NOTE: Despite what I said during the Opening Sequence portion of the video (8:30) about using a pre-pull Omen proc on Shred for your first builder, you'll notice that the top-parsing Ferals have been opening with either Mangle or Rake. This is because of 2 things: 1) the lack of positional requirements on Mangle and Rake - being able to get those initial builders off WHILE positioning yourself, as opposed to having to get the positioning first, increases uptime (and also DPS in effect); and 2) while I was researching for this video, the Feral sim was assuming Mangle debuff on every single Shred, so it was incorrectly projecting the damage of a Shred opener aka a Mangle-less Shred. Between finishing research and recording that segment of the video, the sim bug was fixed and I didn't catch it (credit to @SyrinEldarin for bringing it to my attention). The sim now recommends Mangle as the OOC opener, but some Ferals on the front page of the world rankings are still using a Rake opener. These are things I should have noticed and taken into account while making this video. To correct what I said in the video, I would change my "Omen proc first GCD" recommendation AWAY from Shred and more towards Mangle or Rake. ALSO: To clear up confusion surrounding what I said about Berserk and Heroism/Bloodlust - Berserk does NOT directly benefit from Hero/Lust, HOWEVER on a lot of fights the raid will be using Hero/Lust at the same point of the fight where you'd wanna use Berserk anyway (right at the start, or during a burn phase). We're NOT looking to specifically line up Berserk with Hero/Lust, it just so happens that they tend to line up sort of by accident. So if you're unsure of when you should use Berserk, normally "when everyone else is also popping their cooldowns" is gonna be the right answer, and usually that happens when the raid pops Hero/Lust. This video was aimed at players who are new to Feral DPS or looking to improve at it, so a LOT of stuff in the video is simplified, including the part about Berserk timing. As you get more experience with the spec you'll start to find out for yourself which fights are the exception to this, but I just wanted to make sure that people aren't getting the wrong message.
I'm not sure how you arrived at shred opener with clearcast proc, but if it's from the feral discord channel, then you should know that that information was actually based on a bug in the sim; shred was coded to always assume mangle debuff. Once that was rectified, mangle opener came out on top over shred when you have a clearcast.
@@SyrinEldarin Yeah, that is where I got the info. Clearly I missed the bug find and correction. Thanks for the info, glad to know about it. Now I have to break the habit of Shredding with my pre-proc lmao
@@tomomo822 Generally speaking we don't really wanna use Pounce in raids. The only way to make a case for it is if you're carrying a Savage Roar into the fight from immediately preceding trash, and even then Pounce's bleed damage isn't really that good
Thanks for watching! Are there any topics you wish there were videos about that you haven't been able to find anywhere? That's the kind of stuff I like to cover - like some of the math I went over in this video is only in there because I've never seen anyone explain WHY, they just want us to accept what they say, so I wanted to actually show why. But yeah if you can think of any stuff like that let me know and I'll add it to my list of stuff to cover in future videos 👍
@@tableslam Hey mate I never see any feral/boomkin comparisons, it would be cool to see them compared on set variables, could make for some interesting content :)
@@JJftw7 As it happens, Griftin (Feral) and Gho (Boomie) just started a weekly podcast together, that sounds like a great topic for them to cover on the podcast! I'll let them know about your suggestion
Damn good guide man. As somebody who thought they played a Feral at a high level, this makes me feel like I'm starting all over again. Really appreciate your time on this.
Thanks! Working on another one for slightly more advanced stuff as well. A few things in this guide are intended more for beginners to help get the basics down, but once you move onto the intermediate-advanced level they become progressively less applicable. So the next guide will be an update for when the "beginner stuff" isn't cutting it anymore lol
@@tableslam Awesome, looking forward to it. While I'm at it, mind a quick question? If Rip is about to drop, is it advised to apply a 3 or 4 pointer? Or always push to a 5 point application, even if it means a few seconds lost of uptime? Sorry if you explained this somewhere in the video, am listening to it a 2nd time right now.
@@guycomputer829 Hold out for a 5-pointer for sure. A couple seconds of lost uptime here and there is worth the extra damage - 85-90% Rip uptime is considered extremely good, but I usually hover somewhere between 80 and 85% (would prefer for it to be higher but sometimes RNG has other plans haha)
Thanks for this guide @Tableslam. I was simultaneously learning Ulduar fights and the Bearweaving spec over the last 4 weeks and your guide was a huge help. Actually, I got a ton of use from more than just one of your videos. You do a great job. Very thorough in your explanations of each section and your use of timestamps was a huge help as the studious viewer.
I mostly wanted to ensure you that this video was a massive contribution to the community of Feral players despite it now being out of date. But outdated does not necessarily mean obsolete. If you're new to feral and practice bearweaving for an hour on a target dummy than the current rotation will feel so damn simple.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I'm working on an updated guide for the new Faerie Fire (Feral) change, and there will definitely be some callbacks to this video. Base concepts like timer desynchronization definitely still apply, so it's not like I'm starting completely from scratch. But enough has changed that I feel like a new guide is in order
@@Gelroozle Probably not, it's pretty straightforward especially if you're not completely new to the class lol. It's more or less the same thing we were doing before but without any weaving, and we're hitting FFF more or less on cooldown. The only times we don't hit it on cooldown are pretty obvious and easy to figure out on your own - if we already have a proc, if we'll cap energy as a result of hitting it, or if the next thing we need to cast is NOT Shred (aka don't hit FFF right before you're gonna do a new Rip or Bite). There's some nuance of course, but the general basis of the "new" rotation is pretty easy if you already knew how to play Feral before
That's great!! Comments like these are exactly why I made the video, I'm happy to help! Next goal for ya: Pump so hard that you NEED Hand of Salvation LOL
Lmao it was the first thing I recorded and by the time I was done editing I was like is this too cringe? Yes, and that's exactly why I'm keeping it lol
TY for the vid, I appreciate the effort put into the way this was put together. Currently 4260gs on Skyfury as a feral druid, learning a lot from vids like these :)
The video that ends up in will be with other more advanced stuff, like snakeweaving, flowershift weapon swapping, pre-pull trinket toggling, etc. So its not gonna be like a standalone video, but there will of course be timestamps in that video to skip to whatever parts you're interested in 💪
Extremely informative video, I'm glad I was able to convince you to make a longer video. Now all that's left is to put all these tips and tricks into practice. :)
Just now getting into feral as my third 80, this guide helps alot. The spec feels so intuitive and I love all the different things that are working at the same time. I'm really hoping the new Uld gear ilvl puts Feral in a better spot when compared to other dps though. It sort of sucks learning all these things just to be vastly outdamaged by an unholy DK smashing their face on the keyboard after lust
Our potential definitely goes up by a pretty significant amount, but unfortunately a ton of fights in Ulduar are super Feral-unfriendly fights. Like any fight that's generally melee unfriendly is even worse for Feral because we have positional requirements on top of everything else lol. But on the tank & spank fights we'll have the potential to beat some of the specs that we had no chance against in Phase 1
Very entertaining and useful video thanks. Been malding all night due to losing 5 rolls on a row to a DK, half of it leather, so I decided to use my time more wisely improving my DPS
Very good video !!! I do have to admit, that even though I really like to push my abilities to the limit, I think that weaving is just beyond my capabilities. I am proud to say, that I even got on some 25 Naxx bosses a rating of 91 via bracket. But overall I am still at around 70. I know that the range of the best and worst Feral is very large compared to other classes, but I think for a non-hardcore player, I am at least not bad ^^ Glad I found your channel, to further improve myself !
Don't sell yourself short! As you get more and more familiar and comfortable with it you'll gradually start to feel a little bored, like you could be hitting more buttons and doing more damage. That's when you can add some of this weaving stuff in, when the normal rotation feels like it's not enough for you anymore. Yeah, Feral has a much larger spread/range than other classes, but tbh I think it has less to do with skill level than people think it does. Sure, that plays into it to a degree, but a big part of it is the way warcraftlogs "decides" tank parses from DPS parses. Whether a parse counts as a tank parse depends on the amount of tanks the admins of WCL decide are needed for each fight, so if you're the "safety option" third tank on a fight that WCL says is a two-tank fight, the site will classify you as DPS for that fight even if you never enter Cat Form at all. So the spread is bigger than it should be because there are a bunch of parses that **should** be tank parses that are mixed into the same category as the DPS parses instead. Basically WCL's arbitrary system is causing Feral DPS's average to be dragged down. Most people don't know why, and just assume it means there's a bunch of really bad Feral DPS, when really it's that there are a bunch of "extra tank for safety" Ferals that are being classified as DPS. For example, on my guild's first 2 Sartharion kills (one 2D, one 3D), I was wrangling whelps and fire elementals. WCL says that all three versions of hard-mode Sartharion (+1D, +2D, and +3D) are only two-tank fights (one tank on Sartharion himself, and the other tank on the drakes/adds). So even though I **WAS** tanking, WCL still classified me as DPS because I was the third tank
There's a couple developments on that front, too. Rake is a good opener so the Assassination Rogues can use Hunger For Blood sooner, but the sim tool is currently showing a Mangle opener as the higher-damage option. To complicate it more, for a lot of Phase 1 there was a pretty even mix of Ferals using a Rake opener and Ferals using a Mangle opener on the front page of the world rankings. If you Mangle first then your Rake will be boosted by SR and will do more damage, so there's that to consider as well. Either way the difference in damage is pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things lol
So after using what I learned from your video I went from 2 and 3 on our meters straight to number one...I've found my new favorite feral content creator...again,nicely done
Very helpful, thank you for this video! My alt is a feral druid cause it's my favorite class fantasy as well as actually being good in wrath classic. It's always so satisfying doing your rotation near perfect and destroying bosses. I top warlocks sometimes lol.
Nice video, ill have to rewatch it when I'm higher level, I'm 43 at the moment so don't even have mangle yet. Just got back in WoW for the first time since 2006 haha, and decided to go with Druid again only this time Tauren and not Night Elf. Already noticing a lot of improvements in Druid from what I remember, I never played WotLK back than.
This was a fantastic video, there's a lot of feral players who need to learn that uptime is more important than everything else. The only downside for me for playing feral is that I'm still the utility class, which means I have to try to effectively use Brez/innervate at regular intervals during raiding and pick up adds to drag them to the tank. I tried going with Idol swap macros for Rip and Shred but the delay seemed to throw a serious wrench in the works with not allowing bleeds to fall off (made the GCD timing feel clunky af ) Once you get to the full on Feral bear weaving dps with engineering, pot timers and idol swap macros, shit gets chaotic to a degree that you can't explain it to any other class. Playing my surv hunter is a completely brain dead experience compared to feral. One is like riding a bike with training wheels and the other is riding a unicycle while juggling.
Yeah, there's a reason why the middle of the old JFM picture looks the way it does lmao. But weirdly at some point it just sorta clicks and then it feels normal, no big deal. Hard to explain lol. I've told other people before that I think Feral is harder to explain/teach than it is to play, which I think is why there aren't that many videos about how to play it lol
Drunk boosted a druid with the homies on disc last week, they told me i should go boomie, some assumed i’d go resto since i main R sham, but i love a challenge. Planning to reroll cat as my main right before ToC. Your videos are so helpful dude. Thank you so much 🔥🤌🏻
Tbh you're gonna find a lot of stuff about Feral that's similar to other classes you've played, whether its a timer to manage or a buff to keep 100% uptime on, and you can for sure use that to make it an easier transition. Like my OG main from original TBC onwards was a Combat Rogue, so I remember the energy change firsthand since I played an energy class back in the day. Savage Roar is like Slice and Dice, Rip is like Rupture, Berserk is like Adrenaline Rush. So that's a super easy analogue, but there's for sure stuff from other classes that you'll find as you go that will help it feel more natural. And of course the fact that you have extensive experience on a healer means you have a unique perspective that could potentially help you out on some fights (or at the very least allow you to help your healers out by taking less damage or chipping in an offheal with a Predator's Swiftness proc or whatever). That's one of the reasons why I decided to make my Paladin alt a healer - so I could get that extra perspective to help me be better on my main haha
A clear explanation of how to maximize DPS no doubt. I left this video feeling informed, a little overwhelmed, moderately confused but strangely optimistic! Reminded my of my first sex ed class.
As someone who has been a boomie main for the better part of a decade I’ve always wanted to try feral, I thought I understood how to play it but turns out I didn’t. I was clipping everything cause I thought it was better to keep 100% up time then let it fall off. This has been such an amazing video and you definitely earned a sub, like and comment. Great video!
Glad it was helpful! Yeah it's almost counterintuitive to let stuff fall off, but that's pretty much how 99% of dots work in Vanilla/TBC/Wrath. I think it was Cataclysm that introduced the universal mechanic where if you refresh a dot it "extends" the existing one so you don't clip it. Before that it was specific spells or talents that refresh dots (like the WotLK Warlock talent that refreshes Corruption etc)
on sapph or malygos when you are unable to melee, a quick moonfire or starfire is also a dps gain, or wrath with a predatory swiftness buff/ if the starfire will take too long.
