Just a question for you raider ferals out there. All of my guild's time spent in T4 content, I was tanking, so naturally I was looking more for bear gear to help w/ progression. As we've moved into T5, I find myself in a dps slot more often than not, and as such, want to maximize the pewpew. I have recently come back from a hiatus and don't have any much gear beyond T4

Currently we are clearing SSC and TK w/ the exception of Vashj and Kael, which I expect to be downed in a couple weeks. I am running just under 800 dps avg. on those raids, sometimes OT, but mostly kitty. I would very much appreciate some tips/tricks/critiques from some raider cats. My T4 set is currently enchanted/gemmed for tanking, as I still do alot of tanking in instances/ZA/KZ etc.

Nyka is the name on the armory, Silver Hand, I'll try to stay in kitty gear when logging out. Thanx in advance.

I doubt I will be much help to you, but this is the only thread related to my current dilemma. I'm still a bit of a noob to all of this. I have a level 68 Tauren Druid, and I am spec'd feral. My dilemma is I am pretty much the worst tank I've ever seen. I spent little to no time in bear form while leveling and as such am much better doing melee dps in cat form. The guild I am in is going to be starting Kara soon, either this weekend or next. I'm not entirely sure what to focus on as far as my stats, and I don't want to get my gear enchanted too soon as it would be a waste of mats/gold if I replace the gear shortly after getting the enchant. I do however try to fill my sockets but I don't know if I'm socketing the gems that are the best for me. Any and all help from my fellow druids would be appreciated, even if it comes from the Alliance, lol. Stonedbull on Mug'thol. Thanks ahead of time to anyone willing to give me some advice.

Hallo cat druids :D Welcome to our druid grove :>

There are plenty of good tricks with cat form raid dps. In my mind there are 3 aspects to it - spec, gear and rotation.

First off, lets talk about spec.

Druid Talents (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0)

In a raid situation in an optimal rotation, about 40% of your damage will come from Shred, 45% will come from white damage, and the remaining 15% will come from rip and mangle.

The key is really to buff Shred. Here are the key points:

- Reduce the energy it costs to shred by getting 2/2 Shredding Attacks.

- Reduce the cost of Mangle with either 3/5 or 5/5 in the Ferocity talent. This is right at the top of the feral tree. You may wish to get 3/5 as this also produces an close-second optimal rotation which is self-correcting to energy lost through misses, dodges, and parries of your special (ie energy-costing) attacks. 3/5 is often the best option if you wish to get 5/5 Feral Aggression.

- Get Mangle. You need it.

- In summary, for optimal dps I would strongly recommend the following feral talents (some of which are obvious, others perhaps not..) Sharpened Claws, Primal Fury, Predatory Strikes, Shredding Attacks, Faerie Fire (Feral), Savage Fury (only if you have points to spare, it's pretty weak talent tbh), Heart of the Wild, Survival of the Fittest, Leader of the Pack, Predatory Instincts, Mangle.


In addition to this, it is also very important to get 5/5 Furor, 5/5 Naturalist, and 1/1 Omen of Clarity from the Restoration tree. Do not skip any of these Restoration talents!



Gear. Get 132 hit rating.

Once you're weilding a decent early raid weapon such as Earthwarden, terrestian's stranglestaff, or perhaps the Gladiator's Maul if you do any pvp or arena, you should aim to be at around 2900 attack power and 35% crit self-buffed. Once you have have reached this stage, it becomes more beneficial to start stacking hit rating.
Your white damage attacks (which account for 45% of your raid dps) have a 9% chance to miss a raid boss. By getting 132 hit rating - which is a cheap stat on most items considering what it does - you increase your dps by roughly 4.5% on that alone.
Couple that with the fact that your Shred will never miss (only 5% chance for shred and rip to miss, which is 79 hit rating incidentally), you will be able to effect smoother rotations with no missed attacks, your timings will be better and it will allow you to optimise your rotation. It's difficult to put a % on it, I would imagine in the region of 8% increase in overall dps.

Beyond this, it is also beneficial to stack expertise, as this reduces an enemy's chance to dodge your attack. In most dps situations you will be behind your target, so they will not parry, only dodge; mobs and players alike cannot parry an attack that comes from behind.

