The best reference if you're willing to read and think is to start page 17, post 420 here, and read all posts through the end of the thread. Be aware that one hotfix has adjusted arpen since page 17, but you won't understand later posts if you don't start there.

If reading and thinking aren't your favorite things, the short answer is: armor debuffs don't work on the same scale as arpen, so no you don't have to figure them in to your arpen from gear. A boss with no debuffs mitigates roughly 20% of your melee damage when your paperdoll penetration is 100%. A boss with sunder, FF, and shattering throw all up at once mitigates none of your melee damage when your paperdoll penetration is 100%.

Sal, when Rawr says DPE, it actually means Damage Per Execute and not damage per energy.

I divided the damage per execute by the energy required to execute.

Looking at what's on the PTR, is there anything that leads anyone to believe that we'll change from favoring ArPen over Agi (to cap)? I'm thinking that it'll just be easier to reach the cap with more ArPen on gear, leaving us to be able to gem for Agi more.

If you're going to be lasting longer than 3 swipes on the trash, usually the best thing to do is rake/mangle, SR, swipe->TF->swipe (etc). You want SR up on trash; it makes a huge difference. The only reason you'd not want to is if the trash will die within 4.5-7.5 seconds.

If you basically want to own the meters, you can do the above except throw in berserk after the TF. Then swipe until everything is on you.

As to the other questions: you cannot use tiger's fury with berserk. You can use it right before berserk though.

A simple rotation is savage roar to 2 - 3 CP, rip at 5 CP. With shred, mangle and rakes getting your CPs. That's not going to be the best ever, but it will work okay.

Thanks, I'll deffinetly give this a try. While i (and probably all of us) do enjoy topping the meter, i'd rather play my class the right way . This sounds like a perfect combination of both.

I'd also be interested in what type of rotation you use one "small" pulls that don't warrent AOE, but also don't let us utilize a full rotation. Such as 3 80-120k mobs. Would it be best to use to first mob to get up a good SR (3+ CPs) and then work on getting FB's on the other 2?

EDIT:: Apparently i caught you mid-edit. Thanks for the info on TF and on a "simple" rotation. So based on what you're saying i would rotate something like: Mangle -> Rake -> SR -> Rake\shred to 5 CP -> Rip -> build 2-3 CP -> SR -> build 5 CP to rip again.

That seems fairly manageable as i work on timing\watching my debuffs, and taking FB out of the rotation entires (except during beserk) should help me avoid wasted energy and clipping my debuffs\downtime. Thanks.

Ok Hatesfury, I try to answer all of your questions.

Well, this doesn't change your DPS much, but it's not the optimal beginning either. The priority list I posted in the guide says

That means SR is more important than Rake.
Your start should nearly always look like "Mangle -> SR -> Rake".
Even if another feral or a warrior applies Mangle/Trauma I would suggest Mangle -> SR -> Rake and NOT Rake -> SR -> Shred, because the damage of your rake is calculated when you "cast" it. If you don't have SR active, your rake will do 33% less dmg for the whole 9 second duration.

If you have SR already active and start off on a new target, then the opener would look like (mangle, if no other feral/arms-warrior) -> rake -> follow the priority list.


The problem with a "general" rotation is, that we can't predict how fast you are building up combo points.
If the whole Cat DPS Cycle is too complex for you, try to follow only the first 6-7 points I mentioned.
This would mean, don't try to squeeze FB in.

You can do fairly good DPS if you just do 5CP SR / 5CP rip always.
I always suggest to beginners, that you shouldn't spend your energy as soon as you have enough for an attack. Try to pool your energy, if you have the time.
If mangle and rake are both up and you get to ~45 energy, you don't need to shred immediately (except rip is about to expire and you could lengthen the duration with shred). You will not lose any DPS if you wait with your shred for 3-4 seconds. This way you have ~85 energy and you can react to buffs/debuffs expiring. Sometimes it's quite hard to pay attention to our 2 dots, the debuff AND SR at the same time. If you pool your energy and try to play on a high energy level in general, you always have some kind of "backup energy" to refresh anything when you didn't notice that it's nearly expiring.

Ok now, what to do on multiple adds that cannot be AoE'd? For example Freya trash, where there are some sheeps that mustn't be opened?
Of course you still have to make sure mangle is active. God bless you, if your raid provides you with an arms warrior. Then immediately SR on the first add and just follow the priority list, with just some tweaks.
It all depends on how long the mob is about to live. Will it live for 9 more seconds? Then make sure rake is active. Rip is generally not very effective on most trash, since this would require the mob to live for 16 more seconds. But still remember, that ~5 Rip ticks are still better than FB. On the first add, I often don't use rip, but build up my 5 CP and do a 5 CP SR so that I can use Rip and even FB afterwards on the second add.
If an add is about to die and you have 4-5 CP's on it, SR might be more effective than FB because then you can do more damage on the NEXT add (because you don't have to worry about SR here).



