How much damage loss would I be looking at if I took Tigers Strength over it?
Is it really a 10% damage loss assuming perfect BT uptime?
While we’re on the subject, is it bad if you’re constantly renewing BTs before you use them all? For me, If my bleeds are good and I’m using the next cast to send out a Furrocious Bite, I’ll try to refresh them regardless.
It’s mostly a headache trying to track it all the time.
I look at it this way.
If Yes to all 3, then BT is worth it.
For me, since I answer No to all three, BT is not worth it because I don’t play at the skill level it would benefit me, but instead will likely end up a DPS loss overall due to lack of feral skills.
But I still have fun without it.
Honestly the change to have three charges of BT compared to just one is a big game changer. If you’re running brutal slash as well, you will get enough BT uptime simply by following the standard feral rotation to make it better than Lion’s Strength in most situations.
If you aren’t using brutal slash it gets more complicated in single target because Swipe is terrible, and you can get multiple cycles before needing to refresh your DoTs. If you find yourself oftentimes not being able to keep BT up in ST, running Lion’s Strength isn’t a terrible decision.
BT in incarn is a mess. If you’re able to trigger BT during incarn that’s a bonus, but honestly it’s best to just focus on getting through as many cycles as possible.
Note that everything I mentioned above is contingent on having a decent handle on tracking DoTs and following a feral rotation based on those DoTs. When you’re properly cycling and pooling energy, you’ll naturally get through 3 builders inside of 4 seconds as a result of needing to reapply rake, thrash, and filling with swipe/slash/shred once every three cycles without even needing to track BT. It’s common to disregard BT during incarn and there can be times with frequent apex procs that cause complication. But overall you should get more out of BT than Lion’s Strength by just following the rotation.
If you’re still learning and getting used to the feral rotation, playing Lion’s Strength can make sense and can even result in more damage than if you miss proccing BT too often.
Thank you for the information. I was honestly wondering about that when it came up incarn. I always started with three, but was able to burn through them pretty quick. I was worried I was losing insane DPS cause I’d try to refresh BT when it ran out while in the incarn.
Yeah having BT inside incarn when you can get it is better than not having it, to be sure. But the primary benefit of incarn is how quickly you can cycle. Each extra finisher you get out of incarn is worth 4 BT-buffed finishers. It’s not worth sacrificing a finisher to proc BT if you’re at 5 CP without it.
As you get more comfortable with the spec it is worthwhile to get used to building with three different abilities almost regardless what they are during incarn. Again, the focus is on getting as many full CP finishers as possible. If that means shredding in a 15 mob pull then shred away. It’s only outside of incarn where the builder usage becomes a significant percentage of our damage and we need to be more careful with using the right ones.
It’s worth noting that BT proccing can continue through a finisher. It’s not uncommon during incarn to have something like slash > thrash > primal wrath > rake. So long as the three builders happened inside 4 seconds, this will proc BT all the same.