Hybrid Cat/Bear vs. Cat

[Werehamster]

So it seems like I'm being called upon to DPS in progression fights quite a bit now. Among other things (including the fact that cat DPS is friggin' hard), I still have a hybrid bear/cat talent spec which leaves out very key talents and glyphs which could improve my dps. Based on Tuesday's Saurfang Jr. fight, which is pretty much the best possible fight for me:

Code: Select all

ABILITY        TOTAL  NON-CRIT    CRIT  CRIT RATE    
Melee:         547736    85618  459604      65.9%
Rip:           407869    68411  339458      70.3%
Shred:         404903    92956  311947      62.8%
Rake Bleed:    178296 
Rake Hit:       31599     7818   23781      71.1%
Ferocious Bite: 55439            55439     100.0%
Mangle (Cat):   36033    15072   20961      42.9%

For a total of 1661875 damage over 3:52 or 7163 dps.

Some changes that would happen if I respecced and reglyphed:

Master Shapeshifter (4% extra crit while in cat)
Predatory Instincts (Increases damage done by melee crits by 10%)
Feral Aggression (Increases damage done by Ferocious Bite by 15%)
Glyph of Savage Roar (3% extra damage done while Savage Roar is active, i.e. 100% of the time if I'm doing it right.)

The extra crit is hard to calculate, because more crit means more combo points which means more finishers and higher uptime on Rip and Savage Roar and more chance to Ferocious Bite. But straight out it would at least convert some of my non-crits to crits, so I can calculate that. So I dumped this in a spreadsheet and changed hits to crits until I got 4% more, added the multipliers in to melee crits and ferocious bite, then added 3% on the top. The result was 7781 dps.

So it seems like this might be worth it for me to do if I'm going to be dpsing more often. The downside is that I will no longer be able to do any sort of progression tanking, I will lose an additional target on maul, 8% dodge and 12% damage reduction in bear. Edit: oh, and extra armor.

Hmm... actually I think I can get most of this minus the ferocious bite (which only added 40 dps) and only lose the maul and armor, and either 4% dodge or 8% damage reduction or a mix of both...

[tethealla]

Doing the hybrid cat/bear spec is very difficult. I tried to do this on my druid, and eventually gave up (and went pure tank). The ferals in my previous guild usually were feral cat/feral bear dual spec'd. My opinion is that you should maximize your talents for chosen spec. If it is feral dps, maximize your talents for dps.

That said, if you want to keep your hybrid spec, I'd suggest moving points from infected wounds into primal instincts. The 10% AP debuff is shared with enhancement shaman (talented earth shock) and we do have one. As for master shape shifter giving 4% to crit? At our crit levels, 4% to crit is of limited use, and paying 5 talent point for it is very pricey. From what I can tell, your feral gear has 48.5% crit out of cat form unbuffed.

[Werehamster]

Every little bit of crit helps until I get to 75%. It's not just damage -- more crit is more combo points which eases the rotation. That said, it is 5 points, which is a lot of bear avoidance.

And yes, Infected Wounds falls into the bear half of my hybrid spec, it's more useful for when I'm actually tanking and dead weight when dpsing. Just switching out that for Primal Instincts and swapping the glyph brings my spreadsheet up to 7571 dps. I suppose a 5.6% dps increase is a good starting point.

[Anjubee]

From my observation, it seems that lately we are lacking tanks (especially when we are trying to do 2 10 mans). While increasing cat dps is important, I would hate to lose you as a viable offtank when we need it.

[Werehamster]

So, if last night's raid was any indication (especially the ugly twins, http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/xg2x ... 816&e=6079 and http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/xg2x ... 515&e=6752), I think the swapped out 3 points and glyph made a very noticeable difference.

It also helped that I learned more about how much cats need to focus on hit rating... i.e. not at all since most of our damage is yellow and missed specials refund 80% of their energy cost. I went a bit below the hit cap last night, but still moved up significantly in the meters.

[tethealla]

Yes indeed. Your spreadsheet was talking about a 500ish dps increase. Both of those links show between a 1000-2500dps increase.

Now that you have a baseline for what your hybrid spec can give you, you might try a full respec into a cat spec and see what it'd do. I'd be curious what kind of dps you could do fully spec'd if a hybrid spec is pulling 10kdps on festergut.

This of course would have to be on a day enough tanks show up to ICC early enough for us to clear.

Oh do keep in mind that the 15% buff went into effect last night. That will have affected your numbers.

[tethealla]

Feral DPS vs Brain Surgery -- We'll examine which is more difficult =]