Nightcrawler, why do you have executioner on hellion glaive (archon glaive for alliance) is it better than having the 400 extra attack power?

I believe that FbN also has a setting for the minimum amount of combo points to do SR at, so along the same lines as the not having any combo points.

With 2pc T9, the average Mangle and the average Rake are already fairly comparable in damage. I'm pretty sure Rake actually beats Mangle one ability compared to the other with no other modifiers (trauma/mangle/savage roar). When you add an already applied trauma or mangle to the picture, Rake just went up by 30% in damage which leaves mangle behind.

If Rake is not applied at a time where you have zero combo points, Savage Roar is down (you need it back up quickly), and mangle/trauma is already applied because of someone else, you should, in fact, use rake to get that combo point, or two, to apply Savage Roar.

Double Post~

Coldbear, it's a question of opportunity cost. The initial calculations done were whether an average of two seconds of rake at the start of a fight were worth more than the damage difference between Rake and Mangle (given that you can't guarantee that Mangle/Trauma will be up at any time at the start of the fight). However, I think the question you're asking is a mid-fight situation. So it's relatively dependent on if you have the energy to apply the mangle, then an SR, then a rake. Chances are you don't (otherwise you likely would have had CP for SR already), so chances are you're missing much more than just 2 seconds of Rake uptime. So the original discussion you're basing your assumpions on isn't applicable. I'm also not sure where the new math on the topic will land (in favor of mangle, rake, or even shred) in this scenario-- each has advantages. But as uncertain as I am about which is ideal, I'm quite certain that the difference is small enough to not be significant.

Drastically incorrect. You should never apply rake when you do not have Savage Roar up. Both rake and rip check for Savage Roar on application, and never again throughout the duration of the bleeds.

This means that if you apply rake then for the next 9 seconds or 12 with 2T9 you have a lower power version of rake up. You should shred ( assuming mangle is up ) for the cp to use SR and then apply rake.

What you really should have done was pool energy however so that you could have done this without being in the circumstance where both SR and rake fall off at the same time.

In fact, some very rough math seem to indicate that it's very difficult to decide if you should or should not apply Rake without SR, in this particular scenario.

Assumptions:

- A 5 minute fight, namely 300 seconds
- An average 80% Rake uptime, that being 0.8*300=240 seconds
- 2pcT9, which is the norm for the majority of cats, thus having 4 ticks per Rake application
- A Mangle ----> SR -----> Rake combo would waste one full Rake tick, as damage is not applied until the full 3 seconds elapse. Any fraction of time (in this case 2/3 of a Rake tick) does not translate into the same fraction of tick damage
- Glyph of SR, making the modifier of SR being 1.33

Based on the above, we would have 240secondsOfRake/3secondsPerRakeTick = 80 Rake Ticks in the fight

(A) If the situation described happened only once in the fight, then the comparisson would be the following:

Case 1: Combo Rake ----> SR -----> rotation
76 Rake Ticks with SR at x damage per tick = 1.33*76*x = 101.08*x damage
4 Rake Ticks without SR at x damage per tick = 4*x damage

Total: 105.08*x damage of Rake ticks in the fight

Case 2: Combo Mangle ----> SR -----> Rake ----> Rotation
79 Rake Ticks (one assumed wasted) at x damage per tick = 1.33*79*x = 105.07*x damage

Total: 105.07*x damage of Rake ticks in the fight

The situation gets slightly worse when this happens more often.

(B) 2 times in a fight

Case 1: Combo Rake ----> SR -----> rotation
72 Rake Ticks with SR at x damage per tick = 1.33*72*x = 95.76*x damage
8 Rake Ticks without SR at x damage per tick = 8*x damage

Total: 103.76*x damage of Rake ticks in the fight

Case 2: Combo Mangle ----> SR -----> Rake ----> Rotation
78 Rake Ticks (two assumed wasted) at x damage per tick = 1.33*78*x = 103.74*x damage

Total: 103.74*x damage of Rake ticks in the fight


(C) 3 times in a fight

Case 1: Combo Rake ----> SR -----> rotation
68 Rake Ticks with SR at x damage per tick = 1.33*68*x = 90.44*x damage
12 Rake Ticks without SR at x damage per tick = 8*x damage

Total: 102.44*x damage of Rake ticks in the fight

Case 2: Combo Mangle ----> SR -----> Rake ----> Rotation
77 Rake Ticks (two assumed wasted) at x damage per tick = 1.33*77*x = 102.41*x damage

Total: 103.74*x damage of Rake ticks in the fight


A few comments on the above:

- The difference in the two tactics seems to be really really small, even if you factor in the x damage multiplier. Assuming my cat attack power of around 8.9K (with mainly 10man gear in a 10man raid), the formula gives a base Rake tick damage of around 605. That would bring the actual damage numbers of case 1 and case 2 in the scenario (A) to 63573.4 and 63567.35, respectively.

