed damage, and will be increased by Mangle and Trauma.

If I'm understanding this right, it looks like folks will need to start off with a mangle first come patch time. I'm very used to rake, mangle, SR, so this will take some time to unlearn.

The initial damage of Rake is so low that it's probably still more useful to have Rake tick 1 second earlier than to have that initial hit mangle-buffed.

Pounce requires stealth, which means it'll take you longer to get into the action. On top of that, it really doesn't do a lot on boss fights anyway.

Holyhawk: While your dps seems ok, and reasonable, I am still curious how you manage to have 5 Ferocious Bite in your cycle. My dps on a boss dummy is around 2800, which seems ok, since I have slighlty worse gear than you, and according to Rawr it should be around 3000 at its max, while yours is around 3275 by Rawr.

But my 2800 is without any FB at all. I'm curious at testing other cycles. And while I have higher numbers on Rip, your numbers is always higher on everything else. Are you using 4 cp for your Rip sometimes? Please explain further.

Anyone else that can get high dps numbers on a dummy target and perhaps make a quick video? I have a very fast FTP server for that matter.

No I use only 5CP finisher, but if savage roar runs out (cause I sucked at my rota ) and I have only 2 cp and low energy, I use 2cp for savage roar, still something i need to work on.

I think my timing with FB is still bad.

I don't really see how you can have 5 FB in your cycle. I have a hard job keeping up Rip/SR as it is, without any FB. Do you have any chance to record a demo video or something?

There used to be a link floating around here that linked to a simple flash "game" that allowed you to practice your cat rotation. I have it saved at home and will post the link in here tonight when I get home. It was in the old megathread if someone knows how to find that and post the link. I think that would be helpful for people who may not want to spend lots of time at the training dummies, but can afford some time online.
feraldps This is the link I was talking about. I'm not sure how updated it is, but it seems a fitting time to add it to the thread with people trying to maximize their rotations.

Sorry about the delay, but some of you may like to know that I've updated CatFight, which includes an option to hide/show the reports. It should also be able to track whichever buffs/debuffs you'd like to track (i.e. trinket uptimes, HoTs, etc.).

CatFight - Addons - Curse

It's been a while since I did any TC and didn't just go with my gut on things, so bear with me.

In regards to the opening combo's debate, it really does come down to probability on fight length, there is effectively a 33% chance that you will get a extra tic on Rake assuming you are trying for 100% rake uptime. I'll preface by saying I believe this to be an incorrect tactic depending on when exactly your last Rake ends, it's always difficult to tell exactly how quickly the boss will die, on one of my guild's poorly ranked Patchwerks, average DPS was ~65k and he died at just under 200 seconds with an average of 1% every 2 seconds. Taking Bloodlust and various execute abilities into account, 9 seconds prior to death, Patchwerk was at 5%, a later raid it would have been just over 6%. Certainly if the boss is at 10% I'll reapply Rake, but under 5% (depending on boss) I think it's better DPE to shred than lose 1 or 2 tics of the Rake.

Looking at the math behind it, Rake does .01*AP + 190 initial and .18*AP + 1161 over 3 tics in 9 seconds. Each tic of Rake is 30.36% of its damage at 10k AP and 30.64% at 15k. Now, this is going to vary based on your Crit, ArP, and AP, but as those values get higher (and for me right now) Shred becomes better than Rake -1 tic for DPE. So at anything under 6% on Patchwerk, I don't reapply Rake, for people with lower Shred DPE or Mangle specs, you should never reapply Rake after 3-4% depending on RDPS. From my point of view, this means the 33% chance of an "extra tic of Rake" is meaningless and I simply care only about the DPE of my starting moves.

Rake and Mangle are equally effected by Savage Fury and Naturalist. Assuming only 1 sunder and FFF on a 11k armor boss = 37% DR, 63% taken, and that the initial hit of Rake is properly increased by the Mangle debuff as per patch notes.

Rake - SR - Mangle
((.01ap + 190) * c% + (.18ap + 1161) * 1.3) + (((55.2 + 1.4ap/14) * 2 + 634) * c% * .63)
.01ap c% + 190c% + .234ap + 1509.3 + 468.972 c% + .126ap c%
.136ap c% + 658.972 c% + .234ap + 1509.3

Mangle - SR - Rake
(((55.2 + ap/14) * 2 + 634) * c% * .63) + ((1.4*.01ap + 190) * c% + 1.4*.18ap + 1161) * 1.3
468.972c% + .09ap c% + .0182ap c% + 247c% + .3276ap + 1509.3
.1082ap c% + 715.972c% + .3276ap + 1509.3

Subtracting MSR - RSM
-.0278ap c% + 57c% + .0936 ap

And I forgot to apply PI (1 + 1.2crit) * damage
-.0278ap - .03336ap c% + 57 + 68.4c% + .0936ap
.0658ap - .03336ap c% + 57 + 68.4c%

Since c% must fall between 0 and 1, we can say that the difference must fall between
0%: 57 + (.0658 * ap). 7.5k ap: 550.5 10k: 715 12.5k: 879.5
50%: 91.2 + (.04912 * ap) 7.5k ap: 459.6 10k: 582.4 12.5k: 705.2
100%: 125.4 + (.03244 * ap). 7.5k ap: 368.7 10k: 449.8 12.5k: 530.9

In comparison, a 33% chance for that extra tic of rip looks like (I added in unleashed rage and blood fury):
(1.1*1.4*.18ap + 1161) * 1.3/9 * 1.02
7.5k ap: 477.36 10k: 579.462 12.5k: 681.564

My apologies for not figuring out the exact crossover point, but from ~50% crit and ~10k ap is where a lot of us are, and with less crit and more AP, that extra tic of rake becomes worth less and less. Pretty confident saying MSR > RSM for almost all cases.

