Help in maxing one of my feral druids dps in horridon encounter.

[druideena 14]

Hey guys, I was wondering if you could take a look at these meters and armory link and see if you can help me help one of my raiders. My entire raid is awesome and i enjoy raiding with them, but I would rather be downing bosses then wiping with them.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/spr70208a8iljvwj/sum/damageDone/

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/turalyon/Silvertyp/advanced

[Paloro 39]

First thing I noticed is he is a little low on expertise. That made me look to his talents and he is running with Incarnation and Heart of the Wild. Incarnation is a very gimmicky talent that starves you of energy if used outside of berserk. He should really be looking to run with Soul of the Forest for that tier. The highest output dps for T6 talent is Dream of Cenarius, but if he is uncomfortable playing that style, then HotW should suite him fine.

Depending on your strat, he could be doing different roles. Feral has very high single target damage though and if you could afford to lose an add dps to let him stay on the boss 100%, that would be best for the raid. If not though, he should be using his symbiosis on one of the warlocks to soul swap his rip/rake from an add to horridon. This will allow him to do good boss damage while still helping on the adds.

Some more knowledge as to where your raid is struggling might help me better.

Side note: All 3 of your melee and a tank wear leather agi.......that stinks

[Tarazet 144]

Some thoughts:

- I use and recommend Cat's Eye so that you can monitor the buffs, debuffs and cooldowns that are important to feral DPS and also monitor combo point generation. Set it up with Savage Roar, Rip, Rake, Tiger's Roar, and Weakened Armor as a minimum.

- Always apply Weakened Armor via Faerie Fire as your top priority if it isn't up due to someone else's application (Warrior, Druid, Rogue). Focus your melee attacks on targets that have this debuff. Tell your Rogues to do the same with a glyphed Expose Armor.

- Remove the reforge from ring #2 since it goes over cap, and wastes stats.

- Keep an eye on the proc from the 522 trinket. It's really key to use your cooldowns when that is up. Even as a bear I find monitoring that proc to be essential.

- I saw that he was using Heart of the Wild to spam Hurricane in caster form, which is a perfectly valid use of the talent. But my feeling is that your raid would be better served by having him use that talent so that he can utilize Bear Form for one of the doors that have difficult adds. I'm thinking particularly of the fourth door. The damage gained from Hurricane could be outweighed by having an extra tank for 45 seconds when it counts the most. Like Paloro says, Dream of Cenarius is normally the best talent for a Feral, but on a fight like this with extended AoE phases, it won't be as useful as it is on a single-target fight because the combo point generation is much slower due to using Swipe instead of Shred. By the same tack, less finishers = less use for Soul of the Forest.

- Speaking of which, he was making very little use of Shred, opting instead to use Mangle as his primary combo point generator. This is a significant DPS loss. You should always be behind your target and you should always use Shred as your primary combo point generator. It's better to attempt to Shred, fail, and reposition so you can hit your target than it is to Mangle, though you can twitch-react if you are capped on energy. He even has Glyph of Shred, so even if he is face-tanking mobs, he should have more opportunities to use Shred.

- Thrash uptime was good, though he should be careful to use it with Clearcasting and avoid needless use at other times due to the resource cost. Tiger's Fury uptime was good. Savage Roar uptime was not; that should take priority over all other combo point spenders because the damage buff is so massive.

- Normally, I would say the best thing you can do is have him choose the most dangerous add with the highest health and have him focus it down, cleaving with Thrash when he gets procs. But you have two Rogues, which also operate on combo points. So since Ferals have better AoE than Rogues, it's probably better to leave the single-target focusing to the Rogues.

Edited April 22, 2013 by Tarazet

[Martyx 4]

- Speaking of which, he was making very little use of Shred, opting instead to use Mangle as his primary combo point generator. This is a significant DPS loss. You should always be behind your target and you should always use Shred as your primary combo point generator. It's better to attempt to Shred, fail, and reposition so you can hit your target than it is to Mangle, though you can twitch-react if you are capped on energy. He even has Glyph of Shred, so even if he is face-tanking mobs, he should have more opportunities to use Shred.

Shred is poor... due to the extra cost in energy it needs to be cast the damage increase vs mangle is only 5%. Plus it requires you to be behind the target AND requires 100% rake to get it's damage increase.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5848167510?page=2#29 for some maths.

- Thrash uptime was good, though he should be careful to use it with Clearcasting and avoid needless use at other times due to the resource cost. Tiger's Fury uptime was good. Savage Roar uptime was not; that should take priority over all other combo point spenders because the damage buff is so massive.

- Normally, I would say the best thing you can do is have him choose the most dangerous add with the highest health and have him focus it down, cleaving with Thrash when he gets procs. But you have two Rogues, which also operate on combo points. So since Ferals have better AoE than Rogues, it's probably better to leave the single-target focusing to the Rogues.

Agreed on all points. The flat 30% increase in damage means you need practically 100% uptime on SR and he should be able to achieve this as he has the glyph. Thrash is fab but again it's difficult to achieve but ensure using it with CC for freebie plus damage increase.

The final point is very viable as kitties move quicker than most classes so a single target nuke plus a little cleve here and there goes a long way!

[Tarazet 144]

Shred is poor... due to the extra cost in energy it needs to be cast the damage increase vs mangle is only 5%. Plus it requires you to be behind the target AND requires 100% rake to get it's damage increase.

http://eu.battle.net...67510?page=2#29 for some maths.

I'm going to stand by what I said. I use Shred exclusively, not just because it itself has a higher DPS output than Mangle (as long as Rake or another bleed is up), but because if i'm in front of my enemy, it can parry me and maybe even kill me. It's a useful positioning check.