Deviating slightly from the Mangle/Shred discussion, I would be interested to know what people's thoughts are on what to do with extra combo points that are generated while using Berserk. It isn't unreasonable to assume that you could refresh both SR and Rip and then be at full energy (after Tiger's Fury) before using Berserk, which means that we don't have anything good to spend our combo points on during Berserk. Should I just ignore these combo points while Berserk is active and just Shred/Mangle, or am I missing something? I know there was some talk earlier of finishing Berserk with a 5 CP FB, but is this really our only option?

I have come to realise something. Mangle is way worse
First of all let me explain that.
Mangle does about 67% damage of shred. Converted to DPE it is about 83%. The thing I then did was take into the calculation that there is extra energy left to make more combopoints. I tricked myself there. I counted the energy twice!

By converting to DPE I looked at what damage does 42 energy do for Shred and what energy does Mangle do for 42 energy (= 42/34 = 1.24 Mangle). There is a 17% damage loss if you use mangle.
The only benefit mangle has about 1 more CP per every 3 hits (also counting the fact that a crit does 2 CP).

I would be really surprised if 1 CP could make up for 3 to 4K damage. Mangle is lot worse then I thought and Shred is better. "I cave" if you will

Valerian, back to the scaling discussion.
I was formerly (wrongly) under the impression Mangle and Shred are about the same in usefulness. That was not only based on damage, it was based on the overall usefulness, mainly that Mangle generates more CP.
Damage formula per 1 energy:
The damage shred does = Shred DPE value + 1/42 CP
The damage mangle does = Mangle DPE value + 1/34 CP.
In your posts you only look at the pure damage done, but forget to mention the important CP part.

Though I still think both definitions of scaling are valid. Let me explain in an example below in what situation:

True (as said above), Shred is better then Mangle. The discussion on that is closed in my opinion. But if there would be 2 abilities similar to each other that have the exact same damage (raw damage + CP generated) at for instance 4000 AP (lets call that the tipping point). In that case it would really be very useful to look at the base damage. Below the tipping point the ability that has the highest base damage would be favored. When AP grows and gets above the tipping point the ability with the least base damage will be favored.
However there is no such ability (I think only Shred and mangle came close there).

So although not often used, when comparing 2 abilities and when damage is close, it is good to know that the ability with the less base damage will scale better vs the other ability.

I took Primal Tenacity since several trash packs stun you almost instantly. The fact that you can not dodge while stunned makes you take more damage. This means healer have to heal more which can be dangerous when you do not have that much threat on the mobs. But you are right. With the gear I have now it should not be needed anymore.

Feral Instinct is a must for me since most Naxx trash packs are 5+ mobs. Keeping aggro on all of them is hard already with the massive AoE DPS classes have nowadays.

KotJ is 60 energy every 30 seconds if you activate it exactly when it becomes ready. It makes Tiger's Fury harder to use since you have to use it at low energy and without OoC up. Cat DPS is already very complicated which is why I have Tiger's Fury in a macro to activate right before I Shred.
My question: Is KotJ really worth the 3 talent points?

One thing we should both remove is Improved Leader of the Pack - Spell - World of Warcraft.
But it is really nice when grinding and soloing big mobs.

The energy cost of FB is also reduced so it's actually not that horrible to use when berserk is still up. My suggestion would be to use it before Berserk ends.

I got used to KotJ and i think its really good. Open with rake, mangle, (shred), savage roar. Now TF and you have almost full energy bar so you can quickly put up rip. Using TF effectively is not a problem for me even at this stage when i did not optimize my UI for cat damage yet (all i have is progress bar for savage roar). It helps a lot with keeping the rotation at our relatively low crit levels.

As for iLotP, i tried existing with 1/2, but i couldnt. I could have placed the points into Feral Instinct or Predatory Strikes, but i do not think its worth it. And i think iLotP is useful when raiding as well, it heals me for 1200 when i am in tank gear.

If you get a lot of energy and there is no time to wait to refresh Rip or SR (berserk being an excellent example) you can choose one of the following:
Do nothing and just keep on shredding.
Use FB and "waste" extra energy.
Use Rip too soon.
Use SR too soon.

Doing nothing is not a real good option. FB is neither (see bolow).
Though doing nothing gives a few benefits: You can do one more shred instead of a finishing move. At this point you will have to make a decision: Will renewing my finishing move give me more benefit then one shred.

FB is not really what you want to use while berserking (after berserk ok), but it takes a little more then 2 seconds after FB before you can do a new shred. Wasting the berserk time.And then you will have to wait an other 2 seconds.
Wasting extra energy is not nice but if it is a few energy it could be worth it, but only after berserk is done and you have enough energy and Rip and SR are up for a long time.

