Murna

This is a guide for cat dps, especially for beginners. I will try to update it whenever there are changes or new information. If you're looking for more detailed information or indepth discussion, look at FeralByNight (Cat & Bear simulation tool) and/or Cat DPS Rotation

Post updated for patch 3.2.2


Agi - Agility
AP - Attack Power
ArPen - Armorpenetrationrating
BiS - Best in Slot
CP - Combo Point
iLotP - Improved Leader of the Pack
FB - Ferocious Bite
SR - Savage Roar
Str - Strength
TF - Tiger's Fury




1. Speccing your Cat


Maximum Single-Target DPS: > click <

This spec takes every talent, that increases single target DPS. You've got one point left, possibilities could be: 4/5 Furor, 1/2 iLotP or 1/3 Feral Instinct

Maximum AoE-DPS: > click <

This spec only has 5 different points. You've got 3/3 Feral Instinct here and 2/2 iLotP. You could aswell take the two points out of iLotP and together with the last left point skill 3/5 Feral Aggression.


Actually Feral Swiftness and Survival Instincts don't directly increase your damage. But they offer very significant survival tools. Additionaly, both allow you to DPS for a second longer here and there.




2. DPS Rotation


As there is no real rotation, we speak of a "priority list" for cat DPS. Try to follow the following instructions in the given order.

1. Keep up Savage Roar
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.


This priority list is quite hard to maintain. Cat DPS is one of the most complicated ones in PvE WoW. Try to remember these rules:

1. Remember: Savage Roar buffs everything; Mangle buffs bleeds and shred; Bleeds buff shred. That means, never shred without applying mangle and at least one bleeding.
2. It doesn't matter how many CP you use for SR. Just make sure it never drops!
3. Use Rip and FB only with 5 CP
4. It is very tricky to squeeze in FB's in your rotation. At first you should try to maximize SR, Mangle, Rip and Rake uptime (in this order). When you get more experienced, try to FB more. You need to guess how much time is needed for building up 5 CP's - this depends on your crit chance. Usually, a FB is worth dropping Rip for 4 Ticks approx (8 seconds). Remember that after using Rip, you need energy for building at least one more CP to refresh SR if necessary.
5. FB is most efficient when used at 35 energy. It gets worse when you spend more, thus making it least efficient when using with 65 energy.
6. A 5 CP FB is always more efficient than a shred, even when used at 65 energy.
7. When using the shred glyph: When rake and rip are about to expire and you could shred to extend the rip duration for 2 more seconds at the cost of letting rake drop for 1-2 seconds - do it.




3. Facts, Stats and Numbers

Assuming all important feral talents and cat form . Numbers in brackets include Blessing of Kings.


Strength
1 Str = 2.37864 AP (2.616504 AP)

Agility
1 Agi = 1.18932 AP (1.308252 AP)
1 Agi = 0.0129744% Crit (0.01427184%)

77.05 (70.07) Agi = 1% Crit

Stamina
1 Sta = 10.812 (11.8932) Health

Critical Strike Rating
1 CritRating = 0.022% Crit
45.91 CritRating = 1% Crit

4.8% of our white Crits will always be converted into white hits against bosses. We can't reduce our chance to normally hit with white attacks below 4.8%.
Our Critchance with Yellow Attacks is reduced by 4.8% against bosses. But we actually CAN convert all our hits into crits.

76% - White crit cap (+ 24% Glancing Blows = 100%)
79.8% - Ferocious Bite Crit Cap (+ 25% Crit from Talent - 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)
104.8% - Yellow Crit Cap (- 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)

You have to subtract any avoided attacks from these caps. For example: If 4% of your attacks are avoided due to not reaching the Hit- and/or Expertisecap, then your white crit cap would be 72%.