4:19 This is mildly pedantic on my part, the video's advice about holding Berserk for Bloodlust/Heroism is usually adequate because most raids either Lust immediately or save it for a specific burn phase. For people looking into more advanced rotation optimization and theorycrafting: Berserk and Bloodlust do not actually synergize at all. TLDR; holding Berserk for Bloodlust doesn't sim best, but can be practical for burn phases if you need something to die ASAP. Lust only increases our auto attack speed, Berserk only halves the energy cost of cat form abilities and affects Mangle cooldown/cleave in bear form. These aren't effects that stack in some useful way. You nearly always want to Berserk on open after your first Tiger's Fury puts you near energy cap (now that TF buff does not cancel when you hit Zerk, a change made in Classic from original WotLK). There are a few exceptions I can think of where you might not Berserk open. One, the boss in question specifically has mechanics in the opener that waste significant Zerk uptime, at that point it depends on the boss fight (KT and Gothik trash phases come to mind for me in T7 as Berserk is usually unnecessary to survive the trash and the KT trash doesn't count for parses) and your raid's kill time. Two, the boss has a phase requiring you to burn it fast to avoid a wipe (Sarth 3D without zerg strat comes to mind, if your raid needs to burn the first drake fast to avoid a wipe). Three, lining up with cooldowns/buffs that actually increase your ability damage significantly, not specifically just your haste (current top Malygos feral parse does this with Power Spark, interestingly enough not the case on Loatheb spores). Clearcasting procs more frequently when you're Lusted and generally this is likely more beneficial when you're not Berserking because we're energy limited in cat form, not GCD limited. Those clearcasts would be better if procced at a time where we're not getting half energy abilities. Berserk opener currently still sims best though even if it overlaps with Lust and sets you up comfortably, 5 point Rip, 5 point Savage Roar, and a surplus of combo points for your next timer refresh. Great video guide, I still enjoyed hearing how you think of the rotation and it should be a good resource for people learning feral DPS =)
Yeah all that stuff is absolutely true. This video is more of a sort of beginner's guide, so there are a lot of generalized things in this video that end up becoming progressively less true the higher your individual skill ceiling gets. For example, later on in the video in the Bearweaving section I talk about doing 1-GCD weaves, which is fine for people who are just starting to learn how to weave, but in practice even I don't do 1-GCD weaves unless it's just to refresh stacks of Lacerate. Once Lacerate is stacked to 5, I keep doing 2-GCD weaves, but one of the GCDs gets switched to Mangle instead of a second Lacerate. And when I'm Mangleweaving I still do 2-GCD weaves, with the 2nd GCD being a Lacerate, even if I'm not gonna maintain the stacks. But stuff like that goes a little beyond the scope of what I wanted the video to be. It's already a giant infodump lmao I didn't wanna make it even more confusing or complicated by getting into the more advanced stuff. That stuff is for a separate video. Thanks for the kind words and feedback 💪
@@tableslam Fair enough! I suspected you might be aware and didn't want to overload beginners, which is understandable for a guide like this. I hope I didn't come off too "WELL ACKSHUALLY" lol. I'm just adding an additional tip-off for viewers that there's more nuance to the point in question if they care to dive deeper. If they really wanna optimize they can hopefully do their own advanced research/reasoning/simming, but some of those folks might take lining big damage cooldowns up at face value without ever thinking or looking deeper into how exactly they interact 😛 Most raids worth their salt will Bloodlust on pull or during a critical burn phase, so your advice there is good enough for people who just wanna kill bosses without pushing their parse. I'd just hate to see people pop Berserk early/late because they have it stuck in their head that it's optimal for their overall damage. I look forward to seeing your advanced feral video! Peace and thanks for taking time out to reply ✌️
One of the best dps guides I've seen period. And I've been playing this game for over 10 years, so good job mate! Love the way you explain things so precisely, you have a way with words Awesome
Whoa that's pretty high praise, I really appreciate that! I was actually worried it was gonna be too much detail lmao. I'm a very detail oriented person, especially when I'm learning stuff. Understanding the "why" behind a concept I'm learning makes it easier for me to remember, because otherwise it's just memorization instead of actually learning. So I figured I'd make the guide I wish I had when I was first learning the spec haha
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On biting in the berserk window: I feel like you should continue to shred even at 5 cp until you are at around 18-20 energy before squeezing in a bite. Otherwise you’re losing a lot of energy to the bite conversion which I think is less dmg/energy than shred (especially a berserk shred).
Yeah the DPE for a Berserk Shred is pretty giga, and the Bite conversion stays the same during Berserk as it does without it which is kinda cheeks. The one redeeming quality to that Bite conversion is it's not terrible when we crit with the Bite, which **should** happen more often than not with full raid buffs and the extra 25% crit chance for Bite on bleeding targets from the Rend and Tear talent. My Bite crit chance is over 80% with full raid buffs - I've seen some absolutely giant Bite crits before during Berserk window
Overall quite a good video. Other than some minor nitpicks (like, e.g., mentioning that ability crits in bear weave will refund you 5 rage so you might still get a mangle maul sequence off of just 10 rage from your initial white hit), I'd say that the primary improvement is that your lacerateweave should still involve bear mangles. It is a decent damage increase to never cast mangle in cat form (other than the initial one), and 2-GCD bearweaves are not particularly burdensome. It's also a minor dps increase to lacerate in mangleweave, even if you don't maintain the stacks; 2-GCD weave sequences tend to beat out alternatives.
Thanks! Yeah, when I play in actual raids I try to only bear Mangle, and once Lacerate is stacked to 5 I switch to Mangle + Lacerate in subsequent weaves. My rage gen is a lot higher with full raid buffs so I very frequently do 2 or even 3 GCD weaves depending on how low my energy was when I went to bear. The issue I had with recording the dummy demos for this video was lack of raid buffs causing me to have much lower rage gen, so I more or less only had enough rage to do 1 GCD weaves (with a few exceptions from white hit crits here and there). For an "intro to bearweaving" sort of thing I figured demonstrating the ultra basic 1 GCD Mangleweave was fine. After a couple more raid streams I should have enough example footage of Lacerateweave in action to make another separate intermediate/advanced bearweaving video, which will 100% include the stuff you mentioned. I like to shout people out that contribute to the discussion, so if it's cool with you I'll include a screengrab of your comment in that video as well
If you insist on biting during zerk i think you should use bite only when on minimum energy, flowershift to proc OOC, back into cat use the proc on shred. If hero is active i'd probably not shift and just afk auto while pooling
Yeah ideally min energy Bites are the way to go during Berserk, that's how I do it during actual raids when I play. Not entirely sure why I was so trigger happy on Berserk Bites in the demos, I for sure should have Shredded a couple more times before Biting and gotten more damage out of the sequence. Overall I don't necessarily think it was a giant mistake or anything, just super inefficient (which is still a mistake, just not a giant one lmao)
@@tableslam I'm just nitpicking, my brain would have melted as soon as I pressed the record button :) You explained things very well, I appreciate the time it took to portray your thoughts on feral. I feel this would be an excellent pin in the Druid discord. Also I just checked your videos and I see "How To Break A Bot" hahaha, we are very alike.
@@richie364 I appreciate that, thanks! And yeah if you only knew how many takes it took for just about every clip in the video lmao it got to the point where the Berserk clips I used were 2 out of like 40something and they were the only 2 where I didn't flub a word, so it was either continue trying to get the "perfect" take or just accept the 2 good takes... it just so happened that those were the 2 that had inefficient Bites lmao figures. Someone actually did link the video in the druid disc the other day and there was some discussion about it. I never would have posted it myself, I feel like that would have been kinda weird lol
Not much will change, tbh. Rip will still be a part of our rotation until we have ArP hardcap - as long we're only softcapped we're still using Rip as the primary finisher. If you have a WA that shows you your trinket procs, though, prioritize Bite over Rip wile you have an ArP proc up. That's about it tbh
Awesome video, new to feral so I learned a lot! Also loved the silly skit in the beginning x) One question: When calculating the mangle vs rake before SR at the opening sequence - for rake to be buffed by SR, SR needs to already be present - yes? In that case, what you gain from going rake first is 1 seconds of rake uptime, and a SR-buffed mangle, compared to a naked mangle but a SR buffed rake, right? 33% extra damage from SR on 8 seconds of rake vs 9 seconds of non SR-buffed rake but a SR-buffed mangle seems like the correct comparison to me - no? This should end up heavily in favor of mangle first.
I was looking at purely "how much damage can you get out of the first GCD," which was the reasoning behind a Rake opener based on sim recommendations at the time. You can even look back through the Feral DPS channel on the Druid discord and see an overwhelming consensus towards a Rake > SR > Mangle opener before the sim was updated. I mentioned this in the pinned comment, but since recording this video, the Feral sim was updated to fix a bug, and after the update it has been recommending Mangle as the opening GCD. There are still some Ferals on the front page of the world rankings who use a Rake opener (usually because an Arms Warrior charged, got to the boss first, and crit right away to get a Trauma up), but the vast majority are using a Mangle opener as per the sim recommendation. The point you made is absolutely correct and part of the reason why the sim recommends a Mangle opener, and Mangling first is also a way to sort of "hedge our bets" on critting with the opening GCD. When moving from "beginner level" to "intermediate level" and beyond, it makes more sense for our first SR to be at least a 2-pointer so it will last through the duration of Berserk. If we Mangle first and it crits, there's our 2 points for SR, and then our first Rake will go up after SR. If the Mangle doesn't crit, then we cast a non-SR Rake to get to 2 or 3 points for that first SR. Best case scenario, the first Rake is buffed, worst case scenario it isn't, but Mangling first at least gives us the chance for the first Rake to be buffed by SR.
This was great. Been looking for something like this. One question I have is when to Ferocious Bite. There are times when I have lots of energy, 5 combo points, 15+ seconds on both rip and savage roar so I bite, but then if I get a bad string of no crits SR or rip might fall off. If never bite, what do I do with those high energy high combo high duration times?
The first thing to look at is whether SR and Rip are gonna have a syncing issue. If their durations are within 2-3 seconds of each other, it might make sense in that situation to pool energy and get an early SR refresh to desync. If your timers aren't synced, then you basically just pool energy and use Shred & Rake to prevent capping (while maintaining Rake uptime). It seems wasteful because we'd rather be using those combo points instead of wasting them, but unfortunately that's the most efficient thing to do in that situation
Thanks for this video @tableslam , it really helps. 2 questions from a newbie cat. - One point SR gives 14sec of uptime vs 5sec for every subsequent point. Any benefit of using 1point SRs ? - I sometimes find myself with 5 combo points and 5-6sec left on BOTH my SR and Rip.. what's the go then? I tend to wait for Rip to finish (to avoid clipping) and then do Rip and a quick 1pt SR.. but should I get the 5pt SR asap (clip the remaining 5sec of SR) and then start building for a 5pt Rip? Thanks for your help. Subscribed!
A 1pt SR generally isn't gonna be long enough, so it's best to stick to 2-4pt SRs. Synced timers are something that needs to be handled proactively. You have the right idea with clipping the end of SR, but it needs to happen a LOT sooner than that. Ideally you should notice that your SR and Rip timers are synced up long before you're even at 5 combo points. As soon as you notice a syncing issue, stop building and pool energy. Just before you cap, refresh SR, and then you have plenty of time to build to 5 again so you don't lose any significant Rip uptime, and you're also all set on SR. Generally speaking you don't wanna do 5pt SRs. We end up refreshing it early so often that it's kind of a waste to spend any more than 3 or 4 points on it. I aim for 3-pointers, but if I'm at 2 points and my next builder crits, a 4-pointer isn't a bad thing. But if I'm already at 3 or 4 I will stay there, pool, and refresh SR just before I cap energy. I almost never purposely build to 5 for SR. Doing so can make it difficult to maintain Rip uptime
@@tableslam cool thanks. Just need practice to detect those situations earlier it seems. That and general raid awareness lol. Staring at those CDs is deadly
@@cixidelmont1008 Yep, practice is the name of the game for sure. The more we practice the less we have to think about it, and the more mental bandwidth we have for other stuff (like raid awareness lol)
My next video will be about Weak Auras! There are a ton of really good aura packs out there that lots of people download, which is great, but my video will be about how to make your own. There's nothing wrong with downloading aura packs, but I know there are people who want to do it themselves, but can't because they don't know how. So hopefully my video will alleviate some of that. All the auras you see on my screen were custom-made by me - I decided to make them myself instead of downloading a pack, as sort of a personal challenge. I'm also SUPER picky about how I like things displayed, so I figured I'd have to do so much editing to the auras in any pack I'd download that I might as well just make my own lmao
@@tableslam Ill look foward to it. I just really like your timer/tracker bar and power bar set up. Its much easier seeing the time left on roar as a bar than just your traditional button CD
@@naturalyamazing I agree, there are some things that are easier for me when displayed as icons and some that are easier for me when displayed as bars. I'm not really sure why tbh, I can't really explain it lol. Of course my hope for that video is to inspire people to do it themselves, but I'm still gonna include links to each of my WA groups in the description of the video
I see the main use of giftweaving as trash dmg, rather than bear swiping. I'm a little unsure with Lacerate weaving which is optimal, but after a zerk start with hero, you can finish with high savage roar timer, 5 CP and 10s on rip, refresh rake - And that gives you a bunch of time to use remaining hero to mash out all 5 lacerate stacks with mauls where possible. Given you are purely pooling energy and nothing to refresh in this window, I don't really see a reason not to do this. Probably isn't much difference ultimately anyway.
You could probably fit all 5 in that 10-sec window. You probably wouldn't be able to do all 5 at once - you'd have to switch back to cat to prevent capping energy partway through - but you're right that that's a good time to do it because we're pooling there. You're also right that it probably won't end up making a giant difference either way, but getting stacks up as early as possible is for sure preferable. The more uptime the better
Extremely great guide! One little thing I'm wondering: Why do we have to use Gift of the Wild to trigger Omen? Wouldn't any spell have the chance to trigger it like a rejuv, llife Bloom or at least Mark of the Wild?
@@CC-rw4sz Improved Mark of the Wild is a normal talent we should be taking regardless. Unless you're talking about the Glyph that reduces the mana cost of Makr & Gift, in which case yes, that's also sort of one of the default minor glyphs
Thanks! I use Glyph of Shred, Glyph of Rip, and Glyph of Savage Roar. Some like to use Glyph of Maul on cleave-heavy fights (like Anub and Faerlina) so their bearweave Mauls hit two targets, but with the recent fix to Maul that may not be as much of a thing anymore. Maul used to (incorrectly) be able to proc Omen of Clarity, which is not how it worked in original Wrath. Glyph of Maul basically had even more of a chance to proc Omen of Clarity because it had "extra" chance to proc Omen since a Glyphed Maul hits two targets. With the release of Phase 2, Blizzard fixed Maul, so it can no longer proc Omen. Because of this change, Glyph of Maul has lost a little bit of value, but the extra damage it can provide on cleave fights will still be pretty good. Before, when people swapped in Glyph of Maul, they were usually dropping Glyph of Savage Roar. Another alternative glyph that is sometimes used is Glyph of Berserk for the extra 5 second duration on Berserk. Again, Glyph of Savage Roar is usually dropped to accommodate this. This is mostly done on cleave fights as well (again, Anub and Faerlina) where you're using your Berserk window primarily to spam Swipe. That extra 5 seconds on Berserk is usually an extra 3-5 half-cost Swipes. Yet another alternative glyph, specifically for fights where you cannot guarantee you'll be behind the target, is Glyph of Mangle for the extra 10% Mangle damage. This is useful on fights like Kologarn, where it is literally impossible to use Shred. You'd swap out Glyph of Shred for Glyph of Mangle since you'll be using Mangle as your primary builder on Kologarn. Ferals who never need to tank might even have a totally separate talent build specifically for Kologarn where they take Improved Mangle for the energy cost reduction, and also Glyph of Mangle for the extra Mangle damage. Unfortunately, many of us have to tank at least some of the time, so a lot of our 2nd specs are taken up by a tank build, but I fully expect to see DPS-only Ferals using the Mangle spec at the top of the Kologarn rankings.
