Cat Rotation For Bosses:

Rotation for bosses can get pretty scary some times, but hopefully the tips that are in this article help you out.  First off, the word “rotation” should be taken lightly for bosses, as what you do is more a priority list than a rotation.  Secondly, if you let any of the abilities about to be mentioned fall off either you or the boss, your dps will dip, but it’s not the end of the world.  Just make sure to follow the list below, and you should be on your way to the top of the DPS charts:

1. Always make sure that you’re behind your target if you can help it!
2. Always keep Savage Roar up.
3. Always keep up Feral Faerie Fire.
4. Always keep Mangle up.
5. Always keep Rip up (only 5 combo point rips, nothing less)
6. Always keep Rake up.
7. If all the above are applied, Shred.
8. If all the combo point required moves above have 9 seconds or more left, Ferocious Bite.

With all of that said, my personal rotation goes a little like this:

• Get in position
• Feral Faerie Fire
• Mangle
• Savage Roar (gives me 14-19 seconds depending on if I’ve crit or not.)
• Rake
• Shred till I have 25 or less energy
• Tiger’s Fury (for 60 extra energy as I am speced into King of the jungle, and extra damage is always good!)
• Shred till 5 points
• Rip

usually after, or right before you do a combo move, you’ll have to reapply rake, though if it’s before the combo move, make sure that you do it for the last two combo points if you can help it.  If you applied it afterwards, use whatever combo points you get from that rake, and build up to 5 with shreds.  After you’ve attained 5 combo points, look at your buffs, if Savage Roar and Rip have 9+ seconds left, Ferocious Bite.  Also a good rule of thumb to follow is to do two combo point moves and Savage Roar when reapplying (only use one combo move for the initial application), and Always use a 5 point combo for Rip or FB (Only exception is FB on a mob close to death, than just go to as many as you think you can before it dies.)

Side Note: My current Cat spec / Projected glyphs that I’d take are found here. (An indepth look into Glyphs and Talents are to come soon!)

A few thing that might need to be cleared up:

Mangle: Make sure this is appied before any bleeds are applied or you shred, as it does increase their damage and only needs to be applied every 60 seconds.

Rake: Not as strong as any of the other moves you can do initially, but the bleed is still powerful (especially on those mobs that have high armor, as bleeds are not effected by armor reduction.) And anytime you can do damage while continuing your rotation is most certainly a gain.

Feral Faerie Fire: Quite a few druids of all specs forget to apply this, and it’s a shame, I personally apply this while I’m getting in position since it’s the only ranged move I can do as a cat.  Also, this will increase not only your damage, but everyone in your party that relies on physical attacks.

Tiger’s Fury: With the changes that were applied in Wrath of the Lich King, this should almost be activated every time it is up.  The only exception is if you’re speced into King of the Jungle, as it gives you 20/40/60 energy back instantly when activated (Along with the extra damage Tiger’s Fury already gives!) If you’re speced into King of the Jungle, you should most definitely wait till you have 25 or less energy.

Savage Roar: Every move that you do while this is up (except for the initial move to gain the combo points to apply it), you’re losing dps, and a lot of it.  So almost at all costs, make sure that this is up.

Rip: This is now our bread and butter Sustained damage over long fights now that it can crit.  If Savage Roar and Mangle are applied (if mangle was not applied or is wearing out, you should probably reapply it getting points to either Savage Roar or Rip) you should rip.

Ferocious Bite: This is our big burst damage.  This is kinda the filler between Savage Roars and Rips so that your combo points don’t go to waste.  When this move crits, it’s awesome, when it doesn’t, not so much. Armor pen makes this move really shine.

Berserk: This was one ability that I did not cover as it is very situational and you have to talent into it.  I personally don’t see a situation where either a cat or a bear druid would not pick this up, but I’ve seen it before.  Pretty much though, you get 15 seconds of abilities being 50% energy cheaper, so this is a MAJOR dps boost.  As I said though, it’s situational, If you know the fight is going to last longer than 3 minutes, activate it early. Warning!: Tiger’s Fury cannot be activated while Berserked so always apply Tiger’s Fury first if you need the extra energy!  If it’s shorter, wait till that clinch moment that everyone has to burst a certain mob down, or if the boss has a percentage enrage (see Patchwerk and Maexxena).  Also some people like to pop it when the group Bloodlusts (or Heroism for all you Alliance people out there. ).  I personally like to use it after the initial Savage Roar and after Tiger’s Fury, or after the Bloodlust, and after Tiger’s Fury if it is up.

