I am having trouble dishing out enough dps for Mystic +. My dps is almost embarrassing. My standard rotation is the: Rake, Shred, Thrash, Swipe, Primal Wrath. Then repeat the rotation ending with Ferocious Bite. All the while popping whatever cooldown available.
I could use some tips from veteran Feral players to help boost my dps a bit. Any advises are welcome. Thank you in advance!
Out of curiosity, what are the Shred and Bite doing in your AoE rotation? Swipe is just an AoE Shred. Anytime you want to use Shred but there’s 2+ targets, use Swipe instead. Shred has no place for 2+ targets.
You also shouldn’t really be Biting for 4+ targets. Primal Wrath spreads your Rip around, true. But its direct damage is no joke either and it outpaces Bite at 4+ targets. At fewer than that your primary goal should be to maintain Rip and Rake on all your targets using Bite (with Sabertooth) to refresh Rip and multidot that way. If you’re not using Sabertooth then you multidot in the conventional way and Bite if no one needs their rip refreshed, but on 4+ targets you swap to entirely Thrash/Swipe/Primal Wrath spam.
I also can’t help but notice you have no Jungle Fury in your Azerite traits, you stacked Untamed Ferocity for some reason which you should not do as Berserk isn’t very good so Bersekring a lot isn’t very good. You want 3 stacks of Jungle Fury and that will make a huge difference in M+ especially when you take Predator. Thing of it as a permanent 50% buff to your crit rate. Since crits mean more CP, that means more Bites and Wraths.
From a M+ perspective, here are some general rotational tips:
First off looking at your Azerite, you don’t have any Jungle Fury which is by far our best trait. I would highly recommend getting pieces with that. On the flip side though, you have 3 Wild Fleshrending, which is one of our other good traits alongside Heart of Darkness.
For your essence I’d recommend taking either Focusing Iris or BotE for your major because they are great in AoE situations, which occurs frequently in dungeons.
For your talents you should take Predator instead of Sabertooth (you will constantly refresh Tigers Fury and have it ready for each pull), Guardian affinity can be swapped to Balance affinity (you get extra range on all your melee attacks, which is fantastic for positioning), and possibly changing Bloodtalons to Moment of Clarity (if you’re struggling with the BT rotation, MoC is far easier and possibly better because of the amount of WFR you have)
I’d highly recommending checking on a dummy to see the damage breakdown between Swipe while Thrash is on a target, or Primal Wrath (and when it’s empowered by BT). If you find that you’re doing far more damage with Swipe, that may be another reason to drop BT and take MoC instead.
For a general AoE rotation (not using BT), it would be:
Start in stealth -> cast Tiger’s Fury while stealthed -> Rake on priority target -> Thrash -> Swipe to 5 CP -> Primal Wrath.
After that it’s maintain Thrash, maintain Rip (usually using PW), maintain Rake on I think 3 targets max (this can be ignored if there’s a ton of enemies you’re fighting at once and simply rely on spamming Swipe), and if your Swipe out damages your PW direct damage you can dump extra combo points into Ferocious Bite.
For single target (not using BT) you can go:
Start in stealth -> cast Tiger’s Fury while stealthed -> Rake -> Rip -> Thrash -> Shred to 5 -> Ferocious Bite at >=50 energy
After that it’s maintain Rake, maintain Rip using Rip, maintain Thrash, use CP on Ferocious Bite.
Overall, biggest thing to keep in mind are maintain your bleeds and ensure Thrash is on the target before you use Shred or Swipe.
Only ever use Ferocious Bite at 5 CP and above 50 energy (it consumes extra energy to deal more damage).
When using Bloodtalons, always try and use it on Rake, Rip, and your finishing moves. This makes the rotation much more complicated though, and requires some foresight on making sure bleeds don’t fall off and such.
A usually Bloodtalons opening goes like:
Pre-cast Regrowth out of combat -> stealth -> Tiger’s Fury -> Rake -> Rip (using either Rip or PW depending on ST vs AoE) -> Trash -> Build to 5 CP and use finisher.
A BT rotation goes the exact same as a normal rotation, except when you have 4 or 5 CPs. You should never hardcast a Regrowth, only do so when you have predatory swiftness (every CP spent has 20% chance to grant it, so it’s guaranteed after a 5CP finisher).
Single Target Rotation:
So when you have predatory swiftness and get to 4 CP, check:
Will Rake fall off within 4 seconds?
Will Rake fall off within 6 seconds?
Will Rip fall off within 10 seconds?
