Feral Kitty looking for some help

[hornball]

Hey there first time poster.

I recently re-rolled to a druid from a mage. I dinged 80 in july but I had to leave for work issues so only stated to gear up properly since the first week in September. Here is the link to my armoury for refrence on what I am going to ask http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dragonblight&n=Hornball.

I think atm i am okish geared for the little time i have had to play on my druid and i think my spec for feral dpsing is good to.

I have read all guides from elitest jerks and on these forums and think I have the required 'rotation' right to be a very good feral dps.

I am asking for some Feral druid's help. I sometime think I lack to reach the DPS i should be. I have read people saying there reach 7-8k dps and i am not near 8k at all. At the moment i am the only feral druid in the guild and we have no warriors with trauma so I have to apply mangle each and every fight

An example of my dps, in a flat out fight say patchwerk, ony 25 mans I can reach 5.4 dps but in the TOTC raids I am going as low as 3k DPS as I am struggling to keep up my bleeds, dots, SR etc.

What I am asking is there any advice anyone can give to help me improve myself? I know armP seems to be what most druids stack for but is there any point if i dont have an armP trinket such as Grim Toll? Does Grim toll and soft cap make a masive diffrence to DPS as saying have soft cap and no armP trinket? If so how big a diffrence in DPS is it.

Can anyone offer any advice for me on my talents, gemming, gearing etc?



Cheers for reading, Horn

[Deleted]

Well first of all you should try to get a hold of some items with expertise on them so you can reach the expertise cap (26).
A dodged attack is always a dps loss.

Even with keeping mangle up yourself you should be reaching 6-7k dps in ToTC with your current gear and 5.4k dps on patchwerk is low.
It would be alot easier to find any reason if you could post a combatlog from any fight.

and if you could say your current stats in catform aswell cause it doesn't seem like you have 50%+ UB crit with your current gear, but I might be dead wrong about that aswell.

Having such a low dps really feels like you're not keeping SR up 100%, you can never let SR run out and you shouldn't refresh it on only 5cp, Refresh it on 1cp if it's needed.

Basically when I have to mangle myself I start every fight with Mangle, SR, Rake, Shred to 5cp, Rip .. after you've done that all you have to do is track those timers and start thinking 5-6 moves ahead, basically if you have to clip your SR or if you should take a chance on doing an FB and hope for an ooc proc/crit alot etc.

Anyway, if you could post your stats + a combatlog I think either me or someone else could help you alot more.

[Solux]

Read the Cat Sticky, especially the main post and the last few pages.

ArP has been reduced in effectiveness since last patch, so it's not as good as it was. It's always been the case that you don't want to start stacking ArP until you hit a certain threshold, which most of the high end raiders who talk numbers fluently usually have. According to EJ with the 380 or so ArP on your gear, you're not even close. Their recommendations are >400 + Grim Toll or the Mjolnir Runestone or >1000 ArP. Regemming to Agi to increase your crit will probably help your finishers go off faster and your damage overall improve. As Kaeru already said too, you have absolutely no expertise on your gear, so 4% of your hits are being dodged if you're behind the boss, meaning lost Combo points. 3 or 4 pieces with Expertise on it would bring you up to 6.5% where you want to be.

You don't have a 'rotation' as I suspect you know, just Mangle > Rake > SR > Shred to 5 CP > Rip > keep everything running and Tiger's Fury whenever you can.

If you want a mod to help you with it, try BadKitty.

[wee]

ppl saying to go for 4p T9 need to shush.
I've over 70% crit in raid as it is so why get 5 more on a few abilities when u lose the 2p T8 clear casts.
clearcasting>all imo.
get the T9 2 set from the shoulders and head (good amount of expertise)
keep the T8 2 set from the legs and gloves
And craft the ToC LW chest.

I wont take the T9 legs or gloves due to the stupid amount of hit on them. You should have enough hit from all your non set pieces tbh.

as for XT, I've capped 15k on 25 man. But the heart takes insane buffed dmg so It's nothing that imba tbh.

[Jon]

Having such a low dps really feels like you're not keeping SR up 100%, you can never let SR run out and you shouldn't refresh it on only 5cp, Refresh it on 1cp if it's needed.

Keeping up SR properly is one of the things new kitties struggle most with.

Don't be afraid to refresh Savage Roar early if it's going to drop right before you need to do a new Rip. If you wait until SR runs out before redoing it, you'll end up with 0 cp and no Rip on your target for far too long.

[Tashiki]

Keeping up SR properly is one of the things new kitties struggle most with.

