Talent & Glyphs
You can Replace some points if you want. And change some majors and minors glyphs.
Stats
Agility
Agility is the primary dps stat, it increases both Attack Power and Critical strike chance. DPS-wise, it is way ahead of every other stat, nothing comes even close to Agility.
Strength
Strength is a pretty good stat aswell, but it takes the spot of Agility on gear so you'll rarely need an item with Strength on it. It is essentially the same as Agility apart from the fact that it doesn't give any critical strike chance and it doesn't benefit from the leather specialization (+5%).
4.2: Strength is now pretty bad for cats as it only gives 1 AP per point, don't bother with strength items.
Mastery
Increases the damage done by our bleeds namely Rake, Rip and to a lesser extent Pounce. As cat, around 50% of our damage comes from bleeds, so Mastery is definetely a good stat.
Critical Strike
Increases the chance to get a critical strike from our abilities. All of them can crit including bleeds. Critical Strike also increases the likelihood to get 2 combo points on our combo-generator abilities. Pretty good stat overall.
Haste
Increases the speed at which you auto attack. Which means more Omen of Clarity procs (clearcasting). Haste also increases our energy regeneration rate. Haste does not reduce the time between 2 bleed ticks unlike most dots so it is only usefull for some part of our damage.
Hit/Expertise
Hit reduces the chance that any of your attacks will miss, and Expertise reduces the chance that any of your attacks will be dodged or parried by your target. Cats get 80% of the energy cost back of any special ability that miss (as in miss/dodge or parry). Add the fact that you have a 2 or 3 sec window to refresh your bleeds, so even if you miss a refresh you can still achieve 100% uptime with proper play. This basically means that hit and expertise are not our best stats, and you don't need to be hit-capped nor expertise-capped to do good dps. Both stats are pretty much equal in value.
To be hit capped with your melee hits and yellow attacks against a raid boss (level 88) you need 8% hit or 960.87 hit rating on your gear.
To be expertise soft capped against a raid boss (level 88) which means that you reduce your enemy’s chance to dodge to 0% and his parry chance to 7.5% you need 26 expertise or 780.78 expertise rating on your gear.
To be expertise hard capped against a raid boss (level 88) which means that you reduce your enemy’s chance to dodge to 0% and his parry chance to 0% you need 56 expertise or 1681.68 expertise rating.
Obviously as a cat you will most likely be able to position yourself in the back of your target, which means you can safely ignore the hard-cap part of expertise.
In general the following rule applies for a cat:
Agility > Strength > Mastery Rating ~= Critical Rating ~= Haste Rating > Expertise Rating = Hit Rating
Refoging
Right, so now that you've gemmed and enchanted all of your gear, you need to put in the final touch a.k.a. reforging. If the item has: ("/" means or)
- mastery and crit/haste rating -> don't reforge it
- mastery and hit/expertise rating -> reforge the hit/expertise into crit or haste
- crit/haste and hit/expertise -> reforge the hit/expertise into mastery
- hit and expertise -> reforge either hit or expertise into mastery/haste/crit
In other words, every single of your items should have mastery/haste or crit on it, other than that follow this simple rule:
hit/expertise < crit/haste/mastery
Gem
As for normal gems, agility is king so use as many 40 agility gems as possible: Delicate Inferno Ruby. If you ever get an item with a socket bonus superior or equal to 20 agility then:
- if there's only one socket that isn't red then respect the color whichever it is
- if there's 2 sockets and at least 1 of them is red, then respect the other sockets color
In both cases:
- if you need a yellow gem, use the 20 agility/20 mastery gem:Adept Ember Topaz .
- if you need a blue gem, use the 20 agility/20 hit rating gem: Glinting Demonseye .
Enchanting
Head: Arcanum of the Ramkahen +60 agility and +35 haste rating
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal +50 agility and +25 mastery rating
Cloak: Major Agility +22 agility
Chest: Peerless Stats +20 all stats
Bracers: Agility +50 agility
Weapon: Mighty Agility +130 agility
Boots: Major Agility +35 agility
Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor +190 attack power and +55 critical strike rating
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle +1 prismatic socket
Gloves: Mighty Strength +65 mastery
Power Upp
For extra dps use Skewered Eel or Seafood Magnifique Feast, 90 agility and 90 stamina. Use Flask of the Winds which will give you 300 agility. Use Potion of the Tol'vir at the same time as Berserk to optimize your dps. Remember to use a potion right before the fight starts aswell, so you can use 2 in one fight. Potions last for 25sec so take advantage of it!
