The Cat Guide - 4.3

[rathofvol]

The reason hit or expertise doesn't (read:in 99% of cases) matter is because of the nature of energy and the ranking of our abilities. Unless you get energy capped because you miss so many abilities, most every other stat will be better. I don't have much hit either, but in almost all cases you will be GCD capped as opposed to energy cap. You're still going to land all of your abilities, it just might take 1 or 2 more GCDs. A few more GCDs after that, your rotation will be caught up. The only thing to potentially be careful is being dependent on a ability to hit with TF up, it doesn't hit 3 times in a row, now your TF isn't up anymore. The way around this is to alter your rotation to make sure you have 5cp before using TF.

Hit and expertise caps are more important for white damage, rage, and RP dependent classes. Their auto attacks and abilities depend a LOT more on hitting than ours do, so therefore their stat weights are drastically different. For example, if you were a combat rogue, hit and expertise would be your #1 and #2 stats by a wide margin, because white damage would be your biggest % of dps. Warriors depend on rage, which depends on their auto attacks hitting...etc. Because rip is so low on our damage %, that's why we don't aim for these stats either

I'm not stating that I think hit/exp are the best stats for feral, I completely understand why they are suboptimal. All I'm saying is being so low makes things way more frustrating and sims don't factor in me throwing my keyboard across the room when I miss out on a 5cp TFd Rip on Magmaw's head when I have H Key proccd and an agility pot up.

[the9tail]

I chose the berserk glyph, because 2 extra shreds per berserk (or 4 shreds in the case above), outweighs a 15% damage bonus for 6 seconds from the TF glyph. What do you guys think?

I agree with your thinking.

[anni23]

groups going to try al'akir this week. he kind of looks intimidating as melee.
is shred positional requirement a drawback for feral here? do you have to mangle spam more than maloriak red phase?
whats a good position to be in for p3? any advice/tips will be greatly appreciated
i could always go moonkin if feral is seriously disadvantaged on this fight :x

[Deleted]

My guild always groups the entire raid on the tankspot, so shred is not really an option after phase 1
But with glyph of mangle you can still do good dps. (esp since bleeds arent affected by parries/dodges much)

[Barawr]

RAWR is currently suggesting reforging a lot of crit on items into haste instead of just leaving a crit/mastery item as is. I know we have talked about breakpoints for having enough energy regen to help the priority so is this the reasoning for the suggestion?

[Nathanyel]

Just a quick share, Strength of the Panther (4T11 proc) is cancelled when leaving Cat Form, e.g. to rebirth or innervate someone (or the occasional selfheal on Chimaeron)

[Deleted]

Yea just discovered that as well

---------- Post added 2011-01-28 at 12:00 AM ----------

RAWR is currently suggesting reforging a lot of crit on items into haste instead of just leaving a crit/mastery item as is. I know we have talked about breakpoints for having enough energy regen to help the priority so is this the reasoning for the suggestion?

Rawr is overvalueing haste atm, no clue why.

[Shornaal]

Rawr is overvalueing haste atm, no clue why.

Had the same result with Mew, when i was with only a couple of epics and a 346 weapon it was valuing haste over crit. Changed to Malevolence and haste dropped to the bottom.

[Nathanyel]

Atm, I mistrust any calculator where a single item exchange affects the value of stats so heavily, all in the absence of capped stats (hit, exp have no importance, and ArP is gone)

---------- Post added 2011-01-28 at 10:52 AM ----------

groups going to try al'akir this week. he kind of looks intimidating as melee.
is shred positional requirement a drawback for feral here? do you have to mangle spam more than maloriak red phase?

Saw this post again when scroling up, yes, he sucks as cat, did him on 25 yesterday. Unless you get a good spot in P1, you can never Shred. Exchanged the Shred Glyph for the Mangle one (and TF for Berserk, wanted to test that at the dummies anyway, and in this fight, Berserk is clearly superior as you can't even sync TF and Rip in the slightest)
It takes some getting used to, Rip sucks when you have to refresh it every 16 seconds, but with some practice, you should do competitive damage, albeit several positions below your usual one.
On the bright side, 4T11 has nearly no chance to fall off - unless you rebirth/innervate, of course.

[Elunedra]

Atm, I mistrust any calculator where a single item exchange affects the value of stats so heavily, all in the absence of capped stats (hit, exp have no importance, and ArP is gone).

i dont trust any calculaters atm witch makes me confusing what would be better :/

it seems hast & crit & mastery be verry close to hit & exp next patch so i think ill jsut get hit / exp capped and get rid of those missing rip / rakes :P

[rathofvol]

i dont trust any calculaters atm witch makes me confusing what would be better :/

it seems hast & crit & mastery be verry close to hit & exp next patch so i think ill jsut get hit / exp capped and get rid of those missing rip / rakes :P

There's is really no way to get hit and expertise cap with the current gear available, unless you did something really dumb like start socketing for it. Even with reforging all crit/haste to hit/exp you still will find yourself with a good 5% chance not to land something.

[Leinie]

The bolded section is a little misleading. The glyph only increases the uptime by 2.22%, 20% unglyphed, and 22.22% glyphed.
You could say that the glyph makes TF available 11.1% sooner, but the two statements are not the same.

If a fight lasts 4 min, you will actually lose dps (due to having to clip your rakes, and thus wasting energy). It takes 9 unglyphed TF's to make it possible to have 10 glyphed TF's, this means the fight has to be longer than 4:40 to even get use out of the glyph. I mentioned clipping rake because the guide says to clip your rake for a dps increase.

