WotLK Feral DPS DiscussionFollow

Honestly, I ran all the way to 80 with a tank build, so I never really ran cat until I hit 80 and we had too many tanks for 25's. I had a pretty good DPS set, so I ended up volunteering to go kitty for it.

I average around 4k overall during Naxx 25, reaching up to 12-15k on trash pulls and averaging between 3.8-4.2k on bosses depending on crit streaks.

I know that I get some really monstrous FB's with those extra 4 points, but I never tested out taking them away from there. The biggest thing I found was that when making my DPS build, I had to put 2 points into it anyway because it was the only talent that gave me a dps increase on the top half of the tier to allow me to go lower into the tree.

You could take the other 2 points and place them in Natural Reaction to increase your dodge percent, but other than using another point in Feral Charge (which does nothing for your dps except maybe getting you there a little quicker. (Why were you out of place? :P )), you still have to put a point in FA to get lower in the tree.

Off the top of my head, I average 12-14k FB crits on normal fights, with upwards of 28k Crits on Thaddius with the boost to dps from people stacking. These numbers are guesstimates, you'd have to let me run Naxx 25 again this weekend for solid numbers. I keep meaning to turn on my WWS for my 25's run, but keep forgetting >.<

If nothing more substantial than my "Cause I said so!!!" post comes through before this weekend ends, I'll post some good numbers Monday.

EDIT: 333 posts...Half Evil?


Edited, Mar 20th 2009 12:08pm by Galenmoon

First off you need a better Idol for tanking, any of these are better. For DPS you can use most of these ones or preferably the emblem one with the shred bonus.

Your spec is ok but when 3.1 hits you're going to de-facto lose Master Shapeshifter on account of needing two points to finish RnT and get Primal Gore since it's important even for bear builds. I can hit 2100 raid buffed in mostly green dps gear with my spec right now, so MS isn't really a big deal unless you're min/maxing a cat build. Additionally, Shredding Attacks is a bear talent too and shouldn't be overlooked; Lacerate is still an important part of our rotations and this will have the side bonus of letting you use Shred more when kitty.

Don't use finishers until 5cp, sans maybe for an opening SR from stealth (Ravage-SR-continue as normal). Yes, you'll "waste" combo points on crits at 4 standing cp, but you're wasting more damage by using finishers one CP early. Should always shoot for 5cp, put up SR, and then continue obtaining CP ensuring Rake is always up and then using Mangle/Shred as appropriate until 5. Then you have to assess if SR is going to run out before your next 5cp; if so, refresh it. If not, Rip. If Rip and SR are both ticking with plenty of time, then you can FB.

Having a separate set of gear with DPS gems would no doubt help improve further, but these are some starting changes you can make that might make a difference for you.

Edit: And as I understand it, powershifting is pointless now, waste of GCDs. I suggest not doing it.

Edited, Mar 20th 2009 1:27pm by Norellicus

I did the same thing a lot before I became overgeared for the heroics. Not an issue now that I tank them and OT Naxx 10 in my kitty spec.

Powershifting is definitely not usable anymore. It does nothing to regen your energy and actually makes you lose the white hits you would have gotten while waiting for energy to regen.

My rotation doesn't really change much when I'm in tank spec, just makes it harder to keep everything up because of lower crit chance and less energy back from Tiger's fury.

Rake, Savage Roar, Mangle(Shred if you have shredding attacks, which I always take in my tank build) to 5 CP's (Use Tiger's Fury in the middle if your SR will wear off before you get your rip up due to unlucky non crits), Rip, Rake, SR (it will have worn off at this point and you want it up till you can get a 5pt one up) Mangle/Shred to 5cp, SR, Mangle/Shred to 5cp, Rip, Mangle/Shred to 5cp, Here is where I decide if I have enough up time on Rip and SR to FB. If I do, then I do it.

The hard part about dpsing in a tank spec is that your much slower at CP generation due to lower crit chance and less energy back from TF.

I still don't gem for kitty dps even when I switch specs. That's ok though because Agility will be king again after the patch. I have a few items I switch to that are socketed with strength, but overall I use a lot of my Tank gear to DPS. I switch my necklace, rings, trinkets and belt. Everything else stays the same from the tank set I have on now.

This rotation is bad. Mangle should only be used to keep the debuff up. If you have a bear tank totally take it out of your rotation. Also Tiger's fury should be used at less than 30% energy (If you have the King of the Jungle talent).