I have a WeakAuras channel in my discord where I have import links for my aura groups - they're also linked in the description of my WeakAuras video. You could also go to wago.io/p/Tableslam but you might have to pick through some non-Feral stuff I have on there (I used to main a Warrior lol). My action bars are Bartender with the Masque addon to change the skin of the icons (using the Epix skin), Details for damage/threat meters, SexyMap (simple square preset) for the minimap, MSBT for the scrolling battle text
Really enjoying the video so far, I'm trying really hard to keep my DPS up, but after 2 weeks of bad drop luck and a massive roster shift I've gone from around top 8th-12th to usually last. I'm about 2/3 pre-raid BiS and 1/3 P1 BiS, but I cannot seem to push beyond a 3.5k average on the training dummies, and I believe one of my best results on a non-damage boost mechanic boss is only 5.2k DPS. Is this mostly a gear/scaling issue? I recently rectified dropping rake from the general rotation. The big crit shreds made me think rake was a waste once rip was applied. I saw in your Str vs. Agi video you mentioned druids looking at about 7k DPS at some point. The only thing I can think of is that I need more crit. I'm poised to pick up a nobles deck at next week's fair. I've been juggling both options, but the Agi trinket is seeming more viable. I'm still torn as most of my remaining gear to upgrade are the big crit pieces. And I don't want to farm herbs for another 14 hours to make both decks. Last thing, do you have the name for the timer addon you use? I've seen a few feral channels that use it and it would really help as I'm currently eyeballing the debuffs with no actual numerical counter to see.
It could be gear, but a huge part of DPS is related to kill times. If your group takes longer to kill bosses then your DPS will be lower. Not really a ton you can do about that - that's one of those "team effort vs individual effort" problems that has persisted throughout the history of team-based games lol. That 7k figure I tossed out in the Str vs Agi video is what the Feral sim shows with full Phase 1 BIS on a Patchwerk-style 3-minute fight, full Strength setup, with a 100% uptime Lacerateweaving rotation and minimal mistakes. The vast majority of players and fights meet NONE of those criteria lmao and that's fine, that's just our theoretical ceiling if we play completely perfectly. In context, that specific part of the video was referencing the simmed difference between the Str card and the Agi card, so I was using the simmed DPS figure as well. Also, we ALL need more crit lmao. Our "real" playstyle comes online in Ulduar when we have enough crit to start making Ferocious Bite a regular part of the rotation. The 2-piece set bonus for Tier 8 gives Rake, Rip, and Lacerate ticks a chance to proc Clearcasting, so that combined with the extra crit on gear means we'll actually be able to Bite, and our DPS will go up a decent amount. That's the reason I recommended the Agi card in the video - it fits better into our set in Ulduar than the Str card does. When it comes to dummies, the main thing to keep in mind is that we're usually at our absolute worst on a dummy because we don't have full buffs, and the dummy doesn't have full debuffs. When I do dummy work I'm not using the number I see on the meter to evaluate my overall performance, I'm using it to compare how I did on the most recent rep vs the one before it. It may as well be "on a scale of 1 to 10 how did I do" instead of the actual DPS number. I use the dummies primarily to practice the rotation, not to see what my damage looks like. There's a 90% chance the timer you were looking at was a Weak Aura. There is a standalone addon called OmniCC that will put numerical timers on your buff and debuff icons if you're looking at the target's debuff tray to see your durations. I'd definitely recommend Weak Auras though, as you can resize and reposition them however you like, and they have timers built in. My next video will be about how to set up your own Weak Auras, but it won't be out until this weekend most likely. Hope this helps! 💪
@@tableslam Awesome, thanks for the quick reply. I'll keep at it, and focus on being more consistent but flexible with my rotation as needed. The rake opener and not realizing I can give myself a very short initial SR were new ideas to me. And if it helps specify for the addon I'm referring to the bars between your character portrait and the target portrait. Where your debuff icons pop up just above said bars, decently sized with timers.
@@Asubatsu Yeah, what you're seeing there is Weak Auras. Literally the best addon ever invented in the history of WoW, one of the most versatile and widely-used addons out there. You can create icons or progress bars with timers on them to make it waaaaaay easier to track buffs on yourself, or debuffs on your target. You can use them to track cooldowns as well. It's a game changer for sure
hey man. Thank you for this video. It was detailed enough that it answered most of my questions. One thing though. The only thing I didn't gleem was how to manage/engineer the desync between roar & rip. The main problem I'm having, is refreshing roar early. There's been so many times where i get bad RNG after refreshing roar that i can't get a new rip up in time. As a consequence, i find myself often refreshing roar way too early. Got any advice / tips for this?
The main thing you can do is to be more proactive about the desync. You've nailed down prioritizing Rip by refreshing Roar early, but the next steps towards being more optimal with Roar are to: 1) spend fewer combo points on it (3-4 is plenty); and 2) pool before refreshing Roar. If you do these two things you'll have more energy to spend in your next section at the expense of a little bit of SR efficiency (which is a wash since we're refreshing it early anyway).
I just downloaded a weakaura that tells me what to cast. Feral is the build I play when I'm super inebriated. After watching this though, I kinda wanna find out what I'm actually doing lol.
Knowing the what/why/when/how of the rotation yourself makes a huge difference when you end up in a situation where you have to alter the rotation. Sometimes when you just follow the WA you end up losing uptime on one or more of your buffs/debuffs and you lose a considerable amount of DPS because WAs like that don't account for boss mechanics
I have a channel in my discord with all my weakauras imports, and I have a video showing how I built my setup with links to the aura groups in the description of that video 😎
It depends on how much change we'll see on the Ulduar trinkets because of the announced ilvl boost for Ulduar gear, but Greatness will remain one of the strongest trinket options all the way until Death's Choice/Death's Verdict in ToGC (Phase 3). Comet's Trail (Algalon 25) and Mjolnir Runestone (Thorim 10H) are the top trinket choices for Phase 2, but the Algalon trinket in particular is gonna be hotly contested by almost all the physical DPS. Comet's Trail is technically BIS, but what I plan on doing is passing on CT and running Runestone/Greatness through Phase 2 in order to (hopefully) give myself a higher priority on DC/DV in ToGC. Hope this helps! Thanks!
This is one of those situations where the thing I said in the video is true in a practical sense. We actually aren't specifically waiting for lust to Berserk, it just so happens that the fights where we would want to save Berserk are generally also fights where the raid is gonna save lust. So if the raid is waiting to lust, that's a signal that there's a better time later in the fight to use cooldowns. Obviously this isn't gonna be true for every single fight, but for the most part the time where you'd wanna use Berserk just happens to also be the time where the raid wants to use lust. Since this video is aimed at beginners, it was easier to present it the way I did because lust and Berserk tend to accidentally line up anyway most of the time. There is a tiny bit of synergy with Berserk and lust though, in the form of extra OOC procs during the Berserk window. I'm sure you've noticed but for the first like 2/3 to 3/4 of Berserk we more or less have enough energy to do whatever we want just about every GCD, but at the end we're waiting on energy. If the 30% attack speed from lust translates to 30% more OOC procs, we stand a pretty good chance of not running out of energy at all during Berserk. But I mean OOC is super streaky and unreliable to the point where trying to theorycraft or predict anything about its behavior is almost pointless. That theorized 30% increase could happen on its own even without lust, or it could not happen even with lust. But I mean that's just RNG for ya. We **should** see 30% more OOC procs if we have 30% increased attack speed, so that's the assumption I work under. If it happens as expected, cool, if not then it was bad RNG, not much we can really do about it lol
One thing that i was thinking about, u opted for using rake as a builder for your first savage roar. And later u said rake snapshots with savage roar when applied. Wich Always was my thought why i always use my first rake once savage roar is up. Thoughts?
I said it was counter intuitive to Rake first, and that's exactly why. We'd prefer for that initial rake to be boosted by SR for sure. But in our first few GCDs the main focus is getting a quick start, and Rake's lower energy cost combined with its efficiency, as well as having an extra 2 seconds of uptime, makes it the best choice for a quick SR while still doing the most damage of anything else we could have picked for our first GCD. Ideally we wanna start with an Omen proc regardless though, so if we're doing that then the Feral sim recommends to use Mangle as our first GCD, which means our first Rake is gonna come after our initial Roar anyway
To explain why people think that rake is post hoc affected by Mangle is to also explain why snapshotting bleeds with savage roar is a thing. They seem contradictory.
Rake IS affected post hoc by Mangle, the difference is that Mangle is a debuff on the target that affects the damage it takes, as compared to SR being a buff on yourself that affects the damage you do. That's the part that trips people up is the difference in the way targets/players are affected by these things
@@tableslam That's fair. Most people won't go that far with the nuances of debuff/buff and just question why some abilities snapshot and some don't. Appreciate the video btw! Great stuff. I was forcing lacerateweaving without both a solid understanding of mangleweaving and a raid team that manages threat well. An easier rotation should allow me to monitor threat easier. Too many spinning plates! Also being responsible for raid leading as a feral dps is a sick joke...
@@falcon1209 Spinning plates is the perfect analogy tbh lmao. I can't even imagine raid leading while doing the Feral rotation, even streaming while playing is kinda hard, having to watch boss mod timers in addition to your DPS timers and doing callouts must be awful, my condolences
This video is more or less for beginners or less experienced Ferals. I'd consider that stuff as "more advanced" or just "too advanced for a beginner video." Stuff like that will be in a later video I make about more advanced stuff (idol swaps, daggerswap giftweave, snakeweave, more in-depth bearweave stuff)
It's another way to reset the swing timer, like how you do with an idol swap. Doing an idol swap when you go back to cat form after a bearweave resets the swing timer back to cat swing from bear swing, but it also incurs the GCD. Summoning the Albino Snake non-combat pet does not incur the GCD, but will still reset the swing timer. So if you macro it or get a WeakAura to summon it when you enter Cat Form you can get a swing timer reset basically for free
@@tableslam not exactly. It's the sort of matter-of-fact absolutely necessary math and min maxing. The sort of 'we chose this life' attitude. idk if that makes it more clear lmao.
@@tableslam also, i spent the whole last 15 years playing a feral druid, but as a tank. your videos were actually pretty significant in helping me transition from tank to pure dps. ended up with a top 5 parse on my server on patchwerk. was an affirmation for sure
@@Goodbyestrangerfood Nice dude that's awesome! Yeah when RNGesus smiles upon us it's a good day for all. And yeah I feel like for a lot of us that "we chose this life" attitude is there in the first place because if any of us reroll NOW, it'll just look like we thought it was too hard and gave up lmao so if we're in this for the long haul we might as well fight tooth and nail (heh) to squeeze out every last drop of DPS we can. if the class itself can't be the best then we can at least try and be the best at the class lmao that's all we really have left
@@tableslam that's maybe exactly what I meant by the quintessential druid. A sort of unusual commitment to this one thing. And doing whatever you can to make it as good as it can be (even if it means farming a bank full of MCPs)
Great video thank you, solved my questions and thoughts. I am curious about idol swapping when leaving a bearweave tho. How often do you think about this - maybe to snapshot a rip with ripidol or having shredidol during berserk. Thanks again!
I normally keep my Shred idol on during Berserk. I'll do an idol swap after a bearweave, but only if I'm hitting a Maul on the way out, like if I have a Maul queued up and I'm waiting for that Maul to land before I go back to cat form. If i'm doing that, I'll idol swap just to reset my swing timer. If i'm not gonna do any bearweaving at all on a fight I'll idol swap to min/max my Rip and Shred damage, but I usually only do it while pooling and I try and time it for right when an auto attack lands to try and minimize the amount of autos I'll lose from the swing timer reset. But if you're just using idol swapping to reset your swing timer after a bearweave, there is another way to do that - you can "snakeweave" as they're calling it lmao. Snakeweave is one of the funnier degen weaves I've seen - for some reason the Albino Snake non-combat pet resets your swing timer when you summon it and is off the GCD, so you can get an Albino Snake from the pet vendor in Dalaran and have a summon macro/WA for your snake pet to reset your swing timer instead of idol swapping LOL
it may be a minor thing regarding the opener, but pressing mangle as first global rather than rake also "saves" you 5 energy since rake is 35 and mangle is 40. But as you already stated correctly, if you turn off the automatic mangle/trauma within the sim, the sim tool is going to mangle first global into roar and rake as 3rd global
My only question is why is it better to cast Tiger's Fury before Berserk, just for the damage bonus or to burn its cooldown asap (if this if the case, is that worth it?). Great guide, btw
Great question, it's to enter Berserk with as much energy as possible without capping so we can spam Shred as much as possible. That 60 energy we get from Tiger's Fury is basically 3 extra Shreds during Berserk. We could technically just pool energy before hitting Berserk to achieve a similar result, but that's not really the play in most cases. Instead we DPS like normal and hit TF > Berserk to keep our opener fast-paced, and it's the higher-damage option to do it that way as well
Hey great video! As a feral that is leraning, should I do 5 point Savage Roars to open a boss fight? Or just start the rotation with a 1 point savage roar to get it up and then work towards applying a 5 point rip? Cheers! -Darth Caul-
We should almost never cast 5pt SRs except during Berserk, since everything is half energy during Berserk and we can actually afford to. Outside of Berserk, it costs (on average) too much energy to get a 5pt SR, which can cause you to potentially lose Rip uptime. 3pt SR is kind of the "sweet spot." To open a fight, a 2pt SR will do just fine. That's long enough to last through Berserk if you're doing a Berserk opener, and if you're doing a non-Berserk opener that's still plenty of time to build to 5 for your first Rip. A 1pt SR generally won't be long enough if you don't get the crits/OOC procs you need, but that extra 5 seconds from a 2pt SR usually IS long enough
It's just Mik's Scrolling Battle Text (MSBT) - I've used it since original Wrath, it's nice because it shows ability icons next to yellow damage so you can tell at a glance where the yellow damage is coming from
Cool video, buuut: The rake opener makes no sense for me. You apply rake without savage roar, so all 3 ticks don´t have the 30% SR bonus and you loose way more damage than with a mangle opener. Yes, you can apply the Mangle debuff later and get the increased tick damage, but you can´t apply SR later to increase the rake ticks damage. Maybe I´m missing something, but it seems for me you mixed up mangle debuff and SR buff here...
Nope, I didn't mix them up. I said in the video that it's counter-intuitive, because it is counter-intuitive. The full reason is a lot more nuanced than what I covered in the video, but essentially what we actually want is for our initial SR to be longer than just a 1-pointer. I presented it the way I did in the video to stress the importance of getting a SR up early in the fight. If our opening Mangle (or Rake) does not crit, then we are doing the other one with our 2nd GCD so we can do a 2-3 CP SR. This means that sometimes our first Rake is gonna be a non-SR rake anyway. We shouldn't be banking on our opening GCD being a crit, and if we're assuming we don't get a crit then we're gonna get more overall damage by using Rake before Mangle because we'll have 1 more second of Rake uptime
@@tableslam Ok, thanks for the explanation. I assume this applies only for non-berserk and non-OOC openers. I have to try the 1cp SR, 5cp Rip, 1cp SR, 4-5cp SR version....