Don't be afraid to refresh Savage Roar early if it's going to drop right before you need to do a new Rip. If you wait until SR runs out before redoing it, you'll end up with 0 cp and no Rip on your target for far too long.

Sorry for the slight thread hijack but i'm new to playing Feral and have trouble monitoring SR, I use FeralByNight but that doesn't seem to have this option but what add ons do people use to track SR duration?

[ziggis]

Sorry for the slight thread hijack but i'm new to playing Feral and have trouble monitoring SR, I use FeralByNight but that doesn't seem to have this option but what add ons do people use to track SR duration?

Badkitty or Feralbynight are the 2 best options imo. There are alot of addons to track buffs/debuffs which can be used, which one you like is a matter of taste.

[getefix]

Sorry for the slight thread hijack but i'm new to playing Feral and have trouble monitoring SR, I use FeralByNight but that doesn't seem to have this option but what add ons do people use to track SR duration?

I use elkana's buff bars to show my savage roar, grim toll proc, and a bunch of other procs. I also started using power auras to scream at me when savage roar goes down. These are great options he you want something customizable, the ones listed in earlier posts are better if you want something that'll work out of the box

[Bigbluedruid]

A few things to keep in mind about dps.

1. A lot of people lie about their dps to help their e-peen.

2. A lot of people will list their burst dps or AoE dps to help their e-peen.

3. Dps is strongly affected by everyone in the raid. If everyone is doing high dps then your dps will be higher, if some people are doing low dps, you dps will be lower. (cds, bloodlust, etc. if affected by it)

So don't worry about what other people say their numbers are. Your dps seems fine, just go for that extra expertise people have said you need. I went a couple expertise under cap on Twins one time and it cost me about 200 dps.

[Facey]

Your dps is rather lowing seeing your gear.
My dps on totc heroic has an average 6.2k and my gear isnt all that diffrent from yours.
cant say about patchwerk, havnt dont those fights for a while.

If you are having trouble keeping your prior list up try catrotationhelper. its the only addon i ever use as a feral druid. it shows you the CD of every attack you are going to use.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ionhelper.aspx if you are interested

aside from this as the previous posters said you rly got low expertise, even tho expertise and hit arent a prior stat you should keep them as high as possible without gimping. there are plenty of items that give you the expertise you need. you can also drop some hit (slightly)
im not sure how your crit is in catform since in normal form you get -% crit if you dont have weapon skill which most druids dont but try to get 50% pref 55% in catform unbuffed! yes unbuffed that does incl without motw. ones you get 55% crit which should be standard on your gear about now you will see a good combo flow in your battles.

About the Arp im not sure anymore (i quit wow before 3.2.2 :P).
If you got the money do a testrun on the dummy with agi vs arp gemming, on my druid arp ended up slightly better then agi even without grim toll or the runestone.
im not sure what meta you are using but seeing you use 2x stamina arp my bet would be the wrong one, there are 2 versions of the meta 1 req 3 blue gems (if i remember right) and 1 req 1 of each color. pick the one with 1 of each color, get a 10 stat gem which you alr have and you can focus on red gems only.

and aside from this the only thing i can say is. keep improving the rotation, its nvr perfect.

(now i could be wrong in some stuff i said since i played before 3.2.2 but i doub a lot has changed except for arp rating)

gl

[hornball]

Well first of all you should try to get a hold of some items with expertise on them so you can reach the expertise cap (26).
A dodged attack is always a dps loss.

Even with keeping mangle up yourself you should be reaching 6-7k dps in ToTC with your current gear and 5.4k dps on patchwerk is low.
It would be alot easier to find any reason if you could post a combatlog from any fight.

and if you could say your current stats in catform aswell cause it doesn't seem like you have 50%+ UB crit with your current gear, but I might be dead wrong about that aswell.

Having such a low dps really feels like you're not keeping SR up 100%, you can never let SR run out and you shouldn't refresh it on only 5cp, Refresh it on 1cp if it's needed.

Basically when I have to mangle myself I start every fight with Mangle, SR, Rake, Shred to 5cp, Rip .. after you've done that all you have to do is track those timers and start thinking 5-6 moves ahead, basically if you have to clip your SR or if you should take a chance on doing an FB and hope for an ooc proc/crit alot etc.

Anyway, if you could post your stats + a combatlog I think either me or someone else could help you alot more.

In catform my stats are as follows:

Attack Power: 7497
Hit rating: 282 (8.60%) <i know im way over capped but its what the gear has on it
Crit Cahnce : 51.22%
Armp Rating: 651 ( 46.51%)
Expertise 10% which i know has to be raised.