Rotation Single Target
1.Keep Faerie Fire (feral) up
2.Keep Tiger's Fury on cooldown but don't use it if you're full or close to full energy
3.Keep Mangle's debuff up (skip this step if you have a bear, arms warrior or subtlety rogue in your raid)
4.Keep Rip with 5 combo points up
5.Keep Rake up
6.Keep Savage Roar up (with 5 or less combo points, preferably 5)
7.Filler: Shred
This is a simple priority list when it comes to dps as a cat.
There are a lot of other conditions but I didn't include them in that priority list to keep it simple.
If you want to optimize your dps then add the following rules to the above:
- Try to time the application of your bleeds (Rake, Rip) with Tiger's Fury as much as you can, since your bleeds will get +15% damage for their whole duration if you manage to refresh them while you have Tiger's Fury buff up.
- Use Berserk as much as you possibly can but try to use it when you are almost full energy (around 80) and Tiger's Fury still has 15s or more left on its cooldown. Also try to sync Berserk with burn phases (ie: Magmaw's ground phase).
-If your target is under 25% health, use Ferocious Bite with 5 combo points to refresh Rip (if you have less than 5 combo points but Rip is about to drop, use Ferocious Bite anyway). Do not use Ferocious Bite above 25% health.
- When refreshing Rip or Rake, try to do it between the last 2 ticks. With the new dot queuing system, you won't lose any tick and you will achieve 100% uptime if you do so. So you should refresh Rip when it has less than 2s left and Rake when it has less than 3s left.
- If you get a clearcasting proc from Omen of Clarity, use it on Shred because it is our most expensive ability.
Multi target
Use Swipe. Its best aoe ability for feral when he fight vs. 3x target
You can Replace some points if you want. And change some majors and minors glyphs.
Stats
Agility
Agility is the primary dps stat, it increases both Attack Power and Critical strike chance. DPS-wise, it is way ahead of every other stat, nothing comes even close to Agility.
Strength
Strength is a pretty good stat aswell, but it takes the spot of Agility on gear so you'll rarely need an item with Strength on it. It is essentially the same as Agility apart from the fact that it doesn't give any critical strike chance and it doesn't benefit from the leather specialization (+5%).
4.2: Strength is now pretty bad for cats as it only gives 1 AP per point, don't bother with strength items.
Mastery
Increases the damage done by our bleeds namely Rake, Rip and to a lesser extent Pounce. As cat, around 50% of our damage comes from bleeds, so Mastery is definetely a good stat.
Critical Strike
Increases the chance to get a critical strike from our abilities. All of them can crit including bleeds. Critical Strike also increases the likelihood to get 2 combo points on our combo-generator abilities. Pretty good stat overall.
Haste
Increases the speed at which you auto attack. Which means more Omen of Clarity procs (clearcasting). Haste also increases our energy regeneration rate. Haste does not reduce the time between 2 bleed ticks unlike most dots so it is only usefull for some part of our damage.
Hit/Expertise
Hit reduces the chance that any of your attacks will miss, and Expertise reduces the chance that any of your attacks will be dodged or parried by your target. Cats get 80% of the energy cost back of any special ability that miss (as in miss/dodge or parry). Add the fact that you have a 2 or 3 sec window to refresh your bleeds, so even if you miss a refresh you can still achieve 100% uptime with proper play. This basically means that hit and expertise are not our best stats, and you don't need to be hit-capped nor expertise-capped to do good dps. Both stats are pretty much equal in value.
To be hit capped with your melee hits and yellow attacks against a raid boss (level 88) you need 8% hit or 960.87 hit rating on your gear.
To be expertise soft capped against a raid boss (level 88) which means that you reduce your enemy’s chance to dodge to 0% and his parry chance to 7.5% you need 26 expertise or 780.78 expertise rating on your gear.
