I was using NeedToKnow before i swap to BadKitty because this 1 helps to keep track on trauma, mangle from other ferals, and FF from others too. Yeah there is no much customisation since it is design specifically for cat at the moment, and the cat dps tracking part is actually quite complete. It is not too bad and i recommend you give it a try.

Why bother with Mangle - bear? Didn't Blizzard change it so it does not affect cat dps or was that only talked about and dropped?

Mangle - Bear still applies a debuff that increases bleed damage by 30%, which happens to be the same thing that Mangle - Cat and Trauma do.

It was dropped. Mangle - cat and mangle - bear each affect both shred and maul damage.

I dont see how you guys have problems incorporating a 5 CP FB into your rotation when you have 2 PC T7 and Glyph of Rip both increasing duration by 3 secs for 6 secs soon to be 7 I have no problem in a 25 man to mangle rip SR opener and then from there get off 3 5pt Finishers Rip then SR then FB before Rip is down and have to be reapplied. Yes your FB does less damage than Rip but if it still assumes that Rip doesnt fall the dps is more.

My rotation is:

Mangle, Rake, SR(gets me 3-4 CP SR every time)

Then Repeat:

Shred to 5 CP while maintaining Rake and Mangle; Finish with Rip
Shred to 5 CP while maintaining Rake and mangle; Finish with SR
Shred to 5 CP while maintaining Rake and mangle; Finish with FB

The specs this assumes is 7800 atk power, 10% haste, 10% armor penetration, hit capped, 47% crit. All stats completely unbuffed and this nets any fairly stationary encounter such as Patchwerk, Kel'thuzad, Thaddius or Loatheb as an ez 4500-5400 dps. And in a fight like Malygos I can break 6600 dps if the tank can handle me.

Things to notice is with my crit chance 3 special moves=5CP.

Energy costs for skills

Rake: 30
Shred: 42
Mangle: 28
Rip: 30
FB: 40

and with the energy regeneration and occasional OOC procs its more than ez to do so

Isn't rake 35 energy with 5/5 ferocity, or am I missing something?

Stopin, that won't work because you're trying to cram at least 15 CP(not accounting for CP overflow) into 20s(Rip duration). No cat can generate that much cp, berserk being the exception. Until then, the rotation you specified will have significant parts where rip is not up.

It is, and Mangle is 29 with 2t6 and 5/5 ferocity and 3/3 imp mangle, 34 with imp mangle and ferocity, or 35 with 2t6 and ferocity (I suppose 34 with 2t6 and imp mangle but not taking ferocity would just be dumb)

One thing I don't understand is the Glyph's interaction with Rip. Rip tics every 2 seconds, does +3 seconds ever add that last second of damage?

Well the glyph adds 4 seconds, so 2 ticks, no issue there.

The T7 2-set which you're thinking of adds 3 seconds, and from beta days I was always curious how that would actually work. Oddly, it adds 2 ticks, effectively 4 seconds. I still have no conclusive answer on how this is working from staring at timestamps and mob debuffs, but in the combat log, the rip falls off right as the 10th tick occurs, despite the fact that visually, you may actually see the rip disappear off the mob before the last tick.

Best I can figure, the boss debuff icons, as well as any timers you have, are being told the 19s duration. The actual damage dealt, and the combat log, seem to rely on a different mechanic, where glyphed, 2-set rip deals 10 ticks, and the debuff falls off the mob when the 10th tick completes.

2T7 is "bugged", it adds 2 extra ticks of damage. Ever wonder why your Rip duration runs out, and then a decent amount of time after that you get another tick of rip? According to anything that tracks buff/debuff duration, rip lasts 19s, because that's what the game tells those mods. But, the game is, right now, actually applying 10 ticks of rip damage. Now, if you happen to hit ferocious bite at 19.5s, will you get the bleed bonus from RnT? No idea. This will all be corrected next patch anyway, whenever that is.

As for Stompin's rotation, I was thinking on that a bit more. Why go to full 5cp savage roar, Stompin? If your rotation works around 20s rip, why not do a 2-3 cp roar? Yes, 2 cp roar lasts 19s, I think that 1s window can be spared. Frees up a lot of cp "wiggle room" in your rotation, because at max, you need 15 cp max per 20s(this is counting for CP overflow), which I think is more manageable than 18 cp max per 20s. Minimum would of course be 12 cp per 20.