Haste Rating
1 HasteRating = 0.030% Haste
32.79 HasteRating = 1% Haste

Hit Rating
1 HitRating = 0.030% Hit
32.79 HitRating = 1% Hit

Hit Cap vs lvl 80 targets: 5% Hit = 163.95 HitRating
Hit Cap vs lvl 83 targets: 8% Hit = 262.32 HitRating

Expertise Rating
1 ExpertiseRating = 0.030% less Chance of getting parried or dodged
32.79 ExpertiseRating = 1% less Chance of getting parried or dodged
8.2 ExpertiseRating = 1 Expertise
1 Expertise = 0.25% less Chance of getting parried or dodged

Expertise Cap vs lvl 80 targets: 5% (Dodge) / 5% (Parry) = 20 Expertise = 163.9 Expertise Rating
Expertise Cap vs lvl 83 targets: 6.5% (Dodge) / 14% (Parry) = 26 / 56 Expertise = 213.13 / 459.1 Expertise Rating

Since you should always attack from behind, your target can't parry. Therefore you only need 26 expertise or 213.13 Expertise Rating.

But every serious Cat skills Primal Precision, which gives 10 Expertise or 81.97 Expertise Rating. So if you skill this talent, your cap will be:

Expertise Dodge-Cap vs lvl 83 targets and with Primal Precision: 16 Expertise = 131.16 Expertise Rating


Armorpenetration Rating
1 ArPenRating = 0.07145% ArmorPenetration
13.9957272 ArPenRating = 1% Armor Penetration
Hard Cap 1399.57272 ArP = 100% of the target's armor are ignored




So, what stats are important? Generally I hardly advice you to use RAWR or Toskk's DPSGearMethod. The value of every stat depends on the rest of your gear.


The Value of Hit / Expertise

A question very often asked is, whether we need to be hit or expertise capped. The answer is: No, not with the items available. Hit and expertise scale directly with your DPS. The better your gear gets, the higher the value of Hit/Expertise gets. When in blue gear, both contribute very little to your DPS. With Ulduar BiS, they are quite important, but still not the best stats. The same holds true for T9, although both are more important when you have really good T9 lvl Gear. It is assumed, but still not sure, that we need to be hit and expertise capped in T10 content. Also, there is no such 'magic threshold'. Both stats always have the same value (as long as below the hard cap), no matter if you have 0% hit, 3% hit or 5% hit.
BUT - for a beginner it could be quite confusing missing a lot. Our DPS priority is already hard enough even without our attacks being dodged. It could mess up the DPS of a beginner, if his hit and/or expertise is too low. If you consider yourself weak at maintain a stable cycle, then more hit/expertise could help to stabilize it.


Topic: Armor penetration rating

Armor is a stat with diminishing returns. Meaning: the more Armor you have, the worse it gets in terms of damage reduction percentage. The first 1000 armor are far more valuable, than the last 1000 armor. That is the reason, that ArPen scales better than linear. When you have only a little bit ArPen, you reduce your target's armor only a little bit - but we know that the last 1000 armor are not that important. But if you manage to gather more ArPen, you will reduce your target's armor more and more, which gets more and more valuable.
Short story: ArPen scales better than linear - the more you have, the better each point of it becomes.

At about 400 - 500 ArPen, ArPen becomes the best stat
The exact amount depends on your gear (especially the trinkets). Use RAWR or Toskk to find out, when exactly ArP overtakes Agility. Also remember, that the value of both is very similar at that low lvl of ArP. The difference is extremely small and only gets bigger, when you gather more ArP.
As soon as you can reach these numbers, regemming all Agility gems for ArP gems would improve your DPS.
Our goal is to come as close to the ArP Hard Cap as possible.

And now it's time for mentioning the two ArP trinkets currently ingame:

[Grim Toll]
[Mjolnir Runestone]

Wearing both trinkets is quite useless since they have a significant shared uptime and then there would be ArP wasted (assuming you've got some ArP on your gear). The goal is, to reach the ArP soft-cap. Soft Cap means: you have exactly 100% Armor Ignore when your trinket proccs.

ArP Soft-cap: 735 ArPen, if wearing [Mjolnir Runestone]
ArP Soft-cap: 788 ArPen, if wearing [Grim Toll]



For clarification, I will try to explain this. Let's say you don't have one of the two trinkets and x is the ArP on your gear (and with Hearty Rhino, the +40 ArP food buff):

x < 400 -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it
400 < x < 1400 -> ArPen is the best stat, gem for it
1400 < x -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it


Now finally Grim Toll drops off Gothik the Harvester and you are lucky enough to get it!

x < 400 -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it
400 < x < 788 -> ArPen is the best stat, gem for it
788 < x -> Agility is the best stat, gem for it


Just replace your soft-cap with 735, when wearing Mjolnir Runestone instead of Grim Toll.


