Please someone help me understand feral dps

[Deleted]

Hey guys, lately I've been playing my druid again, and fell in love with the meow-factor! But... sometimes I'm just lost when it comes to the priority list (e.g. http://fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1883). Gear is 500~510 and I got a RoRo, if any of that matters.

There seem to be times when I can choose between wasting different ressources, but there's no option not to waste any. Now I read the concept of feral dps: keep up roar and bleeds that tick as hard as possible. Bite = execute phase only unless you got the gear and know what you are doing.
Abovementioned priority list suggest 'wasting' combo points is the way to go:
-Use a CP generater if: You're about to energy cap.


Let's say I just got perfect rake/rip up, thrash is up, there's 10++ seconds of roar on me and I keep getting Omen proccs and am about to energy cap HARD. /edit: and I'm at 5 Combo Points.
- Do I use a CP generater every time I'm 1 GCD from energy capping and on any Omen proc?
- Do I reapply Roar anyway - fuck the 10 seconds that I lose - in an effort to unsync rip and roar?
- I have tried to add in Ferocious Bite... Not happening at that gear level. TF down, RoRo proc, no Omen procs. So much nope
- Energy capping is out of the question I assume for obvious reasons.


Insights from more experienced ferals are very much appreciated.



On a kinda related note:
Rip 24 second run time
Tiger's Fury 30 second cooldown
The priority list suggests I don't hold TF to buff Rip, if I have to hold it for more than a few moments. Is that correct?

[teddabear]

Hey guys, lately I've been playing my druid again, and fell in love with the meow-factor! But... sometimes I'm just lost when it comes to the priority list (e.g. http://fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1883). Gear is 500~510 and I got a RoRo, if any of that matters.

There seem to be times when I can choose between wasting different ressources, but there's no option not to waste any. Now I read the concept of feral dps: keep up roar and bleeds that tick as hard as possible. Bite = execute phase only unless you got the gear and know what you are doing.
Abovementioned priority list suggest 'wasting' combo points is the way to go:
-Use a CP generater if: You're about to energy cap.


Let's say I just got perfect rake/rip up, thrash is up, there's 10++ seconds of roar on me and I keep getting Omen proccs and am about to energy cap HARD. /edit: and I'm at 5 Combo Points.
- Do I use a CP generater every time I'm 1 GCD from energy capping and on any Omen proc?
- Do I reapply Roar anyway - fuck the 10 seconds that I lose - in an effort to unsync rip and roar?
- I have tried to add in Ferocious Bite... Not happening at that gear level. TF down, RoRo proc, no Omen procs. So much nope
- Energy capping is out of the question I assume for obvious reasons.


Insights from more experienced ferals are very much appreciated.



On a kinda related note:
Rip 24 second run time
Tiger's Fury 30 second cooldown
The priority list suggests I don't hold TF to buff Rip, if I have to hold it for more than a few moments. Is that correct?

You never know when your going to get an OOC so you can't make any decisions on what move to do based on OOC. Yeh If you are at 5 combo points and need to Rip or SR in the somewhat near future then a bunch of OOC means you just lost a Bite but if you don't get the OOC you will lose a crapton more DPS than you would get from a bite. Especially with RoR, 1 tick of Rip can do as much as a Bite.

If you have AoC TF'ing every Rip works out nicely. At your gear level stick to the NEVER FB strategy. 570+ then you can get away with it a lot. Even then you will be surprised how often you get no OOCs and no crits even though you are crit capped.

[Ulfhedinn]

I am at 510 on my druid atm... no roro. FB pretty much always screws me. The only time I can be sure FB wont cause issues is during lust/berserk.

[Shamanegans]

Hey guys, lately I've been playing my druid again, and fell in love with the meow-factor! But... sometimes I'm just lost when it comes to the priority list (e.g. http://fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1883). Gear is 500~510 and I got a RoRo, if any of that matters.

There seem to be times when I can choose between wasting different ressources, but there's no option not to waste any. Now I read the concept of feral dps: keep up roar and bleeds that tick as hard as possible. Bite = execute phase only unless you got the gear and know what you are doing.
Abovementioned priority list suggest 'wasting' combo points is the way to go:
-Use a CP generater if: You're about to energy cap.