1. Keep mangle debuff up
2. Keep Savage roar up
3. Keep rake up, be sure to let it fall of before reapplying to get last damage tick
4. Use shred to build combo points, NOT MANGLE! (Other than keeping the debuff up)
5. Use rip at 4 or 5 combo points with Savage roar up
6. Use Tiger's Fury whenever off cool down and below 30% energy
7. Only bite when you have 12+ seconds on Savage Roar and lots of time on rip

I never take Master Shapeshifter in my tanking build. I use those 5 points in Imp Mangle and Shredding attacks. I would rather have more utility in my build if I am an off tank. It is a 6 sec cool down on mangle. Reduce that by 1.5 seconds is 25% increase in the number of mangles that you throw out in a fight. For AOE tanking I can see Master Shapeshifter being better.

A lot of fights in Naxx only require 1 tank and it is nice to have that kitty to DPS. Besides, this is a thread about Kitty DPS.....

Oh, it's still decent sure, but it's only worth just under 1% crit; the Idol of Terror/Plainstalker will give you ~.7% crit and an equivalent amount of AP in Cat, and a huge chunk of Dodge in Bear.

There are only 2 ways that powershifting still works: -

1) Shifting to bear for an attack or two then back to cat - with furor, you are in bear while your energy builds up then you shift back to spend your energy. No real evidence showing a DPS increase that I have seen, but it might work (although you lose some white damage with the shifts) - way to much effort for me to bother trying.

2) Using the [wowitem=8345]Wolfshead Helm[/wowitem]. Still works like the old powershifting and someone at EJ had done some testing to show it worked quite well soon and may be a DPS increase at the moment. You gain a lot of DPS from the extra energy, but you use a lot from wearing a level 40 helm with no meta-gem.

Overall, I feel that our rotation is complicated enough without worrying about trying to powershift for a possible slight gain. For us mere mortals, we are better off concentrating on perfecting our rotations and maximising the up-time of our buffs/debuffs.

Oh oh, just wanted to add a few things. I meant to post last Friday but I got busy at work and ended up going home without thinking about it.


It is only a choice as much as Ripping at 3 CP would be a choice. (i.e. you can do it, but you will gimp your DPS) We used to Rip at 4CP, or 5CP if the previous attack was a crit, because we gained no visible benefit from Ripping at 5CP. The base damage was a bit higher, but it did not scale with AP any more than a 4CP Rip did. Now that it does, it's much better to wait and Rip at 5CP.

From WoWWiki:



This is the same as clipping any DoT, really. The difference with Rip is that it takes time to build up while Rake can be reapplied at any time. If you reapply Rake before it's gone, you can cheat yourself out of one, or more, tick (may not seem big but if you do it every time it'll hurt your DPS).

If anyone is unfamiliar with the mechanics, this is a summary of how it works:
Rake deals damage on use, and then ticks every 2 seconds.
Let's say the tick timer is at 1.5s, only 0.5s away from ticking, and you reapply Rake. What happens is that the timer is reset and you have to wait another 2.0s before it ticks, effectively giving that tick a 3.5s timer, lowering its efficiency, blah blah yadda yadda.

But like any DoT or debuff, the longer you wait before you reapply it, the more energy-efficient it will be and your damage:energy ratio will be better. Same as Mangling 1-2s before it fades rather than 5s before gives you more "bang for your energy" (36 energy every 17-18 seconds versus 36 energy every 12-13 seconds). Also, with DoT's, the very last tick always occurs when the DoT fades, that's why you let it fall off.


I personally don't use FB much either, especially since I modified my spec/glyphs a bit more toward tanking. I dropped the Mangle glyph to pick up Growl, so when I DPS I need to refresh Mangle that much more often and it leaves me with very little energy to spare on FB. It's likely a problem you'll encounter unless you have a cat-oriented build.

My advice would be to not worry about it for now and just focus on keeping your DoT's/debuffs up as much as you can. You might be able to FB during Berserk only, but that's fine. In 3.1 it'll be easier to FB anyway.

So if you check my armory right now, you'll see my tanking gear.

From that gear, the pieces I change when I go to DPS spec are the cloak, idol, belt, rings and trinkets. Everything else I keep the same.

Obviously this hurts my dps a little since my headpiece glyph and some of my enchants are geared towards tanking.