With high level gear from the T9 content it could be better not to wear neither Grim Toll nor Runestone but instead aquiring a very high amount of passive ArP.



4. Gear


Again, please use RAWR or Toskk. Although neither of both are 100% accurate, it's probably the best way to determine gear upgrades for you.

Some questions often asked:

Which idol should I wear?
The best Cat Idol is [Idol of Mutilation]. After that, it depends.
If you have to mangle yourself, [Idol of the Corruptor] is BiS for you. If not, then it depends on your ArP. If you are below approx 250 ArP, [Idol of Worship] would be your choice, above that the [Idol of the Ravenous Beast] becomes better. But actually the Rip and Shred idol both grant very similar DPS - the difference is really low.

Which trinkets should I wear?
The [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] is in most gear setups one of the best trinkets. This will not be a useless investment, as it is an extremely good tanking trinket aswell.
In the second slot you should wear one of the two ArP trinkets mentioned above ([Grim Toll] or [Mjolnir Runestone])

How good are our set bonuses?
The 2T7 bonus is very good. Although there are better items in every slot, the bonus outweighs this by far.
The 4T7 bonus is very bad.
The 2T8 bonus is extremely good. You really need to have this.
The 4T8 bonus is about as good as 2T7.
The 2T9 bonus is very good.
The 4T9 bonus is mediocre.

Try to collect 2 T7 items first. Head and shoulder would be the best choice.
If you're entering Ulduar, your first aim should be to get 2T7 + 2T8, which is VERY good.
If you can choose between 2T7 + 2T8 and 4T8, choose 4T8. You should notice a very small DPS increased, based on the higher iLvl of T8 (the 4T8 bonus is actually of the same value as 2T7).
Similar holds true if you enter Coliseum. 2T8 + 2T9 will be an upgrade to 4T8. And although the 4T9 bonus is worse than the 4T8 one, the higher item level of two more T9 items outweighs this.
But because the 4T9 itself isn't that good, it's probably better to wear 2T9 and some offsetpieces instead of 4T9.


Absolute BiS set:

Horde

Slot	Item
Head	[Runetotem's Headguard of Triumph]
Neck	[Collar of Unending Torment]
Shoulders	[Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Triumph]
Back	Sylvanas' Cunning
Chest	[Vest of Shifting Shadows]
Wrist	[Bracers of Swift Death]
Hands	[Sunreaver Assassin's Gloves]
Waist	[Belt of the Pitiless Killer]
Legs	[Legguards of Cunning Deception]
Feet	[Icewalker Treads]
Ring 1	[Band of Callous Aggression]
Ring 2	[Dexterous Brightstone Ring]
Trinket 1	[Death's Choice]
Trinket 2	[Comet's Trail]
Weapon	[Twin's Pact]
Relic	[Idol of Mutilation]

Alliance

Slot	Item
Head	[Malfurion's Headguard of Triumph]
Neck	[Collar of Ceaseless Torment]
Shoulders	[Malfurion's Shoulderpads of Triumph]
Back	Vereesa's Dexterity
Chest	[Armor of Shifting Shadows]
Wrist	[Bracers of Swift Death]
Hands	[Gloves of the Silver Assassin]
Waist	[Belt of the Merciless Killer]
Legs	[Legguards of Cunning Deception]
Feet	[Treads of the Icewalker]
Ring 1	[Ring of Callous Aggression]
Ring 2	[Dexterous Brightstone Ring]
Trinket 1	[Death's Verdict]
Trinket 2	[Comet's Trail]
Weapon	[Lupine Longstaff]
Relic	[Idol of Mutilation]

Eat 40 ArP Food. Gems used: 18x [Fractured Scarlet Ruby], 1x [Enchanted Tear] (Head),
Enchants as usual. Weapon Enchant Berserking.


