Tweaking DPS

[Grahf]

Hi guys.

I've read the guides, the stickies, the sticky guides and the comments in a lot of different places and I've built my druid around what I've found and personal experience, however I'm now looking to fine tune it and squeeze a little more dps out and I was hoping you guys could help here.
My guild raids a lot, firelands etc etc and I want to set myself apart from the other melee dps that we have, I know my class well and I'm a smart player. I don't stand in the fire and "Wtf?!" the raid channel when my guy lays BBQ'd.

Armory:
armorylite.com/eu/shadowsong/fei

Typical rotation:
FF, FC, RAVAGE, MANGLE, RAKE, RIP AT 5CP, IMMEDIATE TF, RAKE, SR. Then switch to the priority system + BSK.

I was thinking about procs and fluid death in particular. Light buffs take me to just over 5k agi. I do about 22k in HC's and between 16-17k on the dummy. I'm working on getting MotWT and vp's atm.

Any tips? Anything standout?

[Gorelaz]

Seems like ur going the right direction, but u could add berserk to ur starter in HCs
mine goes like this: Pot, FF, FC, Mangle, Ravage, TF+Rake, Berserk+5CP Rip (just to maxmize the benefit from t12 4p bonus), Shred, SR, Shred spam and 5CP FB till berserk ends, then go down the prio list normally.

That should give u a strong starter on HCs and let ur berserk comes off CD in time for burn phases in most fights, personally I pulled 45-50k DPS on Raggy HC 25 at the pull with this starter.
Always remember, Omen is ur friend tho.

Edit: Ofc remove FC from the rotation on Raggy, forgot to mention that

[Reape]

Seems like ur going the right direction, but u could add berserk to ur starter in HCs
mine goes like this: Pot, FF, FC, Mangle, Ravage, TF+Rake, Berserk+5CP Rip (just to maxmize the benefit from t12 4p bonus), Shred, SR, Shred spam and 5CP FB till berserk ends, then go down the prio list normally.

That should give u a strong starter on HCs and let ur berserk comes off CD in time for burn phases in most fights, personally I pulled 45-50k DPS on Raggy HC 25 at the pull with this starter.
Always remember, Omen is ur friend tho.

im intreguied, how did you feral charge raggy in cat form? as when you do FC on raggy you end up in the lava at his backside...

[Macor]

Actually you waste ravage, most optimal opener(when you can FC) is like : FFF,FC,mangle,rake,sr,TF+zerg,ravage,shred,shred,rake,rip, than spam shreds and FB on 5cp also i tend to refresh rake in last sec or 2 of potion even if it has like 6 secs Tfed but thats just me.
Some1 might say go for rip b4 SR but still i thing SR uptime matters much so i waste 1-2 ticks of rip for 4-6 melee swings buffed 80%.
And about 50k burst on Raggy hmmm what buffs you have and what weapon are you using? i'm mostly ~40k+/-(378 fandral), and another question(since we are still progressing on raggyHC) how your tanks manage switching if dpsers go ape on boss 50k+ our tanks (and they are good) have switch problems coz of treat capping with ToTs/MDs? and if there is no MD/ToTs i'm mostly dead quite fast when i prepot.

Just note: this guy isn't raiding he speaks about random zalandari and eventually wotlk/tbc raids since he didn't enter any of cata raids(just checked him on armory) so from that point of view (no offence) you must learn encounters 1st so you can know when burn phase comes aka Magmaw head or someting like that to tune your CDs properly and do bit more than expected form gear you have. also in your gear/ilvl aim for full mastery>haste>crit ignore hit/exp might work beter.

[Grahf]

Just note: this guy isn't raiding he speaks about random zalandari and eventually wotlk/tbc raids since he didn't enter any of cata raids(just checked him on armory) so from that point of view (no offence) you must learn encounters 1st so you can know when burn phase comes aka Magmaw head or someting like that to tune your CDs properly and do bit more than expected form gear you have. also in your gear/ilvl aim for full mastery>haste>crit ignore hit/exp might work beter.

None taken
I've been reading up, watching vids, asking questions so I know a bit, but without giving it a go I'll never be 100% comfortable. I've been going for full mas at the moment but I'll look tonight at seeing what i can change. Thanks.

[crabmousse]

Some1 might say go for rip b4 SR but still i thing SR uptime matters much so i waste 1-2 ticks of rip for 4-6 melee swings buffed 80%.

urgh.

what you think doesn't matter when there are people who actually know. Rip uptime is far more important than Savage Roar, you realise 1-2 ticks of Rip can be upwards of 40k damage? just look at your logs after the game and see melee damage versus Rip damage, why would you ever prioritise SR over Rip?

