cat newb question

[brettfirst]

Hey so my main is bear tank but a few bosses per raid so far I've been going cat. I have my doubts though about my dps, which right now against a training dummy is hitting about 51k. And my iLevel in cat spec is 487.

Since I share a lot of the same gear between specs, not all of my gear's secondary specs is reforged correctly. Nicely I have duplicates of some gear pieces so I can reforge/gem the 2nd pair for cat, but in cases where I have like 489 boots (gem/reforged for bear) and also a 476 boots, I'll just choose the 489 so I don't take a big agility loss.

With that said, I'm wondering if hitting around 51k on training dummy makes sense, or...I should be way higher?

To give you a rough idea of my rotation (which I think I'm doing correctly):
These are always up: Rake, thrash, Faerie Fire, rip (ideally 5 cp), savage roar (I try to only case this with 0 combo points as to not waste them since...it can be cast at 0 nicely). And I get in a ferocious bite if there's still a lot of time on rip.
Of course, tigers fury at low energy and when it's off CD, Berserk and nature's vigil when off CD, and I'm building CPs with Shred.

I appreciate any thoughts you may have. Feeling apprehensive about my dps atm

[Tinderhoof]

A few tips from your discription.
1. Never do Rip with anything less then 5 combo points.
2. You should only use SR with 0 combo points save at the begining of the fight, or because something has gone wrong. The reason for this is SR costs 25 energy. If you only refresh with 0 combo points that means you are using up 25 energy every 12 seconds. That is energy that can be used for the rest of your abilities. You don't have to use 5 combo points for SR, but it doesn't hurt to do that as well.

As you don't have as much experience with the rotation as it is now, I would really recomend you start using Ovale and Nerie's Ovale Scripts. These are both Addon's that can be found on Curse. Ovale is a rotation script that gives move suggestions. Our rotation is VERY complicated now and this will give you an idea of how the flow of it goes. I would also recomend you setup some timers to watch SR, Rip, Rake and FF so you can see at what point each move is being suggested. Then sit on the dummies for a while and see how that works for you.

For further tips a link to your armory with your cat gear equiped would be helpful.

[brettfirst]

Hey thanks for the advice, really appreciate that.

I tried Ovale out, it was able to bump my dps up a bit, feeling a little better about my feral ability.

As I monitored Ovale with what my normal rotation would be, I can confirm what you were saying about using Savage Roar (it was telling me to use it regardless of how many combo points I had). So that's an improvement I'll implement now, thx.

My last question is about Thrash. Normally when I was doing rotation I'd simply get in thrash whenever it was off.

Ovale seems to be using a bit more of a mysterious theory on it though. Sometimes it's fine with thrash being off the target for a while, and only sometimes telling me to use it. I'm guessing this is because of the high energy cost of thrash as well as the fact that it doesn't generate combo points? And maybe it only suggests using it when I have a lot of excess energy/don't need more combo points???

thx

[Tinderhoof]

There are 2 instances I know of that the script will suggest Thrash.
1. If you have an OOC proc and there is no Thrash on the target, or the Thrash is below 6 seconds (I think).
2. If you have 5 combo points and the script will want you to refresh something soon, but you will energy cap before the refresh.

Thrash can do a lot of damage, but the high energy cost and lack of combo points will cause other parts of the rotation to fall off. So it is recomnded as an oppertunity spell instead of rotationally.

[brettfirst]

Great. thanks!