Refreshing Rip will mean wasting about damage per 2 seconds that Rip is still up. However if rip is about to end in less then 8 seconds it will need a refresh soon. Berserk will be over in a couple of seconds. After which you will need to refresh Rip anyway. Better to get this "free" (only wasting one shred) Rip now (and in the process save some energy) and waste 4 ticks of Rip.

Lastly the use of SR. SR does no damage on its own. The only thing it needs is to be up at all times (preferably). So doing SR will not be directly beneficial in damage when you use it to replace a shred hit. You have to look at it from an indirect point of view. Having to "waste" CP on SR will mean you can't do Rip as soon as you would like. In 10 seconds you get 100 energy, which should be enough to get 5 CP (crits and Omen of clarity). So if you are at less then 10 seconds CD away from SR I would refresh SR.

To sum it up:
Choose a good time to use Berserk. Ideally when when you are at 0 CP and at 60 to 80 energy with SR and/or Rip to expire.
Berserk:
1st choice Refresh SR when it is below 10 Seconds
2nd choice Refresh Rip when it is below 8 seconds
3rd choice (only when at the end of berserk) Keep shredding (once or twice) till berserk is over.
4th choice FB.
Ideally you wait for berserk to be over to FB. After which you will have 0 energy. THEN you use tigers fury and get CP up to refresh Rip.

I like to use berserk right at the start while I have full energy. This allows me to very quickly get all buffs and debuffs up and start doing max DPS very early in the fight without KotJ.

ILotP heal me for 1692 when tanking but it only seems to happen around every 8.5 seconds. When I look at the healing received meter ILotP is barely visible. Put in other words. ILotP is useless for the tank but it can help a little with the raid healing.

Still. I am really considering trying out this build.: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

@Raqtor: What is the reason to take imp. mangle? For cat damage, KotJ is way more powerful. For threat, then try tanking without it and see how it works. I think that imp. mangle in shred build is waste of talents.

That is simply not useless for a tank. It amounts to 200 health per second given your numbers. That's a phenomenal amount of health as a passive gain for 2 talent points. If it takes an average of 4.25 seconds for a boss to kill you when you get no heals, having 2/2 ILotP is equivalent to 2% avoidance after diminishing returns. The longer it takes to gib you without heals, the better this talent is. For most fights, it's probably equivalent to 4% avoidance or more.

Would you really give up 1% avoidance per talent point as a tank? For what, exactly? Do you ever consider putting points in feral aggression? In terms of mitigation per talent point ILotP takes it out behind the woodshed and leaves it for dead.

The only way I could see leaving out Improved leader is for dps build, or a hybrid build that needed high dps and didn't have the budget to take all the good tank talents. Even then, the utility it brings to your group (raid?) seems like it would be hard to give up.

I'm not sure there are 61 better talent points to take even in a pure cat build. In a pure bear build, taking 2/2 is a no-brainer.

I know you pulled that number out of the air, but do we know where the actual tipping point is? If someone's done the math on it to show, explicitly, where this point is, could they post it?

People need to stop saying shred is always better than mangle. It isn't. Get Rawr, put in your gear, and see. Compare improved mange/no shredding attacks vs. shredding attacks with or without improved mangle. See what has best DPS and whether shred is actually recommended. Yes, at some high gear level shred will win, but for plenty of ferals for plenty of points of progression mangle will be better -- even without 2T6.

Assuming a tipping point > 0 and linear equations that express the damage, then this is correct. Mangle and Shred's tipping point happens to be < 0 AP, so this doesn't hold for Mangle and Shred. Lest the above be taken to be the case in all comparative situations, I wanted to qualify it.

I just wanted to clarify the tipping point (and explain for Krystallynn) and what happens on each side. The tipping point can always be found by setting the two expressions equal to each other and solving for AP. For Mangle/Shred:

Shred: 3.51*AP + 1158.3
Mangle: 2.4* AP + 760.8

3.51*AP + 1158.3 = 2.4*AP + 760.8
1.11*AP = -397.5
AP = -358.108108...

So, the amount of AP it takes to make Mangle and Shred do equal damage is -358.1. Since the equations for each describe lines, we know that's the only point where they're equal. Any other point will always give the edge to one or the other. In our case, we can graph the lines and see what comes out on top. Again, since they are lines, one will be above on the left side (less AP), and the other will be above on the right side (more AP). We can pick a point on either side (zero works wonders as long as it isn't the tipping point) and see what happens:

AP = 0
Shred: 3.51*0 + 1158.3 = 1158.3
Mangle: 2.4*0 + 760.8 = 760.8

Obviously, Shred does more damage with more AP than the tipping point. Therefore, Mangle will do more to the left of the tipping point (less than -358.1 AP).

