Freya's adds are killed too fast by aoe as it is. Usually going from 100->20 in under 10 seconds. Then its just a matter of spacing out killing them individually (not a dps race). On thorim my job is to destroy evokers and champions and single target down thorim as fast as possible. On razorscale the adds just don't matter...dps'ing razor when he is down matters. The adds on Auriya are irrelevant. On mimiron we single down the assault bots as fast as possible (then clean up others with aoe but again not important). On hodir the flash freezes usually aren't close enough to make swipe very efficient. On XT we should let ranged take care of the adds. On kologarn the ranged aoe down the adds after arms are killed. Haven't done yogg yet so dunno about that.

I just don't really see where our aoe is all that valuable. Sure, I can inflate my dps by quite a chunk but really just at the expense of decreasing the dps of others who can accomplish the same thing more efficiently. So while FA is a minor increase, I'm not sure it isn't more valuable to the raid. Still playing with this a bit.

Efficiency isn't about dps burst. Yes, swipe has incredible dps burstability if used with a full energybar, TF, ooc and trinket procs off hidden cooldowns, etc. However, in the middle of a boss fight in an energy starved situation its just not that great when our single target prowess is hard to beat. Mediocre aoe or awesome single target? We should play to our strengths even if it doesn't look as good in the meters.

We do not do mediocre aoe. We do top of the charts aoe dps, even in sustained aoe situations.

And if you need/want to aoe in the middle of the fight and you don't have energy ready for it, it's just you ignoring your aoe capabilites and not saving energy for it. Most aoe situations are on well known timers.

How well does a rogue aoe when he's got no energy ? A warrior with ww on cd ? A mage/lock in the middle of a cast ?

Never see myself near the top in sustained AoE situations even with full swipe spec (not counting saving energy for irrelevant stuff like auriaya swarm). Players/classes I blow away on single target can easily surpass me, especially if we aren't looking at hitting 10 or 11 targets. So if lots of people can aoe in a sustained situation as well or better than I can but very few can single target then which should I be prioritizing? Hell, some classes pay almost nothing for good aoe. Let them do it? The list of ulduar bosses includes very few if any bosses where there are truly aoe dps races. On the other almost all boss fights reward the ability to light up single targets as fast as possible. A few others reward good target switching dps (which we don't really bring).

Actually, on a related topic, how do the most skillful druids handle AoE and target switching situations?

Do you tend to save TF/berserk for your AoE periods, or is it generally better to use those single target? Any feelings on how many points on a SR before you start seriously AoEing?

For target switching situations like breaking flash freezes on Hodir, which things drop from rotation? Obviously you won't be ripping, but do you find yourself using FB or SR more often? Do you tend to rake>mangle>shred, or does rake>mangle>mangle work better for the faster combo point generation? Do you switch to bear for faster charge CDs, or just use cat charge?

The thread so far has covered single target DPS in depth, but I feel like my target switch and AoE DPS is still pretty unskilled. I'd love to hear any tips or tricks to best use our capabilities.

The amount of AoE in Ulduar is much lower than in Naxx so that you want to use both on the single targets were necessary without having it on CD on the next boss. In Naxx you can probably use it on the trash packs as well, because there is nearly no single target trash.

For TF use it when ever it is ready, because it is not about the meter in the end it is about killing the boss as fast as possible so no doubt that TF should be used whenever ready. In case of TF you need to be able to burn the 60 energy on a target before you move to a next target (re-filling energy while moving to the next target). That is all you should care. For example the Hodir Flash Freeze are close to each other just burn TF on them.

Feral druids are a terrible single target DPS class, but the best AoE class, reference WMO's scoreboards where the only fights with Feral druids in the top 20 involve significant AoE. I'm sorry if you can't place well on AoE based fights, maybe you're just bad? And if you're "blowing away" anyone on a single target fight (that doesn't involve Required moving (mimiron) without compensation (vezax/hodir) then I'm sad to say that other people are probably also bad. And what classes pay less for AoE? Warriors (weaker than us at AoE) and Unholy DK (the only class that trumps us, and their AoE is slow, not Burst)

And of course the majority of fights in Ulduar favor Single Target, if any boss had majorly significant AoE requirements, fights would begin to require raid stacking, something Blizzard is trying to avoid (but failing to do in terms of healers and tanks) That doesn't mean that the greater portion of damage for a druid won't be coming from Feral Instinct than Feral Agression. And yes, of course stuff that gets AoE'd is going to die quickly anyway, that's because the classes that are amazing at AoE (Feral Druids, Rogues, Unholy Death Knights) do their job and let the other classes that are better single target DPS do theirs. Yes, Mages will living bomb, warlocks will SoC, warriors spin, pallies storm, spreists sear, hunters volley, so on and so forth, but the lions share needs to come from the classes for whom the highest AoE dps and lowest cost comes from. That is us and few others, none are casters.

