Hey vbdo, You say you are stacking armor pen, which I agree with, but there is another ring with armor pen that I believe would be better

[Band of Draconic Guile]

This lacks the crit and gem slot, but provides more Arm Pen, which as you said gets better with the more you have. I was wondering if you had a reason to why you chose the agile over it.

As surprising as it is, 85arp>24ap, even with the hit I'd always prefer the Dreambinder.

[Wolfshead Helm] was finally fixed on live today. Haven't checked the effect at lower levels, but it no longer works for my level 80 druid.

I am currently looking at ways in which I can tweak my dps to squeeze out a little more, one thing I am looking at is possibly speccing into Feral Aggression. Looking at a recent WWS parse for Vezax, FB was only 3% of my overall damage done. After doing some quick calculations, doing an extra 15% damage on my FBs would have given me only an extra 20dps.

To me, such a small gain for 5 talent points seems a little futile, so I was wondering what kind of numbers other ferals were getting for FB. And what kind of setup they are using.

For me, currently I am still gemming for agility, and attempting to maximise rip uptime as a priority, with 2T7, Rip and Shred glyphs. I also have the mangle glyph, as we do not have a regular mangle bot, and I don't trust the other ferals to keep mangle up. My general strategy for tank and spank, once I have popped berserk and settled into a rhythm, is to cast a 4pt SR, followed by Rip, hopefully providing enough spare combo points for a FB before I have to SR again.

I tend to be around 5% FB damage on average on my WWS parses, that's with 1/5 Feral Agression, gemmed for agility and using rip, SR, shred glyphs. Agreed that feral agression is a pretty lacklustre talent for cats, even if you managed to get 10% FB dps an extra 1.5% overall damage gain for 5 talent points is not strong. In fact if like me bleeds make up between 30 and 40% of your DPS, points would actually be better going into Genesis in the balance tree :/. Does this 'increased periodic damage' effect actually work on kitty bleeds?

Genesis does NOT affect bleedings.

no, no increased bleed damage nor frenzied regeneration increase.

I find up to 10 points can be allocated to optional talents in a feral build as follows:

• 5 points FA - 0.1-0.3% dps increase as per point as per rawr
• 3 points FI - 10% swipe
• 1 point SI, 30% hp 28 sec / 180 sec cd 4pc assumed
• 2 points Furor +20 energy on shapeshift
• 2 points NI 35% agi = healing, +10% healing received.
• 3 points -2 mangle energy cost, less valuable with manglebot
• 2 points iLotP 4% hp on melee crit 6 second cooldown 8% mana on feral
• 3 pointsPotP 3% less dmg taken / additional threat in bear.

assuming FB was 10% damage done 0.3% dps increase per point in FA (150dps based on 5000). 6.6% // 0.2% per point. 3.3% // 0.1% dps increase per point. Our alternate talents are quite powerful giving options which is nice. I don't see genesis being changed considering blue trackers have noted responses to investigating high feral dps. For me I went 4/5 FA 1/1 SI in case I need to take some expected / unexpected spike damage.

- edited for being bad. and less spaces. but bad drood = good.

This is the real feral dps cycle

Its always going to boil down to maxed swipe vs maxed FA, its one of the only trade-offs that ferals make between specs for dps. The other is generally whether on not SI belongs in a dps build. Personal taste I say it does, as if i can pop a CD or 2 and stay in for a Lightning Nova on Emalon or the like its worth a heck of a lot to me.

Neither is right per say and neither is wrong, heck I wish I could spec both.

General consensus in Naxx was single target damage is king and maxing it to its fullest was the best route, with very few non-single target focused fights, just let the classes that have AoE damage without needing the talent points do the job. Now obviously your millage may vary based on your guilds needs, for example in Naxx I specced 3/3 swipe due to guild makeup at the time.

With Ulduar I am 1/3 Swipe, 5/5 FA and ended up dropping ILotP since the ret pallies JoL covers the melee healing needs quite nicely and with both all we saw was ridiculous overheal.

Are there fights I wish I had 3/3 Siwpe? Sure, Thorim instantly comes to mind, but I also take damage dealt in arena spot 1-3 ( fighting with our Ret Pallies, and DK's ) even with just 1/3 swipe, and we successfully clear it as long as the gauntlet team doesn't hit a snag. Our arena team is fairly balanced and knows their job really well. I simply equip that friendly little [Idol of Perspicacious Attacks] during phase 1 and swap back to shred or rip idols phase 2.

TLDR verson: Every boss fight in Ulduar you will use Ferocious Bite, thus FA is always being used, Swipe is on a fight to fight basis, and thus just not as important.

Last research I read said the idol does not work in cat form, or are you doing phase 1 in bear?

Assuming you droppeded imp lotp, what is your spec such that you dont have room for both 3/3 swipe and 5/5 FA? Ive always felt that a pure cat spec would have both (and I do). Unless you are specced for powershifting with wolfshead or something.

The value of all the talent points is defiantly fight specific and in terms of rotation the value of mangle / swipe / FB talents is quite interesting. Looks like a WWS thread is coming up and fight-specific comparisons should show some real-world values. I wouldn't discount talents that increase aspects besides your dps because when one is in a progression battle anything to make life easier is appreciated.

I couldn't live without iLotP as most fights have AoE damage on the melee and everything little makes the hardest fights successful including increased dps.