Fix my Feral DPS

[Zanzha]

Recently there was some animosity about the lack of resources on MMOC for feral in one of the discussion topics, so I've decided to take some initiative and set up one of these, along with compiling some useful guides etc. (and with any luck it'll even get used)
Stolen the framework from the hunter forums, it's going to be pretty barebones to start with

Purpose of this thread:

- To assist people who have made a considered effort into their damage yet are struggling to meet their expected numbers. If you have exhausted other avenues and don't know what to do for further improvement this is the thread for you.
- To allow experienced players to share their oozing nuggets of wisdom with those eager to learn. Everyone who has a solution to share is welcome to contribute.
- To discuss alternate approaches to ability usage or gearing, just make sure you have good sources of information before making claims.
- To provide a

Before Posting:

- Make sure you've read the various guides and understand the basics of preparing your spec. This thread isn't for teaching you how to gem, glyph, enchant correctly or of the basics of stat priority and rotation usage.

What to Post:

- Your spec, general gear level and expectations in raids. Don't have people trawl armorys and parses for these details when they can be given up front.
- Your problem in as much detail as is possible. Is it specific to an individual boss? in particular phases or situations? (AoE, Bloodtalons, Target swapping, movement, etc.) or just a general patchwerk style low dps problem? The more detail you can give the more helpful answers we can provide.
- Any resources you have which can detail the problem are useful. WarcraftLogs parses and armory links are especially helpful. (PLEASE PLEASE provide these, it is very difficult to get any useful information from a damage meter screenshot)

What Not to Post:

- L2P
- Stealth bragging damage logs.
- Other unsuitable things(!).

Please post this template at the top of your post, and fill in the details you have. Make sure you post behind the [/B] tags.

Item Level
Expectations:
Armory Link:
Warcraftlogs Link:

Example post
Item Level: 882
Expectations: Above 390k on Guarm
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...anzha/advanced
Warcraftlogs Link: http://warcraftlogs.com/superawesometotallylegitlink

Hey, I'm having some issues with my DPS. I've seen people with my gear do at least 390k on Guarm, but I've only managed 340. What's wrong? I've included some recent logs so you can see my performance etc. Thanks!

Resources:
(shamelessley lifted from discord and then some

Guides:
Xanaxara - http://xanzara.com/xanzarasferalguide.pdf
Tinderhoof - http://www.wowhead.com/guides/classe...feral/overview
Wordup - www.icy-veins.com/wow/feral-druid-pve-dps-guide

Analysis tools:
Warcraftlogs - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/
Clawnalyst - clawnalyst.nimos.ws
(credit to nimos on that last one, absolutly stunning tool for checking how good your snapshotting is)

Snapshot-tracking WeakAuras/TMWs:
Pawkets - www.fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24557
MoonBunnie - http://fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=34278
Tal - www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2073498
Daegalus (TMW) www.fluiddruid.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=34439

Simcraft:
Simcraft: https://www.simulationcraft.org/
Guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...mcrafting_dps/
Guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._get_personal/

Class Discord:
https://discord.gg/W4U25Ha

Note: I'll make this thread look prettier later, but for now it should serve its purpose.
If you see some flaws with this post feel free to PM me about it!

[Eryn]

Let's break the seal
Item level: 873 (866 equipped)
Expectation according with simcraft/AMR comparing other player over 300k
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/it/characte...asalute/simple
Warcraftlogs Link: best Ursouc heroic https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done
normal:https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...er/7278128/10/

Hello
in Wod I play as Resto but in this exp in our guild all decide to switch healer so I decide to play feral and I fall in love with it
My guild is a social one, we raid sometimes and sometimes playing in mythic+ (our best effort is a 7+). I have read all the guide, I'm usually simcraft my dudu for the stats and all the other stuff but I'm still struggle with my dps that compared with the other in warcraftlogs is low. Despite that I'm one of the my guild's main dps but I'm not happy because I know that I can perform better. I use TMW and DotFocus to track my stuff. Can you help me to reach my dream please?
(sorry for my english btw)

[Deleted]

Hey. Finally making an account here and stopping the lurking. Great thread idea Zanzha, i'm sure it'll help.

