Feral Cat

Hi

I have searched the entire internet for macros or someone who has succesfully used a cat in there team for dps. Anyone that has a good macro setup or been testing this with some good results?

sort of, and he's a tree now. I originally had the shaman as resto and druid as balance but couldn't handle the procs well enough so switched to cat. DPS dropped substantially (could be macro wasn't effective). So made him a tree and the shaman elemental and saw a HUGE increase. I think part of the problem is DPS behind the mob which is inconsistent when boxing 5 char.

I've got two DPS macros on my all feral team:
- /cast [stealth] Ravage; Shred
- /cast [stealth] Pounce; Mangle

So far I am spamming IWT and one of the two.
I have had a bit of success with a chain of -- Macro 1, IWT, Macro 2, IWT.
Need to build a mapped key, to basically do that rotation, and then spam the crap out of it.

I do have the stunning finishing move and the dot finishing move as hotkeys.
But so far (still leveling up), nothing survives more then 2-3 combo points.

I'm sure a heroic boss, will last more then 2-3 seconds... but during the Lunar Festival, a 5600 GS Demo Warlock did not last 1 second. In fairness to the lock, it was the equivalent of 5x Ambush.

Are you using a mixed team or only druids with this sollusion?

In my 5 druid team, 5x feral was only about 70% effective in terms of sustained DPS potential, largely because of their bread and butter attack being positional (shred). On anything short of bosses, though, they positively owned.

I had basically 2 macros:

Finisher/Ambush:
/cast [stealth] ravage
/cast [nostealth] ferocious bite

and variants of the normal DPS rotation.

PVP or non-boss PVE mobs:
/cast [stealth] pounce
/castsequence [nostealth] reset=5 mangle, savage roar, mangle, mangle

Boss PVE/sustained DPS:
/cast [stealth] pounce
/castsequence [nostealth] reset=5 rake, savage roar, mangle, mangle, rake, rip, mangle, mangle


I never got real happy with the sustained DPS rotation what with the crit=combo points mechanic and that using shred effectively was inconsistent due to positional/range issues.

The top dps cat in my mains guild posted a pic on the guild forums showing a diagram of the logic in his dps rotation.
Due to some checks needed in it, and the combo point functionality, I believe it would be nearly impossible to make effective one or two button macros for it.
But I'll post the pic here anyway so you see.
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/875...srotationa.jpg
I guess it could be turned into a relatively good /click macro, but it would still never get as effective as playing it manually.

That chart is actually simplified. I play a cat in a moderately high end guild.

There is no way you can macro up a cat and get numbers anywhere near what you'd see playing it solo. High crit causing two CP well over half the time would make it a nightmare. You wouldn't be able to pool. Berserk's effectiveness would essentially be cut in half.

With the Mangle changes bringing a new Glyph of Mangle, EJ has said that the DPS loss with a mangle-spam build isn't nearly as bad as it was. (Now around -10%.) Mangle still has lower DPE, especially when you lose the Glyph of Rip, but it has faster guaranteed CP generation.

All that said, this is how I'd do it with /click (for boss):
Glyph mangle.

Mangle Mangle Roar,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, (I'd play around assuming three or four CP, either way you'll clip)
FFF,NULL (I've never used null myself, I assume it will end the castsequence until it reaches the reset condition)
Tiger's Fury,,,,,,,,,,,,,
[Manually use berserk here. This is "bad form" but you can't exactly pool and in this setup its the best time to use it.]
Rake,,,,,,,,,,,, (you can easily prevent clipping on this which is actually a big boost)
Mangle Mangle Rip,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, (you'll clip left and right but you don't have much choice)
Mangle

I might play around with my druid just to see what I get with something like this vs. by hand.

Heroic dummy
4.24% tooltip hit (not being hit capped hurts /click dps immensely), 21/5.25% exp
No Berserk, completely unbuffed

Shred/"manual": 7100 dps (this is 12-13k saurfang/fester/rot, for raid buff reference)
/click+mangle glyph: 6100 dps (~85% "efficiency")

Its no where near the efficiency you can get as an ele or ret but its not nearly as terrible as I was expecting.

85% efficiency, is pretty good when boxed.
Especially considering: a) Mangle does not require facing; and b) Mangle is getting a DPS boost in Cataclysm such that it won't lag as far behind Shred as it does not.



Are you using this for your click:
/castsequence Mangle, Mangle, Savage Roar,,,, (commas)
/castsequence FFF, Null
/castsequence Tiger's Fury,,, (commas)
/castsequence Rake,,, (commas)
/castsequence Mangle, Mangle, Rip,,, (commas)
Mangle as fall-through.


