[Feral] Paloro's How to Guide

[Krazyito 521]

Remember that Berserk increases your energy pool by 50, so you only need to be below 70~ or so energy to not cap.

[Xeroqt 0]

I only pop tiger's fury later so that I can stay at high energy for the whole of berserk.

[Paloro 39]

Helooooo, I have a question!

Ok, so, we're about to start the boss fight, i've prepotted and popped my incarnation, I'm at 5cp with a lengthy duration on my berserk? Should I use Tiger's fury and Rip here? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just use bite, quickly get to 5cp again and us tiger's fury AND bloodtalons to buff my rip, this would also mean that I'm using tiger's fury with 7/8s left on berserk, this is more optimal no? 

 

First mistake, you used Incarnation before Rake in the opener.  

 

You should be going:

Prowl

Pre-pot

Rake

Incarnation - end of GCD Berserk

Shred

Shred

TF+Rip

 

The reason you use Rip first is

1) the next finisher will be a TF+BT buffed FB

2) the lost uptime of Rip is a dps loss

[Paloro 39]

Finally added the UI section!

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

[Xeroqt 0]

I'm confused, but in the guide it says to wait until you have roughly 8s left your berserk before you pop tiger's fury

 

and 1 more thing, should i ALWAYS use tigers fury on rip,  or just use it on cooldown.

Edited December 11, 2014 by Xeroqt

[Paloro 39]

I'm confused, but in the guide it says to wait until you have roughly 8s left your berserk before you pop tiger's fury

 

The guide is referencing when you use Berserk outside of the opener.

[Paloro 39]

and 1 more thing, should i ALWAYS use tigers fury on rip,  or just use it on cooldown.

Because Rip lasts 24 seconds, you won't be able to buff every one with TF.  Therefore, you should be using TF on cooldown.

[Xeroqt 0]

Because Rip lasts 24 seconds, you won't be able to buff every one with TF.  Therefore, you should be using TF on cooldown.

 

But always line it up with a finisher? 

Btw, they have nerfed shattered hand, is it now the inferior enchant?

[Paloro 39]

But always line it up with a finisher? 

Perhaps you misunderstood (or I am misunderstanding you).

I mapped out the abilities for you (*not drawn to scale).  We are trying to keep as much uptime as possible on our bleeds.

 

Rake lasts 15 seconds

Rip lasts 24 seconds

TF lasts 8 seconds: As long as you can apply Rip/Rake during these 8 seconds, it will count toward your snapshot.

 

From the image you can see that you won't be able to sync TF with another Rip until your 4th application....but you 5th will also be buffed by TF.

Also, you can sync TF with every other Rake.

[Paloro 39]

Btw, they have nerfed shattered hand, is it now the inferior enchant?

 

Shattered hand is buffed by both SR and TF so I don't see it losing much value for us.  I might have time to simulate it this weekend though.

[Xeroqt 0]

Perhaps you misunderstood (or I am misunderstanding you).

I mapped out the abilities for you (*not drawn to scale).  We are trying to keep as much uptime as possible on our bleeds.

 

Rake lasts 15 seconds

Rip lasts 24 seconds

TF lasts 8 seconds: As long as you can apply Rip/Rake during these 8 seconds, it will count toward your snapshot.

 

From the image you can see that you won't be able to sync TF with another Rip until your 4th application....but you 5th will also be buffed by TF.

Also, you can sync TF with every other Rake.

Ok I think I get it, what I was asking was whether or not it would be worth holding on to tiger's fury to either use it with a ferocious bite or with a rip.

 

so if I'm at 1 cp and I use tiger's fury, that means it likely would have expired by the time I need to use my finisher, wouldnt it be worth holding on to it for a few seconds to get as much out of my finishers as possible?

[Paloro 39]

It is not optimal to wait to use TF in any circumstance.

[Xeroqt 0]

http://maxdps.com/druid/feral.php

If you look under trinkets, it says that rune of re-origination is currently BiS, is this true?