Eryn, at first sight it would seem that your uptimes could be higher, you should aim for 95%+ on Rip/Rake/Moonfire (88% on Rip is too low) and 99%+ on Savage Roar which isn't the case on your Ursoc fight (88% on Savage Roar is really too low). Ashamane's Bite was active 17% of the fight so it's pretty low as well to do a top rank so either you had bad RNG (happens) or your Rip refreshing (and your pooling in general) could need some improvement. It could be both, but consider the latter as your Rip hasn't perfect uptimes. You should work on always trying to keep up the longest/highest damage Rip on the target to ensure good Ashamane's Bite procs. Nevertheless this fight was rather clean compared to your other logs which are a bit outdated and/or messy so I can't really help you on other fights.

[Shadowsongs]

Item Level: 885
Expectations: +475k on Guram
Armory Link:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...wsong/advanced
Warcraftlogs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done
The only issue I can see is savage roar up-time which was 93% other than that everything looks fine. Yet i see people with same gear get to 500k dps on Guram
what is the issue here

[Zanzha]

Item Level: 885
Expectations: +475k on Guram
Armory Link:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...wsong/advanced
Warcraftlogs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done
The only issue I can see is savage roar up-time which was 93% other than that everything looks fine. Yet i see people with same gear get to 500k dps on Guram
what is the issue here

Ok so I had a quick look at your log and armoury.

First off I'm going to say that 475k is ambitious, not impossible but ambitious and could need some good rng on your part as it's starting to get into the region where dps legendaries and AR uptimes can make a difference, especially with your current gear. It's not bad per se but your stat weightings are very off for a single target fight like guarm with a fairly large amount of haste, whilst sporting very little verse, getting a couple of upgrades to swap out those haste pieces could have a pretty decent impact on fights like guarm, just make sure you're simming yourself regularly and trying to swap some of those pieces for stuff from m+. Relics are ok, not optimal but ok, try to get a decent rake / rip for blood, i know they're few and far between but it's just something to aim for.

I hate saying that I think it's predominantly a gear / itemization issue, I ran a sim to confirm my suspicions, ~450k for 400s fight 471k for 4 minute fight, so not entirely out of reach but as I said, ambitious and is going to need a fair amount of rng, a more reasonable target to set yourself looks to be reliably pushing 430-450k depending on the fight duration

Commendations on that log though, the only flaw I can see at a glance in it is the rip uptime, everything else was bordering on perfect. http://clawnalyst.nimos.ws/RP187mrwkyXNgbQV_17_0.html

Some minor things though as you seem to have the core gameplay down. On your opener you want to avoid this and use your cooldowns with ashamanes frenzy not after, even though the debuff is dynamic with tiger's fury etc, quite a lot of the damage on it is frontloaded.



On the savage roar front, you seem to have a tendancy to cast low combo point SR's, this can in some cases be the correct choice at times it looks like you're too eager to spend your combo points and hold onto them, you have the energy ring, make sure you use it, while you're pooling at a glance looked fine it looks to me like you're pooling at the wrong times.


(savage roar uptime in blue background, casts in green, rip casts in red) take a look at it for yourself here)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/RP187mrwkyXNgbQV#type=resources&source=9&pins=0%24Main%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%24127390394.0.0.Druid%24false%2452610%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24auras-cast%240%240.0.0.Any%24127390394.0.0.Druid%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24155722%5E0%24Separate%24%23a04D8A%24resources%240%24127390394.0.0.Druid%240.0.0.Any%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%240%24103%5E0%24Main%24%2300ff1e%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%24127390394.0.0.Druid%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%2452610%5E0%24Main%24%23ff0000%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%24127390394.0.0.Druid%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%241079&spell=104

There are several times where you're refreshing rip outside of the pandemic window, when you could just be pooling, refreshing a little bit later, and having a much easier time getting the CP for SR. With that in note it didn't end up hurting you excessivley here as while your SR uptime did suffer, you always had it for re-application of bleeds. On that note if everything is fine and up / running you can also pool your SR cp, all you are missing with it not up in that scenario is whitehits which aren't a huge problem and could have saved you a couple of times, obviously once you get it to a T though you shouldn't have problems keeping sr up closer to 100%

TLDR: work on your pooling, its ok but it needs some improvement.