Note: I'm doing these napkin calcs with the assumption the average cp ability costs 35 energy. It's more convenient because a mangle build has just mangle(34) and rake(35) Anyone have an idea what average energy per cp is for a shred build?

I never really thought about the 19 second rip thing before, now I am wondering if re-applying rip right after the debuff falls off (at 19 seconds) prevents the 10th tick or not?

People mentioned this "bug" is being fixed soon, how are they addressing this issue? reducing the 2T7 to 2 seconds or making it 4 seconds?



In regards to the 5cp Rip, SR, FB rotation, that seems ludicrous to me. At least with any kind of semi-decent Rip uptime.

I am currently using a 2-3cp SR -> 5cp Rip rotation, which feels "nice", and is manageable even with bad luck with crits. Sometimes I am refreshing SR early or wasting CPs by putting in extra shreds while sitting on 5cp waiting for Rip to fall off, but I like the "feel" of the rotation and the near 100% SR/Rip uptime.

I have been curious about potential ways to work FB into a rotation, but have not had the time to tinker with it yet (also my gear may be a little crit lacking to make it viable yet), so if anyone has other suggestions about working FB into a rotation I would love to hear it.

The debuff doesn't fall off after 19 seconds; the timer goes to 0 and stays at 0 for one second before the last tick occurs and the debuff falls off. (At least, this is true with my UI - x-perl.) If you reapply rip at 19 seconds you lose the last tick.

As for the fix, the PTR patch notes say "Dreamwalker Battlegear: The Rip bonus is now 4 seconds instead of 3."

I do have 2 questions:

a) People talk about opening with rake - mangle - SR or maybe mangle - rake - SR. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that first rake is made without SR, so all ticks are calculated with less AP right? Isn't it better to open Mangle - SR (with 1 or 2 CP) - Rake?

b) What is your strategy on Berserk? I usually try to use a Tigers Fury so I end up at ~85 Energy, then use Berserk, which brings me to 95 Energy. And then? Just do shreds, refresh mangle/rake and waste lots of CP, because rip and SR don't need refreshing? I assume FB during Berserk is a quite bad idea, right?

a) If its possible I open with a ravage from stealth, then SR - rake - mangle etc. If not I go with rake - mangle - SR - shred. My reason for not going with mangle - SR - rake is that with the rake - mangle - SR rotation, the rake bleed gets more ticks over the fight, and by the time you've pressed SR the rake is already half way through so it doesn't matter if its applied with less AP, cause the extra ticks u gain by opening with it kinda makes up for it. Besides I usually refresh rake after the SR cause its almost ran out.

b) I also go with the Tiger's Fury before I pop Berserk, so I get nearly full energy, and then I just spam as many shreds as I can and keep up mangle/rake/rip/SR all the time, and when the berserk is almost over, and if the timers on bleeds and buffs are >7 seconds I throw in a FB And yeah, using FB during a Berserk with more than 3 seconds left, is a HUGE waste of energy, and the Berserk almost loose its value.

a) Is there any math to suggest that ravage, without savage roar up, is not a waste of energy? In response to the original question, Mangle -> Rake has been the way to go because rake was not being modified by savage roar, and the initial rake damage was not affected by mangle, so Mangle -> Rake lost no DPS. In the next patch I believe all of this will change, SR will properly affect rake and mangle will increase it's initial damage as well. I'm not sure what my opener will be at that point.

b) I've been playing with this a bit, I like to get 5 CP Rip/SR up, with the help of Tiger's Fury, then pop berkserk such that within the first 5ish seconds that it drops I can TF again. In this way I've found that I can pretty much shred spam my way through the whole berserk. However, I have a followup question: is re-applying rake worth the GCD during berserk, or is it a net DPS increase to shred like mad and reapply it as soon as berserk wears off?

Rake is slightly more damage than shred (not just more damage per energy) so it's worth using rake during berserk even if you won't be able to spend all your energy (which would mean half the difference in energy cost between rake and shred is wasted).