If Rake is falling off within 4s and Rip is falling off within 10:
Cast Regrowth to proc BT -> Rake -> Rip
If Rake is falling off within 6s and Rip is falling off within 10s:
Shred to get a 5th CP -> Regrowth -> Rip -> Rake
If Rake will not fall off soon and Rip is falling off within 10s:
Shred to get a 5th CP -> Regrowth -> Rip -> Shred
In the above scenarios, if Rip is not falling off within 10 seconds, you can instead pool energy and use Ferocious Bite as your finisher instead of Rip. Also above, ensure that Thrash is still maintained as much as possible, but don’t use a BT charge on it. It does so little damage and it’s main purpose is to buff your Shreds and Swipes.
Actually great breakdown. I don’t prefer to play predator in M+ tho, and while I can see the value for sure and possible dps gain, I usually stick to sabertooth in all content just because in M+ it helps keep my ST damage a little better for bosses.
And this might be overthinking it depending on level of key, but with Bolstering as an affix I want as little as resets as possible during add pulls taking the value of predator away completely. Plus it helps keep my muscle memory a little more consistent between activities and pvp. I just don’t think it’s as bad to NOT run predator in M+ despite that being the more recommended ya know?
Wow! Thanks for all the tips guys! I will work on what you told me. Of course, the gearing part will take some time. But the talents and rotations will change immediately. Thanks again! You guys rock!
My 2 cents for this:
I completely understand where you’re coming from with wanting to stick to Sabertooth since it greatly simplifies the rotation. Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing Feral a ton the past 2 expansions and have the rotation down really well, but I can see why Sabertooth is still a very desirable talent.
The reason I would promote using Predator in dungeons though is because 1: it allows you to have Tiger’s Fury when opening on every new encounter (free damage increase and with Jungle Fury free crit) and 2: in AoE situations (which dungeons mostly consist of) Ferocious Bite is not used nearly as much and this the talent that effects it has lower value.
Concerning bolstering, I don’t see how using Predator would directly contribute to causing some mobs to die quicker than others, therefore causing large bolstering stacks. If anything taking Sabertooth and relying on FB’s sounds like it would cause issue more frequently. Regardless, you would still get the first benefit listed above in a bolstering dungeon.
One comment I’ve taken from a guildie is that in dungeons, killing trash packs takes up the overwhelming majority of the time. Any benefits (traits, Azerite, essences) that can be taken to reduce the time needed to kill mobs has a much greater effect than bonuses taken to kill bosses. For that reason I believe that Predator ends up being the go-to talent in that row.
All solid points, and like I said I might just be overthinking it too hard theorycrafting in my head lol. And also to be fair, I quit at the end of MoP and just recently returned from that 7 year break this patch so I haven’t really practiced with predator much. I’ll do some keys tonight and try it out.
Is it really just as simple as using tiger’s fury every single time it resets during fights? Or is a weakaura better to keep track of the 17 sec cd and refresh when needed? Honestly have no idea how or if it interacts with the rotations other than the opener as dumb as that might be.
Last question on the topic, would you advocate for Iris major then over BotE? And then running blood, c&s, and breath minors or something? I normally use lucid minor and no iris at all but perhaps better for predator.
It depends how often it’s going to refresh. If it’s going to refresh more than 4 times in a minute it’s usually better to just use it when it’s available, wasted energy be damned. One thing you don’t want is for someone to die while Tiger’s Fury is off CD because then you waste a refresh. When you’re using Predator, you’ll be pretty hard-pressed to run out of energy on trash so you don’t care that much about wasting it so it’s more important to make sure the damage buff stays up 100% of the time.
Blood vs. Iris I find is a matter of preference. Both can work in M+. I usually go Blood since that still gives me good AoE burst without tanking my ability to deal damage to bosses. Lucid Dreams is usually the minor that gets given up on M+ because when you run Predator, you don’t really need energy fixing so an essence that fixes your energy isn’t super desireable.
My setup for M+ is usually Blood Major, Breath, Iris, C&S.
You are the real MVP. One thing that’s kind of messing with my muscle memory running this, is opening on bosses/ST. Normally with BT/Sabertooth, I’m applying rip with only 1 or 2 CPs which is getting refreshed with bite from there obvs. However it doesn’t feel right to me still, since if I rip after rake I instinctively want to build towards a bite from that point on and doing a 2cp rip it feels bad to have to build towards ANOTHER rip for duration. I guess is it building towards 5 cps first before initial rip and go bite from there unless refreshing is needed?