So once you get 2900+ AP, 35%+ crit, and 132 hit rating, continue to stack agility (and expertise whenever you can find it). For almost all realistic gear situations, agility is better, point for point, than strength. Also, one point of strength is STILL worth 2 points of attack power. The Heart of the Wild increase to cat attack power is applied AFTER the strength is converted to attack power. Therefore an item with 2 AP, will result in 2.2 AP increase, and an item with 1 Str, will also result in a 2.2 AP increase. If you went for the Nurturing Instinct talent, the strength also gives you +healing. In addition, Blessing of Kings is a common raid buff and it increases Strength by 10%, but not attack power.

Consequently, the most important stats in most situations beyond the hit cap are, from most to least important: Agility, Strength, Attack Power.

For enchants; Agility on weapon, agility on gloves, agility everywhere you can, strength where you can't, and attack power where neither of the above are an option. For everythign else just get whatever.

For gems, when you can get +8 agility in a slot without breaking your hit cap, do it. If you are not yet at the hit cap, use Rigid Dawnstones, which are yellow gems. Your meta gem should be +12 agility and +3% crit damage.
If you need to fill a blue slot for a set bonus but don't want to use stamina or some other non-dps-giving stat, try to get one from a heroic instance. Shifting Tanzanite from Warlord Karathresh - the last boss in [heroic] Steam Vaults, has a chance to drop these. They give 5 agility 6 stamina.

For idols, I recommend using the Everbloom Idol for cat dps. This is available from G'eras (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=18525) in the centre of Shattrath City for a cost of 15 heroic badges. This idol works out as better raid dps than any other idol, including the idol of terror, which is arguably the best tanking idol.

The single most important set bonus for cat form dps is the 2 piece Tier 4 (Malorne) set bonus, which gives you a chance on hit of regenerating energy. Energy is precious.


In general; don't be afraid to run a bit lower on stats like spirit, intellect, and to an extent stamina, if it means you can seriously boost your dps-giving stats. Also don't get mp5; it doesn't work when you are in cat or bear form. =)


Finally rotation...

The tank charges in. Be a good cat and wait a bit for him to get aggro. Once he has about 5k headstart on you, dive in and get set up in the following way:

1. Faerie Fire (Feral) the target as you run in.
2. Mangle.
3. Shred! Keep shredding until you have 5 combo points.
4. Stop shredding at 5cp.

And then we enter the rotation:




5. Faerie Fire (Feral). Wait until you have 70-80 energy...

6. ...then Rip

7. Immediately do a Mangle.

8. The mangle should hit the mob before the first tick of rip, provided you didn't delay in step 7.

9. Start shredding again to build up 5cp. The difference in damage between 4 and 5 is negligable so if you get 4 and the Mangle debuff has run out, just rip with what you have.

10. Go to step 5.


And that's it. That rotation is (I believe) the best way to optimise your dps.



In some situations, the raid boss you are fighting may be immune to bleed effects; this means rip is not an option. Instead of rip, use Ferocious Bite. However, only do a ferocious bite if you have 35, 36, or 37 energy. FB converts all your "spare" energy into extra damage, but the efficiency is extremely poor. Therefore the closer to 35 you can get, the more energy-efficient the bite becomes. If you have 38 or more energy, the energy-efficiency of biting becomes poorer than simply waiting and doing another shred; or mangle if the debuff is needed.


Don't talk yourself into keeping mangle up to "improve the raid's dps". This is a very generous idea but is not backed up by damage meter analysis. Unless your raid is filled with rogues and dps warriors and you are the only cat feral druid, it's not worth it.



Uh yea, that about covers it :>


-Annikk

omg, WOW -=O
that info may come in handy in a week or so. thank you so much. i do need to ask tho, since i'm sure i'm doing something wrong now. . .generally when questing i alternate between mangle and rake til i have my 5 cp then i pop fb. i've gotten almost a 4k crit from fb. <3 but then again, i'm also FACING my "opponent" whereas in a raid i will be best put to use behind the boss. still that leaves me wondering why is rip > fb? is it simply because rip is a dot? thanks again for the input. -=)

If im not mistaken Rip is based upon your atkp. And if you have 2900 atp selfbuffed you will have.. 3200~ raidbuffed. That makes its better dmg then FB unless FB crits. But better play it safe then loose X dps =P

Imo anyway :P

If you check on EJ it says that 142 hit rating is the raid boss cap... dunno which one is correct, currently im maintaining that 142 at all times...