Even with how hard it seems, it’s quite simple to keep everything you need applied up almost all the time. Also, if there are any questions with this, or any of the posts I make, please, feel free to comment, and I can try to help answer them as best as I can.

 

 

 

Cat Rotation For Trash:

Quite a few people ask me how I get high DPS in heroics and raids.  With the new changes to our abilities, it’s quite easy. However, there are a few rotations you have to do based on the situation.  This post is going to cover the situation of basic trash, which you’ll find this in raids between bosses and 5-man dungeons.  Now some people might say, “Trash? No one cares about that!”  But think about it, even if you’re overgeared and have an instance on farm, you spend majority of your time on trash.  Needless to say,  the faster you get trash down, the faster your run goes, or more attempts at progression. 

Now on to some trash talk! ( get it?) Trash is all about doing a bunch of damage really fast, which is perfect for cat druids because we deal our damage in bursts for the most part.  Trash usually doesn’t have high health, and you have a lot of people doing AoE’s like yourself, so there isn’t much time to really establish a complex rotation.  So, first thing to do is get in position. 

Being that swipe is our only AoE that we have, you want to get where you’re behind the middle most mob, and turn your character so that you’re facing the most mobs nearest to you.  I know this is kinda like a “Duh!” statement, but I don’t know how many druids forget good positioning.  Also, wait for your tanks to establish aggro.  Another fault that I see a lot of cats have is they will see the tanks pull one of the mobs, Feral Charge in, and start their rotation.  This will most likely lead to your death, and ultamately lead to you having lower dps.  So, with that said, getting positioned without the help of Feral Charge helps give your tanks a few extra seconds that might be vital for your survival.

Secondly, you need to get Savage Roar up as quickly as possible, and to do that, you’ll need combo points.  As you can tell from the tool tip on Savage Roar, it’s ability lasts longer the more combo points you have.  How many points you hold out for depends on how quickly your group clears trash, but for the most part, you should be able to get by on one or two (If you are speced into Primal Fury and crit).  Now to get these points are up to you, I usually go for Rake, It’s cheap, and I get extra damage from the bleed while I’m swiping.  Although a Mangle will do the trick as well, and it does a bit of burst just incase you’re killing something that dies before a few ticks of your bleed goes off.  Once you land that first blow, be it Rake or Mangle, you need to hit Savage Roar.

Side note: If you have not speced into King of the Jungle, this would be the time you would hit Tiger’s Fury for extra damage on the next step.

Once Savage Roar is applied, the fun begins.  You need to start Swiping.  You should be able to get one off after landing Rake/Mangle, and Savage Roar unless you’ve speced into Clearcasting, and it has proced, then you get another Swipe in.  Once you cannot swipe again, you have two choices, you can either wait for enough energy to regenerate to swipe again.  Or, if you’re speced into King of the Jungle, you can activate Tiger’s Fury and gain energy (up to 60 energy) and some extra damage on your next swipe.  However, after you activate that, unless you get a Clearcasting proc, or 30 seconds have gone by (and you dont have the tier 7 set bonus to reduce the cooldown of Tiger’s Fury to 25 seconds), you’ll have to wait for the energy to regenerate, and by that time, your mobs could be dead.

Once the pull thins down to one mob, chances are they are almost dead, so you cant quite start up a standard single mob rotation and have to do as much damage before they die.  So again you’re faced with one of two choices that I see, and that is either Mangle and then Shred them to death (Mangle increases the damage of Shred), or you can just Mangle spam till it dies.  Rake does low initial damage, and the bleeds might not make up for the damage of Mangle and Shred by the time the mob dies, and your other abilities for the most part require combo points you may not have to equal the damage you could do with the two abilities mentioned above.

Side Note: Some people might say it might be better to Mangle one time and then Ferocious Bite(FB), but with one or two combo points, you would have to crit, and hope for the high end of the damage range on FB to equal the damage that you could easily do with Mangle or Shred.

Below is a flow chart that I usually run through my head for trash, and it might be useful for someone so I’ve decided to post it. (Also, I’ve never seen a rotation as a flow chart and thought it would be fun. )

Another Side Note: For the chart below to be 100% accurate you need to be talented into all energy reduction talents, King of the Jungle for the 60 energy when Tiger’s Fury is used, and also Clearcasting.