5. Professions, Glyphs, Enchants, Gems, Buffs


Professions


Alchemy: +80 Attack power through mixology, when using Flask of endless rage
Blacksmithing: 2 more sockets. Assuming epic ArPen gems, the bonus is 40 ArP.
Enchanting: 2x +40 AP ring enchant. Bonus: +80 Attack Power
Engineering: On use 340 Haste Rating for 12 seconds, 1 min CD. Averages out to 68 Haste Rating. Otherwise you would enchant +20 Agi. Total Bonus: +68 Haste Rating, -20 Agi
Herbalism: 3600 self-heal for 5 seconds, 3 min CD
Inscription: +80 Attack power because of the enhanced shoulder enchant
Jewelcrafting: 3x +34 ArPen gems instead of +20 ArPen. 3*14 = 42 ArP.
Leatherworking: + 80 Attack power because of the enhanced wrist enchant
Mining: + 60 Stamina
Skinning: +40 Crit Rating
Tailoring: Swordguard Embroidery grants 400 AP for 15 seconds, roughly once a minute. This averages out to approx 100 AP. You miss out the +22 Agi for this. Total Bonus: +100 AP, -22 Agi.


Glyphs

Major Glyphs:
1. [Glyph of Savage Roar]
2. [Glyph of Rip]
3. [Glyph of Shred]

Alternatives
4. [Glyph of Mangle]
5. [Glyph of Berserk]

Minor Glyphs:
1. [Glyph of Dash]
2. [Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth]
3. [Glyph of Challenging Roar]


Enchants

Head - [Arcanum of Torment]
Shoulder - Master's Inscription of the Axe > [Greater Inscription of the Axe]
Back - Swordguard Embroidery > +22 Agi
Chest - +10 Stats
Wrist - Fur Lining - Attack Power > Greater Assault
Hands - Hyperspeed Accelerators > +20 Agi
Legs - [Icescale Leg Armor] or Nerubian Leg Reinforcements
Feet - Icewalker
Finger - +40 AP
Weapon - Berserking > Mongoose > Massacre > Executioner




Gems

There is only one Meta, you always want to have this one activated: [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond]
The [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] is coming close, but it require 2 Blue gems and this requirement is worse than one yellow + one blue.

Red socket: [Fractured Cardinal Ruby], if you have less than 400 or more than your soft-cap of ArPen, then [Delicate Cardinal Ruby]
Blue socket: [Puissant Dreadstone], if you have less than 400 or more than your soft-cap of ArPen, then [Shifting Dreadstone]
Yellow socket: [Deadly Ametrine]

The Red gems are far superior than the blue ones and better than the yellow ones aswell. Therefore the best you can do is:
Fill every socket with red gems except of one. There you put [Nightmare Tear]. Of course you choose an item with a good Socket bonus, you would otherwise miss if you use the normal red gem instead.



Buffs


You should use a [Flask of Endless Rage] and [Hearty Rhino]. If you are below than 400 ArPen or above your soft-cap for ArPen, then [Blackened Dragonfin] would be your choice.

It's again hard to tell you, how important each buff is as this depends on your gear. But the order should be roughly the same.

+20% Physical Haste -> Enhancement Shaman (imp. Windfury Totem) or Frost-DK (imp. Icy Talons)
+10% AP -> Blood-DK (Abomination's Might), MM-Hunter (Trueshot Aura) or Enhancement Shaman (Unleashed Rage)
+Agi / Str -> DK (Horn of winter provides 155 each) or Enhancement Shaman (imp. Strength of Earth Totem provides 178 each!)
-20% target armor -> Debuff applied by Prot-Warrior (Sunder armor) or every rogue (Expose Armor, Finishing move)
+AP -> Warriors (+548 AP when not skilled, +685 when skilled in Commanding Presence) or Paladins (+550 AP when not skilled, +687 when skilled in imp. Blessing of Might)
+4% physical damage -> Debuff applied by Combat Rogues (Savage Combat) or Arms Warrior (Blood Frenzy)
+10% Stats -> Paladins (Blessing of Kings)
+3% Dmg -> BM Hunter (Ferocious Inspiration, their pet buffs this) or Retribution Paladin (Sanctified Retribution)
Traumabot -> Another Feraldruid or Arms warrior applying Mangle/Trauma for you so you can skip it from your DPS Cycle
+3% Crit -> Debuff applied Elemental Shaman (Totem of Wrath affects all targets within 40 yards of the totem), Retribution Paladin (Heart of the Crusader, the Paladin has to judge a single target) or Assassination Rogues (Master Poisoner affects all target that the rogue has poisoned; he can spread this with Fan of Knives)
+ Stats -> Every Druid (Yes, this includes yourself!) through imp. Mark of the Wild
-5% target armor -> Feral and Moonkin Druids (Fearie Fire and Feral Fearie Fire, you can apply this yourself without losing DPS), Hunter (if they have a wrasp as pet) and warlocks (Curse of Weakness would mean a DPS loss for them)
+3% Haste -> Balance Druid (imp. Moonkin Form) or Retribution (Swift Retribution)