However, in most cases (1 or fewer omen of clarity procs during berserk, probability of this is roughly 2/3) you should be able to spend all of your energy during berserk (480 energy in 14 GCDs).

As we all do know, Rake has a higher DPE than shred. This does not change during berserk, where DPE is simply doubled.
IF you would have unlimited energy, than it doesnt matter and shred would be a better option. BUT this is not the case.
Assuming you have 100 Energy when starting berserk. After 10 seconds you've generated another 100 energy. You could have made 10 Shreds in this time, which costs 210 energy. Now you are out of energy...

SO - In order to be efficient I would suggest to refresh rake as usual

This idea of getting extra rake ticks by apply it earlier seems a bit over the top to me.

If you use Mangle, Savage Roar, Rake then ok you will lose 2-3 seconds of rake however when a boss is about to die there is a point where you do not expect rake to finish ticking when you reapply it, the same applies to rip. At this point in the fight your concern is having enough time of Savage Roar left, mangle up then it is just a case of Shredding and Ferocious Bite. Ferocious bite will come in to play quicker than the shredding will but there is still this point.

All you are doing by using rake first is increasing the window of getting a full rake in by 2-3 seconds by reducing the damage that first rake does by not having Savage Roar up. With the chance of missing a rake tick, drastically reducing the damage per energy of rake for a small chance at getting one extra rake into your rotation I do not believe the benefits out way the cost, this is just my opinion of course.

I am assuming there is at least one warrior or feral tank in the raid to keep the bleeds running for those last few seconds.

Has anyone attempted putting the "double mangle" effect on rip into any rotations?

I was playing with target dummies today and it definitely still does work (Letting mangle time get low, apply rip, reapply mangle before rip ticks). However, I had trouble getting a rotation working well with it. I have both the mangle and rip glyphs and well as the T7 rip bonus. With rip being longer than mangle, I was putting an extra mangle up a few seconds after applying rip. That seemed to work fine for the added effect but I had trouble keeping SR up while doing this and was not able to throw in any FB.

Is it even worth the effort and the extra mangle (Taking away energy from shred) or would a general shred rotation be better to stick with? It would seem like if the extra damage gained from rip was more than the damage lost from using an extra mangle it may be worth it if there's a solid rotation for it. Has anyone else has considered or tested this?

It's may just be a smaller issue, but when do you use your first (and as that, your following) Tiger's Fury? It's a serious question because despite having quite good gear, I'm nowhere being able to get smooth 'full' rotations going - as soon as I throw in a Ferocious Bite, everything literally falls down (Rip and(lesser)/or(more often) Savage Roar, Rake) because I'm unable to get enough CP's to keep going and have to start again.

After a FB (with rip>8seconds, SR longer) I tend to use 5CP-rip with 1 or 2 seconds left on SR, rake/mangle/shred until at least 2 CP's to start again. That's the 'good' ending (which neglects SR), which tends to appear not enough.
Usually I just have 4CP's with 1-2seconds left on SR - I generally refresh SR now, losing a lot of rip-uptime that way.
Because of that situations, and the fact that FB's of some 'called-good' WWS-training-sessions is not more than maybe 6-7% dmg, I'm already thinking of dropping the whole FB, even putting my points into some bear-talents (or Feral Instincts for AoE-situations).

So my basic questions are:
1)When is the right/a good time to use TF
2)If falling short on CP's, namely having 4CP's, rip expiring now and SR in the next GCD - refresh SR, 4-rip WITH SR up or even 5-rip without SR?

here's a WWS of my last night's performace, where the results are not that bad in a casual-raid, but having tanked in a top-guild in TBC I'm just not satisfied and sure, that more is possible and manageble.

Is this true, or is it true that SR was always supposed to affect rake? The patch notes for 3.0.8 suggest that SR has not been affecting rake, but has been fixed in the patch.

Now that every part of rake is (or will be in the patch) considered a bleed, what is the optimal opener assuming 1.5 CP generation per yellow hit? Mangle -> Rake -> SR? Mangle -> SR -> Rake? It seems like a Mangle Crit -> SR opener would be ideal, but if mangle doesn't crit I'm not sure I could get rake + 5CP Rip ticking before SR fell.

The bug referenced in the patch notes is that Savage Fury was improperly affecting Rake not Savage Roar.