I have a little question.

I try not to use FB in my rotation and just stick to Rip and SR as finishers since my crit rate (CP generation) is a bit low. However, sometimes I'm faced with a situation where after getting a lucky streak of crits/OoC procs I end up having 5CPs on the target, while still having a good deal of time left on SR/rip. In that case, should I FB and run the risk of missing a couple seconds of SR uptime as a result? Or should I just play it safe and refresh my SR/rip before they expire?

My experience in this situation is that I invariably lose a large amount of rip uptime if I try to use my extra CP on FB. It's possible that I just need more practice, but if you feel that your CP generation is low, then even during Berserk it's probably not a good idea to FB if you notice you have free CPs (better, in general, to just waste ~3 CP and then refresh Rip when it runs out).

As applicable to general cat DPS, after about five hours of practice on the target dummies, I've tightened up my rotation a lot. I found that the biggest thing that was holding me back is that I was shredding far, far too much, and not looking ahead enough to see what was going to need refreshing. I've also moved to a 2-3 point SR > 5-point Rip in general, since it seems like a much more consistent cycle and doesn't result so much in Rip and SR falling off the target at the same time, which is bad news for your Rip uptime.

My general strategy for DPS is to watch my timers (SliceDice is invaluable, although I wish it showed Mangle duration somehow), and to decide what to do based on whether SR or Rip will run out first. If SR will, I get ~2 CP, wait until i'm either about to cap energy or SR / Rake is about to run out, then refresh SR with those CP rather than generating more (so that the CP get used on the ensuing Rip). If Rip will run out first, then I get to 5 and refresh it as usual. For Rake uptime, the trick is simply to be looking a few seconds ahead to make sure you have the energy to refresh it when needed. I find that it almost always results in lost uptime to shred with less than 50-60 energy unless you've just refreshed everything and/or just gotten an OOC proc(s).

This is obviously for stand-and-burn situations. It's not always a good idea to be saving energy in this way on a boss that may or may not stay in range to attack (i.e. malygos).

I agree that fitting FB into the rotation is hard and borderline asinine in terms of gameplay mechanics. With the randomness attributed to a feral cycle(OOC and Primal Fury, thank god we don't have 2T4 anymore), you need to be a psychic to know when you can use FB.

I'm hoping Blizzard changes the 45-point to include something like the rogue talent from the assassination tree. Not 1-1 copy, that would make feral dps overpowered easily. Maybe add time to SR duration per point spent on FB, something like that. Not so much that you'd never have to refresh SR again, but give you some breathing room if you guessed wrong on your FB usage.

Anyway, in the meantime, I only use FB during berserk. Otherwise, I set a minimum time for rip that I need to work from 0CP in order to refresh it 5CP. In other words, I'll continue rake or mangle and when rip gets to 8s, I'll dump whatever points I have into savage roar and then start on rip. It does work out usually to a 2-3 cp SR, 5 cp Rip rotation, but I find just setting a "threshold" time on rip makes it much easier to manage the randomness.

WWS reports you have used SR only once, which - if it's true - means that you had very low uptime on it. I'd say that with only one SR per 3 mins, your dps is very respectable ;-)

On a sidenote. I'm using NeedToKnow for buff/debuff tracking and apparently it doesn't properly recognize 2x T7 bonus. I was clipping last tick(s) of Rip until I noticed that.

I'd think it only shows 1 because I never let it run out.

Ah, scratch it then. I didn't realize WWS records it as a single buff.

Well, anyway - I got similar problems. Can't get anywhere close to 3k on heroic dummy (as suggested earlier by other Ferals). My top scores are around 2700-2800 during 3 minute fight, with one Berserk used. With one mispredicted FB, it's down to 2400 max.

Just get TellMeWhen. Easy to configure, easy to customize. You can choose what target to track for what debuff/buff/cooldown. In my setup, I have the buffs (Tiger's Fury, Berserk) up top, the ordinary timers (SR, Rake, Rip, FFF) in the middle, bleed increasing debuffs (Mangle(Cat), Mangle(Bear) and Trauma, regardless of who applied it) on the lowest row and finally a Clearcasting icon to the left of it all.

If you wanted to you could add Innervate, Rebirth, potions, flasks, Sunder Armor... really anything that can be found on you, your target, or the target of your target.

Left part of image is configuration mode. Right part is actual use in combat.

Anyone else trying this cat specific mod BadKitty - Addons - Curse? It is still a work in progress and i've been using it, works pretty nice so far. In future i think the author plan to add in bear support too.

I looked at that mod on curse after it was mentioned on these forums, however I thought that it looked too unfinished and could not be customised as much as other mods out there.

I am using a combination of NeedToKnow and TellMeWhen - however I am eagerly anticipating merging of different spells into one frame on TMW (having 3 seperate bars for mangle bear, cat and trauma ftl).

Similar setup 2 posts up to mine, however I like the bars of NTK over the icons of TMW for rake, mangle-cat (if there is no bear or arms warrior doing it), rip and savage roar, i tend to get a feel for the timers at a glance that way.