Let's say I just got perfect rake/rip up, thrash is up, there's 10++ seconds of roar on me and I keep getting Omen proccs and am about to energy cap HARD. /edit: and I'm at 5 Combo Points.
- Do I use a CP generater every time I'm 1 GCD from energy capping and on any Omen proc?
- Do I reapply Roar anyway - fuck the 10 seconds that I lose - in an effort to unsync rip and roar?
- I have tried to add in Ferocious Bite... Not happening at that gear level. TF down, RoRo proc, no Omen procs. So much nope
- Energy capping is out of the question I assume for obvious reasons.


Insights from more experienced ferals are very much appreciated.

In that situation I would just SR then Shred the OOC then shred again to avoid energy capping, 2 shreds would hit so hard with the bleeds all ticking maybe even close to a bite damage and increase your Rip timer.

On a kinda related note:
Rip 24 second run time
Tiger's Fury 30 second cooldown
The priority list suggests I don't hold TF to buff Rip, if I have to hold it for more than a few moments. Is that correct?

you are forgetting that mangle, ravage and shred increase rips timer by 6 seconds that means you can line up TF with every rip, there shouldn't really ever be a time where you need to wait more than a second to not have rip on the target.

[Deleted]

In that situation I would just SR then Shred the OOC then shred again to avoid energy capping, 2 shreds would hit so hard with the bleeds all ticking maybe even close to a bite damage and increase your Rip timer.

Thanks for the answer! This one feels like the most intuitive - essentially only 'wasting' Roar uptime by overwriting the old Roar. Good to hear it's regarded as the best option dps-wise

you are forgetting that mangle, ravage and shred increase rips timer by 6 seconds that means you can line up TF with every rip, there shouldn't really ever be a time where you need to wait more than a second to not have rip on the target.

The extended duration I already added to the 16 second base duration, 16 + 2*3 because I figured I'd use CP-builders 3 times during the rip duration anyway. Before one gets the cooldown reduction trinket the timers are 6 seconds apart sadly. And from the fluiddruid list it appears it's not worth synchronizing them at all costs. I guess it makes sense: there doesn't seem to be anything better to do with the combo points or energy during this 8 second gap than to apply a slightly weaker-than-perfect rip, which you try to overwrite with a better rip as soon as you get the chance. //edit: It's 22 seconds only even; not 24. So the gap is 8 seconds.

- - - Updated - - -

You never know when your going to get an OOC so you can't make any decisions on what move to do based on OOC. Yeh If you are at 5 combo points and need to Rip or SR in the somewhat near future then a bunch of OOC means you just lost a Bite but if you don't get the OOC you will lose a crapton more DPS than you would get from a bite. Especially with RoR, 1 tick of Rip can do as much as a Bite.

If you have AoC TF'ing every Rip works out nicely. At your gear level stick to the NEVER FB strategy. 570+ then you can get away with it a lot. Even then you will be surprised how often you get no OOCs and no crits even though you are crit capped.

Yeah, I realized fb is out of the question. I will try to get my hands on the AoC trinket. Thanks for the input.
RoRo can screw you out of your crit chance at any gear level haha

[pkm]

Just a quick question, is it ok to wait a gcd or two if your energy isn't going to be capped? Since I believe feral doesn't have random energy regeneration mechanisms like rogue I don't think it should be a problem?

[Soisoisoi]

Just a quick question, is it ok to wait a gcd or two if your energy isn't going to be capped? Since I believe feral doesn't have random energy regeneration mechanisms like rogue I don't think it should be a problem?

Yes, in fact that's a pretty big part of Feral. Use Shred before you cap energy, don't just use it as soon as you get the energy to use it. Helps a lot with burst and quickly getting CP back after using a finisher, so you're less likely to let something fall off.

[Deleted]

Just a quick question, is it ok to wait a gcd or two if your energy isn't going to be capped? Since I believe feral doesn't have random energy regeneration mechanisms like rogue I don't think it should be a problem?

That gets explained in the link I posted in the OP. You use CP builders when you HAVE to use them, not as soon as you CAN use them. That's the basic mindset and works really well for most cases. I'm just not sure about certain rare cases; which is what I started this post for