Currently on the test realm, we have:

~Enrage: This Bear Form ability now generates 20 rage initially, and 10 rage over the next 10 seconds. The armor penalty is unchanged.
~Swipe (Cat): Percent of weapon damage done reduced from 260% to 250%.
~Mangle: Ranks 4 and 5 base points reduced by about 11%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
~Rake: Ranks 6 and 7 base points on initial and periodic damage reduced by about 7%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
~Rip: Ranks 8 and 9 base points and points per combo point reduced by about 6%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
~Shred: Ranks 8 and 9 base points reduced by about 10%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
King of the Jungle: This talent now reduces the mana cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form by 20/40/60%.
~Primal Tenacity: This talent no longer reduces the mana cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear

Just in case you’ve been a hole and haven’t heard, feral is getting nerfed again. Bears and Cats, while enjoying the sleek new looks, will also be doing less DPS and taking more hits. The DPS nerf, looked at one way the nerf is a flat amount of damage per special attack. All the primary DPS talents are being reduced in base damage: Mangle, Rake, Shred, and Rip. Mangle by 11%, Shred by 10%, Rake by 7%, and Rip by 6%. Clearly the emphasis can already be seen on the direct damage, as opposed to bleed damage, though both are being reduced. Swipe is also being reduced from 260% weapon damage, down to 250% weapon damage. My word! That’s a lot to cover. First though, let me give you some things to be happy for. One, because this is a base reduction to damage, calculated before applying Attack Power bonuses, it’s a lot less than it sounds. The better your gear, the less you will notice this. Secondly, because of the changes to Emblems, most of us soon will be in the category of having enough pure stats not to notice. Finally, only the last 2 ranks are affected by this, meaning that most levelling druids won’t be affected.

But there is some slightly bad news, at least if you are stacking armor penetration. See here’s why, if Shred damage is being reduced by 10% that is a base reduction of 96.525 per shred. That doesn’t mean it’s a straight 96 damage reduction, however, that would only be the case if the enemy had 0 armor. The amount of damage reduction the boss has before any armor penetration (but after faerie fire) would be roughly 29%, and with BiS Ulduar gear this will become roughly 16%. This means that a druid with the armor pen soft cap will lose about 13 points of damage more each Shred than a druid with no armor pen. OK, so not much of a loss. 68 damage per Shred, or 81 if you have 566 Armor Pen. Give or take a couple, since my numbers were rounded due to laziness. It’s going to be a few hundred DPS. We’re not worried about it. I did the numbers here just as a demonstration to see for myself how much it might affect armor penetration scaling. The answer was as I expected, the difference was negligible. A lot more of my damage is coming from Attack Power than from the base damage. In Perspective, my Shreds average 4053 each when they don’t crit, reduced by 81 it will still be pretty powerful.

Now that I’ve bored everyone with some numbers. Bottom line: don’t worry about your DPS. If it’s good, it will stay pretty good. If it’s bad, it will be worse but excellent gear will be just around the corner, so to speak.

Next up, feral tanking: I’m not going to dole out numbers on this, mostly because I’m lazy, but also because I have the legitimate excuse that, even though I am a tank, this is not primarily a tanking blog. Suffice to say that I am unhappy with the changes. I feel like bears are being forced into being mana sponges with their sub-par damage reduction and avoidance, and forced to go with their only tanking advantage: HP stacking. I don’t know what to say to that. It’s not and never has been my preferred style of tanking. I’m beginning to feel, in very nearly every practical encounter, less effective than my counterparts. That’s why, though people are largely agreeing that this reduction is smallish, “only” ~5% dodge.. I am bitter over getting yet another nerf. Druid tanks aren’t far from their counterparts, however they are enough less viable in encounters for prejudices against them to stick. I feel it.. and I think this was the last thing we need. Proof positive that I chose wisely in focusing on DPS when I came out of TBC, even though during TBC I was frequently tanking and enjoyed it immensely.

But really, I wanted to discuss feral rotation a while. My own experience and why there is a blue post with the opinion that feral druids are the most complicated DPSers. Yet we’re popular! Right now my guild has 4 feral cats that are mains. Now, on the one hand, I’d have to say it’s easy to know what to do. It is pretty intuitive that a 30% damage boost is the most important ability to use. Always keeping your Savage Roar buff up, with it’s short duration, is the most important thing. In AoE situations I try to get this buff before I spam swipe. I can get very good AoE dps. On ulduar trash fights like Razorscale, where I know I have time to use an SR, I will rake for the bleed damage and the combo point for SR. I should probably have 1 swipe in me after this, apply it and then use Tiger’s Fury instantly for energy, giving me another 2 or 3 swipes in a row. How many depends on how often omen of clarity will proc.

Location is key on these fights. Positioning for the most adds possible can be iresome when you need to be in melee range of your target, keep the adds in a frontal arc directly in front of you, and avoid the all too frequent fires. Given a good location, I’ve found my AoE outdoing casters, which makes sense when those casters have a much easier time of it, and will often be able to target more than cats. In situations that aren’t ideal, casters are often able to target more mobs than I, for longer, which will skew DPS results back in their favor.

If you’re wondering, resorting to Swipe is ideal only if you have 3+ mobs. That is, 3 that are certain to be close enough to be affected. This is based off of in game experience, not theorycrafting.

Single target fights are where things get really complicated though, instead of constantly worrying about finding the biggest pack of mobs and the right spot to lay waste into them, you must focus on constantly refreshing several abilities: Savage Roar, Mangle, Rake, Rip, and Faerie Fire Feral..

First off, the odd one out: Faerie Fire. I generally use this before I’ve reached melee range, during the run/pounce to the boss. If somehow I am in melee range and this debuff is missing, I’ll typically wait for a second that I’ve run out of energy, Tiger’s Fury, and Omen of Clarity procs. If you have a moonkin in the group, ask if they are using FF so you don’t need to.

Your rotation will vary a lot depending on how often you crit, how fast you attack based on haste, and your glyphs and tier gear. To begin, you have to refresh 4 abilities. Savage Roar, then Mangle, then Rip, then Rake. You should keep a reminder up telling you when Omen of Clarity procs. I use EventAlert. When you get a proc, Shred. NEVER use a finishing move except for Savage Roar, which does not consume the proc. In other cases, if all 4 abilities are up, Shred for combo points. Rip when you reach 5 combo points, if you have time (~6 seconds) on Rip and Savage Roar, use Ferocious Bite. On Savage Roar, you won’t have much control over how many combo points you have when this wears off. 2 points is best, more is OK if you are about to lose the buff. Avoid a 1 point SR. Notice that if another druid is applying Mangle, or if an arms warrior has Trauma, you will not need to use your mangle at all. Shred > Mangle as long as the debuff is up.

There are several add-ons that can help you with this rotation, which is not really a rotation at all but a priority list. Event Horizon will display, graphically, how much time you have left on your abilities, and on your cooldowns. FeralbyNight uses theorycrafting calculations to recommend your next ability. I recommend both. Try testing out your DPS with the first and then the second. Sometimes FbN will recommend a Ferocious Bite, or simply remind to use Berserk/Tiger’s Fury, with greater results. The best thing I’ve found is helping to guage when to Ferocious Bite as it’s not always intuitive.

If you’re near to a point where you will lose contact with the boss, do your best to apply fresh DoTs, even if you lose SR. Something > Nothing. Many fihts have down periods like this. I’ll apply my DoTs before they wear out if I know I’m going to be going out of combat. I’ll miss some chances for Shred in the process.