[Feral] The art of a Kitten: PvE guide

[Deleted]

Does this mean HOTW should be saved for hero? And during hero do you continue with your normal kitty rotation? or does wrath spam do more damage? thanks

Yeah Wrath spam with hero is slightly better then normal rotation and hero especially if you have a higher Ilvl spell caster weapon.

[Deleted]

Does this mean HOTW should be saved for hero? And during hero do you continue with your normal kitty rotation? or does wrath spam do more damage? thanks

Also are there any high end ferals out there who are still using HOTW over DOC?

I always use it for progression, unless the fight needs something else (on amber shaper atm). A hotw tranq can really save a raid if something goes wrong, it's just worth it.

[Deleted]

Amazing guide definitly helpfull!
Try to keep it up in the future too

[Deleted]

Thanks alot guys for the friendly quick response. 1 more quick piece of advice if you dont mind. Since i dont have a caster weapon atm and in LFR gear, should i still be using wrath in hero phase or stick to kitty rotation until i get a caster wep? Thanks alot lads.

[kaiadam]

Thanks alot guys for the friendly quick response. 1 more quick piece of advice if you dont mind. Since i dont have a caster weapon atm and in LFR gear, should i still be using wrath in hero phase or stick to kitty rotation until i get a caster wep? Thanks alot lads.

Wrath is definitely not worth using without a caster weapon.

Hurricane is arguably worth using if number of targets is somewhere between 5 and 15.

Tranquility is always worth using with HoTW if the raid needs it.

[Deleted]

Question of the day! Does anybody know roughly how much of a dps increase DOC is over HOTW in current teir gear? with just using the HOTW passive bonus and again with using a good spell caster weap and spamming wrath? IM pretty sure some of you more experienced ferals know the answer to this, but im blind and cant find it, cheers.

And if im not pushing it to much. the same with NV? basically ive been trying to find out the dps differences between the 3, but more interested with doc vs hotw as i explained above.

cheers again

[Paloro]

Question of the day! Does anybody know roughly how much of a dps increase DOC is over HOTW in current teir gear? with just using the HOTW passive bonus and again with using a good spell caster weap and spamming wrath? IM pretty sure some of you more experienced ferals know the answer to this, but im blind and cant find it, cheers.

And if im not pushing it to much. the same with NV? basically ive been trying to find out the dps differences between the 3, but more interested with doc vs hotw as i explained above.

cheers again

It really depends on a fight by fight basis. You mentioned current tier, so is there a particular boss you want to know for or are you just wishing for patchwerk results?

The skill gap for DoC vs HotW is also something you need to consider.

[FeralSynapse]

Question of the day! Does anybody know roughly how much of a dps increase DOC is over HOTW in current teir gear? with just using the HOTW passive bonus and again with using a good spell caster weap and spamming wrath? IM pretty sure some of you more experienced ferals know the answer to this, but im blind and cant find it, cheers.

And if im not pushing it to much. the same with NV? basically ive been trying to find out the dps differences between the 3, but more interested with doc vs hotw as i explained above.

cheers again

I see on average (passive only) about a 2-3k difference between HoTW and DoC. DoC being the higher of the two. If you can't do Doc well it's a decent dps loss. I tend to toss out the DoC rotation (fight allowing, it's not always the best) on farm bosses and use HoTW for progression. With the change to NV in 5.2 I don't think it will be a real option for us-given it no longer lines up with Berserk.

[Deleted]

Thanks lads. As always very helpful.

[Deleted]

Question of the day! Does anybody know roughly how much of a dps increase DOC is over HOTW in current teir gear? with just using the HOTW passive bonus and again with using a good spell caster weap and spamming wrath? IM pretty sure some of you more experienced ferals know the answer to this, but im blind and cant find it, cheers.

And if im not pushing it to much. the same with NV? basically ive been trying to find out the dps differences between the 3, but more interested with doc vs hotw as i explained above.

cheers again

Fully bis and both executed right, about 6/7k difference.

[Elunedra]

i gues the 5.2 rune trinket will greatly value extreme powerfull rips / rakes so i gues it will boost DoC up higher then HotW?

[Deleted]

Feral T15 2set bonus:
does that mean Mangle will be always better than Shred? They are currently very near each others, but with set bonus Mangle will proc more extra combo points which could make it outright better? Except maybe special cases like 4 set bonus procs or some trinket procs where Shred should be used for bigger crits?

