Feral Opening sequence

[dokluten]

Good evening

I got some questions regarding the opening sequence of feral.

1. The option to open with shred from stealth instead of rake? Cause you will refresh your rake as the second ability anyway, due to every single cooldown being popped after approaching from stealth.
I could see the result of it be a dps loss with the delay of rake for 2 seconds, but could shred actually do enough damage in the opener to cover that?

You may also wish to trigger Incarnation seperately prior to Berserk to prevent unnecessarily losing 1 second of the Berserk buff, but this is a small gain.

2. What about delaying incarnation with 3 sec in the opener burst? I know about losing 1 sec of berserk with popping it before Incarnation, but with popping incarnation 3 sec after pull it will result in being up for the second tiger's fury / bloodtalons, so you can get a new full duration with RIP / RAKE with the incarnation / Tiger's fury / Bloodtalons, and a new full duration of RIP / RAKE with 180% stronger bleeds sounds stronger than getting 1 extra second of berserk? Or am i missing something? :?

[FeralSynapse]

1. The option to open with shred from stealth instead of rake? Cause you will refresh your rake as the second ability anyway, due to every single cooldown being popped after approaching from stealth.
I could see the result of it be a dps loss with the delay of rake for 2 seconds, but could shred actually do enough damage in the opener to cover that?

2. What about delaying incarnation with 3 sec in the opener burst? I know about losing 1 sec of berserk with popping it before Incarnation, but with popping incarnation 3 sec after pull it will result in being up for the second tiger's fury / bloodtalons, so you can get a new full duration with RIP / RAKE with the incarnation / Tiger's fury / Bloodtalons, and a new full duration of RIP / RAKE with 180% stronger bleeds sounds stronger than getting 1 extra second of berserk? Or am i missing something? :?

1. Rake opening from stealth does 100% extra damage, trumping Shred until a bleed is applied. Shred only does extra damage if a target is bleeding.
2. Using Inc 1 second before the pull is to make sure a free 5pnt Savage Roar is applied since stealth can be wonky. Generally after the first Rip you want to use the 2nd charge of BT on Rake/Bite. Bite @ 50 energy + BT does more damage than a Buffed Rip.

[Deleted]

Healing Touch
Stealth
Potion
Rake
Cooldowns (Inc/serk/trinkets, etc)
Shred til 5CP
TF + Rip
Shred til 5 CP
HT
FB
Refresh Rake

Resume normal rotation.

[Icecreamcake]

But what if you use SR Glyph? SR isn't activated until after I open with rake so the opened rake wouldn't benefit with SR, should I still open with rake then?

Here's my opener

BT
Prepot
Stealth
Shred
Rake
TF+BF+INC
Shred to 5
FB at 5
Shred to 4 then HT rake or 5 then HT and Rip with Rake after
Shred to 5 then HT right before FB

All this using Savage Roar glyph.

[wrathblade]

Rake will benefit from savage roar when using the savage roar glyph.

[aggixx]

Rake will benefit from savage roar when using the savage roar glyph.

This, and even if it didn't you wouldn't want to refresh it until Inc was up because Improved Rake is a far bigger deal than SR. And you don't want to bite first because then you're intentionally causing Rip downtime, which is bad.

Furyspark pretty much had it right, although Berserking that early can risk energy capping especially when Bloodlust is involved so I prefer to Berserk with TF.

- - - Updated - - -

2. What about delaying incarnation with 3 sec in the opener burst? I know about losing 1 sec of berserk with popping it before Incarnation, but with popping incarnation 3 sec after pull it will result in being up for the second tiger's fury / bloodtalons, so you can get a new full duration with RIP / RAKE with the incarnation / Tiger's fury / Bloodtalons, and a new full duration of RIP / RAKE with 180% stronger bleeds sounds stronger than getting 1 extra second of berserk? Or am i missing something? :?

Not sure what you mean by 180% stronger, but you could if you want I guess. Its not really going to make any significant difference compared to just refreshing Rake when Incarnation ends normally since you're trading away buffed shreds during full cooldowns for it.

