The Feral Druid Guide II - Basic Boss DPS!! [Kitty Spec]

Someone following this 'guide' will not be getting the best dps they possibly can. Feral DPS has gone from a simple rotation in BC to something more complex in WotLK. As has been said previously, there is no 'dps rotation' any more, just a list of buffs and debuffs you need to keep up.

1. Always keep Mangle, Rip, Rake and Faerie Fire up. No need to Mangle or Faerie Fire if there is another Feral druid doing that(dps or tank) and no need to Mangle if there is an arms warrior in the raid/group who can apply trauma as it is the same debuff.
2. Always keep Savage Roar up.
3. If you have 5 combo points and Rip is on the mob/boss with some time left to run then use Ferocious Bite.
4. Shred to get combos points in between keeping buffs and debuffs up.
5. Only use Tiger's Fury when you are at 40 energy or less so you don't waste the 60 energy you gain.

I would personally get my debuffs up quickly and get to 3cp then Savage Roar, then I would continue to keep my buffs up, get to 4/5cp and Rip. I'd Fer Bite when I could. 3cp and SR worked pretty nicely for me, i was able to keep it up almost always.

You didn't even mention Savage Roar (its 40% extra ap, why wouldn't you use it?) nor did you say anything about Faerie Fire which is an important debuff especially in raids (You won't need to apply it and refresh it if you have a bear in your group or raid but you can't always assume the presence of a Feral Tank).

I am usually resto on my druid but i took a few days out not so long ago to do some testing of dps. Without buffs i was able to do really nice dps, 2.5k+ on heroic bosses. For trash it kinda sucks following a normal rotation especially in a high dps group because your bleeds can't run their course and sometimes you can't even get debuffs up before a mob dies. For trash I'd recommend keeping Savage Roar up as much as possible (even if this means 3/4 cps and savage roar is all you do on the 1st mob), then as long as SR is up then just mangle, shred to 4/5 cps, Fer Bite (by that time mobs are dead anyway0. Don't waste cps tho, if you only has 3 on and the mob is close to dieing then Fer Bite for a little extra dps (and maybe a tasty crit! ). Doing this i could keep up 1.5kish dps on trash and more on trash with more hp. My gear is okish: 6k AP - 38% crit - 4-5% hit, unbuffed.

Also you didn't mention glyphs. I've not looked into it much but i'm guessing Glyph of Rip (increases duration of rip) and Glyph of Mangle (increases duration of mangle) would be nice choices at least for 5/10mans. Maybe no need for Glyph of Mangle depending on your typical Raid setup.

Consumables. Go with AP flask or maybe a agi/crit elixir, there are also hit elixirs whicb might be nice if you're lacking. For food you can go with hit, expertise, agility whichever you need most depending on stats. There is also haste food/elixirs/pots but haste is of questionable value to a kitty, its a decent stat but there are better stats to stack.

I'm not saying my info is 100% accurate but this is my experience. This article lacks a few essential pieces of info for starter kitties and, yes, it kinda makes my eyes bleed too

Tag.

I'm sorry, but this is not a good guide in more ways than one. Feral druids have a really complicated "damage rotation". I put that in quotes, because it isn't as much a damage rotation as it is a priority list. In short: An enemy needs to be debuffed by Mangle which can be done by a tanking bear aswell (or Trauma which can be put up by warriors), Rake and Rip. You should always keep Savage Roar up on yourself. The remaining time should be used to generate combo point for your finishers. If you have 5 combo points and there is enough time to generate another 5 combo points before your buffs/debuffs drop you can use Ferocious Bite. This is a very short explanation of proper cat-dps.

But you don't even mention Savage Roar. Jame encourages people to write, which is a good thing. But a lot of people can't write, but still want to. Spreading misinformation is never a good thing, that should never be encouraged. In the end I don't want a feral druid in my raid, who read your guide and plays sub par just because he listened to the wrong advice. If you want to know how to play a feral druid properly visit http://www.elitistjerks.com. After you've read that you can write an overview, so other people don't have to read through hundreds of posts.

If Jame were to write guides like you, they would look like this:
Go to Dragonblight
Then go to Zul'drak
Then go to Howling Fjord
Then go to Grizzly Hills
Then go to Borean Tundra
Done, your 80!

Too many colors + tiredness = brain damage.

As Jame stated in a former comment, you should leave out most of the colors and only use them when it is needed.

Also, I'd like to add in you should check your grammar. Quite some mistakes in there.
I know, the English language is hard the grammatical way, but capitalizing letters in the middle of a sentence isn't that hard to prevent, is it ?

I don't think you have spend a lot of time thinking about how to get a maximum amount of damage out of every point of energy.

Just an example... Shred has a lot more damage per energy then mangle, mangle should only be used to put up the debuff and if a bear is tanking then you should not use it at all.

You also didn't give any advice on what spec to use or glyphs.

These things are the basics that any guide for a class/spec should have (according to me)

You could then also include what stats you should have.

Hey Shadowfuri.

I really appreciate you writing guides, but I think you got one thing wrong. We'd prefer if you took your time and only released one guide but with a much higher quality, instead of releasing 3 guides in a very quick succession, but with very little effort put into the presentation.

Let make a few suggestions:

1. Group your feral guides into one big guide and organize it well, take Jiyambi's Tree Healing Guide as an example. As you can see, her guide is very nicely presented and easy to follow.

2. Spell check your text. And also be careful with capitalization. You forget a lot of time to put a majuscule at the start of each sentence.

3. Too many colors in your guide. Try to remove most of them and only use colors when it makes sense, because it doesn't really make the guide pretty to put whole paragraphs in different colors without any reason. It just makes it look "messy" and some colors actually make it harder to read.

This is constructive criticism, don't take it the wrong way. You obviously know quite a bit about feral druids, so your guides are very welcome, but the presentation could be improved a lot!

Hi again!

While using colors is good to emphasize points, coloring whole blocks of text just for the sake of having color is actually a distraction from the guide. If you want an example, see how Jame uses color in his leveling guides - only to emphasize important points or show a certain type of information (for example all quests are listed in yellow).

However, your other formatting looks very nice, and is easier to read. You still may want to work on your grammar and spelling, since I see a lot of non-capitalized words when they should be capitalized, etc. This will help your guide to look more professional.

It's definitely improving, good job!

Sadly I don't know anything about druids so i can't say if this guide is good, but I can say that this guide really needs formatting
I recommend you read Jame's Guide Writing Guide and revamp your guides!
Now you have something to do until you have ideas for new guides.

Jahwo