WOTLK Cat DPS Guide

[Coldbear]

Thanks for linking Fluid Druid. That guy is legit. Wish I'd known ...again.

[geros]

The only thing I noticed that wasn't completely accurate is FB usually accounts for 10-15% of total DPS and not 5%.

Also, I play on a mac standard keypad whenever I'm on my laptop and am almost deeply offended by the hatred shown to it :P.

*edit*- accounts for 10-15% when someone else is providing mangle. When you need to do it yourself 5% is a much more accurate number.

[Coldbear]

Oooh, good point about FB. Wish I'd figured that out ahead of time.

Thing is, I've got some feral dps expertise and a bit more movie-making knowledge, so more than likely I wasn't the ideal candidate for making this. Oh well. Maybe someone with more knowledge and skill will make another one.

Two other things I got wrong:
I recommended a feral blog (Flyv) that went non-WoW. Go Fluid Druid instead.
The Fluid Druid

Berserk macro should be a two-step macro, one that alerts the DK, and one that you can pop for Berserk AFTER you get the buff. My bad.

The mac keyboard is awesome-looking and -feeling, but I'm 6'2" - 210 lbs and have proportional hands ...just doesn't work. I do kinda miss it sometimes when just typing though.

Feel free to embed the video in your OP if you feel it's up to snuff, with a disclaimer about Flyv and the Berserk macro...

[Dreamsong]

I have a question concerning threat issues. I've read through every feral dps guide I can find online, but in those guides I've never come across anything pertaining to severe threat problems, so I was wondering if it was just a personal issue or if others are also suffering from it.

I constantly have to pester our MT for Vigilance, because without it I literally cannot dps even if I'm using Cower on cd (which we all know doesn't do much anyway besides burn energy that would otherwise have been used to further increase damage and therefore threat). I wait for our tanks (who generally pull about 7k+ TPS) to generate 70k+ threat on a target before I even begin to attack, but if I Berserk early to get my rotation up and running, I can pull agro within 20 seconds.

I used to get Hysteria before 25 ToC gear levels, but that just makes matters worse so I don't ask for it anymore. The only thing that helps is pestering our paladins for Salv, but our warlocks are frustrated with me for taking Vigilance and Salvs.

I guess the real question is: Do all of you kitty ferals have these same sorts of problems, or is something amiss with my tanks?

[ekna]

Dreamsong

As a long time kitty i can confirm that for me the thing is that the MT or OT puts Vigi on me at all times these days as i over agro fast. Hysteria is a blast from the past, basiclly forget it excists.

A piece of advice i can give you (and this is very personal) keep your Berserk for when you have your first rotation going as the amount of threat build by that is insane, basicly you will shred most the time which is high dps and high threat. Get your rotation going with a TF.

There is nothing wrong with your tanks, ours also put out 7.5 to 8.5k tps.

According to blue posts in the past it is that we get 30% threath reduction but when i look at the amount of TPS we produce in comparison with the other mele dps, i think it's not there any more. Can any one confirm that the threat reduction is still there or not?

[geros]

I have no reason to believe that the innate threat reduction has been removed at any point in time in WOTLK. I could do some math based on my DPS in comparison to my TPS but I think it's about right. I think the primary reason that feral DPS is so threat capped right now is because we scale exceptionally well with gear. Blizz didn't intend to go this far with item levels and I think we're seeing the results of it.

[Darksend]

while doing http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...tml#post200948 I tested cat form and white attacks were doing damage*.71=threat as recent as the 3.3 ptr.

[Dreamsong]

while doing http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...tml#post200948 I tested cat form and white attacks were doing damage*.71=threat as recent as the 3.3 ptr.

I've also read that we have the passive threat reduction while in cat form, though I guess I don't understand the mechanics. For instance: A dps DK with the talent Subversion (25% less threat) or a ret pala with Fanaticism (30% less threat) could be pulling the same dps as me on the same target as myself, yet their threat is considerably lower than mine. I'm at ~105% of the tank's threat, while the others are at 75 - 80% of the tank's threat.

Could anyone please explain how our passive threat reduction differs from the talents that these classes pick up, because--in my experience--there is a noticeable difference.

[Darksend]

passive threat reduction refers to the baked in threat reduction since the removal of blessing of salv, every dps has as a base part of their class a 30% threat reduction.

Talents are in addition to that 30%.