To be expertise hard capped against a raid boss (level 88) which means that you reduce your enemy’s chance to dodge to 0% and his parry chance to 0% you need 56 expertise or 1681.68 expertise rating.
Obviously as a cat you will most likely be able to position yourself in the back of your target, which means you can safely ignore the hard-cap part of expertise.
In general the following rule applies for a cat:
Agility > Strength > Mastery Rating ~= Critical Rating ~= Haste Rating > Expertise Rating = Hit Rating
Refoging
Right, so now that you've gemmed and enchanted all of your gear, you need to put in the final touch a.k.a. reforging. If the item has: ("/" means or)
- mastery and crit/haste rating -> don't reforge it
- mastery and hit/expertise rating -> reforge the hit/expertise into crit or haste
- crit/haste and hit/expertise -> reforge the hit/expertise into mastery
- hit and expertise -> reforge either hit or expertise into mastery/haste/crit
In other words, every single of your items should have mastery/haste or crit on it, other than that follow this simple rule:
hit/expertise < crit/haste/mastery
Gem
As for normal gems, agility is king so use as many 40 agility gems as possible: Delicate Inferno Ruby. If you ever get an item with a socket bonus superior or equal to 20 agility then:
- if there's only one socket that isn't red then respect the color whichever it is
- if there's 2 sockets and at least 1 of them is red, then respect the other sockets color
In both cases:
- if you need a yellow gem, use the 20 agility/20 mastery gem:Adept Ember Topaz .
- if you need a blue gem, use the 20 agility/20 hit rating gem: Glinting Demonseye .
Enchanting
Head: Arcanum of the Ramkahen +60 agility and +35 haste rating
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal +50 agility and +25 mastery rating
Cloak: Major Agility +22 agility
Chest: Peerless Stats +20 all stats
Bracers: Agility +50 agility
Weapon: Mighty Agility +130 agility
Boots: Major Agility +35 agility
Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor +190 attack power and +55 critical strike rating
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle +1 prismatic socket
Gloves: Mighty Strength +65 mastery
Power Upp
For extra dps use Skewered Eel or Seafood Magnifique Feast, 90 agility and 90 stamina. Use Flask of the Winds which will give you 300 agility. Use Potion of the Tol'vir at the same time as Berserk to optimize your dps. Remember to use a potion right before the fight starts aswell, so you can use 2 in one fight. Potions last for 25sec so take advantage of it!
Rotation Single Target
1.Keep Faerie Fire (feral) up
2.Keep Tiger's Fury on cooldown but don't use it if you're full or close to full energy
3.Keep Mangle's debuff up (skip this step if you have a bear, arms warrior or subtlety rogue in your raid)
4.Keep Rip with 5 combo points up
5.Keep Rake up
6.Keep Savage Roar up (with 5 or less combo points, preferably 5)
7.Filler: Shred
This is a simple priority list when it comes to dps as a cat.
There are a lot of other conditions but I didn't include them in that priority list to keep it simple.
If you want to optimize your dps then add the following rules to the above:
- Try to time the application of your bleeds (Rake, Rip) with Tiger's Fury as much as you can, since your bleeds will get +15% damage for their whole duration if you manage to refresh them while you have Tiger's Fury buff up.
- Use Berserk as much as you possibly can but try to use it when you are almost full energy (around 80) and Tiger's Fury still has 15s or more left on its cooldown. Also try to sync Berserk with burn phases (ie: Magmaw's ground phase).
-If your target is under 25% health, use Ferocious Bite with 5 combo points to refresh Rip (if you have less than 5 combo points but Rip is about to drop, use Ferocious Bite anyway). Do not use Ferocious Bite above 25% health.
- When refreshing Rip or Rake, try to do it between the last 2 ticks. With the new dot queuing system, you won't lose any tick and you will achieve 100% uptime if you do so. So you should refresh Rip when it has less than 2s left and Rake when it has less than 3s left.
- If you get a clearcasting proc from Omen of Clarity, use it on Shred because it is our most expensive ability.
Multi target
Use Swipe. Its best aoe ability for feral when he fight vs. 3x target
