6.1 feral

[Demitorn]

With the increase to swipe and thrash is feral aoe going to finally revert back to its old ways?

[ShmooDude]

No, changes nothing besides an increase in damage when you'd use those abilities, tab raking is still technically superior, despite being virtually impossible to pull off properly on more than 2-3 targets.

[Will]

The old ways? As in how godly good feral AoE was during early Wrath? It's a million miles from how strong it was then. Swipe (Cat) was introduced just before Ulduar came out in 3.1 and IT WAS OVERPOWERED.

Those were the days. I did some research to find out what it was like. Well I played back then but it brings back memories.

Swipe (Cat) used to cost 45 energy and do 338% of weapon damage.
Mangle (Cat) used to cost 34 energy and do 192% of weapon damage plus a small fixed value.
Shred used to cost 42 energy and do 351% of weapon damage plus a large fixed value.
(NB: The above values are including all talents and necessary effects factored in)

All things considered, back in the Wrath days swiping was ungodly powerful. I would consistently SMASH AoE pulls, and feral single target was damn strong as well. It was rewarding as well, because the spec was a lot harder to play; especially if you didn't have what was known as a 'mangle-bot' (that is either another Feral or an Arms Warrior to apply the bleed damage debuff on your behalf)

Back then, swipe hitting two targets would do more damage than a shred hitting one target. It wouldn't have been viable to swipe two targets of course as you wouldn't get any combo points, but it just goes to show how much more powerful it was compared to today.

You used to have to spend 3 talent points to buff it by 30%, builds that ignored AoE would have skipped the talent for raiding on non-Aoe fights. Even without the talent it was still a lot stronger in relation to single target than today's swipe.

[Thandorr]

As was mentioned before, this changes nothing in the way that we will play in any boss encounters. Swiping will still be a dps loss in nearly every scenario. The difference is that instead of forsaking tab-raking at 11+ targets we will be forsaking tab-raking at 7-8+, but realistically, this will never be the case because in a scenario where there are that many targets, it will likely be best for you to just put up a BT Thrash and focus the boss. Honestly, the only time I would ever see swipe actually being used is on trash, because you're bored lol. But perhaps, it could have its uses if you had full bleeds up on Operator Thogar will good durations, Savage roar up with a good duration and a full, fresh set of a heap of adds, in that situation, I'm interested in if it would be a DPS gain to Thrash/Swipe the adds, until you needed to refresh Thogar's bleeds.

TL;DR, Proceed as you were pre-6.1

[uzu1]

it changed nothing shred was buffed 20% too, you would do nothing different.

[Fiska]

The old ways? As in how godly good feral AoE was during early Wrath? It's a million miles from how strong it was then. Swipe (Cat) was introduced just before Ulduar came out in 3.1 and IT WAS OVERPOWERED.

You should have played with me during WotLK. Then you'd see what an overpowered AoE move really was. Say hello to FoK.

[Will]

Yeah, I remember Fan of Knives too. Fortunately our rogue wasn't always present