Last week I got Infectious Skitterer Leggings. To these I put on the DPS Armor Patch

Keep in mind that when I wear my 7.5 pants, I leave the Tanking Armor Patch on. Obviously with 4 piece Tier bonus I get 3 seconds off my Tiger's Fury cd.

If I replace my 7.5 legs with the Skitterer Leggings and lose the 4 piece bonus, because Skitterer Leggings are better dps pieces, does it make up for the loss of the 3 seconds from my Tiger's Fury cd?

I will run some numbers myself and do some tests, but in case any of you are bored. Lemme know what you think.

Indeed, 2s ticks don't even make sense with a 9s duration... O_o
Must've been thinking about something else, sorry.


Edit:

It somewhat depends how you socket the 7.5 legs, but overall I think it would be a DPS loss.
What bothers me the most about the TF CD reduction bonus is that right now it perfectly fits in fights where you can use Berserk twice. On the other hand, with reduced CD, you'll be significantly off and when Berserk gets off CD, you might have to wait for your energy to go back up a bit. Kinda defeats the point of the TF energy reserve, in my eyes.

Edited, Mar 24th 2009 3:59pm by Selverein

I'd keep the T7.5 legs.

You have a more bear oriented spec so the CD reduction will be a big help. Plus T7.5 has more agility which reduces the AP advantage of the new legs. Agility is yummy.

RAWR is telling me Infectious is better but that is mainly due to the DPS leg patch. As the T7.5 with the DPS patch beats the Infectious.

So the obvious answer is get a second T7.5 legs. Or an insane quantity of leg patches and switch them during fights or in between as the need arises.

Go with the new legs.

I changed my mind and don't feel like deleting stuff.

Plus the new legs are new and probably not as dirty.


edit: you posted while I was posting. I can only use RAWR at work.

Edited, Mar 24th 2009 5:20pm by Horsemouth

So this is now Null and Void. I took some guildies on a Naxx 10 run last night. I decided that since I have 3 sets, I might as well get some use out of them. So I went resto and 2 healed it with a holy pally that had like ~1500 SP and no experience healing Naxx.

Two things happened. One I didn't realize till this morning.

First thing was that the T7 shoulders finally dropped and I actually won the roll with a 99. So it won't matter if I switch the pants now, because I won't lose the 4 piece T7 bonus. So now it's a definite DPS upgrade.

Second thing is that I went to gem my new boots that I got last weekend on our Naxx 25 run. Keep in mind that this is my resto offset, so it's pretty much all Naxx 10/25 items, since I didn't really go out of my way to build it. It just kinda happened as I tanked.

Well I go to my bank and scan through and realize I don't have a good blue/purple gem for the slot. I don't really care much for the socket bonus, but I figure, what the hell, might as well match it. They're nerfing my regrowth crit % (This is still in the ptr isn't it?) and increasing my nourish crit %, so I might as well get a little extra crit.

So I go to the AH, search purple gems with the Purified Twilight Opal in mind. I normally search the gems, click on the one I want to put it back up in the search box, re-search, scan the bottom line to find the cheapest deal and buy it. Apparently I clicked the wrong one, didn't even notice and ended up putting a Balanced Twilight Opal in the socket.

I just realized it this morning when I went to look at my toon on the armory for some stat comparing.

Damn noob L2Socket.

PS: Four Horseman is a ***** to heal with only 2 healers. :P

EDIT: For linkage failure

Edited, Mar 25th 2009 7:26am by Galenmoon

Gratz on the new piece! I used Outfitter too. I have like 7 setups. Birthday Suit, Dancing Suit (cloak, belt, boots and my sexiness), Boomkin, Healer, Kitty, Bear and HP Set. Sucks carrying all that around in my bags. I don't carry the boomkin set anymore because I don't see myself going back to it, but I do carry all the rest around, just so I can compare upgrades for my offsets regardless of what spec I happen to be at the time.

I hate forgetting what piece I have sitting in the bank and rolling/not rolling on a piece I want/don't need.

I tend to run at around 3.8-4.5k dps on boss fights in 25 Naxx in my current gear setup. I'm sure the T7 shoulders will help. I currently have Head, Shoulders, Chest and Gloves from T7 and Legs from T7.5. Our overabundance of druids, not to mention DK's is hampering my acquiring of more T7.5 pieces.