Simply feral kitty question :)

[Deleted]

So, im collecting feral dps gear atm, have read some guides. But, i was wondering, how should i start a boss?

1: mangle > SR > rake and so on

or

2: mangle > rake >SR

[Gimpio]

step 1. download facemauler or feral by night
step 2. ???????
step 3. Profit

[kingkow]

Mangle, SR, rake

but this is easily found out on EJ.

[Daimyon]

It could just be a personal choice, but I've always opened with Rake because I'm using http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50456 and I like it to start collecting stacks asap.

[Torne]

It could just be a personal choice, but I've always opened with Rake because I'm using http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50456 and I like it to start collecting stacks asap.

but with that, the full duration of the rake does not profit from the 33% dmg boost. i think mangle - SR - rake is always the best choice to start a fight.
on a side note, i really hate this Idol, the T9 one is only slightly worse and the buff from it is always up 100% with no stacks to stack, making it better in every bossfight that is short or that requires to dmg stop for too long.

[Breatnach]

I think this has got to be one of the most overrated issues there is.

Even in a perfect scenario, i.e. having a bit of crit luck, not having to move, having 0 latency issues, a mangle bot and not letting SR, rake or rip drop off for one second... the question of having your very first (of many, many!) rakes being 33% more dmg or not, must be extremely trivial. I'm afraid I don't have the numbers to back me up, but on a 3 minute fight (i.e. 2x berserk), I would seriously doubt the difference is even near 50 DPS. I will revoke my statement if anyone can prove me wrong!

But my point is, new ferals and inexperienced ferals (I avoided the wording "bad ferals") come in here and are told "you must Mangle > SR and not Mangle > rake > SR", when there is probably a dozen of other things they could improve on (gear, talents, gems, glyphs, etc) and then good guides (like the one written by this feral from ensidia) are dismissed ("I stopped reading when he said Mangle > rake > SR - LOL L2P") because of a matter than will most likely make a difference of about 0,25% of your total damage.

TLDNR: Yes, you should mangle > sr > rake, but if you are pulling 11k+ DPS, then you will hardly notice the difference anyway (since you must be doing about 99% of everything right) and if you are doing <5k DPS, then you have loads of other areas to improve on first, before worrying about this minor aspect.

[Begottenson]

While rake is at the medium tier level(232 or so) not very beneficial to us, with a 4pc tier 10 those numbers change drastically. Pretty much it won't play any huge role in your dps rotation wise til you have the 4pc set bonus and even then the benefits from doing one over the other starting off your rotation won't be too drastic.

[Deleted]

Thanks for all the replies

[Telmenari]

Honestly, don't even use rake unless you're using 2t9 or 4t10. It's bad.

However, if you have one of those set bonuses, Mangle > SR > Rake for the 700 extra damage that'll yield over doing Mangle > Rake > SR.

As someone else said, it's negligible.

And I don't understand why anyone would pick up the 264 idol before off pieces, or even offset off pieces. It's situational and a very minimal dps increase.

[scorch109]

Don't let people in this thread fool you, a high rake uptime will increase your dps heavily even without set bonuses. and the general thought in most theorycrafting is heavily mangle -> SR -> rake unless you have a manglebot.

[Melonberry]

Don't let people in this thread fool you, a high rake uptime will increase your dps heavily even without set bonuses. and the general thought in most theorycrafting is heavily mangle -> SR -> rake unless you have a manglebot.

Without those set bonuses you actually lose dps using rake over shred. In high end gear, you lose a lot of dps.

if you have a manglebot
rake > sr > rotation

if not
mangle > sr > rake > rotation

[scorch109]

If you have neither of those set bonuses you aren't in high level gear, and thus your rake will be higher then your shred because of the lack of arp powering your shreds.

[Melonberry]

If you have neither of those set bonuses you aren't in high level gear, and thus your rake will be higher then your shred because of the lack of arp powering your shreds.

The reason t8, t9, and t10 have all boosted rake by greater amounts, is because in top end t7 shred outscaled rake. In t9, shred outscaled the t8 bonus even lol.

[scorch109]

That i remember the diference between rake and shred to make rake stronger then shred had to do somewhere around 20% more dpe. which with high level icc gear, swapping one piece out to lose the 4 piece the difference in dpe between rake and shred is shred ahead by 2 at 265 and 267. A very marginal difference in dpe, and on top of that there are very few situations you never run out, move, have the boss turn at you, or anything along those lines, when any of those happen your shred is doing 0, your rake is still doing 265.

[littlepiggy]

swapping one piece out to lose the 4 piece the difference in dpe between rake and shred is shred ahead by 2 at 265 and 267. A very marginal difference in dpe, and on top of that there are very few situations you never run out, move, have the boss turn at you, or anything along those lines, when any of those happen your shred is doing 0, your rake is still doing 265.

this, the difference is normally miniscule and if you drop it you have to sit there and practice on the training dummy for awhile to put it back in your rotation (happened to me, i definetly regret the 5 dps upgrade for having to later *relearn* my rotation

[braxx]

It could just be a personal choice, but I've always opened with Rake because I'm using http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50456 and I like it to start collecting stacks asap.

mangle -> sr -> rake "costs" only 2sec (2gcd) so you wont have a single stack from the idol at the expense of a buffed rake which will theoricaly equal a 4 tick unbuff rake
anyway bad move