To be safe, I'll see how things go at 132 first, if it doesn't seem to be working out I'll do what i have to do to attain the 142 rating. But i have a new dilemma of sorts. Having just dinged 69 I'm looking forward a bit to 70 and what I'll need for raids. I'll be in kitty form for raids at first until I learn the fights, so obviously at first I need to focus on my kitty gear and then if/when I'm going to switch into a tanking role do what is needed to acquire the best tanking gear I can. But when it comes to 2h weapon, since I will be shapeshifted and not actually swinging it which will be better for my cause. . .the Gladiator's Maul from pvp or Earthwarden from CE rep? Or would it be in my best interest to start out with the Maul while being in the role of melee dps and then farm the rep for Earthwarden if/when I switch to tanking? Once again thank you all for your willingness to help a noob, lol. -=)

yo Nyka

Your T4 helmet isn't chanted or gemmed with the best tank or dps, go for Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, the agil will add to dodge and the crit to damage. Keep the t4 helmet and Shoulders for now, swap out the pants for Skulkers Greaves - if you can get ur guild to get to Kara again!! or Forestwalker. Get a Shadowprowler made so you can get a toHit gem in there, rest +agil, +agil/stam, wrist - Vindicators Dragonhide are what you need. Belt the Waistguard of the Great Beast.



Trinkets, I think you need the Hourglass of the Unraveller from Bm. Something to forget about! The extra crit will help. Match this with ur bloodlust.

Potions/regents - If you can get your hands on Insane Strength Potions or Haste (better for other Melee or Hunters classes I think) or Even Heroic Potions.

Enchant any new gear with Agil, boots go for Cat or Boar Speed - movement speed is a major contributer to dps! +stats for the chest. Don't go for any +AP or strength chants - agil at 70 is king!

Are you powershifting between proc's of t4 2pc to maximise energy gains?

Really your dps is fantastic, do you have someone in ur raids who is getting fight infomation up on wowstats (is that what it is called??). I found that help me self analysis what was going on.

E

Elymanrock,

Thanx much, I do indeed powershift, but basing the shift off having 20 or less nrg. I'll look into watching the set bonus procs a bit more. There's always a WWS stats sheet running and I always check it. /agree

Haven't even once seen the Skulker's Greaves drop, but KZ seems to be an easy way to badges, so not hard to get ppl for that. I can make the Shadowprowler, just been loathe to go get all those mats w/ 2.4 coming and the badge chest. But I'll take another look at it, and see.

I like the idea of the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, will try it out. And the Boar's Speed is coming soon, as I've been designated QB for Vashj. Thanx much for the ideas/comments!

Nyka

On the hit rating cap;

It may be 132 or 142, I forget. Either way, it's 9% you need. You can check how much you have by mousing over the appropriate stat in your character sheet.
If someone can confirm which is the correct number, I will update my original post.



On rip, and why it is intrinsically better than Ferocious Bite;

Rip and FB both scale with attack power, but Rip is still better. There are several reasons.

1. Rip is periodic, rather than burst. This means fewer dangerous threat spikes, which can be important at the start of a fight.

2. Rip doesn't use up all of your remaining energy; FB does. The conversion from additional energy to additional damage is extremely poor. Therefore instead of always trying to get a ferocious bite with 35 energy exactly, it's easier to be able to do an always-efficient Rip/Mangle combo. In short, by using rip you spend less time focusing on energy levels to maintain even, powerful dps.

3. Ferocious Bite is more expensive than Rip; 35 energy, vs rip's 30.

4. Rip ignores armor; Ferocious Bite is a direct damage physical attack, and therefore if you are fighting a mob with armor, FB's damage is reduced. An average raid boss with 5 stacks of sunder and faerie fire will NOT be on 0 armor. A few exceptions apply, such as Shade of Aran in Karazhan, who will be on 0 armor after the sunders.

