Actually I understand the point of kbranch but the reality (at least the simulated reality of my simulator FBN) show different things. I'll try to explain how I worked it out.

In the first few version of the simulator I used to think following kbranch ideas because they make a sense.

For istance to see if it's better to use FB or wait for rip to expire and/or use an extra mangle/shred/rake to dump extra energy I used to compare the dps gain as kbranch wrote:

(FB+Extra energy)/Energy should be > FB/Energy + partial shred/ partial shred energy and the same counting in RIP if you are going to lose some extra RIP tick using FB. Using that formulation I ended up with around 3% of total damage from FB. With my actual formulation of the problem I end up with around 6-7% of total damage from FB. In the new formulation I've completly erased shred from the formulation and I only compare (FB+Extra energy) damage vs. RIP tick damage (counting in energy dump due to FB) to understand if it's better to use FB or wait for RIP.

The situation that raise can branch ONLY in the following directions:

- Use FB
- Clip SR
- Wait RIP to expire and if you are going to have too much energy dump it with only rake or mangle (never use shred to dump it unless you don't have shreded 3 times).

At a first glance my new formulation of the problem doesn't seems right. Yes I take into account SR/RIP/TF timers (with a total of 6 timers: SR, RIP, SR+RIP, SR+TF, RIP+TF, SR+RIP+TF) and the energy level to choce between finishers but I've completly banned the FB/shred problem.

Why? Because simulated data seems to agree (at least within a 2 dps difference) that this is actually the best way to theorycraft the problem at least inside t7.10 - t8.25 gear level frame.

What's happening? I'm sure that I'm erasing an important variable from the problem (shred) but what happens is (I'm pretty sure about it given the data) that if we write a "full" formulation of the problem shred damage/dps will erase with some other unused variable so as Kbranch said:

we can easly assume that the chance to lose buff/debuff due to that lost part of CPs (and GCD!) cancel out the DPE increase of using shred to dump energy before FB.

Personal Preference is to FB usually. Most of the time when I'm using FB, both SR and Rip are on the downswing (less than half duration left) and I want as much energy as possible to keep a solid rotation.

One thing I'd like to mention, since I'm here anyway, is a point against stacking ArP. "Mr. Swipe" that I am, one would assume I favor ArP considerably, however I've been noticing a fair number of counter-intuitive (depending on what you consider intuitive) things I'd like those using simulators to check out for me. Clearly, because you aren't generating CP's, Swipe should favor ArP, but looking at the fights where I'm using it (Yogg, Freya, Thorim, Hodir) I'm noticing that there's a significant lack of standard rotation, outside of the boss itself (and ancient protector) you aren't going to be getting any Rips off, and the need for Burst is much higher (very low Rip% total) While it's not necessarily a more significant part of your DPS, FB seems a more significant part of the fight; killing off the Trio on Freya, Guardians/Immortals on Yogg, Champions/Evokers on Thorim, and Flash Freezes. Stacking more Agi (especially in the case of Hodir for more crit) seems like it would be better than ArP in these specific cases. Superior cp generation from crits can make a huge difference when you're looking at having at most 30 seconds on a mob.

I could be horribly wrong, but it's something I'd like people with sims to look into.

I would agree with kbranch's analysis approach. You can't just discount the Shred damage. However, the energy difference (15 in this case) should be compared to missing Rip damage (1.5 seconds of downtime), not the CP equivalent of FB damage. The 70 energy case is probably the best situation for the Shred/FB case since it results in a very low energy FB after the Shred. The analysis will be different at say 90 energy. I don't understand why you don't include this as a possible option though. Higher FB percent does not necessarily equal higher DPS.

ArP is actually worth significantly more than agility when Rip is not used. Even with standard cycles ArP is the best stat. If you remove one of our abilities that does not beneifit at all from it, the stat only becomes better.

Perhaps if you are changing assumptions there are cases where different analysis needs to be done. Say you only have time for 3 attacks on something. My guess is that if you happen to crit twice it is worth using FB as the third attack. In this case it might be worth stacking agility. You also need to decide how long something will live and if it's worth using Rake (which also doesn't benefit from ArP), though you might need to for FB bleed bonus. I don't think it will make enough difference to gem for these cases though.

ArP vs Agi

Keep in mind that when doing cat-shred as your primary attack, the mobs are most likely not fully sundered, and likely not even FFF'ed. There are more factors than just whether or not the standard rotation is being used. Some of those factors are outside of the druid itself.

@Mijae: actually I was excessive when I said "never use shred", obviously if I have for example 10 sec on SR, 3 sec on RIP, 5 sec on rake and 95 energy, I'll use shred instead of FB. But actually (this kind of situation is taken into account in my simulator and addon) in real world that happened to me only twice since 3.1 patch so it's not something usual.
What I said is that actually my theory is lacking some variables, but also kbranch is lacking some variables and strangly simulated data gives an higher dps with mine. So probably there are some variables to take into account that cancel out shred damage in kbranch theory.