- There is a catch in how to calculate lost ticks when this situation occurs more than once. Although it is true that 2/3 of tick time does not equal 2/3 of tick damage, if you have 2 2/3 of tick time you then get 4/3 of tick time or 1 full tick and 1/3 tick time, which translates into 1 tick's damage. So, this would mean that in situation (B) you would have 79 ticks of SR'd Rake (instead of 78) and in case (C) again 79 ticks (3 times 2/3 is 2 full ticks) of SR'd Rake.
I chose to present the numbers as if this did not apply, due to the following comment's reasoning.

- This is a pure numerical approach, which does not take into consideration the available energy state. As Allev said before, it is more probable that you do not have the energy to Mangle ----> SR -----> Rake at GCD, so you would be loosing more than 2 seconds to bring Rake up, which means you would be in fact loosing at least 1 full tick and maybe even 2. So for me, the above numbers are a BEST case scenario for the difference between a "case 1" sequence and a "case 2" sequence.

- Having said that, you cannot ignore the importance of SR for your white attacks too. The lost Rake tick is probably more or less compensated by one (maybe even 2 depending on haste and energy state for SR application after Rake) white attacks without SR.

All in all, it seems to me that much depends on the energy state when this is encountered. If you can gauge that there will be enough energy for a very fast application of all 3 Mangle-->SR-->Rake, then this is the way to go probably. But, if the energy state is such that Rake will be delayed due to lack of energy AND there is enough energy for an SR right after Rake, then that would probably be slightly better.

You're missing one additional consideration to get the energy and CP's nearly equal at the start of "rotation" in these cases and truly compare apples to apples. The first attack of Case 1 after the SR must be compared with the mangle.

Rake ----> SR ----> Shred ----> rotation

vs

Mangle ----> SR ----> Rake ----> rotation

In addition to whether or not there is enough damage lost from rake to justify the downtime, which you have analyzed well, there is also the fact that the CP-generating mangle is done without SR. And also, presumably to get SR up as quickly as possible with low energy, you have chosen the much lower DPE mangle, instead of the better option when the mangle debuff is already up: Shred.

What you say holds true, but I was not trying to compare energy states or CP's generated. The idea is to see the Rake damage difference between missing a Rake tick, but having all Rakes SR'd vs getting Rake up ASAP even without SR first.

From that point of view, only actions necessary to achieve each case's goal are included in the comparisson. And yes, Mangle is chosen over Shred in Case 2 because you need the fastest (i.e. less energy-consuming) ability to generate the CP's for SR. But in Case 1, there is no 3rd action necessary. The goal (getting Rake and SR up) has been achieved at step 2, further actions are irrelevant with respect to how much damage Rake will do. And let me stress again, I wrote this (and understood the OP's post in that way) as a comparisson of damage solely from Rake (and things that would be affected automatically by the delay in SR, such as white attacks). This is far from a complete fight model, which should of course take into cosideration available energy and CP's after each sequence (for example, since you mentioned Shred instead of Mangle in case 2, one could argue that we should factor in whether or not Rip would be refreshed by the Shred and how much damage this would net, but obviously this goes beyond the intentions of this post).

While it's true that Savage Roar is only checked on application for bleeds, what's also true is that Savage Roar is only checked on application of everything. Mangle included.

You shouldn't be worried about the fact that the rake will do less than optimal damage for it's whole duration, because the mangle you applied also did less than optimal damage for it's duration. It just so happens that rake's duration is spread out over time and mangle's is instant. The fact that the two attacks do their damage in different time spreads should be of no consequence. They are nearly identical combo point generation per energy cost, and Rake's non SR'd DPE on an already mangle/trauma'd target will be higher than a non SR'd Mangle.

The only time this should really occur with any real regularity, is at the start of an encounter with a bear tank. The bear tank mangles, the cat dps soon engage and rakes as their first non-Faerie Fire attack followed by applying Savage Roar. You're better off getting the 30% higher damage out of a non-SR'd Rake (because mangle is already applied) than to apply a non-SR'd mangle on top of an already applied and maintained mangle.