[Cenan]

The main thing you have to assure for aggro, is that your hunters/rogues are using their TOTT/Misdirect appropriately. Using these at the start of the fight on a tank is a HUGE aggro buffer. When I was in a different guild, we had a very competent tank, but I could easily pull aggro from an early berserk in a fight, due to under use of those two mechanics. In my current guild, I am able to go all out with a berserk in the first 10 seconds of a fight, without a vigilance, or salvation. The only time that aggro becomes an issue is on Anub, if I am having incredibly good RNG on clearcasting procs when not swiping, which is a fight where salvations mostly become free due to aggro being spread out through aoe.

This can lead to pulling aggro easier in 10 mans, since there is a greater probability you dont have the threat boosts that Misdirect/TOTT provide. Hysteria could also be a problem with an early berserk if you set it up so you always get hysteria for berserk - however, I don't have the luxury of Hysteria except for when our DK occasionally tanks.

That's just my personal experience. My guild has 2 paladin tanks, a bear, a recent warrior recruit, and a DK that offspec tanks occasionally. I haven't had an aggro issue with any of them in 25s, and the only time I've pulled aggro in 10 mans is on an anub pull where the tank gets stunned so his aggro is lower, and a hysteria/berserk in the first few seconds of jarraxus.

[Insahnity]

Questions/comments/nitpicks

A. Resto Tree Talents
A. Feral Tree Talents

B. Feral Tree Talents?

Thick Hide: Increases your Armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 4/7/10%.

Comment: If you were a bear, you'd love this talent.

The feral tree has 3 types of talents, Cat, Bear, or Cat/Bear. At the time of this reply, you say "Take this if you are a bear" or "Don't take this, you aren't a bear". I'm assuming you are making a pure cat spec, might be easier on the newbies to say "Bear only - don't take"

However, if you are going down the hybrid spec road, either bear as part time kitty or vice versa, might want to alter wording accordingly.

Feral Charge: Teaches Feral Charge (Bear) and Feral Charge (Cat).
Feral Charge (Bear) - Causes you to charge an enemy, immobilizing and interrupting any spell being cast for 4 sec. This ability can be used in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form. 15 second cooldown.
Feral Charge (Cat) - Causes you to leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 sec. 30 second cooldown.

Comment: Alongside Feral Swiftness, this talent lets you get to the mob faster and increases your dps.

Might help to either link to a source or summarize analysis of Kitty charge. Specifically, yes it costs 10 energy, but you travel 25 yards (or threshold of X distance) Y% faster, resulting in Z DPS gain (What is the average speed of an unladden Kitteh? African or american?). Also, the spell has a min range, 8 yards, I'm not sure if it isn't just faster to run over at 8 yards from a DPS perspective (GTFO of ouchie patch is a different story).

Primal Tenacity: Reduces the duration of Fear effects by 10/20/30%, reduces all damage taken while Stunned in cat form by 10/20/30%.

Comment: There are a lot of better places to invest three talent points.

I'd mention it for what it is, a pure PvP talent.

Priority Chart

1. Savage Roar.
2. Mangle.
3. Rake.
4. Shred for CP when 2 and 3 are not falling off.
5. At 5 CP's, use Rip if SR has > 5 seconds.
6. At 5 CP's, if Rip & SR have > 8 seconds, use Ferocious Bite.

For 6) @ 5 CP, if Rip & SR have > 8 seconds

Is energy pooling worth considering? Maybe my rotation sucks, but if I am at this stage, I'm sucking on fumes where I get there as far as my energy bar is concerned. For me, energy pooling brings one of the two close to expiry, allowing me to refresh the aforementioned dying ability and then quickly rebuilding 5 CP to catch the next one expiring. Some clipping (1-2 seconds) occurs though.

Idol
Idol of Mutilation - Item - World of Warcraft is the best idol to use for cat DPS. If you somehow lack the ability to pug VoA or the heroic daily (how did you get to this part of the guide by the way), it gets more interesting.

Idol of the Corruptor - Item - World of Warcraft is the way to go if you the manglebot. If you aren't, you need either Idol of the Ravenous Beast - Item - World of Warcraft or Idol of Worship - Item - World of Warcraft. If you have reasonable ArP the beast idol is the way to go.

I've never understood Idol of the Corruptor over Mutilation, I'm probably missing something here. it grants 153 agi over 12 seconds, where as Idol of Mut gives 200 over 16 seconds. Why is the former good for manglebots?

Flask
Flask of Endless Rage - Item - World of Warcraft is the way to go.

Food
Blackened Dragonfin - Item - World of Warcraft if you aren't stacking ArP
Hearty Rhino - Item - World of Warcraft if you are.
Fish Feast - Item - World of Warcraft if you are a lazy cat.

