Rip Vs. Ferocious BiteFollow

I've seen it explained before that Rip is better damage then Ferocious Bite. The core of this is that Mangle increases the damage of Rip by 30%.

However, if I have 40% crit in Cat wouldn't that make Ferocious Bite better, especially if I took 5/5 Feral Aggression or had the T6 Set Bonus?

nah, rip is still better, because it doesnt take all of your energy.

FB has horrid energy scaling, and in a lot of cases, unless you can guarantee you wont use more than 35 energy (hard to do) another mangle or a shred will be better DPS and DPE than an FB, and rip will definetely outclass it.

[disclaimer: I'm NOT 70]

It depends a bit on what I'm doing.

If I'm solo'ing/farming, I do pounce, shred, shred, rake, claw spam (remember- no mangle) then if the mob is not a runner then I finish with FB.
If it is a runner mob I hit it with rip so the bleed kills it.

I generally perfer pounce, shred rather than ravage, shred because of the stun effect.

If I'm DPS in an instance, I use shred as many times as I can til out of energy then claw to 4 CP then FB.

Just want to examine this for a second.

Let's say that you've got someone else keeping mangle up. Your first shred takes your energy to 58, then you shred again, taking you to 16 energy. Next tick puts you at 36, enough to Ferocious Bite, but with only 2 (maybe 3 if you crit once) combo points. Not worth the energy. So you tick back up to 56, shred, takes you down to 14. Next tick puts you at 34, not enough to FB, so wait another tick to put you at 54. Shred again, putting you at 4-5 combo points, and 12 energy. You're not going to be able to Ferocious Bite until your energy ticks up to 52 (which is a waste of energy, as has been discussed previously). So, shred again, and go to 10 energy. Again, have to wait 2 ticks, and you're at 50. Then 48/46/44/42/40. So, the first time you're going to be able to Ferocious Bite with 40 or less energy is after 10 shreds (I think I counted those right).

Now, assuming you're keeping mangle up yourself, the numbers are going to be a bit worse, since mangle only costs fourty energy, raising all those numbers by 2 each time you mangle. Admittedly, I'm too lazy to do the math to see where exactly in the sequence you'd need to mangle, but the only spot that jumps out as a spot to ferocious bite is after a mangle and two shreds (you would be at 36 energy), but unless you've gotten at least one crit, you're only going to be at 3 combo points, which makes the ferocious bite somewhat worthless.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at is that it's going to be very rare for you to be able to get a ferocious bite in that's going to be 40 energy or less.

Yeah, that's great, if you are given time to get into position to ravage before the start of a pull, or if you want to take the time stealthing over to the mob after it's already been pulled. That doesn't happen very often in my experience.

Besides which, after that opener, you're going to be looking at 10 shreds (if someone else is keeping up mangle) before you can Ferocious Bite for 40 or less energy. Add a shred for every mangle you have to throw in there (it's about every 3 or 4, I imagine, I've never really kept track) if you're keeping the debuff up yourself. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against ferocious bite, but you're not going to have a lot of opportunities where it's the best choice for DPS, even if you do have 5 combo points.

Still, it amuses me to see ret pallies with full level 70 epics talking about there big 2000 damage crits, when my ferocious bite at level 60 in not quite all Outlands greens does about as much damage (usually 1800-1900).

Maybe it will change when I get better gear, but where I am at right now, an FB crit is worth almost TWO Shred crits. I would spend 60 energy on FB over 42 on Shred because it is worth at least EIGHTY energy if we are talking damage comparisons. Then I powershift after the FB and that energy loss turns into energy gain. Heck, I powershift with 3-8 energy saved up anyway and that's a loss of energy.