If the mangle that's already applied is your own, then there's probably a something else wrong with the situation in that you didn't plan ahead properly to avoid Savage Roar falling off with no combo points to spend in renewing it.

The reason that you ideally want to have SR up when you Rake is that Rake is our highest DPE combo point generating attack. You want to make sure it's at full power as much as possible. Mangle is a crappy attack only used for its debuff or if you can't attack your target's back, so there's less of an issue if it can't hit for full strength.

Hello guys! I've been following this thread for a long time but never had the reason to post in it until now. With ToC25 HM on farm practically (3% on Anub from Insanity, rawr) I've started to get a lot of upgrades lately. Right now I'm at 66,66% ArP without food, which would make me have something like 68% with food if I'm right, and my old [Grim Toll] is losing more value for every upgrade I get, especially since I currently got 13.6% hit and really want to get rid of some of it. Currently I don't got any other trinket that could replace Grim Toll except [Mirror of Truth] and the [Incisor Fragment].

So my question is, should I stay with [Grim Toll] until I get my hands on something like [Death's Choice], which can take a while since a lot of people with better egpg also wants it, or should I switch to one of my two old trinkets. [Incisor Fragment] got a nice chunk of AP for it's iLvl, and the on-use would be nice to have and to combine with Berserk.

@Optimus Prime
If your guild has ToGC 25 on farm then it's only a matter of time before you get Death's Choice. At your current ArP I assume you're gemming for it, but at 68% with food buff you should go for the softcap+Mjolnir, with your guild it shouldn't be a problem to farm Thorim HM for Mjolnir. You do have Grim Toll, but considering you're way above the hit cap, going for Mjolnir+Death's or even Darkmoon seems like your best choice until you gather enough ArP to get close to the hardcap. If you do get that much of it, Death's Choice heroic and reg will be better, or whatever Death's Choice version you get first, using that and Darkmoon until you get both versions(assuming the hardcap).
PS: You can also try to use Rawr to determine which of the trinkets you linked would be optimal.

Optimas: First, reduce your hit rating to the 263 HARD cap. All hit rating over the cap is worthless. Whether or not you get rid of Grim Toll leads you to two choices:
1) Switch gems to agility until you're under the 780-ish softcap. They're better when you're over soft-cap. This will be somewhat expensive.
2) Buy a [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] (with agi) to replace the [Grim Toll]. This helps you with the hit rating problem.

To be honest, [Mirror of Truth] is probably better than the [Grim Toll] given you get no value out of the hit rating right now and only partial value out of the ArP.

For everyone, the rule is softcap+trinket or go after hardcap. Being in-between doesn't help you at all.

why you suggest regeming for agi to get soft cap of arp and then change Grimm toll for Banner??
thats without any sense... because soft cap of arp is only worth when u have grimm toll or mjolnir???

If you're talking about the starting point of the fight, your idol also plays a heavy role in which attack you open with, as much or moreso than even trinkets. By this point I assume most cats are running [Idol of Mutilation] which would tip the Mangle vs. Rake even more towards the opening Mangle, even in cases where a Mangle/Trauma bot is present. That is if the statement that you want your Rake as fully buffed as possible holds for the 200 agility as much as the Roar buff.

Now the Idol can proc off of mangle or shred, but I wouldn't see it as likely that you would open with shred rather than mangle. And in a number of fights I end up mangling as I run through the boss as the fight starts to get in position for shreds and the rest of my attacks.

IMHO the mangle debuff coupled with the Idol proc has me opening Mangle-Roar-Rake(then usually FFF, which allows enough energy for shred-TF-shred-shred/rip, some variation because of OOC).

Honestly the best upgrade i can see for you is to replace your helm with the T9 245 piece. You drop hit (over hard cap) and arpen (over soft cap) and pick up a bunch of expertise (you are rather low).

Please try to actively use a piece of theorycraft instead of asking other people to do it for you. SimulationCraft produces good results and even has a GUI. FbN is a little more technically challenging, but plenty of people have done it. Rawr is dead-simple and Toskk's is a good backup for those without a Windows machine. None of these will misguide you to a degree which will negatively impact you.

The thresholds all depend on your gear as well as your playstyle. Vastly different playstyles can approach very similar DPS levels, and the best gear strategy depends on the playstyle. Itemizing improperly around caps is the very, very, very worst thing you can do for your DPS.