@@woistwalter7037 it all depends on your RNG tbh. It never hurts to know several ways you can make it work because every cycle will be different every time. But yeah even with non-Berserk and non-OOC open a Rake or Mangle opener is best. The sim is currently recommending a Mangle opener. I explain it more in the pinned comment but Shred with OOC is not correct, the Feral sim was bugged when I recorded the video so it was incorrectly recommending Shred as the OOC opener. Most Ferals on the front page of the world rankings are doing OOC Mangle open because that's what the sim recommends now, but a few are still opening with Rake and they're also on the front page so clearly they are very close (which means in practice it basically doesn't really matter whether your opening GCD is Rake or Mangle despite what the math says lol)
YO! a question coming for you here. Im playing on warmane because i like it more then classic. Although i have not yet met anyone there thats even heard of bearweaving(yet). is there a reason for that? is bearweaving still worth it even with 5k+ gearscore? Whats your thoughts on this.
It's because of Omen scripting on Warmane. It has a higher proc chance AND procs off of a ton of stuff that never procced it in original Wrath and does not currently proc it in Classic Wrath, like Flame Caps/Dragonbreath Chili/Stormchops/Faerie Fire. As a result Warmane Feral doesn't really have any empty GCDs or downtime in the rotation because of all the extra Omen procs. Bearweaving is a thing in Classic because we aren't getting those extra Omen procs, so we have a bunch of empty GCDs. We go to bear form to fill those empty GCDs
Im quite comfortable with bearweaving, i feel like im getting cucked by rage regeneration tho. Like half the time i hover around 21 rage after first bear AA. I have 212avg ilvl. This makes bearweaving really annoying for me.
Yeah I have similar issues at times. If you only get a normal hit or a glancing blow with your first bear AA you pretty much have to hope you: a) crit with your first bear GCD so you'll have enough rage for a second thing when you get the 5 rage from Primal Fury; b) get a Revitalize proc if you have a Resto druid who is rolling Rejuv/WG on you; or c) have Enrage available. There are times where I'm forced to do only a 1-GCD weave because I didn't generate enough rage to make it a 2-GCD weave
@@Variia if you're Lacerateweaving you might wanna let that first auto go through as a white hit and Lacerate instead, if you're mangleweaving then it's probably fine to just Maul. Maul does more damage than Mangle. the exception would be if you don't have an arms warrior and Mangle could use a refresh, then you'd let the auto go through as a white hit and do a Mangle instead
@@tableslam i dont think ill lacerate weave anymore. Most fights are down to like a minute... maybe its worth on longer fights, but on the short ones ill start mangleweaving instead i think
@@Variia yeah a lot of people are starting to do the same thing on shorter fights. even in mangleweave it's still worth it to do a 2-GCD weave if you can and make the 2nd GCD a lacerate even if you aren't gonna maintain stacks. the other thing more people are doing is giftweaving/flowershifting, those are performing pretty well right now. there are a few giftweavers in the top 10 atm
The way I did it in the demo, yes lmao. My demo bites were horribly inefficient. It's definitely not bad to bite during berserk as long as you don't have more than 20 energy - if you have more than 20 energy it's better to Shred instead. It can be kind of dependent on gear as well - if you have both a Grim Toll and a Greatness proc up, your bites will hit like a freight train when they crit. Our bite crit chance is just shy of 75% with good phase 1 gear (good ol' Rend and Tear), and with Greatness procced it's even higher than that. Some people use Wild Magic as their prepot when they're gonna open with Berserk so their Berserk bite has a better chance to crit as well
It's good to do when you're re-entering cat form after a bearweave because it'll reset your swing timer back to cat swing, but if you have the snake snakeweave WA you don't need to idol swap. I have the snake WA, so what I generally aim to do is use the Shred idol at the start of the fight if I'm opening with Berserk since I use lots of Shreds during Berserk, and I'll swap to the Rip idol after Berserk ends and before I put up a new Rip. I leave the Rip idol on for the rest of the fight
If you prepot you can basically do both which is pretty neat - you get one during your opener regardless of what opener it is, and then you get another usage later on. #showtooltip /stopmacro [combat] /use Potion of Speed That's the macro I use for prepotting - you hit it right at the end of the pull timer just before pull and it'll use a Potion of Speed as long as you're not in combat yet when you hit the macro. If someone pulls early, the /stopmacro [combat] kills the rest of the process and it won't burn your potion CD for the fight
The reason I didn't include that is because it's literally different for everyone. It's super dependent on your crit and how lucky you are with Omen procs. At the absolute longest, meaning with 0 crits and 0 Omen procs, it will take you 19.6 seconds to generate the energy you you need for 3 Shreds and 2 Rakes if you're starting with 0 energy, or 9.6 seconds if you're starting with a full energy bar. At the absolute shortest, meaning 3 consecutive GCDs with enough energy for abilities, and all 3 of those critting, it could be as fast as 3 seconds. That's why you gotta hit the dummy - the answer can vary WILDLY and will 100% be different for you than it is for me or any other Feral, so the only way for you to know for sure is to go find out. I know that's not an easy or satisfying answer, but it is the unfortunate truth lol. With that in mind, you'd probably need Rip's remaining duration to be around 20 seconds (playing it safe) to be able to squeeze in a Bite outside of Berserk, and SR is a bit more flexible since it doesn't really matter how many points we spend on it. That pretty much means you gotta get some real lucky crits right after putting up a fresh Rip to be able to Bite, at least in phase 1
Not in the rotational sense, as in how it was done during Vanilla and TBC. Furor doesn't grant a chunk of energy when you enter Cat form anymore, which was the fundamental basis behind the powershift rotation. But powershifting in the mechanical sense rather than the rotational sense, aka exiting and immediately re-entering form, is still possible and useful for breaking roots and stuff like that, especially in PvP or when dealing with specific PvE mechanics. The same macro we used in Vanilla/TBC will still work to do this. Furor DOES still grant instant rage for Bear form, though. Also, Wolfshead was changed to not grant energy/rage on shift above level 60. In addition, energy doesn't generate on the "tick" system of 20 energy every 2 sec anymore - it's now 1 energy every 0.1 seconds (which is still the same regen rate as before, but now it's a steady stream instead of ticks), and it is constantly regenerating in the background even while not in Cat form. The way Furor works in WotLK is that you get to KEEP up to 0/20/40/60/80/100 of that energy that regenerated in the background upon entering Cat form when you have 0/1/2/3/4/5 points in the talent.
@@tableslam Thank you so much for the super detailed reposne! I really appreciate it! What is the old macro that lets you break roots in pvp? That's the one I'm desperately looking for.
@@darthcaul9447 it's surprisingly simple: #showtooltip /cast !Cat Form (Shapeshift) That's it lol. Doing that will essentially re-cast Cat Form, and the exclamation point in front of it makes it not cancel form if you don't have enough mana to re-cast it, which is important so that you don't get stuck in human form. You can swap in !Bear Form (Shapeshift) for your bear form macro as well for the same reason - if you're switching between the two the game will not take you out of your current form if you don't have the mana to cast the new one
sorry if this was mentioned in the video, but how is wrathweaving? i've been doing that along with bearweaves when i don't get predatory strikes procs. should i just take wrath off my bar and only bearweave
To be totally honest, there aren't enough logs with people wrathweaving to have an accurate picture of how it stacks up. I remember reading that the OOC proc chance off those PS instant Wraths was lower than expected, but there just isn't enough data available to definitively say anything either way. From how it looks so far, though, it's not any better than just Giftweaving/flowershifting, but you don't need a PS proc to giftweave so people are straight up just doing that more than wrathweaving. In theory wrathweaving sounds better because you're getting damage out of the GCD you're using to try for those OOC procs, unlike giftweaving. But it unfortunately looks like the OOC proc chance off those Wraths is just way lower than a full-raid Gift
Wrathweaving is merely "okay"; with fully steelmanned assumptions RE: the effective energy value of a combo point, i.e that you can optimally convert that combo point directly into damage via ferocious bite, wrathweaving napkin maths as basically a wash compared to just auto attacking in cat form. So... kind of rough, but if you're in a CP drought and you'll end up with roar or rip downtime and you're in a group with less than 10 people in it, wrathweaving is... fine. In a full 25 man, gift is much better at that job.
Wait wait I am confused about one little thing. I thought you needed to use fearie fire basically on cooldown to try to have omen procs... But you never mentionned it. I checked on sims and it is actually never casted... I have been using it since day 1 in my dps rotation. It gives me somewhat consistant procs on omens and for the most part it worked great. I am not bearweaving that much yet and so during downtimes I refresh fearie fire. I guess going into bearweaving more often doesn't really give me enough windows to use a GCD on fearie fire and hope for an omen proc? So I guess that's why you never mentioned it, right? :o Any thoughts on that matter please? :o
@@tableslam W-What? I am 100% sure it does proc on Wow Classic. I mean, it procs for me. Unless I have the extreme RNG of proccing OOC through white hit when I press Faerie Fire. I am so so surprised. Another content creator said that it works and he's pretty well known :o .... Well I guess you are right since on logs nobody is using that spell. >
@@izmayaya7693 Who was it? It didn't proc Omen in original Wrath. I'm pretty sure you were just getting procs from white hits right at the same time you were hitting FF. I've literally never gotten an Omen proc from FF this entire time. The best way to know for sure is to find a weak mob somewhere and fight it for a while. Don't auto attack, don't use any abilities, only cast Faerie Fire at it, for like a LONG time, and see if you get any Omen procs. You could do it on a dummy, but sometimes the dummies are weird (like the IF dummies not working with Glyph of Shred). I'm gonna also do this myself tomorrow to test it as well. Edit: I just checked the druid discord and people there are saying they're "pretty sure" it can proc it, but that's not really good enough for me, I'm gonna test it myself Edit 2: Looks like the posts I referenced in the first Edit were from beta. I looked through some more posts from after launch and more people are saying that it does NOT proc it, or if it does it's such a low proc chance that it's not worth worrying about it. Still gonna test to confirm
@@tableslam Well I made it to proc with fearie fire. It is inconsistant but it does proc. I got it on video. I would say it is less consistant than procing it with Moonfire for example but it does work. It is a huge pain in the ass to test on random mobs in the game tho. I had way way more OOC procs when using a healing spell. Its weird because reading at the talent it says "any damaging spell can proc it". Fearie Fire in cat/bear form does damage and so it should works the same way a moonfire works in my opinion.
@@izmayaya7693 I went to Dragonblight and found one of those emaciated mammoth calfs and sat there for 12+ minutes using Faerie Fire (Feral) on cooldown, no auto attacks, literally just FF, and I didn't get a single proc in 100+ casts. So either I had horrible RNG, or the proc chance on FF is lower than 1%. Either way it's probably not worth the GCD for such a low/nonexistent chance to get a proc when there are other things we could do with that GCD that will do more for us
Tbh me either, powershifting was just "how fast will your latency allow you to mash buttons?" and the current iteration of Feral is "are you actually good at planning and timer management?"
NOTE: Despite what I said during the Opening Sequence portion of the video (8:30) about using a pre-pull Omen proc on Shred for your first builder, you'll notice that the top-parsing Ferals have been opening with either Mangle or Rake. This is because of 2 things: 1) the lack of positional requirements on Mangle and Rake - being able to get those initial builders off WHILE positioning yourself, as opposed to having to get the positioning first, increases uptime (and also DPS in effect); and 2) while I was researching for this video, the Feral sim was assuming Mangle debuff on every single Shred, so it was incorrectly projecting the damage of a Shred opener aka a Mangle-less Shred. Between finishing research and recording that segment of the video, the sim bug was fixed and I didn't catch it (credit to @SyrinEldarin for bringing it to my attention). The sim now recommends Mangle as the OOC opener, but some Ferals on the front page of the world rankings are still using a Rake opener.
These are things I should have noticed and taken into account while making this video. To correct what I said in the video, I would change my "Omen proc first GCD" recommendation AWAY from Shred and more towards Mangle or Rake.
ALSO: To clear up confusion surrounding what I said about Berserk and Heroism/Bloodlust - Berserk does NOT directly benefit from Hero/Lust, HOWEVER on a lot of fights the raid will be using Hero/Lust at the same point of the fight where you'd wanna use Berserk anyway (right at the start, or during a burn phase). We're NOT looking to specifically line up Berserk with Hero/Lust, it just so happens that they tend to line up sort of by accident. So if you're unsure of when you should use Berserk, normally "when everyone else is also popping their cooldowns" is gonna be the right answer, and usually that happens when the raid pops Hero/Lust.
This video was aimed at players who are new to Feral DPS or looking to improve at it, so a LOT of stuff in the video is simplified, including the part about Berserk timing. As you get more experience with the spec you'll start to find out for yourself which fights are the exception to this, but I just wanted to make sure that people aren't getting the wrong message.
If you're starting the fight with a clear casting proc, wouldnt it be slightly more beneficial to open with a free Pounce to apply the extra bleed?
I'm not sure how you arrived at shred opener with clearcast proc, but if it's from the feral discord channel, then you should know that that information was actually based on a bug in the sim; shred was coded to always assume mangle debuff. Once that was rectified, mangle opener came out on top over shred when you have a clearcast.
@@SyrinEldarin Yeah, that is where I got the info. Clearly I missed the bug find and correction. Thanks for the info, glad to know about it. Now I have to break the habit of Shredding with my pre-proc lmao
@@tomomo822 Generally speaking we don't really wanna use Pounce in raids. The only way to make a case for it is if you're carrying a Savage Roar into the fight from immediately preceding trash, and even then Pounce's bleed damage isn't really that good
if you rake before savage roar it won´t scale with sr - its not like mangle.
This is by far the best explanation & walkthrough I've seen for the feral dps rotation, thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
thank you so much for the video! waiting for the new one with the omen of clarity glif change!
Thanks for taking the time to make these videos, as a feral druid myself i appreciate the content.
Thanks for watching! Are there any topics you wish there were videos about that you haven't been able to find anywhere? That's the kind of stuff I like to cover - like some of the math I went over in this video is only in there because I've never seen anyone explain WHY, they just want us to accept what they say, so I wanted to actually show why. But yeah if you can think of any stuff like that let me know and I'll add it to my list of stuff to cover in future videos 👍
@@tableslam Hey mate I never see any feral/boomkin comparisons, it would be cool to see them compared on set variables, could make for some interesting content :)
@@JJftw7 As it happens, Griftin (Feral) and Gho (Boomie) just started a weekly podcast together, that sounds like a great topic for them to cover on the podcast! I'll let them know about your suggestion
Damn good guide man. As somebody who thought they played a Feral at a high level, this makes me feel like I'm starting all over again. Really appreciate your time on this.
Thanks! Working on another one for slightly more advanced stuff as well. A few things in this guide are intended more for beginners to help get the basics down, but once you move onto the intermediate-advanced level they become progressively less applicable. So the next guide will be an update for when the "beginner stuff" isn't cutting it anymore lol
@@tableslam Awesome, looking forward to it. While I'm at it, mind a quick question? If Rip is about to drop, is it advised to apply a 3 or 4 pointer? Or always push to a 5 point application, even if it means a few seconds lost of uptime? Sorry if you explained this somewhere in the video, am listening to it a 2nd time right now.