[teddabear]

This, and even if it didn't you wouldn't want to refresh it until Inc was up because Improved Rake is a far bigger deal than SR. And you don't want to bite first because then you're intentionally causing Rip downtime, which is bad.

Furyspark pretty much had it right, although Berserking that early can risk energy capping especially when Bloodlust is involved so I prefer to Berserk with TF.

I haven't tested this but the impression I got while raiding is that Incarnation prevents capping with Berserk because you are biting so often. I am guessing that is one of the reasons Incarnation turned out to be vastly superior to the other talents. The other being Hero plus procs.

[Deleted]

I haven't tested this but the impression I got while raiding is that Incarnation prevents capping with Berserk because you are biting so often. I am guessing that is one of the reasons Incarnation turned out to be vastly superior to the other talents. The other being Hero plus procs.

It doesn't really prevent it no.

Pawkets is right that using berserk that early can and will cause energy capping, I wrote it how I did for simplicitys sake for those who aren't looking to smash rank 1's every pull, it keeps things simpler in terms of keeping the CD's aligned.

[Blackflag421]

If you use berserk that early you risk energy capping from a couple clearcasting procs. If you get zero procs it could be a gain but that rarely happens.

[Xyuvam]

FeralSynapse said: Bite at 50 energy + BT does more damage than a Buffed Rip.

So, what about the 3rd and 4th charge of BT in the opener? Is it also worth using it over Rip with BT? I saw some people are doing that (like 4 times FB in the opener after Rip).
Also another question: if you re in middle of the fight (not opener), and say you have 15 seconds left on Rip (without BT), what do you do - override existing Rip with BT, or just FB with BT.

I was always overriding and existing rip with BT, if it didnt have it. No matter how much time was left on Rip. But maybe i was totally wrong.

Thanks guys in advance.)

[aggixx]

You're caring far too much about Rip strength, you never want to refresh Rip that early regardless of the buffs you can apply it with. Once Rip is up, don't even think about refreshing it until it has 7.2 seconds remaining.

If your Rip has 15 seconds left when you reach 5 combo points you should check to see if SR can be refreshed (<12.6 seconds left), and if it can't then pool up some energy for a 50 energy Ferocious Bite. You should have far more than enough time to get to 5 combo points again before Rip expires.

[Xyuvam]

Need 10 posts to send PMs. What is this? )

Aggixx. Can you help with some detail? Couple of questions for you:

1) You have 4CP and you need to refresh Savage Roar. Do you go for another CP (if you have time) and then refresh it at 5?

2) Your Incarnation is about to fade. You have 14-15 secs on Rake. Do you refresh it? (Do you refresh it even if it was buffed with Incarnation + BT, and still has 14 secs?)

3) I was using the latest Ovale. And quite often this scenario came up. Rip had 6-8 seconds left, and IF i didnt have AT LEAST the same power to buff the expiring Rip, Ovale ALWAYS suggested to use FB instead. So is a couple of seconds of buffed Rip worth the Rip downtime. What do you think?

[aggixx]

1) "If you have time" is pretty damn broad, but yes. Assuming you're not going to cause an SR downtime, the only situation where I wouldn't go for more CP is if Rip is going to need to be refreshed soon after I refresh SR, and that doesn't happen often because Rip should generally be refreshed first. The only case where this would happen is if Rip is not quite in Pandemic range when SR is about to fade, or you can't possibly make it to 5 CP in time before SR fades to refresh Rip first.

2) Yes if I'm not downgrading the bleed strength. If you have a IR/BTd rake then refreshing it with just an IR rake isn't gaining you any damage (this tends to happen pretty frequently). Often when it works out so that I can do this, I'll wait until the last tenth of a second or so of the Incarnation to milk as much duration as possible.

3) SimulationCraft results show that delaying refreshing Rip until it is near expiring when you would otherwise apply a weaker rip over a stronger one is slightly higher DPS than refreshing it at the 7.2 mark, and that's what Ovale is suggesting. I don't think this is a realistic thing to do in practice, you're better off just pooling as long as you can without wasting energy, CP, sitting on an Omen of Clarity proc, or pushing back Tiger's Fury and then Rip so you can try to squeeze out an extra tick or two of buffed Rip damage.