[Wolfdragon]

Macor, you're from The Cult, so I understand why your burst is a joke, I pull off 37k burst with prepot while I don't even have 2p t12.. . Sure your guild might be proggressing on HC Rag, but it's been known as a joke of Sylvanas back from the days I left the server, Inat still tanking? If so I understand why you overaggro. Anyway, I'd avoid posting in advice threads if I was "still" proggressing after all the nerfs ( if I took PvE seriously that is ) because... quite frankly both Smokey and Mihir have done close to 60k burst on a good day.

Anyway back OT: What I used to do ( still do every now and then when I'm swapped in( I'm in a PvE guild as a social with raider rank... Boosting GM to 2500 as kittycleave helps you know ) is FF/FC as first 2 moves no paricular order cuz it doesn't make a difference, then mangle spam till 5 cp at 5 cp pop TF berserk rip ravagge rake 3cp SR and a single TF'd shred, rest is spam shred into FB, another thing that sets the good ferals from the bads is the ammount of FB's that you get throughout the fight, the better you manage your timers, the more FB's you'll get in, and I strongly recommend you finetune how much time you need to get 5cp on averagge in seconds, then bite if your timers are above that treshold, the lower the treshold the easier it gets, that's all I got, and in reality, I'm just a Gladiator... not a PvE hero, but I think I can help you more than these guys.

[MasterNewbie]

urgh.

what you think doesn't matter when there are people who actually know. Rip uptime is far more important than Savage Roar, you realise 1-2 ticks of Rip can be upwards of 40k damage? just look at your logs after the game and see melee damage versus Rip damage, why would you ever prioritise SR over Rip?

Because one CP is all that's needed to get SR up to full potency. The same cannot be said for Rip. Right now I don't have time, I will edit the Mew script to put SR before Rip later and we can comment on the results.

[Shyzhi]

hmmm... i have a different rotation to everyone here it feels :P it works for me. I use FFF, FC, Mangle, Sav Roar, Shred (Till no energy), Tigers fury (Buffs damage by 15%), Ravage (Gains 15% more damage), rake (Takes 15%more damage to!), Rip (if 5 points and takes 15% more damage) then i can zerk and shred / FB mash :P thats what iv always done and works for me. Ofc everyone is different in how they do things.

[Grahf]

Thanks for all the comments, its great to see the diff variations. Will spend some time tonight trying em all out n mixing them together. Keep it coming

[Macor]

Cheers Master :P gif some numbers plx

cba even replying to offences from those 2

[vaccine]

And about 50k burst on Raggy hmmm what buffs you have and what weapon are you using? i'm mostly ~40k+/-(378 fandral), and another question(since we are still progressing on raggyHC) how your tanks manage switching if dpsers go ape on boss 50k+ our tanks (and they are good) have switch problems coz of treat capping with ToTs/MDs? and if there is no MD/ToTs i'm mostly dead quite fast when i prepot.

Your tanks suck, I'm sorry to say. We have no MD or TotT and just looking at the high point on each tries damage logs last night I was doing between 50k and 66k dps burst during the start of each pull (pre potting of course) and wasn't even getting 75% of the tanks threat.

[MasterNewbie]

Having SR permanently have higher priority than Rip above 25% leads to a 2 dps drop in ~390 (I don't really know though, need to run more iterations as the error was larger than the difference).

After that I will try to find out how to only do the SR higher priority in the beginning.

[crabmousse]

Because one CP is all that's needed to get SR up to full potency. The same cannot be said for Rip. Right now I don't have time, I will edit the Mew script to put SR before Rip later and we can comment on the results.

that may be the case but the post I quoted is talking about using SR at 2-4cps and giving the impression that a few seconds of SR is a greater gain than two ticks of Rip. realistically speaking after a mangle and a rake you are one Shred away from a 5cp Rip, and another shred away from a 1cp SR, so I don't really get why you're arguing in favour of dropping a SR first.

[Mihir]

Having SR permanently have higher priority than Rip above 25% leads to a 2 dps drop in ~390 (I don't really know though, need to run more iterations as the error was larger than the difference).

After that I will try to find out how to only do the SR higher priority in the beginning.

Dunno if it's just me but Mew already seems to prefer to start with SR before Rip, judging from a dozen sample combat logs. So you'd want to force Mew to always start with Rip I guess. (only way i saw mew start with rip is if after the first mangle and rake, ooc procced causing mew to shred, and then ending up at 5 cp = rip)

Allowing Mew to only use SR if Rip is up is a 50 dps loss.