List of Ulduar Bosses and favored DPS based on Damage distribution in combatlogs
Leviathan: N/A
Razorscale: Even Split with 2 sets of harpoons, otherwise AoE favored, Movement
Ignis: Depends on strategy. The arguably superior burn method (pun intended) favors AoE, Stationary
Deconstructor: Definately Single Target, significant DPS loss having melee break off to kill bots, Stationary
Kologarn: Single Target for us, Stationary
Iron Assembly: Single Target, Movement
Auriaya: Single Target, Movement
Hodir: Single Target, Movement
Thorim: Single Target, Stationary
Freya: AoE, Movement
Mimiron: Single Target, Movement
Vezax: Single Target, Movement
Yogg-Saron: Single Target, Movement
Algalon: ?

That's only 4/12!! I know what you're saying, this just proves your point that swipe must suck! Except 3/12 of 10% per point is still more than 9/12 of 3% per point, FI also adds more DPS on Thorim than FA does, and being able to kill the tentacles on yogg or flash freezes in 4 attacks instead of 5 (when they're clumped) is a hell of a time and energy saver, killing those "trivial" mobs faster results in an exponential gain on raid dps.

It really feels like you're just trolling here, the facts are all in favor of FI over FA, it's not even close except on a minute "I'm going to respec for xt-002 Hardmode" scale.

@ Jone: I save berserk for when it will do the most good (Heart Phases, Storm Buff, etc) but I also keep in mind fight length. Razorscale for instance is around a 6m fight for my guild, so I get to Berserk twice, since there's no way the adds won't be dead in 10 seconds if I berserk, I save it for when Razorscale lands the first time, and then use it as soon as it comes up again. Thorim as well, 6m fight, once during AoE, once on Boss. XT-002 I berserk on the first Heart, Hodir when I have the Storm buff, and obviously Yogg's Heart, though it's a very long fight for my guild and I'm not entirely sure if there's other particular phases I should be using it. Aside from that, as Carlos said, you want to use it on cooldown.

Likewise with TF, "saving it" is particularly a waste. Aside from attacking Freya before 0 stacks of gift (unless you're doing the achievment), there's no time where doing more DPS right now to one target isn't more beneficial than holding onto a cooldown (that I know of)

Feral AoE DPS aka Swipe (Cat) is capped at 10 crits since 3.1, 3.1.2 or a hot fix in between. So the cap will be around 85k DPS if you are lucky and get 10 crits, normally it should be around 60k DPS. Still high but how big is the difference in the end of a fight like Thorim. The Thorim fight P1 is probably the best example were you can get to the max, but I guess you end up with threat problems if you are not taking cover for that...

Well, I drop iLotP for 2/3 FI.

Looking at your WMOs provided in the Cat WWS thread, you did 45% of your damage with swipe.
Ok, but you are still topping the meters in single target fights like Vezax's. What are your Ranged DPS doing there (17/05)?
So why do you think we are bad on single target fights? It might be the case on fights like vezax and Hodir were casters are specially supported but other than that I am not sure why we should not be up there with the others on such fights.

I will agree, Toranshalur, that at some point, my ability to do more DPS in the arena will become superfluous. However, that point is so far in the future, because if the arena is sufficiently far ahead, I will simply start sending more people down the tunnel, making my FI once again helpful More people in the tunnel means an earlier phase 2 and less mana spent by everyone and no rushing to tag thorim before sif leaves, domino effect. So who's helping kill Thorim sooner when that's taken into effect? There's always more to consider than the visual here and now effect.

And I will most certainly add Hodir and Freya to the list of situations where FI is helping the raid more than FA is. If you aren't swiping clusters of Flash Freeze'd NPC's then you're doing it wrong.

As to the WMO comments, I continue to promote WMO here and on the blizzard forums for that reason. I simply can't know if there's some druid out there doing the purported 8k Single Target DPS with 100% certainty. I can know that I'm among the better geared and skilled feral druids, I know the mistakes I've made on fights (wtb addon that prevents me from refreshing SR when it has 20s left), and I know there's no way in hell I'm going to touch the top 20 on fights without swipe except XT-002. It's not a matter of "well just because no druid's done it yet", it really is "you're a blind fool if you think we aren't the new AoE class".

Also, carlos, I don't compare myself to my guilds' standing-in-blizzard can't-find-shadowcrash casters that can't beat me on fights where I die. Yes, I'm bitter about it.

Well this is not the whole story, there's more to it. Basically you can just ignore any other aspects of a boss fight (thorim p1, razorscale adds, mimiron adds, etc.) and just take the damage done to the boss itself as your benchmark - or you don't and take the whole fight with all adds and phases.

I do think we have the potential to excel at both - unless we are somehow biased by the fight itself (kologarn) or others have an unproportional advantage (hodir, vezax).

We are excellent at single target damage and not just xt. Just look at damage done to just razorscale or just yogg-saron's brain. I'd be very surprised to not see you ontop or in the top5 all the time. It's just that the rest of the fight screws up the meters for us (unless we 'cheat' with swipe).

I think you misinterpreted what i meant; phase one on thorim is so easy compared to phase 2 that any advantage you gain in phase 1 is largely pointless compared to an advantage in phase 2 - i.e you want more FB damage. The same applies in many other aoe situations; you have to consider whether more aoe damage is really helping you get a kill, not just look at the dps numbers.

As to swiping hodir adds, not sure what you mean there. My guild just frees a few npcs for the buffs and i think it's the priests(?) who free the others, allowing you to dps the boss. At least that's the way we did it hardmode.