[Paloro 39]

http://maxdps.com/druid/feral.php

If you look under trinkets, it says that rune of re-origination is currently BiS, is this true?

No

 

I wouldn't even be looking at this site...

[Xeroqt 0]

Heard of an interesting opener today, wanna hear your opinion.

So.

 

Healing Touch

Prowl

Pot
Rake+Incarnation

Shred to 5cp

Berserk+Tiger's Fury

Rip

Shred to 5cp

Bite

 

 

This means that those extra seconds on your incarnation will be spent WITH energy as opposed to later on when your starved.

What do ya think?

[Bradykin 16]

 

 

Heard of an interesting opener today, wanna hear your opinion.

So.

 

Healing Touch

Prowl

Pot
Rake+Incarnation

Shred to 5cp

Berserk+Tiger's Fury

Rip

Shred to 5cp

Bite

 

 

This means that those extra seconds on your incarnation will be spent WITH energy as opposed to later on when your starved.

What do ya think?

 

By doing this, you lose dps in two ways without any real benefit:

 

1) By delaying using your cooldowns, you risk losing a usage of one of them later on in the fight.

2) You waste the opportunity to Tiger's Fury in Berserk phase to restore energy, which means with some bad luck with OoC you risk running out of energy and not being able to use every global of the berserk.

 

You gain no benefit by that slight delay anyhow. All you do is shift which part of the incarnation you are berserking in, you still have the same total energy throughout the incarnation uptime. If you see a reason to delay that would increase dps, please post it, but there is no perceivable benefit that I can think of.

[Paloro 39]

By doing this, you lose dps in two ways without any real benefit:

 

1) By delaying using your cooldowns, you risk losing a usage of one of them later on in the fight.

2) You waste the opportunity to Tiger's Fury in Berserk phase to restore energy, which means with some bad luck with OoC you risk running out of energy and not being able to use every global of the berserk.

 

You gain no benefit by that slight delay anyhow. All you do is shift which part of the incarnation you are berserking in, you still have the same total energy throughout the incarnation uptime. If you see a reason to delay that would increase dps, please post it, but there is no perceivable benefit that I can think of.

 

 

The cd delay would be for no more then 5 seconds.  While you could be risking being able to not use them again, with 5 seconds left in a fight, the boss is nearly dead and unless you are hitting an enrage timer.  You will most likely not even worry about using it.

 

I'm not quite sure I agree with the bad OoC luck part.  I would think that it is more plausible to run into the opposite problem where you use TF after Berserk and end up capping on energy due to OoC procs.

 

Either way, you are within a fraction of a percent of damage difference.  It is more important to make sure you are great at the rotation throughout the fight and making sure you position yourself well for boss mechanics.

[Xeroqt 0]

Okay, so what do I do in the following situation.

 

I have  a buffed (TF+BT) Rip on the target as well as having Savage Roar up and am at 5cp.

 

There's about 15s left on my rip and roughly the same duration on Savage Roar.

Ferocious Biting will create a gap in my rotation where I either allow Rip or Savage roar to fall off for a reasonable duration.

Is it ok to cut my buffed Rip a little short and refresh with an inferior Rip (just blood talons buffed)?

I try and pool my energy to 100 at this point to allow my Rip to run the longest possible duration but cutting it short feels a little inevitable.

What do you think.

[Bradykin 16]

Okay, so what do I do in the following situation.

 

I have  a buffed (TF+BT) Rip on the target as well as having Savage Roar up and am at 5cp.

 

There's about 15s left on my rip and roughly the same duration on Savage Roar.

Ferocious Biting will create a gap in my rotation where I either allow Rip or Savage roar to fall off for a reasonable duration.

Is it ok to cut my buffed Rip a little short and refresh with an inferior Rip (just blood talons buffed)?

I try and pool my energy to 100 at this point to allow my Rip to run the longest possible duration but cutting it short feels a little inevitable.

What do you think.

 

In this proposed scenario you have 15 seconds left on SR and Rip. It would be far more beneficial to refresh the SR, waiting to poll energy as to waste as little SR uptime as possible.