Topic: Hysteria

Cats are the best target for Hysteria:

Arms Warrior - Does not stack with Wrecking Crew. Besides, they don't have strong Cooldowns to blow while Hysteria is up.
Death Knights - A significant portion of their damage is elemental and not physical. Dancing Rune Weapon scales only half with Hysteria, summon Gargoyle doesn't at all
Enhancer Shamans - A good portion of their damage is elemental. Feral spirit, their Cooldown, is not affected by Hysteria
Fury Warrior - Although all of their damage is physical, they cannot blow their big Cooldown Death Wish with Hysteria, because it doesn't stack.
Hunter - A good portion of their damage is elemental and their pet wouldn't benefit from Hysteria.
Retribution Paladins - A very big portion of their damage is elemental.
Rogues - A good portion of their damage is elemental.

Cats benefit by far the most from Hysteria. As long as you are quite close to the top DPS in your raid, try to convince your Blood-DK or your raidleader, that you should get Hysteria!


Movie Guide

This movie guide, created by Coldbear, is a good summary of most aspects for cats. It's quite fast and a little hard to follow, but otherwise has a high quality.
Movie Guide



Changelog

Patch 3.2.2:
- Value of ArP has been nerfed by about 12%. Adjusted Soft Cap, Hard Cap and Instructions accordingly

From Patch 3.1.3 to 3.2:

- Profession bonuses increased
- Note about ArP added: Possibility of ignoring ArP Trinkets and go for passive ArP
- T9 bonuses added
- New idol as BiS idol added

September 1st:

- Updated BiS List

 

nightcrowler

Pretty good guide. Only 2 very small things.
In the gem section it's better to remember that usually you don't need other gems than red gems and that you can easly use all red gems and one +6 stats for the meta activation.
For buff importance I think that BoK is the more important one, I'm pretty sure 10% all stats will give you more than 20% haste.

 

Murna

Edited the gem section - I just forgot this one ^^
Concerning BoK - I was trusting RAWR here. BoK is rated 250 points, 20% haste with 535 for my gear.

It's basically 160 Agility + 33 Strength vs 20% haste. The point is, I've got 336 Haste Rating which I assume is quite a lot. My attack speed goes from 0.857 to 0.714. That is a 16.69% increase in melee attack speed. Let's assume autohit contributes for 27% of my total damage, than it would be a 4,5% DPS increase.
And it's also a 16.69% increase in OoC proccs.

Rawr says, 160 Agi + 33 Str gives approx 270 DPS.
5% of say 6500 DPS is already 325 DPS.

I am very interested in your calculation, nightcrowler, as I tend to be sceptical on numbers provided by RAWR

 

Thrawn

Great guide, I wish it were available three weeks ago, when I switched (back) to my feral for raiding. Allthough reading most of the Feral by Night and Cat-DPS Rotation threads i completely missed the gemming option using a enchanted tear. On the topic of (de)buffs: it would be nice if sunder/expose armor could be included in your list so that beginners know they should tell the rogues to keep it up if no warrior is present. I am not sure if you forgot "minor" buffs like heart of the crusader, swift retribution,... or if they are just not worth mentioning ;-) And a last question concerning weapon enchants: If I remember correctly it is stated in the Feral by Night thread, that mongoose is the better dps enchant. Is this no longer valid, or only true for some gear sets?

 

nightcrowler

@Murna. It could be I'm wrong It seemed strange for me that 20% haste was better than 10% all stats but it could be, when I have some real calculation I'll let you know. I'll rerun simulations without particular buffs.

 

Dellas

Do I get it right that gemming for agi after reaching 200-300 Arp (without Trinketprocc) is better than stacking ArP until hitting the Soft-cap?

 

Murna

No. Let's say x is your ArPen.

x < 200 -> Agi is best stat, gem Agi
200 < x < Soft-cap -> ArP is best stat, gem ArP
Soft-cap < x -> Agi is best stat, gem Agi.