Also you dropped your rip in execute, I'm just going to assume you derped and forgot to refresh right as he stampeded.

[Shadowsongs]

@Zanzha wow thanks for the detailed response that was really good analysis
Regarding pooling I was refreshing rip early to try and keep AR up, I wasn't aware of that pooling issue. I'll sure pay more attention to it from now.

Savage roar execution on that fight was odd for me as I missed with some CP but I usually don't refresh with less than 5 CP

I am trying really hard to get decent blood relic but RNG doomed me so far

Also thanks for the opener tip that will make some difference.

I was able to get to 450k in 3.30 fights before but at Nythendra where I don't move even with rot I will try and add more vers vs that useless haste.

It just annoy me when I think I did decent log and find that my ilvl bracket % is 50% didn't know that AR or legendary can influence it that far.

Anyway cheers for the response and tips much appreciated.

[Zanzha]

Haste isn't entirely useless, it's actually one of our better stats for multi target, and even on single target it's no way near as behind as say mastery is for destro locks.

[Abominalizer]

Item Level: 876
Expectations: Above 390k on Ursoc
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...onstyyx/simple
Warcraftlogs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=15

[neiljwd]

@Zanzha

WOW! What awesome feedback and analytical examination! Awesome sauce!

[Cantor]

Item Level: 884
Expectations: 380k on Ursoc
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Cantor/simple
Warcraftlogs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=67

I've played Feral for years - since patch 1.8. I've rarely raided with another Feral, but recently we recruited one and he smoked me on most fights. I'm doing something very wrong, but I'm not sure what. My uptimes seem generally ok, and I think it's more down to muscle memory and making sure I'm hitting things in the correct order than anything else (ie, not letting Rip and Roar drop off at the same time). I've simmed out BS vs LI and BS is pulling ahead for me, particularly with the low-ish crit that I'm running. Enchants are being upgraded to the max level versions as I write this, but the 150 Agility I'd gain from that wouldn't make up for the discrepancy that I'm seeing.

[Deleted]

Hey, just a few things from your Ursoc log that I could make out (which means it is pretty obvious, because I'm not very good at this):

You only use 1 pot, and that is a prolonged power pot. It would help your damage to use 2 pots, and old war will probably be better than prolonged power.

You have casted thrash 3 times and as far as I can tell, you did so when there was no add and you didn't have a clear casting proc. Is there a reason to do that? Because I don't think you should be using that on single target.

Comparing your parse with others in your gear range and parsing a lot higher also shows, that your rip dealt way less damage than theirs. This can be partly due to gearing, but since that player used old war pots, he should have less damage in rips than you. It might also have to do with you casting rip without blood talons up twice (1:15, 3:07). For further looks at your snapshotting, you need to wait for someone with real expertise to come online and have a look.

[Cantor]

Yeah I forgot to use a second pot on this particular pull, and it was a Prolonged Power purely because this wasn't a progression boss, we've had Ursoc on farm for a while. Thrash I tend to use when I'm about to energy cap and have 5CPs, but this may be wrong, otherwise avoiding it as I don't have the legendary bracers. I also noticed that my Rips were doing less damage than our other Feral's, but when comparing myself to other Ferals in similar gear/fight durations, it seems to be matching up pretty closely.

[coño]

Item Level: 885
Expectations: +300k on any fight EN/HC., I've yet to see that number unless I'm in a Dungeon Finder normal. +15% Buff.
Armory Link:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...llatino/simple (Not my normal gear)
Warcraftlogs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...rce=10&fight=1
I'm energy starved without spamming shred. I have never pulled over 300k dps.

I bought a mouse to help me macro TF+AF. I know my uptimes are low and I'm using either badkitty or something else to track my dots. I'm looking to move completely to pawkets. Today I learned that Berserk is NOT apart of our snapshotting. I also learned of a program called AMR and that it's ok to refresh RIP at 8 seconds? SR @ 10? and rake at.. 7 while using JW? I've been playing feral since BC and I've played this whole expansion as feral. I look at videos of other ferals doing 400k doing the exact same rotation. Then I ask myself.. what legendaries do they have. I have the feet that make our rotation a little bit easier, but do they have the ring and gloves? Ill keep waiting. I don't prepot and sometimes don't eat food. I understand that's about 40k DPS. I will be more than happy to old war it the f*ck up, once I can do the base dmg to make prepotting worth it. My normal gear, I sit at 1% vers, 8% haste, 40% crit, and about 61% Mastery, but with that set of gear I feel so energy starved and can't keep up SR.

