MAXIMUM DAMAGE: Talent Choices for Feral DPS in 3.1
Now that the days of so-called “utility” classes are over and hybrids should be doing nearly as much (if not the same) amount of damage as pure DPS classes, it’s time to start thinking like a pure DPS class. Have you taken a talent that doesn’t amplify your damage? Does that talent greatly increase the damage of the raid group? No? Skip it. You want to start every rotation hearing that dude from Crysis saying “MAXIMUM STRENGTH” in your head.
The 0/55/16 build effectively gives you all of the high-damage tools you need to rock out and omits any sort of general survivability. You can arguably move a few points around to customize your build to do exactly what you want to (ex. drop Improved Leader of the Pack for Feral Instinct). If you’re exceptionally concerned about Swipe damage on trash, you can make a macro like the one below to give you a little more of an edge and bind it to your Swipe button:
/#showtooltip Swipe (Cat)
/equipslot 18 Idol of Perspicacious Attacks
/startattack
/cast Swipe (Cat)
And then switch back by binding your other idol of choice to an ability you primarily associate with single target damage, such a Shred:
/#showtooltip Shred
/equipslot 18 Idol of Massive Boners
/startattack
/cast Shred
Notable DPS talents that have changed substantially:
- Heart of the Wild. The DPS part of this talent hasn’t changed; however, 5/5 Heart of the Wild will only give you a 10% STA boost in Dire Bear form now, meaning that if you decide to be a total retard and pull aggro during a trash pack, going Bear and hoping for the best will make you a squishier target than you remember.
- Rend and Tear. The FB critical strike bonus has been reduced down to 25% from 50%. This may diminish the effectiveness of working FB into a regular rotation; however, using the Idol of the Ravenous Beast while stacking at least 200 Armor Penetration may prove to bump up the usefulness of FB beyond DPS simulations. To that end, this build also maxes out Feral Aggression.
- Primal Gore. Completely new. Although this talent now only boosts our Rip and Lacerate DoT damage (rather than Rake as well), it is a substantial damage multiplier. Have the Idol of Worship? You won’t be disappointed.
- Improved Mark of the Wild. If you didn’t already have this worked into your build, you should. 2/2 IMotW now acts like a baked-in Blessing of Kings and increases all of your total attributes by 2%.
Glyphs to have on hand (once they’re available):
I never had the opportunity to test Glyph of Berserk, although I tend to think that you’d be better off with Glyph of Savage Roar (a veritable no-brainer), Glyph of Rip, and Glyph of Mangle. Obviously, if you have some other form of manglebot available (like a Bear tank or a Warrior with Trauma), you won’t be using Mangle and can substitute that Glyph for something else.
All other talent choices should be self-explanatory. Questions? Drop me a line.
I agree 100%. The DPS spec you provided will be the highest DPS spec. The best 3 glyphs are Savage Roar, Rip and Shred. Berserk is more of a pvp glyph and Mangle is not as good as Rip or Shred in 3.1
Here is my 3.1 dps spec.
Nice.
It’s tough for me to give up that spicy 30% damage on trash though, even though trash is going to be significantly harder and require CC come Ulduar.
Trust me, I know. The original build that I put together and tested on the PTR completely omitted Improved Leader of the Pack and only put 3/5 into Feral Aggression. It worked very well. Still, especially since I have a pretty strong “feeling” that I’ll be tanking for trash, there’s very little reason to really pick it up in a Cat spec.
You can always give up iMangle for FI. iMangle provides very little boost to your total DPS. I’m taking IW rather than iMangle because we don’t have warrior or druid tanks. I figured the nearly 5% DR it provides will help our healers.
I wish we could give up RnT. While it rarely was used in 3.0, it will be even less effective in 3.1. Basically PG is a 6 point talent.
RnT is what it is: obligatory b.s. I do have the luxury of a full-time Prot Warrior in our raid makeup, so IW ends up being a waste of space. In the past, I did actually dump iMangle for FI (and as such, can do stupid trash pulls at 14k DPS); however, my single target damage does improve, however slightly, with iMangle. Is it enough to really warrant the change? I’d have to retest again.
I don’t think the Idol of Persp… works on cat shred.
http://druid.wikispaces.com/Swipe_Cat
It doesn’t work on Shred, that’s for sure. As for Swipe, I’ve been getting higher numbers with it equipped; however, that could also very well be due to Clearcasting procs and the number of crits. Obviously I’ll have to look into it further.
http://druidkitty.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/kitty-swipe-an-updated-review/
[...] Feral DPS spec listed up on Unbearably HoT. [...]
I’m a total newb when it comes to feral cat dps. What would an ideal rotation be for this spec?
Also, how would it do in a world pvp setting?
I’m actually working on a post to better explain this, actually. Ultimately, Feral DPS requires a dynamic rotation that is more of a conditional list (If this, then that) than a set “do this THEN do that.” In a PVE environment, you are responsible for keeping up a series of DoTs and damage enhancing debuffs while staying behind your target at all times (so that you can utilize your max damage doodah, Shred). A VERY basic cycle might look something like:
1) Mangle.
Shred to five combo points and then Rip again.
2) Rake.
3) At three combo points, Savage Roar.
4) Every Clearcast proc, use Shred.
5) Shred to five combo points and then Rip.