@@guycomputer829 Hold out for a 5-pointer for sure. A couple seconds of lost uptime here and there is worth the extra damage - 85-90% Rip uptime is considered extremely good, but I usually hover somewhere between 80 and 85% (would prefer for it to be higher but sometimes RNG has other plans haha)
@@tableslam Excellent dude, exactly the info I was curious about. Thanks again, and take care.
I can't describe how incredibly useful this was. You answered all my questions, thank you so much for this guide!
Glad you found it useful!
Thanks for this guide @Tableslam. I was simultaneously learning Ulduar fights and the Bearweaving spec over the last 4 weeks and your guide was a huge help. Actually, I got a ton of use from more than just one of your videos. You do a great job. Very thorough in your explanations of each section and your use of timestamps was a huge help as the studious viewer.
I mostly wanted to ensure you that this video was a massive contribution to the community of Feral players despite it now being out of date. But outdated does not necessarily mean obsolete. If you're new to feral and practice bearweaving for an hour on a target dummy than the current rotation will feel so damn simple.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I'm working on an updated guide for the new Faerie Fire (Feral) change, and there will definitely be some callbacks to this video. Base concepts like timer desynchronization definitely still apply, so it's not like I'm starting completely from scratch. But enough has changed that I feel like a new guide is in order
Good to hear, dude. Excited to see if your approach varies much from what I've been doing.
@@Gelroozle Probably not, it's pretty straightforward especially if you're not completely new to the class lol. It's more or less the same thing we were doing before but without any weaving, and we're hitting FFF more or less on cooldown. The only times we don't hit it on cooldown are pretty obvious and easy to figure out on your own - if we already have a proc, if we'll cap energy as a result of hitting it, or if the next thing we need to cast is NOT Shred (aka don't hit FFF right before you're gonna do a new Rip or Bite).
There's some nuance of course, but the general basis of the "new" rotation is pretty easy if you already knew how to play Feral before
Really good indept video! First timer watching one of your video's and I learned alot! You gained a follower! Keep the guides coming!
Much appreciated! 💪
this is the best video ive seen on how to play feral, thank you so much for making this! it has increased my dps by sooooooooooo much
That's great!! Comments like these are exactly why I made the video, I'm happy to help! Next goal for ya: Pump so hard that you NEED Hand of Salvation LOL
Great video! I've been hesitant to try out bearweaving but I think it's time. You made this insanity make sorta sense. Thanks!
It makes a lot more sense when you get some practice in as well. You start to get a feel for the way everything flows and then it just seems natural
The best Feral guide I've seen. I had so many questions that where all answered in this video. Thank you
Happy to help! I have a couple more videos in the works that will cover some more advanced stuff for further min/maxing as well
Liked off the intro alone haha it caught me off gaurd and was hilarious
Lmao it was the first thing I recorded and by the time I was done editing I was like is this too cringe? Yes, and that's exactly why I'm keeping it lol
@@tableslam quite the contrary man it wasnt cringe at all 😂 very funny
@@mrthirdperson00 Lol glad you thought so, maybe I'll do some more borderline cringe opening skits in the future haha
TY for the vid, I appreciate the effort put into the way this was put together. Currently 4260gs on Skyfury as a feral druid, learning a lot from vids like these :)
Nice, cool to see a fresh realm Feral in the mix. Keep up the good fight
Great video, thank you for taking the time to get it done ✅
Waiting for idol swapping video so muuuuuuch
Incredible work, keep it up!
The video that ends up in will be with other more advanced stuff, like snakeweaving, flowershift weapon swapping, pre-pull trinket toggling, etc. So its not gonna be like a standalone video, but there will of course be timestamps in that video to skip to whatever parts you're interested in 💪
So thorough! Ty!
Extremely informative video, I'm glad I was able to convince you to make a longer video. Now all that's left is to put all these tips and tricks into practice. :)
The dummies in Darnassus are probably still warm lolol
This was just what I needed. Thank you so much!
Huge Thank you for this very detailed Guide. Keep up the good work!
Just now getting into feral as my third 80, this guide helps alot. The spec feels so intuitive and I love all the different things that are working at the same time. I'm really hoping the new Uld gear ilvl puts Feral in a better spot when compared to other dps though. It sort of sucks learning all these things just to be vastly outdamaged by an unholy DK smashing their face on the keyboard after lust
Our potential definitely goes up by a pretty significant amount, but unfortunately a ton of fights in Ulduar are super Feral-unfriendly fights. Like any fight that's generally melee unfriendly is even worse for Feral because we have positional requirements on top of everything else lol. But on the tank & spank fights we'll have the potential to beat some of the specs that we had no chance against in Phase 1
Got my like at the intro, lol good stuff. Great vid
Glad you liked it lol thanks!
Very entertaining and useful video thanks. Been malding all night due to losing 5 rolls on a row to a DK, half of it leather, so I decided to use my time more wisely improving my DPS
Very good video !!! I do have to admit, that even though I really like to push my abilities to the limit, I think that weaving is just beyond my capabilities. I am proud to say, that I even got on some 25 Naxx bosses a rating of 91 via bracket. But overall I am still at around 70. I know that the range of the best and worst Feral is very large compared to other classes, but I think for a non-hardcore player, I am at least not bad ^^
Glad I found your channel, to further improve myself !
Don't sell yourself short! As you get more and more familiar and comfortable with it you'll gradually start to feel a little bored, like you could be hitting more buttons and doing more damage. That's when you can add some of this weaving stuff in, when the normal rotation feels like it's not enough for you anymore.
Yeah, Feral has a much larger spread/range than other classes, but tbh I think it has less to do with skill level than people think it does. Sure, that plays into it to a degree, but a big part of it is the way warcraftlogs "decides" tank parses from DPS parses. Whether a parse counts as a tank parse depends on the amount of tanks the admins of WCL decide are needed for each fight, so if you're the "safety option" third tank on a fight that WCL says is a two-tank fight, the site will classify you as DPS for that fight even if you never enter Cat Form at all.
So the spread is bigger than it should be because there are a bunch of parses that **should** be tank parses that are mixed into the same category as the DPS parses instead. Basically WCL's arbitrary system is causing Feral DPS's average to be dragged down. Most people don't know why, and just assume it means there's a bunch of really bad Feral DPS, when really it's that there are a bunch of "extra tank for safety" Ferals that are being classified as DPS.
For example, on my guild's first 2 Sartharion kills (one 2D, one 3D), I was wrangling whelps and fire elementals. WCL says that all three versions of hard-mode Sartharion (+1D, +2D, and +3D) are only two-tank fights (one tank on Sartharion himself, and the other tank on the drakes/adds). So even though I **WAS** tanking, WCL still classified me as DPS because I was the third tank
Your vids are great man. I love how you explain everything. Thank you!
Thanks, glad you're enjoying! 💪
Really solid. Cat approved and good point on the rake being better then mangle for opening.
There's a couple developments on that front, too. Rake is a good opener so the Assassination Rogues can use Hunger For Blood sooner, but the sim tool is currently showing a Mangle opener as the higher-damage option. To complicate it more, for a lot of Phase 1 there was a pretty even mix of Ferals using a Rake opener and Ferals using a Mangle opener on the front page of the world rankings. If you Mangle first then your Rake will be boosted by SR and will do more damage, so there's that to consider as well. Either way the difference in damage is pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things lol
been looking for this video. you are a great communicator. thank you
Thanks!
So after using what I learned from your video I went from 2 and 3 on our meters straight to number one...I've found my new favorite feral content creator...again,nicely done
Awesome to hear!! Make sure your pallys are ready to hit you with a Salv, if you keep pumping you'll need it lmao
my brain... it hurts
i think ill keep playing 2 button arcane mage
this is great! thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Very helpful, thank you for this video! My alt is a feral druid cause it's my favorite class fantasy as well as actually being good in wrath classic. It's always so satisfying doing your rotation near perfect and destroying bosses. I top warlocks sometimes lol.
Awesome video! Thanks a lot!
Glad you liked it! 💪
Nice video, ill have to rewatch it when I'm higher level, I'm 43 at the moment so don't even have mangle yet. Just got back in WoW for the first time since 2006 haha, and decided to go with Druid again only this time Tauren and not Night Elf. Already noticing a lot of improvements in Druid from what I remember, I never played WotLK back than.
Welcome back! It definitely feels smoother in Wrath than it did in Vanilla/TBC, almost like they finally finished developing the class in Wrath lmao
Very well put together and explained guide! Can't wait to see your Idol swap video for feral Druid👍
This was a fantastic video, there's a lot of feral players who need to learn that uptime is more important than everything else.
The only downside for me for playing feral is that I'm still the utility class, which means I have to try to effectively use Brez/innervate at regular intervals during raiding and pick up adds to drag them to the tank. I tried going with Idol swap macros for Rip and Shred but the delay seemed to throw a serious wrench in the works with not allowing bleeds to fall off (made the GCD timing feel clunky af )
Once you get to the full on Feral bear weaving dps with engineering, pot timers and idol swap macros, shit gets chaotic to a degree that you can't explain it to any other class. Playing my surv hunter is a completely brain dead experience compared to feral. One is like riding a bike with training wheels and the other is riding a unicycle while juggling.
Yeah, there's a reason why the middle of the old JFM picture looks the way it does lmao. But weirdly at some point it just sorta clicks and then it feels normal, no big deal. Hard to explain lol.
I've told other people before that I think Feral is harder to explain/teach than it is to play, which I think is why there aren't that many videos about how to play it lol
Drunk boosted a druid with the homies on disc last week, they told me i should go boomie, some assumed i’d go resto since i main R sham, but i love a challenge. Planning to reroll cat as my main right before ToC. Your videos are so helpful dude. Thank you so much 🔥🤌🏻
Tbh you're gonna find a lot of stuff about Feral that's similar to other classes you've played, whether its a timer to manage or a buff to keep 100% uptime on, and you can for sure use that to make it an easier transition. Like my OG main from original TBC onwards was a Combat Rogue, so I remember the energy change firsthand since I played an energy class back in the day. Savage Roar is like Slice and Dice, Rip is like Rupture, Berserk is like Adrenaline Rush. So that's a super easy analogue, but there's for sure stuff from other classes that you'll find as you go that will help it feel more natural.
And of course the fact that you have extensive experience on a healer means you have a unique perspective that could potentially help you out on some fights (or at the very least allow you to help your healers out by taking less damage or chipping in an offheal with a Predator's Swiftness proc or whatever). That's one of the reasons why I decided to make my Paladin alt a healer - so I could get that extra perspective to help me be better on my main haha
A clear explanation of how to maximize DPS no doubt. I left this video feeling informed, a little overwhelmed, moderately confused but strangely optimistic! Reminded my of my first sex ed class.
Lmao and just like with sex ed, the only thing left to do now is practice rofl
Thank you I learned a lot for my druid alt
As someone who has been a boomie main for the better part of a decade I’ve always wanted to try feral, I thought I understood how to play it but turns out I didn’t. I was clipping everything cause I thought it was better to keep 100% up time then let it fall off. This has been such an amazing video and you definitely earned a sub, like and comment. Great video!
Glad it was helpful! Yeah it's almost counterintuitive to let stuff fall off, but that's pretty much how 99% of dots work in Vanilla/TBC/Wrath. I think it was Cataclysm that introduced the universal mechanic where if you refresh a dot it "extends" the existing one so you don't clip it. Before that it was specific spells or talents that refresh dots (like the WotLK Warlock talent that refreshes Corruption etc)
on sapph or malygos when you are unable to melee, a quick moonfire or starfire is also a dps gain, or wrath with a predatory swiftness buff/ if the starfire will take too long.
Nicely done
Thanks!
4:19 This is mildly pedantic on my part, the video's advice about holding Berserk for Bloodlust/Heroism is usually adequate because most raids either Lust immediately or save it for a specific burn phase. For people looking into more advanced rotation optimization and theorycrafting: Berserk and Bloodlust do not actually synergize at all. TLDR; holding Berserk for Bloodlust doesn't sim best, but can be practical for burn phases if you need something to die ASAP.
Lust only increases our auto attack speed, Berserk only halves the energy cost of cat form abilities and affects Mangle cooldown/cleave in bear form. These aren't effects that stack in some useful way. You nearly always want to Berserk on open after your first Tiger's Fury puts you near energy cap (now that TF buff does not cancel when you hit Zerk, a change made in Classic from original WotLK).
There are a few exceptions I can think of where you might not Berserk open. One, the boss in question specifically has mechanics in the opener that waste significant Zerk uptime, at that point it depends on the boss fight (KT and Gothik trash phases come to mind for me in T7 as Berserk is usually unnecessary to survive the trash and the KT trash doesn't count for parses) and your raid's kill time. Two, the boss has a phase requiring you to burn it fast to avoid a wipe (Sarth 3D without zerg strat comes to mind, if your raid needs to burn the first drake fast to avoid a wipe). Three, lining up with cooldowns/buffs that actually increase your ability damage significantly, not specifically just your haste (current top Malygos feral parse does this with Power Spark, interestingly enough not the case on Loatheb spores).
Clearcasting procs more frequently when you're Lusted and generally this is likely more beneficial when you're not Berserking because we're energy limited in cat form, not GCD limited. Those clearcasts would be better if procced at a time where we're not getting half energy abilities. Berserk opener currently still sims best though even if it overlaps with Lust and sets you up comfortably, 5 point Rip, 5 point Savage Roar, and a surplus of combo points for your next timer refresh.
Great video guide, I still enjoyed hearing how you think of the rotation and it should be a good resource for people learning feral DPS =)
Yeah all that stuff is absolutely true. This video is more of a sort of beginner's guide, so there are a lot of generalized things in this video that end up becoming progressively less true the higher your individual skill ceiling gets.
For example, later on in the video in the Bearweaving section I talk about doing 1-GCD weaves, which is fine for people who are just starting to learn how to weave, but in practice even I don't do 1-GCD weaves unless it's just to refresh stacks of Lacerate. Once Lacerate is stacked to 5, I keep doing 2-GCD weaves, but one of the GCDs gets switched to Mangle instead of a second Lacerate. And when I'm Mangleweaving I still do 2-GCD weaves, with the 2nd GCD being a Lacerate, even if I'm not gonna maintain the stacks.
But stuff like that goes a little beyond the scope of what I wanted the video to be. It's already a giant infodump lmao I didn't wanna make it even more confusing or complicated by getting into the more advanced stuff. That stuff is for a separate video.