Edit: You should have gotten the T9 helm instead of the pants. You shouldn't have bought the non-set T9 helm. You should replace your T8 belt with a T8 belt without Hit Rating. You should realize that when you average itemization that has both ArP and wasted hit, that's worse than the worst combination of other stats you could have on an item.

Edit2: I confused your original post with the post in the other thread who was deciding between Mjolnir/DM:G and some other upgrades. Don't go farm another Banner, you probably can't; farm gold for a Darkmoon Card: Greatness or replace Grim Toll with Mjolnir.

You realize that you're way over arp soft cap?

I did some digging in the addon lua, and figured out the following:

1. Energy pooling magnitude is the minimum amount of combopoints needed before spending the pooled-up energy to go for a rip or FB (with less CP, enough energy will be held in reserve to be able to refresh mangle, rake, etc when they run out).

2. This value (internally called "ripvsfb") has a default value of 1, min value of 0.2 and max value of 10, is used to calculate "max rip downtime" by using the following formula: (FB damage / rip damage) * 2 / ripvsfb - (ripvsfb - 1) / 2
On the target dummy my FB hits for 17k and my Rip for 34k on average, so with a ripvsfb of 1 the max rip downtime would be exactly 1 as well. With ripvsfb of 0.2 it would be 5.4, and with a ripvsfb of 10 it would be -4.4.
It then calculates the ripvsfb_time by calculating the average time needed to generate the energy needed for generating 5 combopoints and casting a rip, assuming 55% of the combopoints are generated by shred, 22.5% by mangle and 22.5% by rake (73% shred / 27% rake if you checked manglebot), and substracting the max rip downtime. This is the minimum time left on rip to be allowed to do a FB. With some quick napkin math i get to 38.5 energy required per combomove. With 50% critrate and 100% hitchance, this gives me 15.5 seconds needed to gather the required energy. So with rip uptime set to 1, FBN will suggest FB only when rip has more than 14.5 seconds left. When set to 10 the time on rip must be more than 19.9, and with 0.2 rip must have 10.1 seconds left.

3. This is a simplified version of 2 for SR. The slider represents a percentage, with 1.0 = 100%. The required time to get the energy needed for the number of combopoints to be used on SR is calculated, and multiplied by this setting (default 1, min 0, max 3). The resulting value (srvsfb_time) is the minimum time left on SR before it will suggest using the already-achieved 5 combopoints on SR instead of FB. So expanding on my previous values, with SR set to 4 combopoints and SR priority set to 1, FBN will suggest using SR instead of FB when SR has less than 10 seconds left on it. 0.9 makes it 9 seconds, etc.

4. Default 0.9, min 0, max 2. A percentage like 3. Calculates the damage per energy of both rake and shred. If Rake's DPE is less than the set percentage of Shred's DPE then it won't be suggested. Takes into account Glyph of Shred.

5. 0 means never mangle (roughly same effect as checking manglebot). 1 means that mangle can be allowed to fall off for short periods of time if it benefits your own dps. 2 means that mangle will be kept up 100% of the time to benefit the raid's bleeds.

I've been using Toskks DPS calculator along with the information on this thread to gear/enchant my toon. I plugged in my current stats into both the live model and the ptr model. According to the model, my same stats on the ptr would grant me roughly 60 additional dps. I haven't seen anything in the patch notes explain this slight buff. Does anyone know what is causing this dps increase? Is it an error in the model or a stealth buff given to ferals in the upcoming patch?

While gearing up (TOGC 3/5) it seems like I can't get rid of my 2T8 bonus.

Currently, I wear T8 helm and gloves, 2 pieces of T9 (shoulders + legs) and Mjolnir + DMC.
Since I'm lacking a lot of small hit upgrades and can't get my hands on any legs with 3 sockets in the near future, I decided to get the T9 legs (link to full equip).

Now my problem/question:
According to anything25's 3.3 FBN built, I'm losing ~100+ DPS whenever replacing my T8 pieces.
I tried 4T9 (everything except chest) and 2T9 (trousers + helmet, along with [Sunreaver Assassin's Gloves] and [Duskstalker Pauldrons]).

Am I missing something here (as long as the simulator is right) or can 2T8 only be dropped after obtaining almost every BiS?

Since I could always build my equip around 2 pieces of T8, one could even assume that it can't be dropped until the stats on those two slots surpass the set bonus on their own (or until a better set bonus is available, of course).
This just doesn't feel right, but where is my mistake?