 

***Paloro edit:

Please read below

Edited December 16, 2014 by Bradykin

[Paloro 39]

Okay, so what do I do in the following situation.

 

I have  a buffed (TF+BT) Rip on the target as well as having Savage Roar up and am at 5cp.

 

There's about 15s left on my rip and roughly the same duration on Savage Roar.

Ferocious Biting will create a gap in my rotation where I either allow Rip or Savage roar to fall off for a reasonable duration.

Is it ok to cut my buffed Rip a little short and refresh with an inferior Rip (just blood talons buffed)?

I try and pool my energy to 100 at this point to allow my Rip to run the longest possible duration but cutting it short feels a little inevitable.

What do you think.

 

 

Pandemic starts for SR at 12 seconds.  This means if you refresh within 12-0 seconds left, you are not wasting any time on the buff.  

Pandemic starts for Rip at 7.2 seconds.

 

In the situation you described, if you were to refresh the Rip, you would be losing out on 45% damage (TF is 15% and BT is 30%) from the remaining ticks (and even more ticks if you refresh before Pandemic).

 

I would highly suggest that you refresh SR first (in Pandemic).

[Xeroqt 0]

But I mean really, how often do the stars align like that. Being able to perfectly refresh Rip at 7s without cp capping/needing to ferocious bite - fucking up your rotation even further.

 

Is it ever worth shredding when you have 5cp already on the target, overcapping so to speak? Or even ferocious biting and allowing Rip to fall off for a little so it runs full duration

Edited December 17, 2014 by Xeroqt

[Paloro 39]

But I mean really, how often do the stars align like that. Being able to perfectly refresh Rip at 7s without cp capping/needing to ferocious bite - fucking up your rotation even further.

 

Is it ever worth shredding when you have 5cp already on the target, overcapping so to speak? Or even ferocious biting and allowing Rip to fall off for a little so it runs full duration

It actually happens quite often, believe it or not.

 

In the situation that you would be capping energy though, before either pandemic phase, you should be using FB.

 

If you look at your damage breakdown in SimCraft, you will see that Rip doesn't have a 100% uptime.  This is why.

[Xeroqt 0]

Rightt, so it's pretty expected for Rip to fall off from time to time, all you can do is try to maintain as much uptime on it as possible. 

[Bradykin 16]

Rightt, so it's pretty expected for Rip to fall off from time to time, all you can do is try to maintain as much uptime on it as possible. 

 

If Rip has fallen off the target, that means that you have let it fall off as a sacrifice to land a FB. This will only be worth it if you get it up again very quickly, and only lose roughly a tick of damage.

Feral is all about forward planning, about learning how to see 20-30 seconds forward in your rotation to see when you can weave in a FB, when you need to get Rip back up, and when, rarely, you can afford to let it fall for a second. This is tied directly to your stats (specifically crit and haste) as different ferals will regen energy and combo points faster based on their gear. It's all about practice and innate knowledge of your class.

 

It's also worth noting that the farther we get in the tier, the more important Rip will be until it is unacceptable to ever let it fall off to land a FB, as our levels of mastery increase. Early in the tier FB and Rip aren't terribly far from each other in terms of effective damage, but the gap will widen as we hit our crit caps and the mastery continues to scale.

Edited December 18, 2014 by Bradykin

[Paloro 39]

It's important to note that haste doesn't not scale for us like it does most classes.

 

Yes, we get faster auto-attacks...but we already have such a low swing timer (1.0 sec base) that significant amounts of haste are needed to actually benefit from it.  More melee attacks do equal more OoC procs, but since it is based off of RPPM, it doesn't change all that much.  The last benefit is faster energy regen.  With >1k haste, I have barely over 11 eps (energy per second) while standard is 10 eps.  Over a normal fight length, that is maybe 2 Shreds worth of damage.

 

The gear from Highmaul is littered with haste gear.  Things will get better when Blackrock Foundry is released.