5. Rip does more damage than an FB non-crit; Although a crit FB will do slightly more damage than a Rip, it does a lot less damage when it doesn't crit. It works out as better energy efficiency and thus damage output to use Rip on bleedable mobs. I suggest trying to use the rotation I posted above :> It's done a lot for my dps output.



On Earthwarden Vs Gladiator's Maul (S1);

Gladiator's Maul is marginally better for dps than Terrestian's Stranglestaff; I must emphasise that the difference between the 2 items is very small.

Earthwarden, despite the expertise rating, is still a poorer dps weapon than the other two.
However, Earthwarden is the best tanking weapon available to feral druids until the SSC trash mobs drop a druid staff for you.

The solution, of course, is to get all 3 :p


-Annikk

Thanks again Annik, your advice is a blessing. I tweaked my feral spec just a bit a few days ago, and started using a modified version of your rotation in my questing. Substituting rake for shred, as it's face to face combat. . .it works wonders. With any luck, I should hit 70 either today or tomorrow. At which point I will be able to get my Gladiator's Maul, then I can start farming coilfang dungeons for CE rep to get Earthwarden (tho that may take some time). I'll also need to spend some time in bg's, as I want to get the PvP shoulders as well. Beyond that it will be farming even more dungeons trying to get gear to drop. Lots of fun ahead of me now, lol. Thanks for all your help, and if anything else comes up I'll start a new thread instead of continuing my hijacking of this one. Sorry about that Nyka, though I must say your gear inspires me.

When you're doing face to face, use mangle instead of rake or shred. Mangle is much better DPS for the energy.

Remember that you can only get coilfang rep from SP and UB until honored (except for a few mobs in UB, which you get until revered). Steamvaults is where you're going to live for a couple weeks.

Also note that some of the best feral tanking gear comes from questlines, not gear drops. A great belt, gloves, wrist all come from questline rewards. The chest, boots and legs should all come from crafted or quest rewards. The hat is crafted too or a quest item. The neck is crafted or bought. About the only thing you should grind for is a cloak, possibly shoulders (though the S1 pVp are better than anything that might drop), and maybe some slight upgrades at gloves and boots.

You should take Rake off your bar. It serves almost no purpose. I _believe_ it is primarily a PvP move to be used against high armor targets.

If you don't have Mangle yet, use claw. Once you get Mangle, remove claw from your bar.

For tanking gear don't forget as of 2.4 you can get some nice starter PvP gear that works great as tanking gear with PvE rep and a little bit of gold (85g for the 5-piece set!). Here is the new set (http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=742).

For non-PvP starter tanking set, checkout this list (http://thebigbearbutt.com/2007/09/13/druid-tank-starter-gear-at-70/).

For the person that said he needs help with Tanking here's some info:

Get stam, stam, stam
Also get your defense to 415

You said you are bad at tanking, well I've seen so many druids say they can tank and wow they don't know how to tank!

Best way to learn is do 5-person runs and if you can do instances that are lower then you so you learn "How to Tank".

there's posts up on how to get the most aggro fast, read them, even print them out and have it right there to see.

Windsaber

You're welcome dub, it's my pleasure to be able to help :>


Rake

Tlb and others are correct; Rake is useless in almost all situations as the damage it does is so poor compared to its energy consumption. You can safely remove Rake from your action bars.


Claw vs Mangle

It's also true that Mangle essentially "replaces" Claw. By replace, what we mean is that Mangle will do more damage, for less energy, in every possible theoretical and practical situation. Therefore Claw no longer has a use, and you should remove it from your action bars too, once you have Mangle.


Solo Grinding

If you're just solo grinding, the fastest way to do it is to not use stealth and use only the following abilities; Faerie Fire (Feral), Mangle, Ferocious Bite.

It's not worth using Rip on a solo mob because it's unlikely a 5CP rip would run its full duration before the mob dies.

When using Ferocious Bite whilst soloing, try to time your Bite so that it does just enough damage to kill the mob.

As I said before, don't bother stealthing when grinding mobs; Pounce and Ravage are both poorer damage per point of energy than Mangle.

