The Enigma Order

I'm too afraid to try Feral yet. Need to get familiar with moonkin first and then start the spec jumping. I really have no clue how to play feral or resto at the moment, but thats something i'm waiting to test in the future.

Tried to run with 4 parts of T6 together with 2 parts T4.
dps was very unstable, and i had between 1600 and 1300 dps.

With my current gear im hitting 1200 > 1400 dps.

On elitiestjerk some druids are mentioning they are pushing 1800 dps.
Clearly there is either a gab in the dps gear from sunwell, or im doing something very wrong

edit:
just reached 1800 dps in 2t4/4t6, dropping after a few rotations to 1400 and then ending around 1450/1500 dps

did it over, and couldnt get past 1300.


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with the same set, and the old mangle > shred  combo followed up by a FB i was only just able to push 1000 dps

Mangle > shred to 5 cps > rip started at a stunning 1000dps and slowly rised to 1200 dps as my shreds started to get the bleed dmg increase from rip.

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no matter what i try, it seems like keeping mangle + a bleed up, is the way to go. Getting FB in between rip and rakes gives great dps output.
right now with 4 parts of T6 + 15% from talents, my FB does 30% more dmg, and have almost 100% crit chance on bleeding targets.
Still im playing with some thoughts of making a spec that doesnt include it in the rotation, since its the biggest drainer there is.

yea, scaling compared to other classes arent viable before at lvl 80, i know

With my tank spec i will most likely keep on mangle / shred like before.
My consern and testing was with a raid dps spec, focusing on cat only.

hmm i deffently need to test that out.
It really feels like they did something to shred. It doesnt do as much dmg now, as i felt it did prepatch.
Might just be me tho

I used Recount to keep track of total damage done. Then I dps'ed for 300 seconds and divided the total damage with 300.

I don't trust the built-in dps indicators in the meters.

Ive been thinking alittle about that mangle spec, and without testing it, i cannot see, how mangle should be able to do more dps than shred, even without the RnT talent.

mangle talented is what? 29 energy
Shred is 42 talented.

thats 13 energy in difference.
You will be able to pick up talents for a hybrid Cat/bear spec yes, but that also meens that you will lose potentional dps. But lets ignore that for now.
Lets also ignore OOC procs, since they under all sercumstances would benefit shred more than mangle.

If you use rake in your cycle, then why not invest in the extra 5 points, to gain 20% extra dps from shred. You might only be able to pull off 2/3 the shreds compared to if you used mangle only, but they will do that much extra dmg, that it probably wouldnt matter.

when i started getting the hang of it, i started to cycle rake and rip. If rip was up, i would use FB as a finisher, if rake was up, i would use rip instead of refreshing rake. Rip is 5 energy less than rake, and they both boost shred.
If you only keep rip up, there is a chance that you will override the previous rip (or not be able to get it off because the current one is better) and that will be a potentional dps loss.

i wont even start to think of lvl 80 rotations yet there is just to much to take into account.
i am using 2 t6 (mentioned it in the above post where i state my talented mangles on 3/3 imp mangle cost 29 energy.) and i agree its hard to fit in a shred without fucking up the rotation.
I am going to try and get a working rotation up with the glyph of rip, and test out the mangle spam, just to see if it has any difference.

Which rotation would you recommend?

mangle> rake > mangle to 5 cp > rip and repeat?
perhaps a FB in between the rips

also.. my spec consisted of 2/3 imp. mangle and 2/3 king of the jungle.
Its also needed to test if berserk will benefit more with mangle spam than OOC.

As far as i understood from Elitistjerk OOC is around 10% more overall dps in the long run

you havent been able to fit in a FB with the mangle spam?

or maybe FB only really shines through with the RnT and feral agression talent combined with 4t6 now

Think this would be the spec to use as a tank/mangle spam spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxGGscbzMeRMhuho0E
(last point based on prefference)

for the more complicated specs including rotation on finishers, and shreds i think something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZEM0sfrz0eR0hdiZ0E0z

i guess it breaks down to gear/setbonuses in the end.
It was with the last mentioned spec i got the results i posted in the start
(2t4, 4t6, everbloom idol)

Mojorising wrote:

maybe it breaks down to the luck on OOC procs or something, but if thats the scaling between T4 and T6 im alittle worried.

At least the two set bonuses on T6 should give you a significant edge over me. I'm not sure the stats on T6 are all that much better than what you can get outside BT/MH - for instance, I have T6 gloves, but I don't use them for dps.

What are your stats in catform, so that we can compare?

I have ~4k ap, 40% crit, hitcapped, expertisecapped, 40 armor pen rating, and no haste. I use 2xT4 for the energy bonus.

i also got alot of "there is already a more powerful spell active" or something like that when i wanted to reaply rip. this fucked up alot of the timing, since i had to spam it until it went off. Together with OOC procs the rip is lost completely =/

This is annoying right now, but it is vital that you have more combo points than you can actually use once you get Savage Roar. Remember, we have to keep up two finishing moves by then. What you are seeing is how superior Mangle spam is at building up combo points compared to shred. Also remember that you can never lose rip damage as long as you always keep it on the mob.

im not convinced that mangle spam is the way to go atleast.

We will know more about this once we get Savage Roar. I agree that it would seem weird if shred is only a weak upgrade to mangle when you use 7 talent points to improve it. The impression I get right now points to them being very equal, though.

did a new test. Used the above, but since i have the glyph of rip it actually allowed me to get off a FB with ease between the rips.
This made my dps have a minimum of 1430 and close to 1500 most of the time. - and i even screwed up most of the time

This is a very good test, because once you get Savage Roar you've already practiced juggling two finishing moves.

Last edited by xzar (2008-10-21 18:13:27)

Mojo, if you are still specced for shredding, would you mind checking what percentage of your total damage comes from shred?

Nah, it's okay - I checked some WWS instead.

I was doing some math on NS+MS (My hybrid mangle spec) versus getting RNT and Shredding Attacks (My hybrid shred spec) at level 80. If I were to spec for Shred at level 80 and still maintain a hybrid spec, it would probably be at the cost of not getting NS+MS and ILOTP.

The numbers I posted earlier in this thread should still be accurate - Shred is 16-17% better than Mangle when properly talented. However, if you add NS+MS to the Mangle spec the difference becomes 11% (at 40% crit). Then factor in that Shred is only ~35% of your total damage (statistics taken from WWS) and the difference only becomes ~4% (rounding up).

This is when looking at Mangle at 34 energy (it doesn't look like there'll be a 2T6-like bonus in the set items at lvl 80).

So my conclusion is that, if you are going for a hybrid spec at level 80, there's almost no noticable difference between a shred spec or a mangle spec, and therefore I would give up shred and use those 7 talent points to get ILOTP and NS+MS.

Last edited by xzar (2008-10-26 13:08:04)