Thanks for the kind words and feedback 💪
@@tableslam Fair enough! I suspected you might be aware and didn't want to overload beginners, which is understandable for a guide like this. I hope I didn't come off too "WELL ACKSHUALLY" lol. I'm just adding an additional tip-off for viewers that there's more nuance to the point in question if they care to dive deeper. If they really wanna optimize they can hopefully do their own advanced research/reasoning/simming, but some of those folks might take lining big damage cooldowns up at face value without ever thinking or looking deeper into how exactly they interact 😛 Most raids worth their salt will Bloodlust on pull or during a critical burn phase, so your advice there is good enough for people who just wanna kill bosses without pushing their parse. I'd just hate to see people pop Berserk early/late because they have it stuck in their head that it's optimal for their overall damage.
I look forward to seeing your advanced feral video! Peace and thanks for taking time out to reply ✌️
Great content. Thanks a lot
Much appreciated, thanks for watching 😎
One of the best dps guides I've seen period.
And I've been playing this game for over 10 years, so good job mate!
Love the way you explain things so precisely, you have a way with words
Awesome
Whoa that's pretty high praise, I really appreciate that!
I was actually worried it was gonna be too much detail lmao. I'm a very detail oriented person, especially when I'm learning stuff. Understanding the "why" behind a concept I'm learning makes it easier for me to remember, because otherwise it's just memorization instead of actually learning. So I figured I'd make the guide I wish I had when I was first learning the spec haha
The folks at RestedXP were kind enough to give me a discount code! The RestedXP leveling guides were giga-min/maxed by some big brains for the most efficient leveling possible, and they have great gold making guides as well!
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Just got my druid to 80 and really appreciate the video and the effort you put into it, looks like I gotta go make some friends in darnassus
Tbh i just go to Darnassus because I usually have the place to myself lmao no one ever goes there
those 8 crits in a row were fuckin hilarious
On biting in the berserk window: I feel like you should continue to shred even at 5 cp until you are at around 18-20 energy before squeezing in a bite. Otherwise you’re losing a lot of energy to the bite conversion which I think is less dmg/energy than shred (especially a berserk shred).
Yeah the DPE for a Berserk Shred is pretty giga, and the Bite conversion stays the same during Berserk as it does without it which is kinda cheeks. The one redeeming quality to that Bite conversion is it's not terrible when we crit with the Bite, which **should** happen more often than not with full raid buffs and the extra 25% crit chance for Bite on bleeding targets from the Rend and Tear talent. My Bite crit chance is over 80% with full raid buffs - I've seen some absolutely giant Bite crits before during Berserk window
Overall quite a good video. Other than some minor nitpicks (like, e.g., mentioning that ability crits in bear weave will refund you 5 rage so you might still get a mangle maul sequence off of just 10 rage from your initial white hit), I'd say that the primary improvement is that your lacerateweave should still involve bear mangles. It is a decent damage increase to never cast mangle in cat form (other than the initial one), and 2-GCD bearweaves are not particularly burdensome. It's also a minor dps increase to lacerate in mangleweave, even if you don't maintain the stacks; 2-GCD weave sequences tend to beat out alternatives.
Thanks! Yeah, when I play in actual raids I try to only bear Mangle, and once Lacerate is stacked to 5 I switch to Mangle + Lacerate in subsequent weaves. My rage gen is a lot higher with full raid buffs so I very frequently do 2 or even 3 GCD weaves depending on how low my energy was when I went to bear.
The issue I had with recording the dummy demos for this video was lack of raid buffs causing me to have much lower rage gen, so I more or less only had enough rage to do 1 GCD weaves (with a few exceptions from white hit crits here and there). For an "intro to bearweaving" sort of thing I figured demonstrating the ultra basic 1 GCD Mangleweave was fine.
After a couple more raid streams I should have enough example footage of Lacerateweave in action to make another separate intermediate/advanced bearweaving video, which will 100% include the stuff you mentioned.
I like to shout people out that contribute to the discussion, so if it's cool with you I'll include a screengrab of your comment in that video as well
If you insist on biting during zerk i think you should use bite only when on minimum energy, flowershift to proc OOC, back into cat use the proc on shred. If hero is active i'd probably not shift and just afk auto while pooling
Yeah ideally min energy Bites are the way to go during Berserk, that's how I do it during actual raids when I play. Not entirely sure why I was so trigger happy on Berserk Bites in the demos, I for sure should have Shredded a couple more times before Biting and gotten more damage out of the sequence. Overall I don't necessarily think it was a giant mistake or anything, just super inefficient (which is still a mistake, just not a giant one lmao)
@@tableslam I'm just nitpicking, my brain would have melted as soon as I pressed the record button :) You explained things very well, I appreciate the time it took to portray your thoughts on feral. I feel this would be an excellent pin in the Druid discord. Also I just checked your videos and I see "How To Break A Bot" hahaha, we are very alike.
@@richie364 I appreciate that, thanks! And yeah if you only knew how many takes it took for just about every clip in the video lmao it got to the point where the Berserk clips I used were 2 out of like 40something and they were the only 2 where I didn't flub a word, so it was either continue trying to get the "perfect" take or just accept the 2 good takes... it just so happened that those were the 2 that had inefficient Bites lmao figures.
Someone actually did link the video in the druid disc the other day and there was some discussion about it. I never would have posted it myself, I feel like that would have been kinda weird lol
I main a feral and I have no idea how to explain to people how to cat. I say it's all internal timers and rng and crying on Thaddius.
Yeah there's only so much studying/researching you can do before you realize you have to just get in there and do it lol
thanks for ur time
My pleasure!
Hey Tableslam. Can you give us some advice on ferocious bite when we get more armor pen?
Not much will change, tbh. Rip will still be a part of our rotation until we have ArP hardcap - as long we're only softcapped we're still using Rip as the primary finisher. If you have a WA that shows you your trinket procs, though, prioritize Bite over Rip wile you have an ArP proc up. That's about it tbh
@@tableslam legend thank you
Awesome video, new to feral so I learned a lot! Also loved the silly skit in the beginning x)
One question: When calculating the mangle vs rake before SR at the opening sequence - for rake to be buffed by SR, SR needs to already be present - yes?
In that case, what you gain from going rake first is 1 seconds of rake uptime, and a SR-buffed mangle, compared to a naked mangle but a SR buffed rake, right?
33% extra damage from SR on 8 seconds of rake vs 9 seconds of non SR-buffed rake but a SR-buffed mangle seems like the correct comparison to me - no? This should end up heavily in favor of mangle first.
I was looking at purely "how much damage can you get out of the first GCD," which was the reasoning behind a Rake opener based on sim recommendations at the time. You can even look back through the Feral DPS channel on the Druid discord and see an overwhelming consensus towards a Rake > SR > Mangle opener before the sim was updated. I mentioned this in the pinned comment, but since recording this video, the Feral sim was updated to fix a bug, and after the update it has been recommending Mangle as the opening GCD. There are still some Ferals on the front page of the world rankings who use a Rake opener (usually because an Arms Warrior charged, got to the boss first, and crit right away to get a Trauma up), but the vast majority are using a Mangle opener as per the sim recommendation.
The point you made is absolutely correct and part of the reason why the sim recommends a Mangle opener, and Mangling first is also a way to sort of "hedge our bets" on critting with the opening GCD. When moving from "beginner level" to "intermediate level" and beyond, it makes more sense for our first SR to be at least a 2-pointer so it will last through the duration of Berserk. If we Mangle first and it crits, there's our 2 points for SR, and then our first Rake will go up after SR. If the Mangle doesn't crit, then we cast a non-SR Rake to get to 2 or 3 points for that first SR. Best case scenario, the first Rake is buffed, worst case scenario it isn't, but Mangling first at least gives us the chance for the first Rake to be buffed by SR.
This was great. Been looking for something like this.
One question I have is when to Ferocious Bite. There are times when I have lots of energy, 5 combo points, 15+ seconds on both rip and savage roar so I bite, but then if I get a bad string of no crits SR or rip might fall off.
If never bite, what do I do with those high energy high combo high duration times?
The first thing to look at is whether SR and Rip are gonna have a syncing issue. If their durations are within 2-3 seconds of each other, it might make sense in that situation to pool energy and get an early SR refresh to desync. If your timers aren't synced, then you basically just pool energy and use Shred & Rake to prevent capping (while maintaining Rake uptime).
It seems wasteful because we'd rather be using those combo points instead of wasting them, but unfortunately that's the most efficient thing to do in that situation
Thanks for this video @tableslam , it really helps.
2 questions from a newbie cat.
- One point SR gives 14sec of uptime vs 5sec for every subsequent point. Any benefit of using 1point SRs ?
- I sometimes find myself with 5 combo points and 5-6sec left on BOTH my SR and Rip.. what's the go then? I tend to wait for Rip to finish (to avoid clipping) and then do Rip and a quick 1pt SR.. but should I get the 5pt SR asap (clip the remaining 5sec of SR) and then start building for a 5pt Rip?
Thanks for your help. Subscribed!
A 1pt SR generally isn't gonna be long enough, so it's best to stick to 2-4pt SRs.
Synced timers are something that needs to be handled proactively. You have the right idea with clipping the end of SR, but it needs to happen a LOT sooner than that. Ideally you should notice that your SR and Rip timers are synced up long before you're even at 5 combo points. As soon as you notice a syncing issue, stop building and pool energy. Just before you cap, refresh SR, and then you have plenty of time to build to 5 again so you don't lose any significant Rip uptime, and you're also all set on SR.
Generally speaking you don't wanna do 5pt SRs. We end up refreshing it early so often that it's kind of a waste to spend any more than 3 or 4 points on it. I aim for 3-pointers, but if I'm at 2 points and my next builder crits, a 4-pointer isn't a bad thing. But if I'm already at 3 or 4 I will stay there, pool, and refresh SR just before I cap energy. I almost never purposely build to 5 for SR. Doing so can make it difficult to maintain Rip uptime
@@tableslam cool thanks.
Just need practice to detect those situations earlier it seems.
That and general raid awareness lol. Staring at those CDs is deadly
@@cixidelmont1008 Yep, practice is the name of the game for sure. The more we practice the less we have to think about it, and the more mental bandwidth we have for other stuff (like raid awareness lol)
You can literally Go 3/3 already for bear weaving 4% -> 6% is kinda a big Push tbh..
Yeah I've felt pretty safe in raids lately so I'm gonna swap it for next week for sure
If you work this hard the DPS should leave everyone else for dead. More difficulty = More damage. Exellent Guide!.
"dumb intro skit" nah bro best intro to feral
To be clear, it definitely IS dumb, but that's exactly why I kept it lmao
Thanks for the guide! Much to practice. Was wondering what WA that those timer bars are? and UI/mods in general
My next video will be about Weak Auras! There are a ton of really good aura packs out there that lots of people download, which is great, but my video will be about how to make your own. There's nothing wrong with downloading aura packs, but I know there are people who want to do it themselves, but can't because they don't know how. So hopefully my video will alleviate some of that.
All the auras you see on my screen were custom-made by me - I decided to make them myself instead of downloading a pack, as sort of a personal challenge. I'm also SUPER picky about how I like things displayed, so I figured I'd have to do so much editing to the auras in any pack I'd download that I might as well just make my own lmao
@@tableslam Ill look foward to it. I just really like your timer/tracker bar and power bar set up. Its much easier seeing the time left on roar as a bar than just your traditional button CD
@@naturalyamazing I agree, there are some things that are easier for me when displayed as icons and some that are easier for me when displayed as bars. I'm not really sure why tbh, I can't really explain it lol. Of course my hope for that video is to inspire people to do it themselves, but I'm still gonna include links to each of my WA groups in the description of the video
I see the main use of giftweaving as trash dmg, rather than bear swiping.
I'm a little unsure with Lacerate weaving which is optimal, but after a zerk start with hero, you can finish with high savage roar timer, 5 CP and 10s on rip, refresh rake - And that gives you a bunch of time to use remaining hero to mash out all 5 lacerate stacks with mauls where possible. Given you are purely pooling energy and nothing to refresh in this window, I don't really see a reason not to do this. Probably isn't much difference ultimately anyway.
You could probably fit all 5 in that 10-sec window. You probably wouldn't be able to do all 5 at once - you'd have to switch back to cat to prevent capping energy partway through - but you're right that that's a good time to do it because we're pooling there. You're also right that it probably won't end up making a giant difference either way, but getting stacks up as early as possible is for sure preferable. The more uptime the better
Extremely great guide! One little thing I'm wondering: Why do we have to use Gift of the Wild to trigger Omen? Wouldn't any spell have the chance to trigger it like a rejuv, llife Bloom or at least Mark of the Wild?
Yeah, it'll work on all those spells, but those all only hit 1 target. Gift hits 25, so the chances of a proc are multiplied by 25
@@tableslam do you run imp gift for this?
@@CC-rw4sz Improved Mark of the Wild is a normal talent we should be taking regardless. Unless you're talking about the Glyph that reduces the mana cost of Makr & Gift, in which case yes, that's also sort of one of the default minor glyphs
Awesome video. Curious to what glyphs are you using and would there be a different set of glyphs if your bear weaving?
Thanks! I use Glyph of Shred, Glyph of Rip, and Glyph of Savage Roar.
Some like to use Glyph of Maul on cleave-heavy fights (like Anub and Faerlina) so their bearweave Mauls hit two targets, but with the recent fix to Maul that may not be as much of a thing anymore. Maul used to (incorrectly) be able to proc Omen of Clarity, which is not how it worked in original Wrath. Glyph of Maul basically had even more of a chance to proc Omen of Clarity because it had "extra" chance to proc Omen since a Glyphed Maul hits two targets. With the release of Phase 2, Blizzard fixed Maul, so it can no longer proc Omen.
Because of this change, Glyph of Maul has lost a little bit of value, but the extra damage it can provide on cleave fights will still be pretty good. Before, when people swapped in Glyph of Maul, they were usually dropping Glyph of Savage Roar.
Another alternative glyph that is sometimes used is Glyph of Berserk for the extra 5 second duration on Berserk. Again, Glyph of Savage Roar is usually dropped to accommodate this. This is mostly done on cleave fights as well (again, Anub and Faerlina) where you're using your Berserk window primarily to spam Swipe. That extra 5 seconds on Berserk is usually an extra 3-5 half-cost Swipes.
Yet another alternative glyph, specifically for fights where you cannot guarantee you'll be behind the target, is Glyph of Mangle for the extra 10% Mangle damage. This is useful on fights like Kologarn, where it is literally impossible to use Shred. You'd swap out Glyph of Shred for Glyph of Mangle since you'll be using Mangle as your primary builder on Kologarn. Ferals who never need to tank might even have a totally separate talent build specifically for Kologarn where they take Improved Mangle for the energy cost reduction, and also Glyph of Mangle for the extra Mangle damage. Unfortunately, many of us have to tank at least some of the time, so a lot of our 2nd specs are taken up by a tank build, but I fully expect to see DPS-only Ferals using the Mangle spec at the top of the Kologarn rankings.