@Boevis: I don't get your point. If you don't use RIP, Arpen increase it's value. In a short fight you are also unlikely to use rake so it increase Arpen value further. So basically the only things is that you will have less time to generate CPs, but actually I don't think that a lesser CPs generation will trade RIP+Rake. Also you can usually use some tips to avoid CPs generation problems. For istance at Freya I use to generate cps on Freya herself before the add spawn and between them and then start AoE (using freya as main target) if there are the small spawns or go for the next add when they are there. Thorim if you are talking about the arena, I use to generate 2-3 cps on the mana-user guy for sr and then swipe, so it's not a great problem, and on hodir I don't have problems keeping up my usual rotation.

I was hoping for something other than anecdotal counters to my anecdotal supposition. Also, Thorim was a bad example since you can basically mash swipe while rolling SR's. I'm not talking about "in general" I'm referring to the very specific situations where you're only going to have <30 seconds on a mob and Swipe is out of the question. I understand removing rip and adding more FB's increases the value of ArP, but is that enough to counter the added uptime of SR and more CP's (4 or 5 versus 3 or 4) to bite with.

Completely ignore the Boss factor. Series of mobs, each will die in X seconds with Y seconds downtime between them. The questions I'm looking for answers to:
Does the increase in CP/Energy from just mangle become worth it for keeping up SR and using FB versus using Rake and Shred?
assuming no: versus Rake and Shred when Rake will only tic twice?
assuming yes: versus Shred without any bleeds?
versus just using Shred with an arms warrior applying trauma and deep wounds to targets?
Do you FB if unable to reach 5cp on a target? With what allowable energy waste?
(and to my main point) Does the need for faster CP generation and burst damage sufficiently increase the value of crit (through agi) to make it worth gemming Agi over ArP if this is your only concern?
Assuming high uptimes, does the Storm Power buff increase the value of crit significantly as well?

I'm sure I'm going to hear "It's trivial" "They'll get finished off anyway" that I heard when talking about swipe, I know this is the "DPS" thread, but I'd rather use my energy and time on some things, especially knowing my ability to take damage is greater than others, than force a spriest or affliction lock, sometimes you bite the bullet.

As this is the topic of DPS rotations, and I'm trying to maximize mine... I need some help and I hope this is the right place for it, if not, my greatest apologies, but... I'm trying to make a macro/script for this:


1. Savage Roar(SR) inactive–>Savage Roar (at least 2cp)
2. SR active–>Rip with 5cp
3. SR+Rip active and time of rip>5 –>Ferocious Bite

I have tried to make it work several times and its just not happening. Its kind of like those macros that do combat = shadowmeld, no combat = prowl. I figure this keeps me from accidently spamming 3, or 4 by accident ( by consolidating down to one button for those 3 things) and keep my rotation as accurate as possible by keeping SR and Rip up and Bite the rest of the time. As it stands, sometimes I'm screwing up and I'll have SR and Rip up and Rip again w/o thinking...which is bad when I have the Shred glyph that renews rip anyhow.

Let me know what you guys think. Appreciates it.

Taloren, it is no longer possible to do this kind of heavy work in a macro. You can use conditions but only those that are built in (checks for forms, stealth, combat and few others). There are no conditional checks for debuffs present on the target and according to blizzard there will never be.

You have to give up on the idea that you will mash one button and it will do all the heavy work for you :-)

There are addons that will show you which ability you should optimally use but you have to use that ability by yourself. Try looking for FeralByNight or FaceMauler.

I have read the relevent cat and bear threads on these forums, but I have not seen the answer to my question. If I am in my bear spec, but doing dps in cat form for part of the fight, such as after Steelbreaker in Iron Council fight, should I completely leave out shred from my rotation?

Since I have improved mangle and no shredding attacks, it seems like a mangle for 39 energy would be more efficient than a shred for 60. I wasn't quite sure how to calculate it with factoring in the % bonuses for each ability.

1. Start Rawr

2. Load spec/gear

3. Cat Model + raid buffs

4. bottom model on stats, mouseover mangle and shred you should get average damage per hit and dps. Divide damage by energy to get DPE for most efficient ability to use - the most damage per energy bar. Consider the additional CP generation of mangle vs shred to keep up rip/sr.

Has anyone managed to get good numbers on Hodir? It seems like the buffs help but I'm not getting anywhere near the 10-13k+ I'm seeing other classes pull (even if they can't do it consistently), usually maxing out around 7-8k. Am I better off just freeing flash freezes for other people that can utilize them better or am I missing something?

Singed - Spell - World of Warcraft

Being one of the very few specs that do zero spell damage, we get no benefit from singed at all.
Haste is one of our worse stats - moonbeams don't do alot for our dps, but on the other hand we scale very well with extra crit damage and having a very high uptime on the storm buff. I've personally never seen over 10k as a feral druid but 8-9k is definately possible.

