🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm looking for some tipes on feral dps, if there's anyone here with
any experience! I don't actually play my druid that much but I've come
to realise that while my gear level has gone up quite a bit with drops
from worldbosses, my dps hasn't followed suit... it was all well and
good having similar dps to my (disc) priest when I was at 460 ilvl
(priest being over 500), but being up at 496 ilvl and still being
about the same was not so good lol. Ok, my weapon is a 463 blue
(upgraded to 471) which will certainly be hurting me, but still, I
guess there's some implementation issues here too!

I spent about an hour with a target dummy tonight, which actually
gained me about 15k, but it still seems low; 60k on Skada, which I
think reads lower than other meters, but still, I'd guess it should be
higher.

One thing I'm doing now (which I wasn't before) is using Mangle as
combo point generator and just using Shred in Berserk or when I have
energy pooled up. Sounds a dps loss but I read somewhere recently a
discussion on it, and that the extra energy and combo points give
flexibility that offsets the dps loss - given using Shred I was never
managing to keep Rip and Savage Roar both up, while it instantly felt
less stressful and energy starved when I switched to Mangle, I think
this may work for me. The guides may all say Shred, but that's
probably for more skilled cats than me; dps output seemed identical in
my tests, for far less stress (and I'll bet that dps is higher for me
when fighting things which aren't as simple as a target dummy...)

I'm also trying to actually not just hit buttons as soon as I have the
energy, but to save a little, and that's vastly improved my uptime on
everything. Got sick of trying to look for tiny icons in two different
parts of the screen and installed NeedToKnow to track Savage Roar,
Rip, Rake, and Faerie Fire (and added Thrash and Predatory Strikes for
good measure, though those are more for information), which is a big
help, although it's a shame it doesn't track combo points as well;
sticking it right next to the target frame worked well enough there
though. Still haven't got uptimes quite right, often find myself with
5 combo points, 100 energy and 8-9 sec left on everything, leaving me
pondering whether to burn it on a bite (and then not have anything
proc so not reach 5 cps in time before Rip expires) or refresh
something that isn't actually running out imminently! Also annoying
when both run out at the same time, thank goodness for glyph of savage
roar!

I'm also trying to figure out cooldown/buff usage; I know you want
maximum buffs to Rip, so have shifted Tigers Fury to macro it to Rip
(used to have it on Mangle/Shred to try to help with energy, didn't
think of the dmg buff), and I try to make a point of refreshing buffs
as much as possible when using Nature's Vigil, but other than that,
I'm not sure there's much more I can easily do. Feral seems so
complicated with so many things to track, that my head kinda explodes
with it! I've accepted I'll never be great, but if I can at least
avoid embarrassing myself too badly, it'll be an improvement!