We're usually concerned with DPE, so let me extend the above math to DPE (Imp Mangle, Shredding Attacks assumed):

Shred: (3.51*AP + 1158.3) / 42
Mangle: (2.4*AP + 760.8) / 34

Set them equal and solve:

(3.51*AP + 1158.3) / 42 = (2.4*AP + 760.8) / 34
34*3.51*AP + 34*1158.3 = 42*2.4*AP + 42*760.8
119.34*AP + 39382.2 = 100.8*AP + 31953.6
18.54*AP = -7428.6
AP = -400.6796

So the tipping point for DPE is actually further left (less AP) than the tipping point for raw damage is.

I've been reading the thread to get some information on the spamming of Mangle vs Shred for combo points. I understand that logically Shred does scale better and with better gear available it will become more useful.So I experimented with Rawr, giving myself the best possible available gear, enchants, buffs etc. And the dps difference between the two was barely 5 points, in favor of mangle. This does require using 2 pt T6(belt and boots in my case) for the mangle setup.

So assuming Rawr is correct, and you have access to 2 pt T6, I wouldn't be in a hurry to switch to a shred spec just yet. I think the only advantage to going shred at the current gear level is so that you can adjust early on to the more complicated rotation which will presumably be optimal in Tier 8/9 gear.

Just checked again, with more middle of the road gear, full Valor gear plus some heroic drops and badge items, and with some "just hit level 80" gear. Mangle is still ahead, by a slightly larger margin. Unless I'm missing something, its a good rule of thumb to say that if you can get 2T6, use Mangle, if not use Shred.

Edit: After reading Monedula's post I ran Rawr again to check the numbers with maxed gear. Obviously I made some mistake as Shred was in fact about 70 dps higher, so you can disregard most of the above. So even 2T6 Mangle spec falls behind once you get some good Naxx items to replace your T6.

Silverstorm, you mention AP wrongly. Though directly related it is not minus AP but Minus white hits.
Also in comparing DPE you forgot (unless I am blind) to mention mangle generates more CPs. 1 CP represents a certain damage. That should be added with the damage mangle does. It is hard to calculate that damage but still should be taken into the equation.

Malficus
Without 2t6 mangle in my example does about 83% of the DPS vs Shred.
To recalculate that 83% to shred you can do 83% * 34 / 29 = 97.3%, still a bit in favour of shred. So yes, the extra CP gained by the use of mangle will in case of 2t6 be in favour of mangle.
Since you got it all set up already in rawr I would like to ask you to replace those 2t6 with 2t7 (or if it is belt/bracers/boots with an other good 200/213 level item).
How does your total dps look? Is it worth replacing the lvl 200 items with 2t6 just to be able to use the buff?
I fear it is not. Full 200/213 items and shred will do more damage then 2t6 + mangle. But sure if you don't have any better, then yeah use the 2t6 for sure. Just spamming mangle is a lot more easy.

20% extra damage on bleeding targets from Shreds makes this a big yes-yes in my book. FB is actually quite usefull at the end of each fight, were the SR and rip would be a waist of CP.

Does Rawr produce DPS numbers that are very close to your real dps? That are closer to real dps, than the slight "napkinmath"-ed difference between mangle spam/shred spam tactics? (and that's about 100 dps) If not, how do you know, what is causing the difference, error/assumption/approximation in Rawr or "real" superiority of one ability over the other?

PS
Monedula
No, he didn't forget it:
Cat DPS Rotation
even more, it was discussed later on the same page:
Cat DPS Rotation
and even that got answered:
Cat DPS Rotation

I tried doing FB instead of Rip on a lvl 83 target dummy and it gimped my dps with 200. True I had a cat/bear build which did not include Feral aggression for instance.

Yes, you're right about the AP vs. white hits. My bad. Multiply those by 14, then, since white hits are AP/14.

As legomayn pointed out, I accounted for CPs in my first theory posts, and I'm still using that context as a basis for my points. It didn't leave any energy for extra finishers. At any rate, you'd have to figure out the ratio of Rip/SR/FB and determine the average damage of each and figure the DPCP (damage per combo point) from there. I should be getting into Naxx in the next week or so and getting some idea of practical rotations, along with grabbing some decent gear to work with.

After doing a lot of playing around with Rawr and the itemization available, I've settled on using 4pT6 until I get a few more best in slot pieces to replace some of my T6, and then continue using 2pT6 until T8 (tentatively, since we aren't sure how that itemization looks yet).