6) Refresh Mangle and Rake just as they’re about to go down.
7) Savage Roar at three combo points just as it’s about to go down
9) Use Tiger’s Fury whenever <35 energy.
10) Use Berserk whenever up. If it's a fight in which you could possibly use it twice, use it toward the beginning so that you can use it again.
11) If 35 energy, 5 combo points, and ~20 seconds on Rip and SR, Ferocious Bite.
Something like that. It's a little confusing unless you're hearing someone say it. You basically want to always have Savage Roar up and you always want your DoTs (Rake and Rip) ticking. You also always want to have Mangle up (unless you have another Druid doing it and/or a Prot Warrior with Trauma) because that multiplies your damage. Do not, I repeat, do not clip your DoTs unless it’s an absolute necessity.
For PVP, you’re really not focusing on the kind of sustained damage that you’d normally do in PVE. In World PVP events (i.e. Wintergrasp), you can usually just run around like a dickhead and Mangle/Shred to your heart’s content. Bleeds are always good to tack onto people, especially with an accompanying mangle, and Faerie Fire can be very discouraging to invisible types. In addition, you’ll probably find yourself using both varieties of Feral Charge to stun/daze your opponents, using Maim to stun and interrupt your targets, and using Pounce to stun.
Does that help at all?
Yeah, that definitely points me in the right direction. For me I raid as resto, so, this feral cat spec is purely for doing dailys & fending off the occasional driveby gank.
Thanks for the reply!
Thanks Runy - sorry that Shred reference earlier was a typo.
Backhand - if you are new to feral dps, I would highly recommend the Face Mauler mod (for PvE).
For those like myself
who don’t object to padding dps metres with oodles of trash swiping, Feral Instinct could be taken instead of, say Feral Swiftness and/or Improved Leader of the Pack.
Just some ideas..
Meh, my build is pretty much the same except I skipped IMotW, I mean generally when you’re talking dps, you’re talking raid dps. It’s very unlikely in today’s raid enviroment that you won’t have at least 1 druid healer or boomkin and it’s pretty much a certainty that either of those will have improved mark of the wild, so I think those 2 pts are better spent on increasing dmg.
Now ofcourse that means for solo’ing and 5 mans you won’t have that assuming you’re the only druid, but honestly, for that who cares.
iMotW also now increases your total attributes by 2%. That’s a damage booster.
Nice build for sure,but if you want to squeeze every litle piece of dps out of your kittydudu, you shouldnt worry about improved MoTW (most of us i think has a resto druid in raid), and better invest them into 30% swipe damage boost, along with one talent point from feral swiftness wich is not very usefull in PvE
Again, iMotW has changed. The 2% boost to all attributes is a PASSIVE BOOST FOR THE PERSON TAKING THE TALENTS. Taking it now increases your total attributes by 2%. Additionally, there isn’t a lot of room for AOE damage in Ulduar. There are a few circumstances in which you can AOE, and they are not many. If you’re worried about Swipe damage on trash, switch to a Bear build for that, which should definitely have Feral Instincts. Feral Swiftness is also AMAZING and will continue to be amazing. 30% speed boost is clutch for most of the new encounters. Taking one point in that is fine, but where else would you stick the extra point?
“Heart of the Wild. I know, not “technically” a DPS talent. 5/5 Heart of the Wild will only give you a 10% STA boost in Dire Bear form now”
Er…I’m pretty sure this talent is giving you +10% AP in Cat Form at this time.
I was just talking about the changes to that talent, namely the STA nerf for Bears. I can edit for clarity, if that would make you feel better.
How much does feral agression help? I don’t have any points in it, i put them into feral swiftness for swipe spam and surv. instincts for the odd holy sh*t moment.
It’s debatable. Depending on your rotation, putting 5/5 into Feral Aggression guarantees that you’ll be rocking some pretty hefty Ferocious Bites, especially if you’ve gemmed for Armor Penetration. If you’re focusing mostly on crit and don’t know how to fit Ferocious Bites into your rotation, it may not be worth it for you.
Why go into the swipe - movment speed increase its a total wate remember trash isnt the object of a raid trash can be 2 manned its just a distraction and a resting stop between bosses i think that the +20% healing done to u is far better for this content I.E Malygos / Loatheb / Sartharion +3D / and then New VoA (emalon) just a opinion but I don’t see the point of having 30% more aoe and 30% speed increase when u could save healers some mana
Well, as you may have noticed, my spec doesn’t include the Swipe talents; however, the movement speed increases will end up saving your life just as often as the extra healing. The title of this post is called “MAXIMUM DAMAGE,” and as such, the build I put together is one that’s geared toward achieving maximum DPS.
Additionally, while I’m all for “saving healer’s mana,” we’ve never had a healer run out of mana on a fight yet.
Thanks for the short “guide” for best kitty dps setup. I just restarted on a new realm with a mate of mine, and the only classes I havent done to 70 or beyond was a Druid or Warrior.
And you can off course guess which one I choose. Thanks for laying out the road for me to level 80.
Hey, no problem. I realize that most of my write-ups are for individuals who have likely been playing the spec for awhile (and thus aren’t very introductory), but I’m glad that I was able to help in some way, shape, or form.
Enjoy your playtime! Druiding has been my passion since 2006.