I thought it would be clear, but obviously I still didn't express myself clearly. I will edit this part.
Also I will edit the buff section - I'm not so satisfied with it.

 

kalbear

Really impressive and well-set guide. Nice job.

The only addition I'd like to see is a list of pre-raiding gear. It's not essential, but it would be very good. I wrote one at the start of WotLK, but it's likely slightly out of date - you can find that here. Thanks!

 

Cynrh

I think it would be worthwhile to discuss UI and how the stock Blizzard UI hampers feral DPS - your eyes have to cross way too much screen distance to take in the necessary information regarding time left on debuffs and buffs, number of combo points, positioning, and environmental awareness aka 'stay out of the fire'. Studies show that during eye movement you don't actually 'see' your surroundings; your brain is substituting in previously seen information. Moving all of the information you need to a central location (ala BadKitty and other debuff monitors) allows you to be far more situationally aware, and act on information quicker.

 

brutish

Along these lines Cynrh I found one of the most helpful addons (along with the centralized debuff/buff monitor you mention) is Hear Kitty for auditory feedback on CP generation. I find myself using my eyes to take in so much information that it's a relief to be able to use another sensory faculty to monitor something else. Also, I'm a very auditory person so it fits right in with my style.

 

killets

For your single target cat dps, theoretically speaking, you don't need Survival Instincts either, as you're already omitted anything related to tanking.

It's a nice talent though, but since you're min/max'ing here, you might as well let it be optional. You could put that extra point + the survival instincts point into Feral Instinct for some additional AoE damage, or you could put both points into nurturing instincts to make healing incidental damage on your cat easier.

Those are all options, especially to newer players who are not used to survival instincts, as the reactionary "oh-sh**" impulse to hit survival instincts mostly applies to new players who tanked a lot.

 

Supahflii

I thought Dream Binder was better than Dark Edge overall? Also, say you have Savage Roar up and Rip ticking, but Mangle and Rake are about to fall off. You only have energy for one of them. Rake would get priority right, or would Mangle while waiting for energy to Rake be more efficient?

 

Cliffjumper

According to the Cat DPS Rotation thread, Rake tops the list. As a personal preference, I usually prioritize Mangle, but I am going to start experimenting with prioritizing Rake over Mangle.

 

Darwexn

perhaps in terms of personal dps rake is better, however, if you are putting up the bleed debuff for your raid, 3 seconds of say another feral druid, two rogues, two warriors etc not getting bonus bleed damage seems an extremely poor trade.

 

Kaetarand

Lack of understanding of forum rules.

 

Murna

I actually don't understand how one can possibly misunderstand what I said. But I will make my greatest effort to explain it once again.

This line should say it quite clearly. As soon as you can reach approx 200 ArP, ArP becomes the best stat!

I even explained it even more:


I understand, that you are worried about your crit chance. But there are other theorycrafting out there more clever than you or me proving that ArP or Agi is always better than crit or anything else. Now matter how much you are concerned, you should trust these information if you want to optimize your dps

 

Kaetarand

OK thank you for the response, that does clarify things a bit more for me.

 

Boevis

I would Reverse those. Rake is definitely not powerful enough to be a required 100% uptime, Mangle is considering it's synergy with other classes.

Taking the scenario of both Rake and Mangle expiring at the same time, and only having 35 energy. First, I will tell you that you're doing it wrong, in order to be at this point, you must have used an ability other than Mangle or Rake 3.5 seconds ago and you should have seen that you'd need to refresh soon and just saved your energy.
Second, consider the damage differences. If you Rake First, you will be losing the benefit of Mangle (30%) on the initial hit and 1 tic of Rake, as well as 1.5 tics of Rip. If you Mangle first, you lose 3.5 seconds of Rake uptime, or 7/6 of a Rake tic.

Mangle Damage lost from Rake First: .3*((.01AP+190)*crit+(.18AP+1161)/3)*1.2*1.1 + .3*(.3AP+3204)/6*1.1*1.5*crit + Raid Damage Lost
Rake Uptime Lost from Mangle First: 7/6*(.18AP+1161)/3*1.2*1.1*1.3

Plugging in 10k AP and 55% crit.
Rake First Loses 1431.1 of your own damage, + X from Raid (depends on how many warriors and rogues)
Mangle First Loses 1976 damage

Mangle needs to provide 544.8 damage to the raid in 3.5 (155.67 DPS) seconds for Mangle First to be more worth it. If you have another feral druid, and you're the one mangling, Mangle Wins. Looking at a random report, Rupture gains ~125 DPS from Mangle and Deep Wounds ~200 DPS, so it's pretty easy in a standard raid to make up the difference.

