Feral Cat

[Ualaa]

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?

[Redbeard]

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.

[Acerak]

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.

[Redbeard]

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?