BTW: I got my hidden artifact skin today... muy excited.

- - - Updated - - -

Tried to edit post to say :Item Level: 873 in normal gear, 863 in gear worn in armory but it won't let me.

[lotj]

Item Level: 885
Expectations: +300k on any fight EN/HC., I've yet to see that number unless I'm in a Dungeon Finder normal. +15% Buff.
Armory Link:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...llatino/simple (Not my normal gear)
Warcraftlogs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...rce=10&fight=1
I'm energy starved without spamming shred. I have never pulled over 300k dps.

I bought a mouse to help me macro TF+AF. I know my uptimes are low and I'm using either badkitty or something else to track my dots. I'm looking to move completely to pawkets. Today I learned that Berserk is NOT apart of our snapshotting. I also learned of a program called AMR and that it's ok to refresh RIP at 8 seconds? SR @ 10? and rake at.. 7 while using JW? I've been playing feral since BC and I've played this whole expansion as feral. I look at videos of other ferals doing 400k doing the exact same rotation. Then I ask myself.. what legendaries do they have. I have the feet that make our rotation a little bit easier, but do they have the ring and gloves? Ill keep waiting. I don't prepot and sometimes don't eat food. I understand that's about 40k DPS. I will be more than happy to old war it the f*ck up, once I can do the base dmg to make prepotting worth it. My normal gear, I sit at 1% vers, 8% haste, 40% crit, and about 61% Mastery, but with that set of gear I feel so energy starved and can't keep up SR.

Feral legendaries can help simplify certain aspects of the rotation, but they're not huge dps boosts like other classes. The boots are the only ones that really are for single target, and the bracers for aoe. The rest just augment certain aspects and aren't (on average) a huge dps swing.

As far as refreshing - it's actually okay to refresh even more than that. With finishers you generally pool as long as you can, and then prioritize SR/Rip/FB based on the SR & Rip timers. The conservative approach is : FB if they're both over half of their duration, SR if you're going to TF in the next cycle, Rip if it's under half of its duration, then SR. Refresh Rake if it's at a similar power at the beginning of the cycle, or when it's in the pandemic range if buffed w/ stealth.

You already mentioned the low uptime on your dots. The other thing is your moonfire & shred casts are completely backwards at best. You should be using Moonfire only enough to keep it up and building cp's with shred. On the Ursoc kill you didn't even cast shred once, but had 75 moonfire casts? You should have about 2.5 shred's per moonfire. You're also wasting a bunch of CP's - a few are expected from primal fury (or more if you have the gloves), but you shouldn't be wasting them from generators.

Feral's always energy limited. You just have to be comfortable doing nothing but auto-attacking at certain points.

[coño]

It's been almost a month or so now since I've gotten my pouncers, so I hope that it means I'm "due" for a new legendary. I'm praying for the hands. My sole focus in life right now is to get my DOT uptime to 100%. Shoot for the stars, land on the moon type of deal. (Yoda voice) Legendary gloves provides more CP's, More CP's = smoother rotation, smoother rotation = higher uptime, and higher uptime = God mode~. No feral I've come across likes or does think like that.

So what is the max time for Rip (21)?, SR (30) MF (?) and Rake (11)? I will never FB outside of Berserk phase or execution phase. I don't have enough energy or CP's to even attempt to pull that off. There are maybe 2-3 times during a fight where I can pool, which is why my AF uptime is so LOW. How do I correct this? Does pooling at 40 energy increase energy regen? Does being in the pandemic range flat out cancel your buffed Rip/rake or is that damage with extra time taken into the next cycle? How can you tell I was wasting CP's? I am under the impression that I might waste one or two if I crit @ 4 CP's while building but nothing crazy.

