[Feral PVE] Focus single target or participate in AOE?

[Deleted]

Hello,

I've read what I could about Feral dps in WoD, but I haven't been able to find a clear answer what to do in terms of AOE. I am wondering what I can do best on add fights like Furnace, Darmac, Thogar etc. Yesterday I did well on Gruul and Oregorger (first of my raid in dps using Incarnate/Bloodtalons), but I was terrible on Furnace. So please help me out.

I did go into logs that showed reasonable dps by a Feral on Darmac (from fluiddruid). I noticed that this Feral player did use Swipe when the packs came out. I was surprised to see this.

Is the proper action to use rake-tab in combination with thrash? Should the thrash be buffed?
Should I focus on the boss, ignore the adds with exception of a thrash?
Should rake/tab be avoided, and should thrash be combined with Swipe? Should any of these be buffed?

Please let me know what you use in such fights and what you focus on. Thx.

[Cantor]

Focus on what you're best at; in our case, that's single target. Regarding your specific example, I'll always Thrash the Packbeasts, but that's only because I have the 2pc tier bonus for the energy return. I might use Swipe to guarantee a second combo point if I'm desperate, but all-in-all I pretty much stick to single target. On our Mythic kill this evening, I was 7th on overall damage, but first on boss damage and in the top 3 for mount damage, while I was second from the bottom on Packbeasts.

[Trimshadow]

On fights like Thogar where adds are stacked on the boss, you can do ok with Thrash > Swipe, but be careful about letting your bleeds drop off on the boss himself or or energy starving yourself - also - single target the man-at-arms when he spawns.

Even on Darmac if the tanks can hold the boss where the adds spawn you can get a thrash off and if you have the energy and enough bleed time rolling on the boss a swipe - but they generally die so fast you're not going to get much from the ticks and it's generally not worth AoE'ing the adds for Feral

Blast Furnace - forget it, just make sure you're focusing down Operators (P1) Primal Elementalists (P2), Firecallers (if you're on Firecaller duty) maybe dot up the mini-boss (Feldspar) from time to time and focus the Heart of the Mountain in (P3) if you are top or in the top dps on Operators, Elementalists, and HotM in P3 - you're doing your job - just don't look at the meters on this fight.. it's sad...

Just about everything else in BrF is a cleave fight (except Kromog), so you should do pretty well on these - and Blackhand is decent for Feral in it's a single target fight (except P2) - it's just not that great for Melee in general because there can be a lot of time out of melee range, especially in P3...

[Liandryl]

Unless you want to pad meter without being efficient, you should not bother swiping on most boss.
With tier 17 2p you should trash once to proc more energy, but unless your raid clearly lacks aoe, keep doing shred instead of swipe.

Not being top dps does not mean you are doing things wrong when you are playing a ST focus class.

[Deleted]

Thanks a lot for your replies. I'm happy to hear that the best thing I can do is focus and not get distracted by packs (other than a Thrash). Also good to hear that it's best not to look at the meters at Furnace...

Any other advice is still welcome. For instance: do you maintain your glyphs/talents for those fights, or do you make modifications?

[Nasigoring]

Yea, Blast Furnace is a bad one for "ranking" for ferals. However we are an exceptional class for it if you do what you are supposed to. Focus down the bellows operator while keeping some bleeds on Felspar for example. I have ranked in the top 95% for Feral druids on BF but only in the 60th percentile for all classes. My general playstyle is to focus on my target, maintain thrash and rotate DoTs if the adds are going to be alive long enough for it to be worth while.
Viva la Iron Maidens!