Rammy's Arms Warrior Guide - Part 4: Raid Pointers

Welcome to part 4 of my guildie Ramagos guide on how to play an Arms Warrior!

So, today seems it's a dull day at work, so I have tons of free time which I don't know what to with, so I'll write some more.

This time I'll go into fight specific tips.

Shannox: This fight is annoying as hell. With the tank running around kitting the boss, if you start running too late, you'll be out of range and won't be able to DPS at all. I would recommend you equip the Glyph of Rapid Charge, that way you can charge every 12 seconds instead of every 13. The problem about charge is that the travel distance is until you reach the max Melee range of the target when you charged. What does this mean? If you charge, and the target moves, you won't be at max melee range. Here is a simple drawing I made to explain it better.



The point where the charge ends won't follow the target if this one moves, so never charge when the target is moving away from you. Since you won't be able to reach the boss by walking until the tank stops or starts making a turn, wait until that moment, went he is starting to move sideways or just completely stops. A charge midfight is a very powerful tool since it gives you an extra 25% crit chance to your next MS, and we always love our MS to crit.

Save your Heroic Leaps for Rageface. If you need to bring him to a trap, leap past the trap and you'll trap him.

Make sure to use your CDs when you know your tank won't begin to move in the next few seconds.

Beth'tilac: Haven't done it, no tips.

Rhyolith: No tips really, since I'm driving most of the time, there is nothing special I do as a Warrior here.

Alysrazor: This fight requires a lot of moving around. Use all the spells in your arsenal to move more effectively. Since I've always done the right side, I will base my tips in that you get that side. I would recommend you get the Rude Interruption Talent since every extra DPS is necessary for this fight.

On the pull, don't shout, you don't need the Rage now and you want to save the 10% buff of the 2pset for later. With all the dmg that goes around at the pull plus the initial charge you'll have enough Rage to even spare a couple of HSs. Keep on DPSing Alysrazor until your 4th MS, then turn back and run to the initiate. By that time he should be coming down as a bird, when he is down, charge at him and go on with your rotation.

The first two initiates spawn within a VERY small time span in literally opposite sides of the room, so you need to be REALLY fast in taking down the first one. initiates 98% of the time have the following rotation "Brush Fire - Brush Fire - Fieroblast". So, when he starts casting Fieroblast, interrupt him, cast Battle Shout or Commanding Shout (depending what your raid needs) and blow all your CDs. At that moment you should have the 5% increased dmg from Rude Interruption, the 10% from the shout, hopefully the 10% from an MS crit, your trinkets and Deadly Calm. The initiate shouldn't live to cast a third Fieroblast. If he does, you are in a bit of trouble, but not too much.

When he is dead, start running to the other side of room, Heroic Leap, and then charge the Initiate. Be very careful though, to reach the Initiate you will need to avoid 2 worms that are in the way, the tank that is probably bringing the bird to eat a worm by then, and the brushfires. If you managed to kill the first initiate before the third Fieroblast, you will reach the second Initiate when he will begin to cast his first Fieroblast. If you didn't, that will go off unless someone else interrupts it, since you are probably still running or still killing the first initiate.

After the second initiate is dead, kill the bird and carry on to your closest Meteor. Remember you can either intervene an ally or charge the other Bird (if it's alive) since by then Firestorm will be soon, so the tank will be bring the bird to the meteor.

The third and fourth Initiates are way easier to deal with. You should have your shout back after the Firestorm, so line it up again with your interrupt so you will have a 15% buff. Kill the Initiate as normal and follow up to DPS the bird, since you'll have a lot of time until the fourth Initiate spawn. Be sure not to Charge the bird, since you want to have Charge available for the fourth Initiate.

You WON'T be able to kill the fourth Initiate before Firestorm, so don't try. You keep on the Initiate until there is 7-8 seconds left for Firestorm, because at that moment he'll cast his last Fieroblast, interrupt that and run to the Meteor to hide. After the Firestorm finish off the fourth Initiate and help kill the bird. Right side only has 4 Initiates while left side has 5 or 6. Do not go to the other side to help out with the Initiate, you'll have to cross the whole room to do that and risk a lot of worms and brushfires. Plus, you need to DPS the bird as soon as it spawn in order to kill it before tornados, and even by doing so you might not make it.

Tornados come and then burn phase. By the time the Tornados disappear and the burn phase starts you'll have all your cooldowns ready. You are now presented with a choice: use them or save them. If you save them, you'll use them on the First initiate and have a second P1 identical as the first one. If you use them in the burn phase things will get messy with the first and second initiates, since you'll spend more time on the first Initiate; the second Initiate will launch one or two Fieroblasts until you are able to reach him; you will barely be able to kill the Initiate before Firestorm so you won't have time to DPS the bird, risking a wipe behind meteors thanks to a bird cleaving.

Third and Fourth Initiates are always the same, the only trouble you have is at First and Second if you don't save your CDs.