Agi/ArPen Elixirs? if you follow the stat weighing for each elixir on your references, the 120 AP blows away anything else, but are there situations where it might be worth it? I think the biggest problem is that there just isn't any good Guardian elixir (extra health at best).

[Dreamsong]

Darksend: Thank you very much! Now I understand the threat variances, though I still feel ripped off when it comes to threat reduction as a cat :P

Insahnity: I believe Geros was saying that you'd take the Idol of the Corruptor as a manglebot only if you were somehow unable to attain an Idol of Mutilation.

[trp]

At this point i have 787ap with the proc from grim toll that gives me 1399arp, that is 100%arp so should i start stacking agility now or just keep stacking ap rawr is saying i should go with agility now but i dont know what do u guy think

[Kazeyonoma]

are you trying to say ArP and not AP?

[geros]

I'll work on clarifying some text that you pointed out. Thanks for the input!

trp: I'd put your unbuffed cat stats in The Druid Wiki - ToskksDPSGearMethod and then put your agi/ArP contribution for gems in there. Add in all the raid buffs you normally get and make sure you select your ArP trinket proc as well. There is a stat somewhere on the lower right that weighs the value of gemming for agi vs ArP. If it's above 1.0, gem for ArP. Otherwise socket agility. I trust that more than rawr to be honest.

[Hire]

Toskk's chart is the definitive guide for high end min/maxing

[geros]

Questions/comments/nitpicks

B. Feral Tree Talents?

Will update to Restoration and Feral Combat talents :P

The feral tree has 3 types of talents, Cat, Bear, or Cat/Bear. At the time of this reply, you say "Take this if you are a bear" or "Don't take this, you aren't a bear". I'm assuming you are making a pure cat spec, might be easier on the newbies to say "Bear only - don't take"

However, if you are going down the hybrid spec road, either bear as part time kitty or vice versa, might want to alter wording accordingly.

I'll change the wording for PvP and bear talents. I have no intention of making a bearcat guide or exploring it here. I'm a firm believer that between dual talent specs and Teleport: Moonglade - Spell - World of Warcraft, you shouldn't comprimise. If someone would like to make a standalone bearcat guide or an addendum for either dark's or mine that'd be great though.

Might help to either link to a source or summarize analysis of Kitty charge. Specifically, yes it costs 10 energy, but you travel 25 yards (or threshold of X distance) Y% faster, resulting in Z DPS gain (What is the average speed of an unladden Kitteh? African or american?). Also, the spell has a min range, 8 yards, I'm not sure if it isn't just faster to run over at 8 yards from a DPS perspective (GTFO of ouchie patch is a different story).

I'd consider it very difficult to give it a serious quantifiable analysis. It's not like Feral Swiftness where you can find from WoL/WWS/WMO the amount of time not attacking and then apply a multiplier to it to determine DPS. This one is a lot trickier. I'll expand the comment to go over some situations that it is helpful. Off the top of my head:

• XT- after gravity bombs
• Razorscale - going one pack to another, getting knocked back at the end of a ground phase
• IC - switching to new bosses, overload
• Hodir - when the ice patch is far away from hodir
• Mimiron - all four phases hardmode, not so much p2 normal mode
• YS - phase 2 getting around tentacles, probably results in green clouds in P1.
• Algalon - if you are dumb enough to get knocked up in the air you can feral charge yourself back down to avoid falling damage. bad kitteh.
• Beasts - Great tool for worms, remove debuff off yourself, jump back in after knockback. Invaluable for icehowl stuns as well.
• Jaraxxus - useful on heroic mode after killing a portal or running away due to legion flames
• FC - depends on how well the focus target is being kept in melee range. Can kitteh jump out of immediate doom though.
• Twins- depends entirely on your strategy if you'd need to move. Useful if you run around to take some orbs though.
• Anub'arak - helps take the giant red bug out. jumping on anub once he emerges.

I'd mention it for what it is, a pure PvP talent.

Will do.

For 6) @ 5 CP, if Rip & SR have > 8 seconds

Is energy pooling worth considering? Maybe my rotation sucks, but if I am at this stage, I'm sucking on fumes where I get there as far as my energy bar is concerned. For me, energy pooling brings one of the two close to expiry, allowing me to refresh the aforementioned dying ability and then quickly rebuilding 5 CP to catch the next one expiring. Some clipping (1-2 seconds) occurs though.