@Caniki: I don't think anything will change for us. Our priority list won't be affected and the nerfs to our attacks are just flat amounts. Since the ArP cap isn't changed either, we don't have to tweak any numbers. Of course you are right, that we probably will use more Agi gems, because reaching our ArP Soft-cap might be easier with the new gear.

Why exactly did you quote my post? These things will bring you infractions on these forums...

Well 7% is already quite a lot since our cap is 8%.

It seems to me that you didn't understand how SR works. SR increases ALL your damage done by 30% (without glyph). No matter how much of our dmg comes from autoattack, dots or mangle/shred - SR is always the most important.


Yes, cat DPS Cycle is not about hammering on our keys to not lose "casting" time. While casters try to avoid even losing fragments of seconds casting, cat dps works differently. To understand this, you have to look at our resources

Caster have two ressources: Mana and time. They have to optimize DPM and DPS both. If mana is a non-issue, then DPS is all that counts. Because time is the second ressource, they have to use the time they have as effectively as possible.
Cats have two other ressources: Energyregeneration and our finishers also need CP. Since our energy regeneration doesn't change and we can't do anything when out of energy, it doesnt matter WHEN we do direct attacks like mangle/shred as long as we always regenerate. That means as long as we never reach 100 energy, we actively use our ressource.
Cat DPS is about planning ahead. It's about estimating how long we need to get 5 CP and checking how our timers will look like when 5 CP's are reached. And sometimes we have to make extremely fast decisions. This mostly applies to FB usage - using FB a second later because we don't react fast enough could even lead to DPS loss.

Well, just use elementary math and you will see that you are not completely correct. We gain 1 energy every 0.1 seconds. Your opener should look like this:
At the start you have 100 energy. You use Mangle (34 energy) and have 1second GCD. That means you have 76 energy before using SR (25 energy), triggering another second GCD. You have 61 energy before rake (35 energy), after the GCD you have 36 energy. Just wait for 0.6 seconds so you have 42 energy and you can use shred. Since TF is not on GCD, you could immediately use TF and have 60 energy. But your shred triggered GCD, so you can't do anything before 70 energy. Now you have 2-4 CP. You could pool your energy now without losing DPS. But on the other hand you KNOW that when reaching 100 energy, SR/Rake/Mangle still don't need to be refreshed. (You would reach 100 energy 6.6 seconds after your first mangle). Additionaly your aim is to get Rip up as fast as possible Therefore you can shred now, dropping to 28 energy, after the GCD you have 38 energy. You have 3-5 CP now. Mangle is up for another 7.4 seconds, rake for 6.4 seconds.
Now, if you have 5 CP already you can rip now (or if rip is bad, because your enemy won't live long enough, just push in a high SR for the next target, alternatively use FB). Now you can wait for 6.4 seconds and do nothing. When rake expires, you will have around 70 energy. After you refresh rake, mangle will expire and you still will have enough energy to refresh mangle as well. If you wouldn't have waited, you wouldn't have enough energy leading to mangle or rake downtime.

This is what I mean with waiting and pooling. Just make sure to maximize rip, rake, mangle and SR uptime, while not clipping Rip and rake. Delaying a shred or mangle will never lead to DPS loss, as long as you stay under 100 energy.

The "problems" or better to call them "challenges" emerge, when you have clearcasting proccs. Your clearcasts should be used AS FAST AS POSSIBLE (because another procc could overwrite the first one) and in most (but not every) cases with shred. Clearcasts are the reason that you should avoid pooling your energy higher than 80-85 (remeber the 1second GCD!).
In my last Ignis fight I had 4 Clearcast Proccs in the row, the first one at 67 energy. 4 GCD's = 40 energy, this would have meant I lose energyregeneration. My solution was to refresh SR early, since clearcast doesn't affect SR.


Concerning your swipe problem: Personally I play with enemy tabs (display these by pressing v) on the battlefield. The one I target is highlighted. There is not much help I could provide you other than "try to position yourself so all your enemys are in a cone in front of you". This of course means alot of moving around, especially strafing (moving sidewards instead of turning and then moving forwards).

It's not. Calculations, simulations and theory crafting have already been made. Whether you prefer to follow your assumptions or to follow hard facts provided by RAWR, FBN or other is up to you.

Which crit requirements are you talking about?

Yes, after about 60% crit, the value of crit VERY slightly drops, because the chance of a wasted CP increases higher than before. But a CP is not that much damage and you still do considerable more damage when critting.

Every buff and personal stats you have are calculated on application. Meaning, if you have a trinket that gives 1000 AP on use, your whole rip will be stronger.

Mangle is a debuff and on every rip tick the game checks, if mangle is active.