The Cat Guide - 4.3

[Fiana]

If it doesn't work consistently there is no reason to implement some script to determine if the person who was a bear for five seconds is really a bear or just a cat.

There are more things to base that decision on than the amount of cat/bear mangles you did (how much maul/lacerate damage, how much rip/rake/shred damage, how many times was TF popped, etc.). If it is based solely on the number of cat/bear mangles, it is a horribly written script.

I totally agree with you. Spec detection is far from perfect.

I just explained how exactly it works: If there are mangle(cat) and mangle(bear) in this fight, it will compare number of mangles in each form. If there are no mangles, it will make decision based on other abilities.

So all you need to rank as bear is do all your fight in cat without using mangle, and do one mangle in bear form in the end.
If you want to rank as cat, you should do more mangles in cat than in bear or not to use bear mangles at all.

WoL site admins are lazy and they don't care much about poor cats and bears.
Lets create our own simple list of rules how to determine if it was cat or bear in the fight and post our suggestion on WoL forum.

---------- Post added 2011-10-15 at 06:15 AM ----------

Check the top 30 bear logs for heroic Baelroc. 90% of them have 90% of their damage as cat. It is just bugged, but what can you do?

Come on, its not MY fault. Don't aggro on me. I just explained how it works.
Look at top1 baleroc 10hm "bear": 3 mangles(bear) 2 mangles(cat).
top2: 1 mangle(bear) 0 mangles(cat)
top2: 9 mangles(bear) 3 mangles(cat)

Thats it. Thats how detection works. Really simple and obvious.

And we can change it. No. We can change it. But you should think out a really simple, easy to implement set of rules to detect role based on abilities used.

[Zheryn]

I just explained how exactly it works: If there are mangle(cat) and mangle(bear) in this fight, it will compare number of mangles in each form. If there are no mangles, it will make decision based on other abilities.

If this really is true it's the most laziest script ever. I think I read somewhere tho that each bear and cat spell had different "weights" and was summed up and compared for each fight to see if it should be ranked as cat or bear. Mangle (Bear) had a way too high value in that list tho.

[Astronomy]

I was busy with PvP mostly lately, but I migrated and start to focus on PvE again. Thank you very much for your great guide Mihir, it helped me a lot for remembering details and also about itemization.

A little question about opening;

Feral Charge
Faerie Fire (while in transit towards the target)
Mangle (to get the debuff going; is also more damage than shred if there's no mangle debuff and bleed on the target yet)
Rake
Shred (to get rid of some energy since we're about to use TF) (mangle instead if you got 4T11)
Tiger's Fury (this might cap your energy for a little bit)
Ravage (with 15% damage bonus from TF, stampede buff should still be on you by this time)
Rip (also with TF bonus. if you don't have 5 combo points yet, do another shred first)
Rake (with 15% damage bonus from TF)

Assuming the tank or any other dps starts with another bleed (say lacarate, rend, garrote, anything), wouldn't it be better to use rake after TF but not before? So it will save us clipping rake which we cast before TF. It should be like; Mangle, Shredx2, TF, (rake is CP ain't 5 yet) Rip, Rake unless we cast it before rip.

In other words, do another class' bleed increases our shred damage, or should it be our bleed only? And 2ndly, casting rake after TF would result 1 or 2 less rake ticks overall, but we will save its energy cost and will not clip it after TF.

I hope I could explain what I wanted, its hard to tell things in detail in a foregin language.

[Deleted]

Any bleed on the target will increase shred damage, it doesn't need to be your own. But the main goal of getting rake up before TF is getting rake up asap, as not having Rake up is a big dps loss, easily worth the extra energy, even if you know you're gonna clip it 6 seconds later.

[Nathanyel]

Any bleeds count, yes, but you can't really count on a "foreign" bleed to be up in the first seconds of a fight.
The top priority at the start is to get the bleeds rolling. The second Rake's cost doesn't matter as much as it happens after the Rip and generates the same CP as a Shred. The lower damage should be evened out through the earlier ticks, and by avoiding a Shred without R&T bonus.

*edit* ah, I shouldn't have pondered so long over the wording, Mihir beat me to it :P

[Astronomy]

Thanks both for your clear replies. I'll keep them in mind.

[ndnt0xic]

Which trinket is better? I've seen people use Matrix Restabilizer with Fluid Death and from what I'm seeing it's MR and Ancient Petrified Seed. EH? I'm confused.

[Deleted]

Did you take a look at the trinket list in the guide?

[ndnt0xic]

I did, that is why I thought it was weird. The kitty in the top guild of my server was rocking Fluid Death until he got the Domo trinket.