Please keep in mind that the rotation I indicated in my first post in this thread is designed for Raid DPS, and may not be appropriate or particularly effective in other dps situations such as 5man groups or soloing.


(Bear diversion)

While Stamina and Defense Skill are undoubtedly 2 very important bear stats, Agility is also a primary bear stat and should not be neglected. :>


-Annikk

Solo Grinding

If you're just solo grinding, the fastest way to do it is to not use stealth and use only the following abilities; Faerie Fire (Feral), Mangle, Ferocious Bite.

It's not worth using Rip on a solo mob because it's unlikely a 5CP rip would run its full duration before the mob dies.

I hate to derail the thread further but found this interesting. Am just 49 and don't have access to mangle. I usually open with a rake and then rip if I get a crit on the first two/three attacks. If I have ripped, my next attack is usually another rake depending on its current duration and I have typically 35-39 energy the tick just after the rip. *If* I powershift it will be after this rake. Depending on mob health post rip I typically will do a 2-4cp bite to finish the mob. While I haven't run the numbers for efficiency this has worked well for me to this point. I am defining "well" by my non twinked ability to take on 2 +2 mobs at the same time if need be (certainly not ideal); usual target is 0 to +2 level mobs. One advantage of using the dots is if mobs run. At this point at least I am not overly concerned with energy/mana efficiency (to a point) as mobs die quickly. Heck I even get 60 energy from powershifting (wolf's head) and don't do it that often.

Am certianlly not trying to question the validity of Annikk's post. I just have a different perspective / have done it a bit differently. I will have to try the above advice and see how it goes. This is sort of my homage to my hunter main since I use macros vs manually weaving shots :smile:.

Rake is better than claw when the mob doesn't die in the time that rake runs. Rip is better than FB when the mob doesn't die in the time that rip runs.

But once you get mangle, everything else is simply bad. Okay, that's not true. Mangle to 4cp->rip is better than 5 mangles if the mob won't die in the time that rip runs out. Mangle to 5cp->FB is better if you can likely finish the mob with the FB. And as you say, if the mobs run using rip is very good.

If you have furor, make sure to powershift to get faster hits too. This is especially true when you use FB and the guy doesn't die.

Ok, I get to show my noobness here. What is powershifting and why is it important? I've not seen this term elsewhere and as of yet have not taken the time to look it up.

Powershifting is shifty out and in to cat form when you have no energy to makes the most of Furor talent "near" instant energy gain.


/cast [stance:1] !Dire Bear Form
/cast [stance:2] !Aquatic Form
/cast [stance:3] !Cat Form
/cast [stance:4] !Travel Form

Add this to a hotkey and wham. This will allow you to change in and out of your current form. To have a cat form only one try:

/cancelform [stance,noflying]
/cast [nomodifier] Cat Form;

Slam bam.

Thanks for the 411. I've done it before and didn't even know it, as I have my shapeshifts each keybound.

So to make that powershift macro, you just have to make your second macro correct? And if so, what does the first macro do? Sorry, new to macros and I will be getting furor for the next 5 levels. Currently I am lvl 50 do you think I should not stealth and pounce and instead FFF, mangle*x, and FB with x combo points. I have basically been running a pounce, mangle, rake, shred, mangle until dead rotation.

Thanks

Remove rake from your bar it is a waste of energy.

At lvl 50, I still did pounce-->mangle-->shred (sometimes 2)-->mangle-->rip (with a FFF thrown in there when I was waiting for energy).. most of the time.

And sometimes, FFF, manlge*4, rip. It wasn't until I had nearly 2000 AP and 28% crit that I found FFF, mangle*4, FB more effective (well quicker). Even so, when I'm doing my daily quests against lvl 71-72 mobs, I typically use rip if the mob has more than 40% health at 4 or 5 CP.

if you look at your damage you'll see there is almost no difference between shred and mangle at your level. The "mangle mash" doesn't come into its own until you have a nice set of outland kitty gear with 1000+ AP.

If I were to level again, I'd get OoC before Mangle. Since mangle isn't all that great until your gear improves quit a bit. But OoC is great at any level.