Being comfortable auto attacking while at 3-4 CP's and 20 energy? Or comfortable auto attacking while pooling with 5 CPs? Does Balance Affinity affect your melee attacks as well as your abilities? And does successful melee attacks, help to increase energy regeneration?

If these seems like stupid questions, I'm sorry. I need to be able to pin point where I'm fucking up at. I've seen these questions being asked else places with no answers. Thank you in advance for your response.

I was experimenting with using Moonfire solely as a CP builder instead of Shred. I'm having a hard time getting off more than one combo point per shred leaving me with no energy. When I use shred as my CP builder, ill aim for 3-4 CP's with shred so that leaves me with 1-2 points for a rake and then finish off with a rip. Often times then not I'm left with at 3 CP's, 20 energy, and my dots falling off. I'm just not regenerating energy fast enough. I understand that you should aim to use TF with RIP, Rake and AF and therefore rarely use it to regen energy. There is some crucial step, gear, method I'm missing out on because I'm laser focused on my rotation.

[halflaloafofkungfu]

check this out. it might help some people. http://www.checkmywow.com/

[Deleted]

This is some great work Zanzha, I've been watching your vids on YT recently.

Let's have a pop at this - Gives me a reason to open an account on MMO-C (Just a shame I couldn't get the username to match my character).

Item Level: 878
Expectations: SimC had it at 266K, which is lower than I usually do anyway - probably a setting issue.
Armory Link: "eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/bloodhoof/Sc%C3%A5r/simple"
Warcraftlogs Link: "warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/18869884/10/#"

This is all new to me, so if I've ballsed up the links, I'll go back and fix them.

I've been playing druid since Wrath time, switching between Resto and Feral. I'd say the main things I'm trying to learn to do better now are a) pooling energy and b) Cleave - I literally cannot make it fit into my head how to cleave properly. I find Feral to be a bit of a spec that picks one thing, superglues itself to the backside and starts chewing away. I get that a cloud of enemies = Thrash/Swipe, but I'm struggling with the 2/3 target fights.

Any tips would be appreciated guys

Cheers!

[ghostydog]

@coño

Your focus on legendaries seems a bit overblown given how minor an increase they are for ferals.

If you barely find time to pool at 885, then you're probably spamming skills too much. To answer some of your questions: pooling at 40 does not increase energy regen. Pandemic only carries over the duration, not the damage. CP waste can be seem in WCL under Resources > Combo Points.

You can start pooling / letting auto-attacks happen for a while at 4 or 5 depending on when your PS runs out and if your rake needs refreshing before rip or not. Balance affinity does affect AAs, and yes they do help with energy inasmuch as they're needed to get Omen of Clarity procs.

Do not, for the love of Ashamane, use moonfire as a builder. It's a damage loss and has lower crit chance than shred, meaning less primal fury, so you may be 'saving' on energy but trading it off for less efficient CP generation and less damage.

[Deleted]

Item Level 882
Expectations: Around 460k, as SimC suggest on 4,5min fight.
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...acide/advanced
Warcraftlogs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=3

Hey, i'm pretty new to feral, but managed to get basics right and now i'm trying to push my DPS higher.
Guarm kill linked in logs is ~409k DPS, where i can see some people doing even 500k+ with similar ilvl.
I'm using http://clawnalyst.nimos.ws/ to check my Uptimes/Dot buffs. Even tho i have ok uptimes and used my Bloodtalons/TF quite well (imho) i'm still way lower on DMG of Rip/Rake compared to top parse.
I'm always trying to line up all buffs together and buff my bleeds as much as possible.

My guess: Looks like top parse is not refreshing Rip too early when buffed, instead using FB. (FB diff is ~7mil dmg), but i still feel like it's going to screw my flow of rotation.
And on another note, my relics are really not up to the standard of gear, had no luck at all

I really want to know where this huge difference comes from beside AR uptime (almost 20% more on top parse from Story @Alonsus)

[coño]

Thank you for answering my questions @ghostydog. I am going to start refresh RIP sooner than later, drop the moonfire idea, and I've already installed pawkets. Looks like my last addon was causing some input lag and Pawkets has better timers. Two months in and I am just now learning to play feral "properly". Depressing.