Uh, no.
Mangle and all Feral abilities scale from AP. You get FAP from weapons that have it as one of their stats. The weapon’s damage, attack speed and ilevel are pretty much no concern. The one exception is that FAP scales with ilevel, but if a weapon has a lot of STR and/or AGI, then it can make an ilevel upgrade not worth it. The issue is that bears only get AP from STR (2 per point). All AGI does for them is a small amount of dodge and crit.
What makes it really unfun is that the Wildfury Greatstaff has so much dodge on it, that it is pretty much your weapon for the rest of the expansion.
And before someone says it, Pillar of Ferocity gives armor which you are just about at the cap for before you get it. Stanchion of Primal Instinct gives no secondary defensive stats, so it can be weak. That said, it gives a lot of threat and a lot of FAP and AP, so very late game, it would not be bad since you get enough defensive stats to off set the loss of dodge on your weapon.
As I said in another thread, there IS a reason RAWR came into being before all other item stat apps and it was made for ferals first.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Mangle_(Bear_Form)
Your link is to the current version of mangle.
https://tbc-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?spell=33987
That is the TBC version. Normal damage is the 55 dps + attack power increase.
At the bottom it says the following:
Patch 2.0.10: The multiplier on base weapon damage for Mangle (Bear) ability has been changed from 130% to 100%. In addition, the bonus damage has been reduced by the same ratio. Mangle (Bear) is no longer affected by Savage Fury.
Here’s another link:
http://tbc.cavernoftime.com/spell=33876
The damage is your melee hitting damage, not the weapon damage. Weapon damage did not mean anything until Wrath. Feral had a base dps of 55. I say dps because bears and cats hit at different speeds, but had the same dps. Attack power and feral attack power then changed that. So you hit for the damage of your melee hits multiplied by that number. Once again, the weapon dps was not calculated into the damage you did.
https://tbc-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?item=25761
https://tbc-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?item=34198
Look at the weapon dps. See how little it changes. That is because the weapon dps did NOTHING. The FAP on it was the most important stat because it and normal AP determines you damage, not weapon DPS. Feral mechanics were much different in Vanilla and TBC.
Oh, and you linked cat Mangle and not Bear Mangle.
I am going to apologize for how confusing my explanation was last night. I was writing those right before bed. Here is a better explanation I hope.
Feral forms act like your weapon. It has 55 dps and because it is your weapon, you cannot proc weapon effects. On the plus side, you always have maximum weapon skill in it. The reason you say 55 dps for the weapon is that cat and bear have different attack speeds and, hence, each hit does different amounts of damage.
As with all weapons, you want to get as much AP as possible. This is why feral AP weapons are so good. It is also why str is so good with its 2 AP contribution.
Most melee abilities are based on your melee white hits. Most of the melee specs follow this. Paladins and shamans are just weird and have some not so nice weapon interactions.
Lets say you have 0 AP and FAP. As a cat (they have 1 aps hand hence easier to figure), this means all of your white hits do 55 damage (with the usual variance). For the cat mange you linked (am going with rank 3 here), its damage is 160% white damage + 165. the equation for figuring its damage is:
(1.6 * 55) + 165 = 253
With armor, crit chance, and AP/FAP, it gets more annoying then it is worth worrying about for this.
So, the dps of the weapon does not matter since it is overwritten by the feral form weapon. All you will care about is the amount of AP/FAP you get from it. It is also why a green STR/AGI weapon is so good in classic wow until you start getting FAP weapons.
I hope this makes more sense than that half asleep version.
in wrath classic right now, barskin is usable in form. So its actually useful for feral now. For balance, wrath introduces the eclipse mechanic. great change. i never played original wrath so i dont know if it was the same then. dont remember anything about boomy melee. i have a feral dps druid and a boomkin and i dont ever melee with my boomy. if thats a thing, then ive definitely been doing it wrong. lol. We now have 2 rezzes. Combat rez still but now also an out of combat rez with no cooldown. i dont know about roots. ill have to try it indoors. i never use them in raid. only world pvp and thats all been outdoors