@@tableslam WOW Thank you so much for the informative response I'm use to getting here is the glyphs I use, next question lol Subbed
I literally do all this to a tee and yet....my dps is ass. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong or why I'm not succeeding in feral. 😭
Join my disc and either DM me some logs or post them in the log review channel, we can figure it out
Love your UI, especially the placement of the timers. Any chance you have a link to that?
I have a WeakAuras channel in my discord where I have import links for my aura groups - they're also linked in the description of my WeakAuras video. You could also go to wago.io/p/Tableslam but you might have to pick through some non-Feral stuff I have on there (I used to main a Warrior lol). My action bars are Bartender with the Masque addon to change the skin of the icons (using the Epix skin), Details for damage/threat meters, SexyMap (simple square preset) for the minimap, MSBT for the scrolling battle text
Really enjoying the video so far, I'm trying really hard to keep my DPS up, but after 2 weeks of bad drop luck and a massive roster shift I've gone from around top 8th-12th to usually last.
I'm about 2/3 pre-raid BiS and 1/3 P1 BiS, but I cannot seem to push beyond a 3.5k average on the training dummies, and I believe one of my best results on a non-damage boost mechanic boss is only 5.2k DPS. Is this mostly a gear/scaling issue? I recently rectified dropping rake from the general rotation. The big crit shreds made me think rake was a waste once rip was applied.
I saw in your Str vs. Agi video you mentioned druids looking at about 7k DPS at some point. The only thing I can think of is that I need more crit. I'm poised to pick up a nobles deck at next week's fair. I've been juggling both options, but the Agi trinket is seeming more viable. I'm still torn as most of my remaining gear to upgrade are the big crit pieces. And I don't want to farm herbs for another 14 hours to make both decks.
Last thing, do you have the name for the timer addon you use? I've seen a few feral channels that use it and it would really help as I'm currently eyeballing the debuffs with no actual numerical counter to see.
It could be gear, but a huge part of DPS is related to kill times. If your group takes longer to kill bosses then your DPS will be lower. Not really a ton you can do about that - that's one of those "team effort vs individual effort" problems that has persisted throughout the history of team-based games lol.
That 7k figure I tossed out in the Str vs Agi video is what the Feral sim shows with full Phase 1 BIS on a Patchwerk-style 3-minute fight, full Strength setup, with a 100% uptime Lacerateweaving rotation and minimal mistakes. The vast majority of players and fights meet NONE of those criteria lmao and that's fine, that's just our theoretical ceiling if we play completely perfectly. In context, that specific part of the video was referencing the simmed difference between the Str card and the Agi card, so I was using the simmed DPS figure as well.
Also, we ALL need more crit lmao. Our "real" playstyle comes online in Ulduar when we have enough crit to start making Ferocious Bite a regular part of the rotation. The 2-piece set bonus for Tier 8 gives Rake, Rip, and Lacerate ticks a chance to proc Clearcasting, so that combined with the extra crit on gear means we'll actually be able to Bite, and our DPS will go up a decent amount. That's the reason I recommended the Agi card in the video - it fits better into our set in Ulduar than the Str card does.
When it comes to dummies, the main thing to keep in mind is that we're usually at our absolute worst on a dummy because we don't have full buffs, and the dummy doesn't have full debuffs. When I do dummy work I'm not using the number I see on the meter to evaluate my overall performance, I'm using it to compare how I did on the most recent rep vs the one before it. It may as well be "on a scale of 1 to 10 how did I do" instead of the actual DPS number. I use the dummies primarily to practice the rotation, not to see what my damage looks like.
There's a 90% chance the timer you were looking at was a Weak Aura. There is a standalone addon called OmniCC that will put numerical timers on your buff and debuff icons if you're looking at the target's debuff tray to see your durations. I'd definitely recommend Weak Auras though, as you can resize and reposition them however you like, and they have timers built in. My next video will be about how to set up your own Weak Auras, but it won't be out until this weekend most likely.
Hope this helps! 💪
@@tableslam Awesome, thanks for the quick reply. I'll keep at it, and focus on being more consistent but flexible with my rotation as needed. The rake opener and not realizing I can give myself a very short initial SR were new ideas to me.
And if it helps specify for the addon I'm referring to the bars between your character portrait and the target portrait. Where your debuff icons pop up just above said bars, decently sized with timers.
@@Asubatsu Yeah, what you're seeing there is Weak Auras. Literally the best addon ever invented in the history of WoW, one of the most versatile and widely-used addons out there. You can create icons or progress bars with timers on them to make it waaaaaay easier to track buffs on yourself, or debuffs on your target. You can use them to track cooldowns as well. It's a game changer for sure
Yo great video. Do you have a link to that particular weak aura?
I'll have a video out today or tomorrow all about creating your own WeakAuras, and in the description of that video I'll have import links
@@tableslam awesome thanks
hey man. Thank you for this video. It was detailed enough that it answered most of my questions.
One thing though. The only thing I didn't gleem was how to manage/engineer the desync between roar & rip. The main problem I'm having, is refreshing roar early. There's been so many times where i get bad RNG after refreshing roar that i can't get a new rip up in time. As a consequence, i find myself often refreshing roar way too early. Got any advice / tips for this?
The main thing you can do is to be more proactive about the desync. You've nailed down prioritizing Rip by refreshing Roar early, but the next steps towards being more optimal with Roar are to:
1) spend fewer combo points on it (3-4 is plenty); and
2) pool before refreshing Roar.
If you do these two things you'll have more energy to spend in your next section at the expense of a little bit of SR efficiency (which is a wash since we're refreshing it early anyway).
Amazing video Tableslam! Is it possible to get your Weakauras? I really like your UI.
Thanks! My next video is gonna be about Weak Auras, I'll be showing how to create them yourself (and I'll also have links for mine in the description)
@@tableslam any ETA on this video?
@@marshallwoodruff3102 I should have it done by this weekend
@@tableslam well I greatly appreciate the content. You've got a new subscriber 🙌
@@marshallwoodruff3102 Thanks!! More to come 💪
I just downloaded a weakaura that tells me what to cast. Feral is the build I play when I'm super inebriated. After watching this though, I kinda wanna find out what I'm actually doing lol.
Knowing the what/why/when/how of the rotation yourself makes a huge difference when you end up in a situation where you have to alter the rotation. Sometimes when you just follow the WA you end up losing uptime on one or more of your buffs/debuffs and you lose a considerable amount of DPS because WAs like that don't account for boss mechanics
Can we get your energy / rage bars? I can't find one that shows energy while in bear :(
I have a channel in my discord with all my weakauras imports, and I have a video showing how I built my setup with links to the aura groups in the description of that video 😎
@@tableslam You're sexy
Hi love the guide :) could you tell me should i take the darkmoon card greatness, what i mean by that Will the trinket be bis even after phase 1?
It depends on how much change we'll see on the Ulduar trinkets because of the announced ilvl boost for Ulduar gear, but Greatness will remain one of the strongest trinket options all the way until Death's Choice/Death's Verdict in ToGC (Phase 3). Comet's Trail (Algalon 25) and Mjolnir Runestone (Thorim 10H) are the top trinket choices for Phase 2, but the Algalon trinket in particular is gonna be hotly contested by almost all the physical DPS.
Comet's Trail is technically BIS, but what I plan on doing is passing on CT and running Runestone/Greatness through Phase 2 in order to (hopefully) give myself a higher priority on DC/DV in ToGC.
Hope this helps! Thanks!
@@tableslam ty a lot men 😁. Gonna go and buy myself a DMC
Hi, great video. Just curious what your macros for shred and mangle are
Thanks, there's a pastebin link in the video description that has all the macros I use, including my Shred and Mangle ones
Another comment on berserk: what’s the benefit of waiting for lust to use berserk? It doesn’t appear to me to interact in any way with haste.
This is one of those situations where the thing I said in the video is true in a practical sense. We actually aren't specifically waiting for lust to Berserk, it just so happens that the fights where we would want to save Berserk are generally also fights where the raid is gonna save lust. So if the raid is waiting to lust, that's a signal that there's a better time later in the fight to use cooldowns. Obviously this isn't gonna be true for every single fight, but for the most part the time where you'd wanna use Berserk just happens to also be the time where the raid wants to use lust. Since this video is aimed at beginners, it was easier to present it the way I did because lust and Berserk tend to accidentally line up anyway most of the time.
There is a tiny bit of synergy with Berserk and lust though, in the form of extra OOC procs during the Berserk window. I'm sure you've noticed but for the first like 2/3 to 3/4 of Berserk we more or less have enough energy to do whatever we want just about every GCD, but at the end we're waiting on energy. If the 30% attack speed from lust translates to 30% more OOC procs, we stand a pretty good chance of not running out of energy at all during Berserk.
But I mean OOC is super streaky and unreliable to the point where trying to theorycraft or predict anything about its behavior is almost pointless. That theorized 30% increase could happen on its own even without lust, or it could not happen even with lust. But I mean that's just RNG for ya. We **should** see 30% more OOC procs if we have 30% increased attack speed, so that's the assumption I work under. If it happens as expected, cool, if not then it was bad RNG, not much we can really do about it lol
One thing that i was thinking about, u opted for using rake as a builder for your first savage roar. And later u said rake snapshots with savage roar when applied. Wich Always was my thought why i always use my first rake once savage roar is up. Thoughts?
I said it was counter intuitive to Rake first, and that's exactly why. We'd prefer for that initial rake to be boosted by SR for sure. But in our first few GCDs the main focus is getting a quick start, and Rake's lower energy cost combined with its efficiency, as well as having an extra 2 seconds of uptime, makes it the best choice for a quick SR while still doing the most damage of anything else we could have picked for our first GCD.
Ideally we wanna start with an Omen proc regardless though, so if we're doing that then the Feral sim recommends to use Mangle as our first GCD, which means our first Rake is gonna come after our initial Roar anyway
To explain why people think that rake is post hoc affected by Mangle is to also explain why snapshotting bleeds with savage roar is a thing. They seem contradictory.
Rake IS affected post hoc by Mangle, the difference is that Mangle is a debuff on the target that affects the damage it takes, as compared to SR being a buff on yourself that affects the damage you do. That's the part that trips people up is the difference in the way targets/players are affected by these things
@@tableslam That's fair. Most people won't go that far with the nuances of debuff/buff and just question why some abilities snapshot and some don't.
Appreciate the video btw! Great stuff. I was forcing lacerateweaving without both a solid understanding of mangleweaving and a raid team that manages threat well. An easier rotation should allow me to monitor threat easier. Too many spinning plates!
Also being responsible for raid leading as a feral dps is a sick joke...
@@falcon1209 Spinning plates is the perfect analogy tbh lmao. I can't even imagine raid leading while doing the Feral rotation, even streaming while playing is kinda hard, having to watch boss mod timers in addition to your DPS timers and doing callouts must be awful, my condolences
Btw you could have mentioned natures grasp to fish for omen procs
This video is more or less for beginners or less experienced Ferals. I'd consider that stuff as "more advanced" or just "too advanced for a beginner video." Stuff like that will be in a later video I make about more advanced stuff (idol swaps, daggerswap giftweave, snakeweave, more in-depth bearweave stuff)
Whats snakeweave?
It's another way to reset the swing timer, like how you do with an idol swap. Doing an idol swap when you go back to cat form after a bearweave resets the swing timer back to cat swing from bear swing, but it also incurs the GCD. Summoning the Albino Snake non-combat pet does not incur the GCD, but will still reset the swing timer. So if you macro it or get a WeakAura to summon it when you enter Cat Form you can get a swing timer reset basically for free
@@tableslam Jesus... the shenanigans dont stop
Yeah for real lmao Feral is for sure the spec that works the absolute hardest for the tiniest gain
you are the quintessential feral druid
lmao what makes you say that? ...is it all the unnecessary math and min/maxing? rofl
@@tableslam not exactly. It's the sort of matter-of-fact absolutely necessary math and min maxing. The sort of 'we chose this life' attitude. idk if that makes it more clear lmao.
@@tableslam also, i spent the whole last 15 years playing a feral druid, but as a tank. your videos were actually pretty significant in helping me transition from tank to pure dps. ended up with a top 5 parse on my server on patchwerk. was an affirmation for sure
@@Goodbyestrangerfood Nice dude that's awesome! Yeah when RNGesus smiles upon us it's a good day for all.
And yeah I feel like for a lot of us that "we chose this life" attitude is there in the first place because if any of us reroll NOW, it'll just look like we thought it was too hard and gave up lmao so if we're in this for the long haul we might as well fight tooth and nail (heh) to squeeze out every last drop of DPS we can. if the class itself can't be the best then we can at least try and be the best at the class lmao that's all we really have left
@@tableslam that's maybe exactly what I meant by the quintessential druid. A sort of unusual commitment to this one thing. And doing whatever you can to make it as good as it can be (even if it means farming a bank full of MCPs)
Good one, thank you. Do you run a custom weakaura? Looks good
Thanks! Yeah, those are all custom. I have another video about WeakAuras where I rebuild the same setup from scratch
Great video thank you, solved my questions and thoughts. I am curious about idol swapping when leaving a bearweave tho. How often do you think about this - maybe to snapshot a rip with ripidol or having shredidol during berserk. Thanks again!
I normally keep my Shred idol on during Berserk. I'll do an idol swap after a bearweave, but only if I'm hitting a Maul on the way out, like if I have a Maul queued up and I'm waiting for that Maul to land before I go back to cat form. If i'm doing that, I'll idol swap just to reset my swing timer. If i'm not gonna do any bearweaving at all on a fight I'll idol swap to min/max my Rip and Shred damage, but I usually only do it while pooling and I try and time it for right when an auto attack lands to try and minimize the amount of autos I'll lose from the swing timer reset. But if you're just using idol swapping to reset your swing timer after a bearweave, there is another way to do that - you can "snakeweave" as they're calling it lmao.
Snakeweave is one of the funnier degen weaves I've seen - for some reason the Albino Snake non-combat pet resets your swing timer when you summon it and is off the GCD, so you can get an Albino Snake from the pet vendor in Dalaran and have a summon macro/WA for your snake pet to reset your swing timer instead of idol swapping LOL
it may be a minor thing regarding the opener, but pressing mangle as first global rather than rake also "saves" you 5 energy since rake is 35 and mangle is 40. But as you already stated correctly, if you turn off the automatic mangle/trauma within the sim, the sim tool is going to mangle first global into roar and rake as 3rd global
What is the name of the addons or WA that shows the skills he uses on the side.
