Go for max uptime. Don't worry about the shreds, once you get the uptime fixed (savage roar > mangle > rip > rake), with your crit rate you will discover times when you have enough energy and are not at risk of losing anything. Use those to shred. And use any clearcasting proc to shred. And that's it, you win. If you don't get 2000 more dps or so on beasts out of that, then you might have some sort of severe lag issue; check your ping. There are some good threads here on EJ dealing with how to reduce your ping and optimize your setup if that turns out to be the case.

Hey, my druid's name is Joog and I'm on Mannoroth. I was wondering if somebody knowledgeable about feral DPS could throw me a rough estimate as to the DPS I should be doing with my stats. Currently on the boss dummy I'm doing 3.5k DPS, but it feels extremely low to me.
The World of Warcraft Armory

damage 629-654
speed .92
power 7401
hit 267
crit 49.67
exp 15

With the post I'm just trying to gauge if with my stats my DPS is in the right ballpark, I'll troubleshoot rotation issues later.

Ok, forgive me for being obtuse, but let me get this straight. Since the armor penetration nerf, is it true that unless you can get to 1,000 (without trinkets) you should be gemming for agility? I don't have a trinket and my armor penetration is in the ~750 range. I guess I've just been reading some conflicting messages and I want to ensure I'm on the right page.

Thanks!

~750 ArP is the soft cap for ArP if you have either trinkets since they will bring you to hard cap when procced.

However they very 1st post in the this thread has an excellent ArP sub-section. I'd suggest you read it.

Might be a stupid question and no offence meant but did you drop 4 t8 recently?
On a side note: Why do you skill improved Leader of the Pack? I would put those points into Feral Aggression.

Hammartime, I don't know I can't find anything wrong with how you play judging from the logs. It's easy to say that your rip and rake uptime was bad, but I can't see how you could have done much better when you have to help killing snobolds and portals. If someone has a log where they do in fact help on adds and still get high uptime I sure would like to see it.

Points in FA is indeed nice in ToC10/25... there are quite many opportunities to bite on each boss; worms before they burrow, Icehowl when he crashes into walls, portals on jaraxxus (at least in 25man), empowered buff during twins and Anub before he burrows.

Since all the fights in ToC10/25 are like this, with low bleed uptime, target switching and opportunities to FB, I believe one can make a pretty strong case for gemming ArP even if you are without a proc trinket. So if you have the gold to burn I'd suggest you experiment with ArP gemming and the trinket from toc5.

Well, personally I've found iLotP more valueable than Feral Agression. Since they nerfed Rend and Tear a while ago, FB are 100% crit anymore and with the loss of 4t8, the dps rotation is tighter, so I find myself FB so much less. On the flipside, iLotP has been very handy for helping smooth out some of the constant damage that many fights have like, XT tantrums, Council HM, Hodir, Mimiron p2, Vexax HM p2, Yogg brain room tentacles reflective damage, Bile/Toxin from worms in Beasts, Twins, Anub p3. I'm sure Icecrown will have no shortage of constant aoe raid damage either and I can't tell you how many times I've barely lived that I'm sure iLotP help make the difference, not only for myself but for basically all the melee. I'm sure you've heard the saying, no matter how high your DPS may be, dead DPS is no DPS.

Shimida, regarding many of those times you mentioned FBing in TotC (excluding portals/volcanos on Jaraxxus, bite is better there and Anub burrowing), just the same you can apply a Rip and tack on plenty of extra damage.

As an anecdotal point, I've always been a pretty hardcore theorycrafter, spent 10k getting blacksmithing so I could have the two extra sockets, ran every simulator religiously, etc., etc. At the arpen nerf, I said screw it, let's see what happens if I regem all agi and drop my T8 bonus for some more 245s and a h258, which the simulators advised me not to do.

End result - dps went up about 200, my rotation feels way easier to maintain, uptimes are improved, and I spend a lot less time fretting about whether to use ferocious bite or not, because the number of times it's appropriate are significantly reduced.

For me it feels like the key religious principle that must not be abandoned is that Blizz Wants Us To Play DDR. The sacrament is that Savage Roar, Mangle, Rip, Rake must be maintained, and then Shred away (but thou shalt also Shred on every Clearcasting proc unless Mangle is down). If you accept that as the fundamental tenet of cat dps, then it naturally follows that all your gear choices, benefits, gemming, etc., revolve around optimizing that to the best of your ability. Agi vs. Arpen choice is more about your personal preference and what gear has dropped for you than it is a foundational decider of what is good or not. The difference pretty much appears to vanish in the fights in front of us.

I'm doing 1k less than what RAWR thinks I should be... I don't understand it though, I have 90% uptime on debuffs and am shredding for CP..

Rawr assumes 100% bleed uptimes, no wasted CP (except when critting at 4CP), guaranteed 3 shreds for every rip, 100% buff/debuff uptime by fellow raiders, and otherwise non-realistic play. Suffice it to say that these things are simply not achieveable realistically. Last I heard, Astrylian was thinking about implementing a new cat model, but there's no estimate about when that will be ready.

If you want numbers that look like your numbers, use a tool that generates numbers like your numbers. I bet SimulationCraft would be fairly realistic, and you can customize the damage cycle for your playstyle. It's not as easy to use as Rawr, though (although the new UI is an improvement!)

Yeah, I've seen some enormous discrepancies between what Rawr says I should be doing, and what I actually do. With my current gear and self-buffs rawr puts me at 4200 DPS vs a Heroic Target Dummy. I've tried to achieve this number, using both FeralbyNight as my guide and just dpsing based on personal experience. Using FbN I achieved an average of 3300 DPS and using, just a standard rotation I've gotten around 3500-3600. This is quite far off from the optimal DPS, it was mentioned earlier that within 85% of the optimal should be alright, so it seems that it is accepted that Rawr does overestimate, if this is true, by how much. I do not fall even within the 85% range. Clearly I'm not perfect and neither is my rotation, but I feel like I have a fairly clean rotation which brings me to my real question.

How close to Rawr's optimal dps should I be getting?

P.S. Does anyone have data points to add to this, e.g. real dps vs rawr optimal? Perhaps we could get a better idea of how much Rawr overestimates.

EDIT: I've tried simulation craft, but it gives me absurdly low numbers (3300), I think this is most likely due to the fact that I still use 4pt6, although when I tried it with my girlfriends character it gave me much more realistic number.