There are my stats unbuffed. The only probelm i can say with my feral dpsing is I do let savage roar drop from time to time to make sure my rip, mangle and rake are kept up. I use flask of endless rage, blackend dragonfin food and haste pots during blood lust. I am going to TOTC 25 man tonight ill post the stats to let you's see whats going on. But during TOTC i have to mob clear up, innervate, rebirth etc which can have a bas effect on my bleeds etc.

Cheers for the replies i have read all of them and have taken all that is said on board. All im asking should i just regem all agility if i can get grim toll? Also i use 21% agility and 3% Critical strike rating, and use a 10 stat all gem to activiate it. I also have 2 x 10armp and 15 stam gems in slots to get the agility bonus.

Cheers Horn

[malacoda]

I use badkitty i dont like the icon flashing part i usually hide it. I use just the warnings, which are just bars that slowly go to nothing as your buff/debuff wears off. It easy for me to track and doesnt take up much space. It has helped a lot. I put SR on top, then rake, rip and mangle on bottom. I found feralbynight to be too much and was distracting. I prefer the keep it simple stupid attitude to my gaming, and badkitty works for it perfectly.

[Deleted]

What you should try is to think ahead abit when you see that your timers will run out at/close to the same time.

If you have let's say Rip & SR both running on close to the same seconds left then just refresh the SR as soon as possible to get them on "different times" and make sure you'll refresh it early enough to get another 5cps to refresh the RIP when it runs out.

Considering your white hits are your top damage I would say that you should rather let rip run out then Savage roar (if it would happen again) since it could take you a few seconds to get energy for the CP + SR again.

But in the end I think it just comes down to practise, practise & practise .. don't know how much time you spend on dummies but when I switched from feral tank to feral dps I spent alot of time (& still do) on dummies.

[Tharkkun]

I use needtoknow to track my dots and buffs. Takes about 2 minutes to setup and isn't as noisy as fbn/badkitty. They provide waaaay too much information for what I need.

[DaveTheHunter]

In catform my stats are as follows:

Attack Power: 7497
Hit rating: 282 (8.60%) <i know im way over capped but its what the gear has on it
Crit Cahnce : 51.22%
Armp Rating: 651 ( 46.51%)
Expertise 10% which i know has to be raised.

There are my stats unbuffed. The only probelm i can say with my feral dpsing is I do let savage roar drop from time to time to make sure my rip, mangle and rake are kept up. I use flask of endless rage, blackend dragonfin food and haste pots during blood lust. I am going to TOTC 25 man tonight ill post the stats to let you's see whats going on. But during TOTC i have to mob clear up, innervate, rebirth etc which can have a bas effect on my bleeds etc.

Cheers for the replies i have read all of them and have taken all that is said on board. All im asking should i just regem all agility if i can get grim toll? Also i use 21% agility and 3% Critical strike rating, and use a 10 stat all gem to activiate it. I also have 2 x 10armp and 15 stam gems in slots to get the agility bonus.

Cheers Horn

Here's a few things I would do in your position.

Gem agility. Do not gem ArP until you get grim toll or mjolnirs runestone.
Use agility food until you have one of the trinkets and your ArP is up to par.
Do not let SR fall off. Ever. 33% bonus to damage is worth losing a few seconds of bleed damage if you have to make that decision.

[hornball]

Yeah i was thinking about agility stacking until i get armp trinket. But is it the right move, i dont want to spend a 1000g if its the wrong thing to do.

Cheers

Horn

PS Kaeru i sent u a PM about data from my TOTC 25 man tonight.

[multhor]

Yeah, I use the 'need to know' addon. It's sweet. I use it for all my toons. Since i'm a button clicker and can't seem to become efficient enough to hotkey everything...I still have to 'look' at my abilities to click them. So moving needtoknow down to my ability bars...I never have to look at top of screen.

[raxin]

The only time you gem ArmorPen is if you can reach the softcap w/trinkent or go for the hardcap which is about 1200, but requires pretty much armorpen on every single item that u have. Keep in mind you dps is always gonna be low on mobs that your not on 24/7, AKA faction champions, jarraxus, or any multi mob fight. For most classes you can almost immediately jump into your rotation where ours can take 10secs+ to get into. But if the stars align and you have a mangle bitch you'll be in top5 easily.

[AngloSaxon]

The only time you gem ArmorPen is if you can reach the softcap w/trinkent or go for the hardcap which is about 1200

Sorry but that information is just wrong.

For some good reference information, read this:

http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t63774-c...guide_dummies/

[raxin]

ya sry was thinkin of the breaking point from agility to armor pen hard cap as stated in EJ is 1400 but the breaking point is about 1200 between ArP and agility. If u can reach more than 1200 via ArP then best to go that route.