In reality you end up wasting 2 rakes (10 ticks, or 70 energy) over a 3 min fight, in order to keep rake up with the TF buff. So you gain 60 energy if the fight lasts longer than 4:40, but you lose 70 energy every 3 min. You do get the 15% damage bonus for 6 seconds every 5 minutes, but I don't quite think that's good enough.

I chose the berserk glyph, because 2 extra shreds per berserk (or 4 shreds in the case above), outweighs a 15% damage bonus for 6 seconds from the TF glyph. What do you guys think?

Two things. 1) Remember that the 15% damage for 6 seconds increases the damage of your Rip and Rake for their entire duration if they're cast during that 6 seconds. That is why clipping Rake with less than ~8 seconds with a TF enchanced Rake is a DPS increase; the energy isn't so much wasted as it is used for a stronger ability that overrides a weaker one. With the TF glyph I've never really had to clip Rake at all anyway. Every other Rake falls under TF if the last tick is clipped correctly.

2) With the Feral Charge and TF glyphs, TF and Feral Charge line up perfectly. Well, I suppose they would if they both weren't glyphed as well, but in this case it's a definite DPS increase. I doubt I'm the only one who's noticed this, but since I haven't seen anyone else talk about it, here goes:

On a lot of raid bosses (I've noticed this on Nefarian, Artamedes, Chimaeron, Valiona/Theralion, maybe a few others), you can actually Feral Charge while remaining in melee range. I assume it's because their hitboxes are so huge, but I'm never 'too close.' With TF up, it's effectively a ~40k (on crit) nuke every 27 seconds costing 10 energy and granting CPs. And you don't have to worry about losing DPS from white damage/OoC procs/Fury Swipes. You just jump forward a couple yards. You might have to run backwards a bit to group back up with melee or w/e but there's virtually no DPS loss at all, barring an unlucky tail swipe. It's win/win. On bosses where you cannot do this, as long as you can run out quickly enough ( < 3sec ) and are in no danger of energy capping or anything falling off, you can still gain DPS by fitting Ravage! in your rotation.

And most raid bosses last longer than 5 minutes.

[Calathiel]

Yeah, in those few fights FC is great, sadly there are fights where it doesnt work at all, for example on Magmaw and Al'akir. Wonder if blizzard is going to fix it or not.
Im also wondering if anyone is using Need To Know for tracking buff/debuff duration (I had it just for keeping stampede buff duration to not waste it as Im not always using it imidietly after charge). Now I've added Strength of the Panther to it but sadly I can't find option to also track the number of stacks. Anyone know how to set it in NTK (if it's possible at all)?

[leofric]

There's is really no way to get hit and expertise cap with the current gear available, unless you did something really dumb like start socketing for it. Even with reforging all crit/haste to hit/exp you still will find yourself with a good 5% chance not to land something.

Armory Hit and expertise capped, still have 3-4 items not reforged to hit/expertise, still using 359 pvp weapon, still rank consistently on fights where I dps.

[Paskgotsheal]

So anyone check out simcraft yet? Looks pretty abysmal for us -_-

Basic stand still fight -

http://manoutoftime.org/misc/simc/pt...372/basic.html


Helter skelter (adds etc)

http://manoutoftime.org/misc/simc/pt...r_skelter.html


RIP cat

---------- Post added 2011-01-28 at 11:02 PM ----------

Armory Hit and expertise capped, still have 3-4 items not reforged to hit/expertise, still using 359 pvp weapon, still rank consistently on fights where I dps.

This post made me lol. rank what like 200th?

[leofric]

This post made me lol. rank what like 200th?

Is 200 bad? I think not ranking would be bad, so unless you guild doesn't post logs, that would be you since I don't see you ahead of me. I am still using the pvp weapon, while you have a 372 heroic weapon, + 4 other heroic lvl items. I can also be relied on not to miss interrupts. Your post makes me lol.

Edit: If ranking was my top concern, I would get rid of all my hit and expertise and hope I RNG'd way way to #1, I am not arguing that it doesn't do more dps. However, I am more focused on raid awareness and making myself available to interrupt flawlessly. While doing that, and still being able to consistently rank, is more important to me.

2nd Edit: Just realized you are in a 10 man raiding guild. Who does your interrupts? Now I am really laughing.

[bavarcarus]

I thought there was some talk of interrupts not being able to miss.

edit: old data, skull bash can miss after some hotfixes a while ago.

[Shornaal]

2nd Edit: Just realized you are in a 10 man raiding guild. Who does your interrupts? Now I am really laughing.

In my 10m i'm never on interrupt duty, as our group has at least other 2 interrupters easily... maybe it's the same for him.

[Deleted]

So anyone check out simcraft yet? Looks pretty abysmal for us -_-

Basic stand still fight -

http://manoutoftime.org/misc/simc/pt...372/basic.html


Helter skelter (adds etc)

http://manoutoftime.org/misc/simc/pt...r_skelter.html


RIP cat

Is this including the 4.0.6 changes? Also shadowpriest nr 1? that doesnt seem very realistic, haven't seen any logs sofar with a shadowpriest on top.

[Jon]

Armory Hit and expertise capped, still have 3-4 items not reforged to hit/expertise, still using 359 pvp weapon, still rank consistently on fights where I dps.

Feral Cat at hit/exp cap? Now I've seen everything. *facepalm*

So anyone check out simcraft yet? Looks pretty abysmal for us -_-

Basic stand still fight -

http://manoutoftime.org/misc/simc/pt...372/basic.html


Helter skelter (adds etc)

http://manoutoftime.org/misc/simc/pt...r_skelter.html


RIP cat

Lovely. Good thing I started collecting moonkin gear a while back.