[Regen]

Do most or any use HotW for progression to use on tranqs?

Also, on a macro for that, could you do...

#showtooltip
/cast Heart of the Wild
/equip SPELLSTAFFWUT
/cast Tranquility


And just like have in my mangle/shred whatever macro my agi weapon? So that my next attack equips the proper weapon first?

[Deleted]

Do most or any use HotW for progression to use on tranqs?

Also, on a macro for that, could you do...

#showtooltip
/cast Heart of the Wild
/equip SPELLSTAFFWUT
/cast Tranquility


And just like have in my mangle/shred whatever macro my agi weapon? So that my next attack equips the proper weapon first?

In 10m im sure the extra cool down would be nice, in 25m normal feral tranq is more then enough.

[Regen]

At which point it'd be better to roll with the wrath spam or L2 DoC?

[kaiadam]

On paper, DoC is about a 3% increase over non-wrathing HoTW. Wrathing is a dps increase on the order of perhaps 10% over normal kitty form damage.
If you time your cds well (if you have a hero and pot during HoTW), the damage differential between HoTW and DoC drops to about 2%.
Next patch, with the wrath buff, the damage differential drops to about 1% - but then the 2 set bonus changes it to about 1.5% (napkin math here.)

I'm a big advocate of taking HoTW for progression 100% of the time. Unless you take so incredibly long to learn a fight that you've got 100% perfected mechanics by the time you're ready for a kill, HoTW is easily a dps increase over DoC as it allows you to pay more attention to the fight and less to your rotation. Couple that with the much higher utility you offer - hotw'd hurricane is the best aoe in the game & hotw'd tranquility is the highest hps heal in the game short of LoH - it seems like a no-brainer that you'd take HoTW. Perhaps swap to DoC after progression is done and you're just going for ranks.

And even then, after months of farm, people are still hitting rank 1 parses as HoTW.

[Sonnillon]

#showtooltip
/cast Heart of the Wild
/equip SPELLSTAFFWUT

It doesn't work for me. It triggers HoTW, but doesn't change my wep. I've tried adding the wep at start or at the end of HotW, but still no effect. The weapon name is correct as I shift+clicked the name from the bag and I know that it is in the bags.

If I have something like that for my shapeshifting, it changes my weapon properly, though 50% of the time fails to trigger my feral/bear form x_x, but changes the weapon.

[aggixx]

Equipping an item causes a 1 second GCD but it can be used while in a GCD. If you hit your macro to shapeshift+weapon swap while you're in a GCD it will equip the weapon first, refreshing your GCD first and locking you out of shifting into form for 1 second or so. Similarly if you have the equip line first it won't let you shift in until a second after the weapon is equipped.

I'm not sure what the macro you pasted doesn't work, here's mine and it works fine:

/cast Heart of the Wild
/equipset Weapon - Caster
/stopmacro [combat]
/use [group] Virmen's Bite
/click ElvUI_Bar1Button1

The equipset command equips an equipment set called "Weapon - Caster" which is a set that has only my caster weapon in it. This way I can update my caster weapon in that outfit when I get a new weapon and any macro with a weapon swap in it will get updated to the correct weapon. It also allows the macro to distinguish which instance of that specific item you want to equip if you happen to have multiple of the same caster weapon.

The last 3 lines let me pre-pot and then click my wrath button outside of combat.

Also, this is the macro I use for cat form, as well as symbiosis:

#showtooltip
/cast [form:3, @focus, harm, combat][form:3] Symbiosis; Cat Form
/equipset Weapon - Feral
/cancelaura [btn:2] Dispersion
/cancelaura [btn:2] Divine Shield

Like I mentioned earlier, the drawback to macroing a weapon swap to a gcd spell is it will inflict a GCD if you hit it while you're in one, so make sure not to do that.

[Paloro]

Nice tip Aggixx, I never would have thought to use an equipment set for it.

[kaiadam]

I actually macro HoTW to all my actual spells instead of the weapon swaps, since HoTW itself doesn't trigger a gcd.

I have a cancelform equip caster set macro, then a catform equip agi staff macro, and each individual spell - tranq/wrath/healing touch/hurricane gets its own hotw macro.

Clumsier this way and takes up a few more macro slots but you don't pop hotw then put yourself into a gcd when you weapon swap.