1. Two Mangles, Savage Roar and commas to recast Savage Roar when it falls.
2. FFF once.
3. Tiger's Fury, and recast on refresh.
4. Rake, and recast on expiration.
5. Mangle, Mangle, Rip and commas to recast when Rip falls.... but in priority, and only higher priority then a Mangle fall-through.

One mangle on SR. If you can "preload" one other mangle before you start your sequence then you get a smoother start.
No mangles on the Rip, just appropriate ,,, delay. Your first rip will be 1cp but otherwise it should be decent.

Around the 20 second mark (second Roar cast) everything is in surprisingly good shape. Mangle is much higher CP/S CP/E than Shred, with the /click setup every roar and rip (after the first) were in pretty good shape. Extra explicit mangles before finishers were largely wasted. Thats why I dropped one Mangle from SR. If you didn't mind manually starting things with 2 mangles, early dps would start higher and you'd have more overall dps.

Ok:

/castsequence Mangle, Savage Roar,,,, (commas)
/castsequence FFF, Null
/castsequence Tiger's Fury,,, (commas)
/castsequence Rake,,, (commas)
/castsequence Rip,,, (commas)
Mangle as fall-through.

With multiple druids, only one would bother with FFF, or maybe two to ensure it lands.

For PvP, would you change anything?
Maybe just Mangle - Savage Roar - Mangles?
Or are the Rake/Rips worthwhile?

My macros might have not been the greatest, but against a target dummy my mangle macro actually did more DPS than my shred one (when specced appropriately for each during the test)...

So not sure what I did there. Personally I dont have good enough control of my people yet to even consider using a shred macro, mangle spam all the way.

Feral DPS sucks until you get some gear, and they are probably the most challenging melee class to box (with the possible exception of mutilate rogues). My feral just hit about 4400gs yesterday, and he's finally starting to shine.

Sub 4000gs he was consistently the lowest dps in my group, even getting regularly thrashed on the meters by my prot pally tank (and initially my feral had the BEST gear in my group). He's now consistently in the top two (ret pally still beats him, though), especially on ICC fights that last longer (which is where I spend most of my time now). Cats generally need slightly longer fights to put out good dps.

As of now he consistently pulls 2.5k - 3.5k, with spikes to 4k. I'm quite happy with that, given it's /click macroed and I don't intend to raid with him.

I run with prot pally, ret pally, enhance shaman, feral druid, and resto shaman. I chose this group for optimal melee buffs, which seems to be working out well but didn't have as dramatic an impact as I'd thought it would.

I use a click macro for cat dps. Of note is that I exclude feral faerie fire(FFF) completely, as I've tested this extensively and that one GCD at the start of a fight has a large effect on his DPS on trash (I use /castsequence reset=combat/target etc, etc). On boss fights you could slip in an alternate macro that includes feral faerie fire a bit later in his rotation if you really wanted to maximize, but I haven't bothered.

I can post my detailed /castsequence and click macros later from home if you want, but they aren't rocket science....I essentially follow Elitist Jerk's(EJ) advice, which is get mangle + savage roar up immediately, apply and keep rake up, get rip up ASAP, use shred for fast combo points + dmg, and keep rake/mangle/5pt-rip/savage roar up after that.

My tweak to the EJ approach for boxing is that it's better to have savage fury up and waste a combo point or two occassionally refreshing it as opposed to risking it falling off, and it's better to have a 3-4 combo point rip up than it is to have it fall off.

You also absolutely must have feral cats attack from behind if you want solid DPS. If you aren't willing to do that, I'd suggest playing another character as regularly using shred is a critical part of both a cat's dps and his combo point engine. (Frankly though, if you are running a melee group you are wasting tons of DPS to parries and such if you aren't regularly positioning them behind the mobs). I've tested this for hours on dummies. I do have a macro that omits shred for those times when positioning simply isn't an option (Ick and Krick for instance(God, how I loathe that fight with my melees!)), but it's sub-optimal.

I really enjoy min-maxing DPS, and I've played my feral solo since the beginning of TBC (when ferals were hugely overpowered), and I was sad to see them get so many nerfs in WotLK. I guess that's why I've stuck with him..nostalgia.

There may be better approaches, but mine works well enough if all you plan to do is run heroics.

How are you inserting the no shred macro? is this an on the fly thing, or do you switch your clicking for certain fights when you know youre not going to be able to get behind your opponent?