I need to expand this section a bit more and go into detail. If you don't think you can refresh the ability that is going to run out in less than 8 seconds then you need to pool energy for sure. At starting gear levels FB should pretty much be ignored. Once you get a reasonable amount of crit, it should be managable enough to do:
5 CP Savage Roar > 5 CP Rip > 5 CP FB > repeat

Set bonuses are going to have a huge impact on this. Specifically 2pc & 4pc T8 and 2pc T9. Whether you apply mangle or not is going to have a large impact on your rotation as well. I run on fumes a lot more in my 10 man raid where I no long have a traumabot (lost my arms warrior to the dark fury arts /cry). When I pug 25 mans with a trauma my rotation is tons more stable. It's been mentioned to me that I need to put some mention in for set bonuses somewhere to emphasize their impact so I'll consider dropping that in.

I've never understood Idol of the Corruptor over Mutilation, I'm probably missing something here. it grants 153 agi over 12 seconds, where as Idol of Mut gives 200 over 16 seconds. Why is the former good for manglebots?

I'll mention that if the triumph bages are unavailable to you. The idol wouldn't be top priority for spending badges, so if you don't have Mutiliation you need to make a call based on whether you mangle or not. This will be a moot point in 3.3 when triumph badges are the normal heroic badges. I haven't done PTR testing yet to determine if the new feral idol is all that and a bag of chips for the kittehs though.

Agi/ArPen Elixirs? if you follow the stat weighing for each elixir on your references, the 120 AP blows away anything else, but are there situations where it might be worth it? I think the biggest problem is that there just isn't any good Guardian elixir (extra health at best).

There is no ArP to AP stat weighing on this guide or any other guide because ArP scales better than linear and is dependent on whether you are aiming for a soft or hard cap. You can toy for it awhile on Toskk's, but there are full raid buffed situations where the ArP exilir is a DPS increase. It will likely never be an increase in 3.3 because blizz seems to be handing out ArP gear like candy. We'll see some interesting gearing choices as a result of ArP caps and crit caps.

[Darksend]

I'll change the wording for PvP and bear talents. I have no intention of making a bearcat guide or exploring it here. I'm a firm believer that between dual talent specs and Teleport: Moonglade - Spell - World of Warcraft, you shouldn't comprimise. If someone would like to make a standalone bearcat guide or an addendum for either dark's or mine that'd be great though.

glyphs alone are such a huge difference because of the impact they have on your rotation. shredding attacks and predatory instincts in any tanking build just seems wrong. I completely disagree with the argument that "some fights you tank one add for the first 30 seconds and dps the entire rest of the fight". sorry, tanking gear losses so much crit and arp because of gems that mangle spamming with improved mangle is almost more DPS than a shred rotation when you do not have the appropriate glyphs.

[Coldbear]

Used parts of your guide as inspiration for this:

Feral DPS guide - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Just finished cleaning it up. Hopefully moving forward we can avoid having 15 different feral guides in ten separate locations each dependent on one single person who may go MIA at any moment. Pool information to find solutions to common problems/issues and teach the new kids.

[Coldbear]

TLDR:

JOHN ****ING MADDEN
http://coldbear.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/catdps.jpg (unknown author)



Is your Feral Dps raider/friend/alt underperforming or needs help? Link them one of these:



ORIGINAL Guide: How To Feral DPS
Download Guide How To Feral DPS.mp4 How To Feral DPS.mp4 (Download, highest quality, easier to pause/rewind)
Guide: How To Feral DPS By Cold - World of Warcraft Movies
Viddler.com - Guide: How To Feral DPS - Uploaded by parl2001 (Full Movie)
YouTube - Guide How To Feral DPS part ONE of two (part 1 of 2)
Guide How To Feral DPS part ONE of two (part 1 of 2)

Things I got wrong (update):
Download CB05.5 Things I got wrong 3000.mp4 (DOWNLOAD, easier to pause/rewind)
Viddler.com - Things I got wrong - Uploaded by parl2001
YouTube - CB05.5 Things I got wrong
NoobFlicks > Warcraft > CB05.5 Things I got wrong
CB05.5 Things I got wrong

Director's Cut Music Video Version:
Download CB05.5 Director's Music Video Cut.mp4

Written Guide:
Feral DPS guide - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft (hopefully to be updated by community)

…OF COURSE, THAT'S JUST MY OPINION. I COULD BE WRONG.

The original video is up to about 160,000 views now (not counting re-uploads on overseas sites), the update isn't that big of a deal but I figured I should at least address the common complaints (like "TOO FAST OMG HEAD EXPLODE") and fix my mistakes.