[Ledonn]

Why does it seem we got picked on over a trinket? Unheeded Warning got nerf due to it being so good for just ferals, a fraction of the population. Heroic Sorrowsong is being worn by almost every caster for H Rag.

That doesn't seem right does it? I don't mean to QQ. Just odd they haven't adjusted that.

[Deleted]

Sorrowsong isnt OP in PVP, Unheeded Warning was.

[SmokeyIllidan]

Sorrowsong isnt OP in PVP, Unheeded Warning was.

One of the main reasons we won't see a legendary for a long time, if ever. Because we're always borderline OP in PVP as is. Which is really just a kick in the pants for someone like myself who doesn't PVP on his main.

[Deleted]

In response to the WoL stuff, there's a bug thread on WoL forum: forums.worldoflogs.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2251 which should answer your questions

the weights for each spell can be found: spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AiM-_moeXe0ddFQ4a29IY0pMdzd1WEZWUk1LYnZRLUE&single=true&gid=1&output=html

hopefully this clears it up a bit

-too few posts to post links

[Elunedra]

I did, that is why I thought it was weird. The kitty in the top guild of my server was rocking Fluid Death until he got the Domo trinket.

well that cat sucks then \o/ ofcourse there is also a personal preference, maybe he favors having as much agility as posable of any secondairy stat, as APS gives mastery instead of agility

[KittyKilljoy]

Just finished getting my 4pc T12 and was curious. Is it best to max CPs with shred then FB to extend Berserk and weave in SR when it's close to going down? I assume that's the case, but didn't know if there was a magic number where it's best to just continue shreds and prepare to go back to the usual cycle of things.

[traen]

Just finished getting my 4pc T12 and was curious. Is it best to max CPs with shred then FB to extend Berserk and weave in SR when it's close to going down? I assume that's the case, but didn't know if there was a magic number where it's best to just continue shreds and prepare to go back to the usual cycle of things.

Yep. Use fb every time you have 5cp when berserk is active. You will get 2 more seconds of berserk, basically its one more shred at half cost or 20 energy. Usually you will be able to extend your berserk to 37-39 seconds, sometimes more.

[Elunedra]

i usaly use 5 cp Rip then 5 cp SR then keep on using 5 cp FB's
the 5 cp SR should keep up SR for the entire duration of bezerk so you dont have to wurrie about that

but about FB, it uses 25 enerygy base then uses up an additional 35 energy todo 100% extra damage

lets say my FB will do 50K, that means: 50K / 25 = 2000 DPE,
now a full energy FB will do 100K at a cost of 60 energy that means: 100K/60 = 1666 DPE

as you see the DPE acutaly goes down the more energy you spend on it, yet i know ppl claim this was a tooltop bug and the 100 bonus damage only consumes up to 25 energy witch keeps the DPE at the same level, but is it realy? becase if it was a tooltip bug then i sepose it had already by fixed by now?

and then think about Bezerk, bezerk only cuts the base 25 energy cost in half yo 13 but does not reduce the bones cust (unless they fixed that) this means:
50K\13 = 3486 DPE
100K\(13 + 25) = 2631 DPE

so bezerk makes the difference in DPE even bigger

or was this all fixed? i havent read about this for awhile

[KittyKilljoy]

My concern was similar to what Elunedra was getting at. With FB consuming some extra energy for the bonus damage I was curious if I was in fact gibbing my dps by that extra consumption. Obviously we don't really have any alternatives (as SR has no real benefit to refreshing early and only a TF'd Rip with a short duration would result in an increase) but I figured there was some math on it somewhere though I've yet to find it. Guess I'll continue to meander the EJ and Fluid halls for a while. Thanks for the help

[Selverein]

It's just a tooltip error, it really is 25+25 energy. The DPE always is the same no matter how much energy you pool.

For that reason you can (i.e. should) spam it during Berserk. The first few might use some bonus energy for more damage, the last few not, but it doesn't matter since the bigger goal here is to use 5-CP finishers as often as possible during Berserk, so you have little choice.

The tooltip error was introduced in 4.2 when they changed its cost and I haven't seen so far that they fixed it in 4.3, strangely, even though the Rake tooltip is being fixed.

Edit: About the bonus energy consumed during Berserk, I'm not sure. It's really easy to test though so feel free to try it on a dummy. Ultimately it won't matter, since what you should do during Berserk will stay the same, regardless of the results.

[MasterNewbie]

The bonus energy isn't affected by the energy cost reduction provided by berserk, and there is a point where shred becomes more energy efficient than FB during berserk, but if you have 4T12, you should disregard it and use FB at 5cps whenever to get that extension ASAP. The DPE of FB is constant outside of berserk, but during berserk it is not constant.

But most importantly,

it doesn't matter since the bigger goal here is to use 5-CP finishers as often as possible during Berserk