It's More Than 2%Follow

Assuming they didn't sneak in an AP scaling change, they reduced the damage from each mangle by about 80, Rake by 200 (over the whole dot), Shred by about 70, and Rip by about 30 / tick. All together, it should be a loss of around 200 DPS or less.

no gear changes of any kind? you wernt missing any buffs? the paladin/warrior that was putting on the ap buff was fully talented?

i ask these because there was nothing in the patch notes that would account for a loss of 1k ap for a druid, and your experiences dont jive with the experiences of several druids i know, which is another reason why i think it might be on your end so to speak.

Far as I can tell, all the usual people who are in our 25 man raid team were there. Every relevant buff that we could want is always there. I'm not really sure why my AP was lower.

Could just be a suck streak, it's happened before. And if other druids aren't feeling the nerf then it has to be on my end. Still, any change to a perfect class that needed no balancing is, IMO, a big flaming pile of fail on Blizzard's part.

I mean come on. Top notch melee AND caster DPS depending on spec that could easily rival and surpass pure DPS classes. Superb, unmatchable healing in another spec. Excellent PvP capabilities, instant cast flight form. The ability to fulfill any role the game needs, and fulfill it as well or better than another class designed for that role. Sounds perfectly balanced to me :)

They lowered the damage on rank 5 Mangle and Rake, right? If I'm not mistaking, that's the rank I'm using now, at level 76. Why on earth they'd bother nerfing leveling damage, I have no idea. At level 76, with a leveling build (tank/DPS hybrid), I'm putting out a solid 1k DPS, which is what my DK put out at level 70 with his leveling build (tank/DPS hybrid).

On another note, they really need to redo the Savage Roar thing. Yes, it's awesome, but the way you apply it and maintain it turns me 10 years older for every instance I do.

"Gotta get Savage Roar up! Okay, done, now Rake and Shred spam, go! Oh, Savage Roar 1pt is about to expire. Blow CP on a refresh. Okay, Rake and Shred spam, go! Crap, mob is dead with four points on it. Have to refresh Savage Roar on next mob. Okay, Rake and Shre- crap, it died again!"

Seriously, I just did Azjol-Nerub and I never once got to actually use Rip. If I ever used anything but Savage Roar, it was a 1pt or 2pt Ferocious Bite. Keeping Savage Roar up is a *****, honestly. Would much prefer if they made it a 3-minute buff like Horn of Winter or Battle Shout.

Or maybe I'm just spoiled from having played a class where you'd apply DoTs first, then spam massive damage strikes, then reapply DoTs and repeat. Really, my fingers were sore after a regular run and I never pushed past 1k DPS.

My buffed AP has stayed the same (I check before each boss fight to make sure i'm in the right gear and have all my buffs). I haven't noticed any significant drop in real DPS now that I have my FeralByNight working again - I was pleasantly surprised with how little I lost not using it, but I had to work and concentrate so much harder than with the addon.

Rating this down, along with all your other posts in this thread, has brought me much joy. I thank you.

Ghostcrawler wasn't joking wen he said that cat dps is probably the hardest rotation in the game right now. The main thing that gives it that distinction is that small errors can result in large damage losses as you rebuild combo points or the like, since everything is so closely linked to each other.

As for 5-mans, you can expect to only pull half dps on trash because they don't live long enough to bother with rip. Bosses will probably die to quickly too to get a real feel, with how overgeared people are. I'm not surprised you're having trouble getting dots up. The rotation is something you get used to.

I don't really understand how this can be the case.

Looking at trash in two ways:

1) 3 to 4 Target Pulls:
If you have 2pc T8 then Rake (for a free Swipe due to clearcast) >> SR >> Swipe >> Tiger's Fury >> Swipe >> OoC >> Swipe >> Swipe... Trash dies and you've done 3 to 5k DPS depending gear.

2) 1 Single Target Pull:
Mangle >> SR >> Rake >> Shred >> Tiger's Fury >> Shred >> Shred >> FB = less than 10secs with potential of closing at 4CP if energy is low and the target will die before you could get the 42 energy to shred again. It's also possible to FB sooner than that depending on crits on the Rake and next two Shreds. The way FB works slamming all that dmg into an instant, can actually make FB perform better in a short fight than Rip could in a long fight.

5mans in general are easy for feral cat to do well on in part because of Tiger's Fury. The CD spends a lot of time ticking down during non-combat moments, which can translate to walking into a lot of pulls with it available. You also walk into each fight with a high burst of damage due to the way our energy works, always pooling up between fights. The exception to this is when you have Ulduar+ geared tanks that only allow the previous pull to be half dead before gathering up the next pull. In which case, my dps still tends to be about the same even though I never get a break for energy to pool up just because I go from swiping 2 to 4 targets to swiping 6 or 7 targets.

I just don't get how a feral cat dps could be halved by fighting trash. In most cases, it should be about equal, and without bringing berserk into it, on 4+ pulls it should actually be higher.

This might be a dumb question but...

On trash mobs, do you use shred or the multi swipe thingy (name escapes me at the moment)
I've never gotten the chance to dps as kitty in an instance as I'm always healing.

And I've never used Savage Roar. For solo dps to level I get 5 CP up rip and target dies shortly thereafter. So in order not to suck (if I ever get the chance to dps as kitty) what are the absolute must use skills?

I'm level 78 right now, amory if it helps. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aegwynn&n=Nithiel

My rips and rakes barely get a chance to tick more than once or twice before a mob goes down in heroic 5mans, so I can believe we are losing out on DPS. Heroic Violet Hold is the worst for this.


p.s I try to avoid using FB because then it leaves me energy-starved for the next mob (and usually waiting for Tiger's Fury to come off cooldown). I usually FB on the last mob in a trash pull or when the boss is near death though.

Also, a question on Berserk - I try to combine it with Swipe for trash pulls but if I don't plan ahead properly (bad me) it leaves me with Beserk on cooldown for the next boss. But trying to Swipe without Berserk means I'm energy starved after only 2 or 3 swipes. Any advice on this?

Edited, Aug 11th 2009 8:49pm by apothik

The first problem is that you're bothering to use rip and rake. If they don't have time to tick, they don't have time to do damage. Replace them with shred or FB. Speaking of which, if you use FB at 35 energy, it won't really leave you energy-starved - no more than using Shred at 42 would've, anyway, and no one complains about using Shred because it'll starve them of energy.

This is true. However, even if it takes up to 45 energy - a full second's latency to process - it's still worthwhile, provided it does more damage than a Shred would have. (If it doesn't, one would have to question why you were using it over Shred in the first place, given its role is solely as a damage tool.) I also spam my FB before I reach 35 energy in hopes that it'll cut down a bit on energy consumption.

If you're going to use Shred, it's almost always worth it to at least put up Rake. Then you have the 20% damage bonus to Shred from 5/5 Rend and Tear.