Of course, if you only care about your personal DPS, you should Rake first. But then you're Fat.

 

Supahflii

Yeah, my question was pretty much pertaining to personal DPS.

Dark Edge > Dream Binder? I was under the assumption (with Rawr) that Dream Binder was BiS.

 

Murna

Well, of course Dream Binder is better than the Dark Edge.
But in the complete BiS gear, you are already at the ArP Soft-Cap. So the 85 ArP Rating of the Dream Binder lose versus the 24AP + 64 Hit of the Dark Edge.

Besides - this BiS list was created by nightcrowler and his FBN simulator.

 

Gestalt

Excellent guide btw Murna.
I was really wondering what the optimal DPS cycle/priority list would be when using Berserk for 2 situations. (or if it even changes at all from the standard priority list) First being XT Hardmode on the Heart, secondly during any other boss fight such as Vesax where you are using it multiple times.

Would it be best to have a full 5cp savage roar up before popping berserk or does it matter? Before using berserk, is it best to have full energy? Should you be using ferocious bite during the berserk cycle? How about rip, rake, or I have read of just straight shred burn ignoring all else?

 

Boevis

I prefer refreshing Savage Roar during the Berserk, else excess combo points feel wasted, so having 5cp up just before that seems stupid.

This being the guide for dummies ... Berserk as soon as it's off cooldown and so is TF. The differences on exactly when is going to come down to a matter of seconds (much like when to FB) Having said that, I think that "If you get to use more than 1 Berserk in a battle, once it's off cooldown and so is TF, after a FB, use TF and Berserk" is a pretty good bylaw on Feral Cycles. SR and Rip will both need refreshing soon, so your chances of wasting CP's is practically nil.

Heart Phases/Storm Power (or some other time period where you need to burst, like the Animus) aside, never Berserk during a Bloodlust

 

Cliffjumper

As a personal preference, I like to put up that Roar prior to heart phase/Animus. Especially for the heart, where your Roar will be up for the entire duration that the heart is out, I pop Berserk and put up a 5CP rip on the heart (usually Mangle Rake Shred and if necessary, another Shred) as soon as I can, and then spam 5CP FBs for the rest of the phase while keeping debuffs up. Ferals and rogues should generally top heart meters, due to the power of Berserk/Adrenaline Rush. After I did a few attempts, I got this rotation down pretty well and it hasn't failed me at all. Animus I don't have quite as many attempts in on, but we usually hold Bloodlust for a bit when he pops, and I usually Berserk pretty soon after he pops in order to help get him into the low health portion so our low-health-wrecker DPS classes can burn him hard. I tend not to FB Animus at a fast rate due to the slightly longer time he is out.

Long story short, I prefer starting both those phases out with 5CP Roars from the main bosses to make getting and holding my debuffs up at the start of the fight a little easier.

 

nightcrowler

@Murna:

Slot	Item
Back	Drape of Faceless General
Chest	Conqueror's Nightsong Rainments
Feet	Footpads of Silence(icewalker enchant)
Ring 1	Brann’s Signet Ring
Head	Conqueror's Nightsong Headguard
Legs	Leggards of Cunning Deception
Hands	Conqueror's Nightsong Handgrips
Neck	Pendulum of Infinity
Shoulders	Conqueror's Nightsong Shoulderpads
Trinket 1	Blood of the Old god
Trinket 2	Mjolnir Runestone
Weapon	Dreambinder
Waist	Soul-Devouring Cinch
Ring 2	Band of Lights
Wrist	Solar Bindings

The BiS gear in my main post is not yet updated, there wasn't Dreambinder when I made it.

 

bloodcurdler

As posted many times, thank you very much for this thread Murna. A question/request i have, is it possible to get separate BiS list for 10man Hard and 25 regular Ulduar? I have had conversations with other druids at different raiding stages and we cant agree on what one should be collecting. I have seen these lists for mage and ret pally classes but only the one posted here for druids