My best dps on Hodir was ~8.3K:
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

The thing is, you want to have as much Storm Power uptime as possible, which is sometimes really hard to achieve as it is RNG based. The key to more dps is paying attention who gets the Storm Cloud and try to get Storm Power from him ASAP. I had only 30% uptime of Storm Power that kill while our other melees had 50%+. The difference is huge and worth losing few seconds of dps while running to get that buff - you have to move anyway to drop the freezing stacks...

This is very much the case. I've broken 10k numerous times but they have mostly been with 3 or more Storm Power buffs. I usually average in the mid 9k with just 2.

I did around 11k on <2min 10man Hodir kill in early May with 1 minute of Storm Power uptime.
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

Is Rake even worth refreshing while Storm Power is up? I'd assume its value diminishes greatly because outside the initial hit it cannot crit.

Hodir is definitely all about the Storm Power buff. Your guild's strat is important here. DPS with the buff, particularly melee, need to stand on top of the tank, and your tank moves the boss near light beams. This increases your DPS and keeps you from pulling aggro... well, it helps, anyway. I seem to get threat capped at around 9.5k DPS on that encounter, unfortunately.

I have no hard numbers, but I would vote that it is worth it in no small part due to CC procs from T8 2 piece set bonus.

The FeralByNight thread has a few people confirming that it is a fairly small decrease in damage, less than a 200 DPS nerf or so.

Still completely unacceptable. Just because Poster-child Ensidia has a feral druid that knows his class better than many of their other players ... WMO doesn't lie and is a much better gauge of feral DPS compared to other classes than unattainable spreadsheet DPS, or a zerg guild's anecdotes. I'm most concerned with how this affects PvP, Feral lacks CC, Survivability, a Healing Debuff and now a huge chunk of DPS (lacking raid buffs and in PvP gear, Feral relied a lot more on the base damage of abilities)

I can think of a dozen other changes that would lower feral Raid DPS without affecting our viability elsewhere, not that I think feral druids should be going from "Pretty good at every fight" to "not worth bringing 2 because 1 is all you need for the buffs" But there was still other things they could do (remove Hysteria stacking) that don't result in making all my furious gear thus far, worthless.

@Boevis: Actually I like the way they changed it. Basically they leaved our rotation and scaling unchanged. (And our scaling was poor so it's fine that they didn't make it worst), in PVE I don't see the problem, I'm already topping the meter in basically every fight (at least vs. similar classes) a 2% dps nerf is something we will probably don't see on the meter, is most likely a "noob shut up nerf".

The main problem will be for pvp, we already aren't that good there and nerfing our base damage will probably lower our dps enough (we don't have buff there, expecially in 2vs2) to don't let us "burst enough". But still I prefer a pvp buff (for istance berserk all around immunity) than any other kind of change.

I could not accept this nerf..
Just because Player who plays their Ferals very well. they nerfed all of ours damage-spells.
The problem is, bad players doesn't make any damage with their druid. But the others make too much.
so boring..

That's the problem with the nerf, Nightcrowler. It's not the numbers, which will stay almost the same, it's the intent.

GC just posted last week they have to be careful not to nerf the less skilled players, yet that is exactly what this nerf is doing, although a bit indirectly. While at the same time, they aren't address the several holes ferals have to jump through to get their max dps. And I'm not talking about just our rotation. Fight mechanics basically have to be a tank 'n spank for it work out well for us. The few of those that do exist will favor other classes(casters). XT and maybe Thorim is all we got.

@Deathwing:
A guildie and RL friend mage told me a few days ago: "GC is mad, if feral should be that high because is a very demanding spec (in term of skill) then all class should have a demanding spec to choce, I like to play a mage for the "feeling", I don't like to spam fire ball at all, give us more button, require us more skill and we are par".
I think he has a point saying that. It's true that bad feral doesn't do too much dps and you can't balance things around top damage guys but it's also true that there are plenty of good enough feral druid doing a lot of damage (we have 3 ferals in my guid and we are topping meters in a lot of fights, so, not only me). It's also true that doing very high damage is demanding but doing good enough damage it's not. If you only use shred/SR/RIP with a manglebot (pretty common those days due to trauma of feral tanks) you'll probably do how much? 10-15% less dps, it's still high. I read the nerf in another way, they don't want to nerf us, they want to shout up criers. Also this nerf doesn't nerf less skilled player more, yes it nerf less equiped ones but actually they are reducing our yellow damage without touching our white damage (the part that doesn't need skill). The only problem I can see is for pvp really. Also probably I'm playing in a "lesser than my skill guild" but I don't see many fight were I'm not topping the meter and if a fight it's a real advantage for casters I'm still on the first few melees (exception made for hodir). XT and thorim are basically tank & spank, but also Freya, Algalon, Ignis, Mirmiron are really good fight for us due to our energy mechanincs and cd.