[Grahf]

Very interesting to read, I'm sure ur gonna carry on with it but does anyone have anything to add about gear? Reforging is not my strong point so would like some opinions there. Also fluid death is it worth the change?

[MasterNewbie]

Dunno if it's just me but Mew already seems to prefer to start with SR before Rip, judging from a dozen sample combat logs. So you'd want to force Mew to always start with Rip I guess. (only way i saw mew start with rip is if after the first mangle and rake, ooc procced causing mew to shred, and then ending up at 5 cp = rip)

Allowing Mew to only use SR if Rip is up is a 50 dps loss.

I honestly don't know. I ran one iteration with the current script for a combat log:
1) Feral Charge
2) FFF
3) Mangle
4) Rake
5) SR
6) Shred
7) Shred
8) Ravage
9) Rip
10) Shred, etc.

So apparently my editing wasn't necessary. Good thing too because I probably would have gone insane trying to.

---------- Post added 2011-10-03 at 10:33 PM ----------

so I don't really get why you're arguing in favour of dropping a SR first.

Well, you have my original post above as well as Mihir's to understand why.

[Gorelaz]

Actually you waste ravage, most optimal opener(when you can FC) is like : FFF,FC,mangle,rake,sr,TF+zerg,ravage,shred,shred,rake,rip, than spam shreds and FB on 5cp also i tend to refresh rake in last sec or 2 of potion even if it has like 6 secs Tfed but thats just me.
Some1 might say go for rip b4 SR but still i thing SR uptime matters much so i waste 1-2 ticks of rip for 4-6 melee swings buffed 80%.
And about 50k burst on Raggy hmmm what buffs you have and what weapon are you using? i'm mostly ~40k+/-(378 fandral), and another question(since we are still progressing on raggyHC) how your tanks manage switching if dpsers go ape on boss 50k+ our tanks (and they are good) have switch problems coz of treat capping with ToTs/MDs? and if there is no MD/ToTs i'm mostly dead quite fast when i prepot.

Just note: this guy isn't raiding he speaks about random zalandari and eventually wotlk/tbc raids since he didn't enter any of cata raids(just checked him on armory) so from that point of view (no offence) you must learn encounters 1st so you can know when burn phase comes aka Magmaw head or someting like that to tune your CDs properly and do bit more than expected form gear you have. also in your gear/ilvl aim for full mastery>haste>crit ignore hit/exp might work beter.

No I dont have issues with threat dunno why u do, with all the MDs and threat buff it wont be a problem. you can check my armory in the sig and yes Fandral HC is alot of boost than the normal one. nearly the biggest boost u'll get from hc items, when I first obtained it I noticed alot of improvement in my dps.
This is my dps log from raggy 25 normal if ur intrested to check it out, think it was ranked 48th on WoL Clicky

Edited first post to exclude FC from raggy opener, forgot that

[Ekthelion]

hmmm... i have a different rotation to everyone here it feels :P it works for me. I use FFF, FC, Mangle, Sav Roar, Shred (Till no energy), Tigers fury (Buffs damage by 15%), Ravage (Gains 15% more damage), rake (Takes 15%more damage to!), Rip (if 5 points and takes 15% more damage) then i can zerk and shred / FB mash :P thats what iv always done and works for me. Ofc everyone is different in how they do things.

Using shred without a bleed on the target (rake or rip) is a dps loss. Shred hits 20% harder with bleed on

[axxey]

Using shred without a bleed on the target (rake or rip) is a dps loss. Shred hits 20% harder with bleed on

Read Mangle tooltip.

No I dont have issues with threat dunno why u do, with all the MDs and threat buff it wont be a problem. you can check my armory in the sig and yes Fandral HC is alot of boost than the normal one. nearly the biggest boost u'll get from hc items, when I first obtained it I noticed alot of improvement in my dps.
This is my dps log from raggy 25 normal if ur intrested to check it out, think it was ranked 48th on WoL Clicky

Edited first post to exclude FC from raggy opener, forgot that

Like many top parses in fights with AoE the rest of your raid's AoE sucks so you're padding meters.

For the origonal poster, a lot have posted new openers for you, the main thing to understand from them is the why.

You don't ravage your free feral charge ravage until the optimal time, it has a decent duration so dont need to use it straight away.

You spend debuff boss(FF while charging, mangle) then spend enough energy so that you can Tiger's fury to high energy without overcapping energy.(not ravaging before here because you're actually trying to spend energy in your available globals)
Tiger's fury and then execute your highest damage per execution moves while having the most buffs(which will last full duration), they being your 2 bleeds and then your free ravage.

Debuff > spend > TF > bleed > ravage > the rest.