My basic setup is full dps spec with 2/2 Shredding Attacks, 5/5 Feral Aggression, 3/3 Improved Mangle, and 5/5 Rend and Tear.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

My gear setup is 4pT6, 2pT7, Rip Glyph, and Rip Idol.
Armory Lite - The WoW Armory Alternative: Thaeryn of Dethecus

My rotation right now is fairly simple, and is probably most similar to Summlan's rotation.

Open with FFF, Mangle, 1-2CP Savage Roar, then Rake.

Mangle to 5CP, utilizing Tiger's Fury every time it's up and I'm under 40 energy.

5CP Rip, then Mangle until Savage Roar falls off or 5CP. Refresh Savage Roar as soon as it falls off with as many CP as I have at the time.

Mangle up to 5CP for my next Rip.

Continue refreshing 5CP Rips and refreshing Savage Roar whenever it falls off with whatever CP I have available.

Ferocious Bite if both Rip and Savage Roar have more than 6 seconds and I'm over 35 energy. I can cut it closer if I have Tiger's Fury up and either Rip or Savage Roar still has a substantial duration (over 12 seconds).

Berserk usage is completely dependent on the fight. Many times I'll pop it just after the opening Savage Roar if it will be up in time for a late bloodlust. If I need to do it later in the fight, I try to use it directly after a Ferocious Bite. During the Berserk I will Shred while maintaining my other debuffs if I've got quite a bit of energy bar to go though. If I bottom out during the Berserk, I will start using Mangle instead. It's best to try to finish off your Berserk with 12+ seconds on both Rip and Savage Roar so that you can Ferocious Bite and work back up to 5CP without either falling off.

Last, I try to use Shred on all Clearcasts, even if at 5CP if I'm not in danger of having Rip fall off. Savage Roar does not seem to consume the Clearcast. It would be nice if they would do the same for Ferocious Bite >.<

Here's a WWS from our 10-man last week. Wow Web Stats

So far, it's fairly evident that the rotation for any specific individual will vary greatly with available gear. The ability to figure out that rotation for youself is what will really set you apart as a feral dps.

Your rotation and cooldown usage is similar to how I've been DPSing. I also use Shred rather than Mangle as my staple, but occationaly use additional Mangles as the situation calls. I have however replaced my 4T6 and did so with the help of Tossk's current calculator combined with in-game testing (both dummies and actual raid encounters). I personally wasn't thrilled with retaining level 70 gear when level 80 options were available, but 4T6 is still very viable and that's disappointing.

I noticed you also have an Idol of Worship, which actually further enhances the effect of 4T6 due to the set bonus being applied after the idol in calculation. I may have to dust off my old set if the loot lottery deems me worthy of a drop.

Now after a goodly amount of work I've been able to completely replace my level 70 gear with superior results, but it takes quite a few upgrades, many of them specific. What worries me more is we're once again going be pidgeonholed into wearing at least 2 pieces of yet another set of tier gear as cats due to the bonus given by 2T7. These set bonuses which add new functionality to the class (2T4) or irreplaceable enhancements to current abilities (2T7) really need to be phased out. I'll be pretty disappointed if I spend another entire expansion wearing 2 pieces of relative first tier gear when I have 'upgrades' available to me in the higher tiers that I cannot use do to unmatchable set bonuses.

I tried to find a comparable WWS, but this run was back on the 25th and I've geared up substantially since then, it also lacks full synergy as I'm missing a Pally buff (Imp Kings) as well as Unleashed Rage (or hunter equiv). Most notably I've switched to Jewelcrafting, picked up the Nobles trinket and scored a Journey's End in the interim, I'll definitely post a comparative WWS tomorrow night when I get another shot at Patch.

Wow Web Stats

I do the same with Clearcasts but quite often I don't have enough time to change the button I'm pressing after the Clearcast actually procs as there is always some delay on it.
After getting more Haste this will become even harder, has anyone found a solution for this?

I don't even know if it's possible to make but an addon that replaces any attack with a Shred if Clearcast is up might work, although situations where this will result in a DPS loss are quite easy to come up with.

For me, I've found that going easy on the button mashing really helps out with that. It's not imperative to get your mangles out as fast as possible when generating combo points. Slow down and don't pound your buttons. I also use Power Auras to give me a nice visual indicator that clearcasting is proc'd. I'm still probably only at 50-60% accurate in utilizing my Clearcasts, so I know what you mean. 300ms connection for the lose

Another solution being simply moving to a Shred rotation.