Solo, just got mangle, when to spam?Follow

My druid just hit 50, I finally get the beloved mangle. Since I'm using this build, (unless the mob is immune to bleed effects) I had in the past been doing pounce - FFF - shred - shred to open up, followed by whatever fits the fight best. My question is, now that I got mangle, where should I put it into the rotation? Once pounce wears off I'm going to spam it, and if I wait until the shreds are done I lose 1-2 ticks of pounce bleed that I could have given the bonus to, but I think the extra damage from shred would outweigh the loss of potential damage from pounce.

I guess what I want is confirmation that I should still stick with the openning combo mentioned above and then introduce mangle to the equation, or if I should put mangle in the place of shred 1 or shred 2 to get more damage out of pounce? (In my rotation, shred 1 would be at T=2.0 seconds, if T=0.0 seconds at pounce, and shred 2 would occur in the interval between T=3.0 seconds and T=4.0 seconds, depending on when energy ticks. If I were to wait until after to mangle, it would be at around T=6.0-7.9 (depending on how well I timed my pounce) meaning I'd miss 2 ticks of pounce if I use mangle after, 1 tick if I replace shred 2 with mangle, and 0 if I mangle right after FFF.
So from that it looks like I should either do Pounce - FFF - shred - shred still, or pounce - FFF - mangle - shred. Which would you recommend?

Edited, Jan 23rd 2008 1:14am by skribs

i usually go pounce > mangle(till 5 points) >FFF when no energy > FB half the time they die before FB and the pounce wears of and if pounce does go they might be lucky to hit me once
but if i know the fights gonna last a bit i would pounce > ff > mangle(5 points) >bleed > mangle(5 points) >maim > heal (if needed) >Mangle(5 points)> FB

Edited, Jan 23rd 2008 4:38am by Plainwalker

um, what i do is just stick mangle after the FFF in place of the first shred. so pounce > ff > mangle > shred. if you get an ooc proc (at 61) youll be able to chuck another shred in there sometimes, for some extra hotness.

Definitely put Mangle in before your Shred for some extra bonus goodness. Similar to some others, I do:

Pounce-Mangle-Shred-(Shred again if OOC)-FFF-Mangle til full combo points

Except sometimes I'll finish them with 3 or 4 combo points instead cause there's nothing more irritating than having the damn thing die on you with combo points left unspent, yaknow?

Anyway to the FFF point, I don't do it right after Pounce simply because I'm often not fast enough and nothing is more annoying than missing the Shred. I'm such a keyboard spaz that once in a while I miss it anyway because I'm not positioned properly even though it looked like I was and then by the time I get it right... too late.

Man, the impression I give here is that of a sucky druid, huh? Hm. Maybe I am a sucky druid.

If you can get the FFF in first, it's probably better that way, so long as you aren't missing out on the good stuff while they're still stunned.


Edited, Jan 23rd 2008 8:24am by teacake

So it's not just me that hates that happening, huh? :P

I usually use rip/bite with 4 combo points, because I don't like to waste combo points when the last one is a crit. What you guys usually do, 5 or 4 points?

I almost always use Rip even if it won't get its full effect before the mob dies. I don't like losing all my energy to FB.

Well, I don't have furor or OOC (just hit 50 so I dont have access to those AND mangle atm), but I didn't realize mangle affected shred as well, thought it was only bleed effects. Forget I asked.

Just a motivator, but this is a recap of a PvP fight against a Warlock last night. Just so you know what's in store for you in 20 levels.

Your Ravage crits Warlock for 3613 damage.
Your Mangle crits Warlock for 1902 damage.
Your Shred crits Warlock for 3060 damage.
Your Maim crits Warlock for 1092 damage.

I kid you not. Almost peed my pants when I saw all those big numbers on my screen. Not counting in the white crits either.

He didn't even manage to pull off a Death Coil. Poor *******.

Ooh I like this. I really don't use Maim to its full potential at all. I often only remember it's there when I need a heal and Barkskin is on cooldown.

Tangent, but I find it's like this with most of the abilities I got at higher levels. I'm kind of stuck in my ways and fighting the same way I did at 50 except with higher numbers.

Yeah, when I got maim I was like "what's this for?" and asked my guild, the only Druid online said PVP. I was like "makes sense." Took me about 15 minutes to think of a PVE use for it. Now that I've used it more often, I frequently use maim for tons of things in PVE. I was misled.

Wow, this is pretty enlightening, I had no idea Maim was such a widely underused/undervalued attack. I was so psyched when I got Maim that I started a friggin' thread about it! I thought it was so powerful that it should be a high-level feral talent instead of a trainable skill. The "Maim -> Get Behind, Pause -> Shred!!!" finisher was the first change to combat tactics in forever, and a fun one at that, and finally having a spell interrupt in cat form seemed too good to be true.

I personally find that Maim's biggest value in instances is actually not interrupting damage spells, (not discounting that at all, mind you) but cutting off those pesky heals that would save the asses of the mob or whoever they're healing. Nothing frustrates me as much as having a mob at 5% heal itself back up to 2/3 health. All that wasted DPS. : (

Do you have a source for that? I'm pretty sure FB with OOC just makes the 35 energy part free, and the bonus damage goes off whatever extra energy is burned.