That's the Details Streamer plugin, when you have Details you type /streamer and the options window comes up for setting it up
My only question is why is it better to cast Tiger's Fury before Berserk, just for the damage bonus or to burn its cooldown asap (if this if the case, is that worth it?). Great guide, btw
Great question, it's to enter Berserk with as much energy as possible without capping so we can spam Shred as much as possible. That 60 energy we get from Tiger's Fury is basically 3 extra Shreds during Berserk. We could technically just pool energy before hitting Berserk to achieve a similar result, but that's not really the play in most cases. Instead we DPS like normal and hit TF > Berserk to keep our opener fast-paced, and it's the higher-damage option to do it that way as well
Hey great video! As a feral that is leraning, should I do 5 point Savage Roars to open a boss fight? Or just start the rotation with a 1 point savage roar to get it up and then work towards applying a 5 point rip? Cheers! -Darth Caul-
We should almost never cast 5pt SRs except during Berserk, since everything is half energy during Berserk and we can actually afford to. Outside of Berserk, it costs (on average) too much energy to get a 5pt SR, which can cause you to potentially lose Rip uptime. 3pt SR is kind of the "sweet spot."
To open a fight, a 2pt SR will do just fine. That's long enough to last through Berserk if you're doing a Berserk opener, and if you're doing a non-Berserk opener that's still plenty of time to build to 5 for your first Rip. A 1pt SR generally won't be long enough if you don't get the crits/OOC procs you need, but that extra 5 seconds from a 2pt SR usually IS long enough
What addon are you using for the scrolling combat text? The way your crits stay on the screen longer is awesome. Great video!
It's just Mik's Scrolling Battle Text (MSBT) - I've used it since original Wrath, it's nice because it shows ability icons next to yellow damage so you can tell at a glance where the yellow damage is coming from
Hey dude i have a question, i'm a new player of druid in this expansion and i don't know how to cast shred spell from front, is this possible?
Welcome! Unfortunately Shred is only usable when behind the target. Mangle is the go-to when you can't Shred
Cool video, buuut: The rake opener makes no sense for me.
You apply rake without savage roar, so all 3 ticks don´t have the 30% SR bonus and you loose way more damage than with a mangle opener.
Yes, you can apply the Mangle debuff later and get the increased tick damage, but you can´t apply SR later to increase the rake ticks damage. Maybe I´m missing something, but it seems for me you mixed up mangle debuff and SR buff here...
Nope, I didn't mix them up. I said in the video that it's counter-intuitive, because it is counter-intuitive. The full reason is a lot more nuanced than what I covered in the video, but essentially what we actually want is for our initial SR to be longer than just a 1-pointer. I presented it the way I did in the video to stress the importance of getting a SR up early in the fight.
If our opening Mangle (or Rake) does not crit, then we are doing the other one with our 2nd GCD so we can do a 2-3 CP SR. This means that sometimes our first Rake is gonna be a non-SR rake anyway. We shouldn't be banking on our opening GCD being a crit, and if we're assuming we don't get a crit then we're gonna get more overall damage by using Rake before Mangle because we'll have 1 more second of Rake uptime
@@tableslam Ok, thanks for the explanation. I assume this applies only for non-berserk and non-OOC openers.
I have to try the 1cp SR, 5cp Rip, 1cp SR, 4-5cp SR version....
@@woistwalter7037 it all depends on your RNG tbh. It never hurts to know several ways you can make it work because every cycle will be different every time. But yeah even with non-Berserk and non-OOC open a Rake or Mangle opener is best. The sim is currently recommending a Mangle opener.
I explain it more in the pinned comment but Shred with OOC is not correct, the Feral sim was bugged when I recorded the video so it was incorrectly recommending Shred as the OOC opener. Most Ferals on the front page of the world rankings are doing OOC Mangle open because that's what the sim recommends now, but a few are still opening with Rake and they're also on the front page so clearly they are very close (which means in practice it basically doesn't really matter whether your opening GCD is Rake or Mangle despite what the math says lol)
do the cat auto attacks suffer from the dw hit penalty?
Nope, we only need 8% hit (7% with a Draenei in the party). Instead of dual wielding we just attack super fast - base attack speed in Cat Form is 1.0
YO! a question coming for you here.
Im playing on warmane because i like it more then classic.
Although i have not yet met anyone there thats even heard of bearweaving(yet).
is there a reason for that? is bearweaving still worth it even with 5k+ gearscore? Whats your thoughts on this.
It's because of Omen scripting on Warmane. It has a higher proc chance AND procs off of a ton of stuff that never procced it in original Wrath and does not currently proc it in Classic Wrath, like Flame Caps/Dragonbreath Chili/Stormchops/Faerie Fire. As a result Warmane Feral doesn't really have any empty GCDs or downtime in the rotation because of all the extra Omen procs. Bearweaving is a thing in Classic because we aren't getting those extra Omen procs, so we have a bunch of empty GCDs. We go to bear form to fill those empty GCDs
@@tableslam Thanks for quick answer! :)
Nice video
Thanks!
Im quite comfortable with bearweaving, i feel like im getting cucked by rage regeneration tho. Like half the time i hover around 21 rage after first bear AA. I have 212avg ilvl. This makes bearweaving really annoying for me.
Yeah I have similar issues at times. If you only get a normal hit or a glancing blow with your first bear AA you pretty much have to hope you: a) crit with your first bear GCD so you'll have enough rage for a second thing when you get the 5 rage from Primal Fury; b) get a Revitalize proc if you have a Resto druid who is rolling Rejuv/WG on you; or c) have Enrage available. There are times where I'm forced to do only a 1-GCD weave because I didn't generate enough rage to make it a 2-GCD weave
Im considering just mauling with the 10 furor rage and leaving bear asap. U got any thoughts on that?
@@Variia if you're Lacerateweaving you might wanna let that first auto go through as a white hit and Lacerate instead, if you're mangleweaving then it's probably fine to just Maul. Maul does more damage than Mangle. the exception would be if you don't have an arms warrior and Mangle could use a refresh, then you'd let the auto go through as a white hit and do a Mangle instead
@@tableslam i dont think ill lacerate weave anymore. Most fights are down to like a minute... maybe its worth on longer fights, but on the short ones ill start mangleweaving instead i think
@@Variia yeah a lot of people are starting to do the same thing on shorter fights. even in mangleweave it's still worth it to do a 2-GCD weave if you can and make the 2nd GCD a lacerate even if you aren't gonna maintain stacks. the other thing more people are doing is giftweaving/flowershifting, those are performing pretty well right now. there are a few giftweavers in the top 10 atm
thank you
Thanks for watching!
Isnt using fb during bezerk waste of energy??
The way I did it in the demo, yes lmao. My demo bites were horribly inefficient. It's definitely not bad to bite during berserk as long as you don't have more than 20 energy - if you have more than 20 energy it's better to Shred instead.
It can be kind of dependent on gear as well - if you have both a Grim Toll and a Greatness proc up, your bites will hit like a freight train when they crit. Our bite crit chance is just shy of 75% with good phase 1 gear (good ol' Rend and Tear), and with Greatness procced it's even higher than that. Some people use Wild Magic as their prepot when they're gonna open with Berserk so their Berserk bite has a better chance to crit as well
How viable is idol swapping when u have idol of worship and ravenous beast
It's good to do when you're re-entering cat form after a bearweave because it'll reset your swing timer back to cat swing, but if you have the snake snakeweave WA you don't need to idol swap.
I have the snake WA, so what I generally aim to do is use the Shred idol at the start of the fight if I'm opening with Berserk since I use lots of Shreds during Berserk, and I'll swap to the Rip idol after Berserk ends and before I put up a new Rip. I leave the Rip idol on for the rest of the fight
so smart
Quick question when should you use a speed potion? On lust with berserk or non lust opener?
If you prepot you can basically do both which is pretty neat - you get one during your opener regardless of what opener it is, and then you get another usage later on.
#showtooltip
/stopmacro [combat]
/use Potion of Speed
That's the macro I use for prepotting - you hit it right at the end of the pull timer just before pull and it'll use a Potion of Speed as long as you're not in combat yet when you hit the macro. If someone pulls early, the /stopmacro [combat] kills the rest of the process and it won't burn your potion CD for the fight
Thanks professor. 😀
@@lance1625 LOL never been called that before. Happy to help!
One thing id love for u to add is; how long does 5cp generally take? How much rip+sr time to i need (generally) to be able to get a fb out?
The reason I didn't include that is because it's literally different for everyone. It's super dependent on your crit and how lucky you are with Omen procs. At the absolute longest, meaning with 0 crits and 0 Omen procs, it will take you 19.6 seconds to generate the energy you you need for 3 Shreds and 2 Rakes if you're starting with 0 energy, or 9.6 seconds if you're starting with a full energy bar. At the absolute shortest, meaning 3 consecutive GCDs with enough energy for abilities, and all 3 of those critting, it could be as fast as 3 seconds.
That's why you gotta hit the dummy - the answer can vary WILDLY and will 100% be different for you than it is for me or any other Feral, so the only way for you to know for sure is to go find out.
I know that's not an easy or satisfying answer, but it is the unfortunate truth lol.
With that in mind, you'd probably need Rip's remaining duration to be around 20 seconds (playing it safe) to be able to squeeze in a Bite outside of Berserk, and SR is a bit more flexible since it doesn't really matter how many points we spend on it. That pretty much means you gotta get some real lucky crits right after putting up a fresh Rip to be able to Bite, at least in phase 1
Can you still powershift as a feral cat in wetly classic and if so what is the macro for that?
Not in the rotational sense, as in how it was done during Vanilla and TBC. Furor doesn't grant a chunk of energy when you enter Cat form anymore, which was the fundamental basis behind the powershift rotation. But powershifting in the mechanical sense rather than the rotational sense, aka exiting and immediately re-entering form, is still possible and useful for breaking roots and stuff like that, especially in PvP or when dealing with specific PvE mechanics. The same macro we used in Vanilla/TBC will still work to do this. Furor DOES still grant instant rage for Bear form, though. Also, Wolfshead was changed to not grant energy/rage on shift above level 60.
In addition, energy doesn't generate on the "tick" system of 20 energy every 2 sec anymore - it's now 1 energy every 0.1 seconds (which is still the same regen rate as before, but now it's a steady stream instead of ticks), and it is constantly regenerating in the background even while not in Cat form. The way Furor works in WotLK is that you get to KEEP up to 0/20/40/60/80/100 of that energy that regenerated in the background upon entering Cat form when you have 0/1/2/3/4/5 points in the talent.
@@tableslam Thank you so much for the super detailed reposne! I really appreciate it! What is the old macro that lets you break roots in pvp? That's the one I'm desperately looking for.
@@darthcaul9447 it's surprisingly simple:
#showtooltip
/cast !Cat Form (Shapeshift)
That's it lol. Doing that will essentially re-cast Cat Form, and the exclamation point in front of it makes it not cancel form if you don't have enough mana to re-cast it, which is important so that you don't get stuck in human form. You can swap in !Bear Form (Shapeshift) for your bear form macro as well for the same reason - if you're switching between the two the game will not take you out of your current form if you don't have the mana to cast the new one
sorry if this was mentioned in the video, but how is wrathweaving? i've been doing that along with bearweaves when i don't get predatory strikes procs. should i just take wrath off my bar and only bearweave
To be totally honest, there aren't enough logs with people wrathweaving to have an accurate picture of how it stacks up. I remember reading that the OOC proc chance off those PS instant Wraths was lower than expected, but there just isn't enough data available to definitively say anything either way. From how it looks so far, though, it's not any better than just Giftweaving/flowershifting, but you don't need a PS proc to giftweave so people are straight up just doing that more than wrathweaving.
In theory wrathweaving sounds better because you're getting damage out of the GCD you're using to try for those OOC procs, unlike giftweaving. But it unfortunately looks like the OOC proc chance off those Wraths is just way lower than a full-raid Gift
Wrathweaving is merely "okay"; with fully steelmanned assumptions RE: the effective energy value of a combo point, i.e that you can optimally convert that combo point directly into damage via ferocious bite, wrathweaving napkin maths as basically a wash compared to just auto attacking in cat form. So... kind of rough, but if you're in a CP drought and you'll end up with roar or rip downtime and you're in a group with less than 10 people in it, wrathweaving is... fine. In a full 25 man, gift is much better at that job.
Wait wait I am confused about one little thing.
I thought you needed to use fearie fire basically on cooldown to try to have omen procs... But you never mentionned it. I checked on sims and it is actually never casted... I have been using it since day 1 in my dps rotation. It gives me somewhat consistant procs on omens and for the most part it worked great. I am not bearweaving that much yet and so during downtimes I refresh fearie fire. I guess going into bearweaving more often doesn't really give me enough windows to use a GCD on fearie fire and hope for an omen proc? So I guess that's why you never mentioned it, right? :o
Any thoughts on that matter please? :o
Faerie Fire does not proc OOC, that was private server jank
@@tableslam W-What? I am 100% sure it does proc on Wow Classic. I mean, it procs for me. Unless I have the extreme RNG of proccing OOC through white hit when I press Faerie Fire. I am so so surprised. Another content creator said that it works and he's pretty well known :o .... Well I guess you are right since on logs nobody is using that spell. >
@@izmayaya7693 Who was it? It didn't proc Omen in original Wrath. I'm pretty sure you were just getting procs from white hits right at the same time you were hitting FF. I've literally never gotten an Omen proc from FF this entire time.
The best way to know for sure is to find a weak mob somewhere and fight it for a while. Don't auto attack, don't use any abilities, only cast Faerie Fire at it, for like a LONG time, and see if you get any Omen procs. You could do it on a dummy, but sometimes the dummies are weird (like the IF dummies not working with Glyph of Shred). I'm gonna also do this myself tomorrow to test it as well.
Edit: I just checked the druid discord and people there are saying they're "pretty sure" it can proc it, but that's not really good enough for me, I'm gonna test it myself
Edit 2: Looks like the posts I referenced in the first Edit were from beta. I looked through some more posts from after launch and more people are saying that it does NOT proc it, or if it does it's such a low proc chance that it's not worth worrying about it. Still gonna test to confirm
@@tableslam Well I made it to proc with fearie fire. It is inconsistant but it does proc. I got it on video. I would say it is less consistant than procing it with Moonfire for example but it does work. It is a huge pain in the ass to test on random mobs in the game tho. I had way way more OOC procs when using a healing spell.
Its weird because reading at the talent it says "any damaging spell can proc it". Fearie Fire in cat/bear form does damage and so it should works the same way a moonfire works in my opinion.
@@izmayaya7693 I went to Dragonblight and found one of those emaciated mammoth calfs and sat there for 12+ minutes using Faerie Fire (Feral) on cooldown, no auto attacks, literally just FF, and I didn't get a single proc in 100+ casts. So either I had horrible RNG, or the proc chance on FF is lower than 1%. Either way it's probably not worth the GCD for such a low/nonexistent chance to get a proc when there are other things we could do with that GCD that will do more for us
I do not miss power shifting
Tbh me either, powershifting was just "how fast will your latency allow you to mash buttons?" and the current iteration of Feral is "are you actually good at planning and timer management?"