Baleroc: DPS, DPS, DPS.

Staghelm: Bring an AoE spec for this one, although single target DPS is important, Arms has awesome multitarget DPS. Your tank and healers will appreciate that little tigers go down fast.

Ragnaros: I have one tip for P1, stay at max melee range, that way when you are pushed back, you'll be able to Charge back and gain Rage + 25% more crit to MS. You'll only be able to Charge back if you are at max melee range when pushed, if you are closer to the boss when pushed back, you'll be too close to be able to Charge.

And be very careful! I've known Warriors that for the sake of being at max melee range they chanced the wrath of the hammer! Thoughts like "Ok, two little steps in and the wave won't reach me, so I can get back fast to max melee range" are dangerous! Don't prioritize the chance of a Charge over your own safety!

Rammy's Arms Warrior Guide - Part 3: Stats

Welcome to part 3 of my guildie Ramagos guide on how to play an arms warrior!

Since I'm running out of advanced strategies, I'm going to talk about simpler stuff... like stats.

Haste, what good does Haste do to us? Someone wants to share with the class? Any hands? Yes, you in the back, what does Haste do to us? ... Very good! It makes our melee swings faster so we have more Rage to use more HS. One point for Griffindor!

What else? No one? Of course no one is raising their hands, because Haste has nothing more to offer. Unlike the rest of the classes, our DoTs are not affected by Haste. That's it, neither Rend nor DW will tick faster the more Haste you have. If you think Rend ticking faster would do weird stuff with the TfB proc for our OPs you are mistaken, since if you remember our first lesson, we try to force Rend ticks with MS.

The drawback Haste has is Slam, since when you are casting it, you delay your melee swings, reducing the value of Haste. As I said before, roughly every 7 Slams you lose an entire melee swing. In a normal 6 minute fight you get to do around 40 slams, meaning you lose 5 melee swings during the course of the fight. 5% Haste gives you roughly 1 melee swing a minute which is roughly 1 extra HS a minute.

Soooo, Haste does seem a bit attractive, let us look what Mastery has in store for us. An X% chance to perform an extra attack that deals 100% weapon damage, seems nice, right? An extra attack means more damage, right? Yes, but, how good is an extra attack compared to Haste and Crit? Let us see the good and the bad of Mastery.

The Good: It can proc of every single melee attack and melee spell, it can crit and it can also proc Sudden Death.

The Bad: Does not generate Rage, has an internal CD of 0.5 seconds so it can't proc of itself and it only does 100% weapon damage.

It is basically an extra melee swing that doesn't generate Rage. It is nice, indeed, but doesn't look specially more appealing than Haste. We do know one thing, though, since it has a 0.5 CD, it will have a cap, so the closer we get to the cap, the less value Mastery will have.

Last of all, we have Crit. Let us see what do we get from Crit. Our main rotational spells have an added value of 120% instead of the normal 100% melee crits have. Our crits also apply DW, which deals 48% weapon damage (not the spell damage like Fire Mage's Ignite) over 6 seconds. DW is affected by the 30% Bleed buff we apply, so it's actually 63-64% weapon damage. DW does suffer munching the same way Fire Mage's Ignite do, although not as much, since it's weapon damage and not the damage done. Crits are devastating with ThunderClap in AoE as well, since they spread DW around.

But 120% crits is hardly reason enough to consider Crit above the other two stats. But wait! What do we have here? MS crits increase our damage done in 10% for 12 seconds? Mmmm, interesting.

Let us see stuff in action with some logs:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/sbp7bbs1etr2iqdz/details/8/?s=2350&e=2711

As you can see, Mastery (Opportunity Strikes) only consists of 7.2% of our total DPS while DW alone consists of 9.2% of our DPS. And we are not counting the damage done by all the crits. I have 6.25% Haste, which is 1 extra melee swing and 1 extra HS per minute, the fight lasted 6 minutes, so the effects of Haste were 6 HS (of 36 which is 1/6th of the 5.8% total DPS HS did) and 6 Melee Swings (of 84 wich is 1/14th of the 10.5% total DPS melee strikes did).

So in total we have the following numbers:

Haste: 0.9686% HS dmg + 0.7497% Melee dmg = 1.7183% total dmg
Mastery: 7.2% total dmg
Crit: 9.2% DW dmg + 32% MS dmg which is 4.9% total dmg + 50% OP dmg which is 7.05% total dmg... 3 spells makes 21.15% total dmg, should I go on? It will probably reach 27-30% total dmg.

Those extra 6 melee swings, 6 HS and 82 Opportunity Strikes would most certainly have procced some SDs, giving DPS indirectly by means of CS, but we are also not counting the DPS we gain every time MS crits and gives 10% dmg for 12 seconds.

It is true those are my logs and I'm reforged to favor crit above all else, So when I get home I'll do 3 dummy runs of 5 mins each, each one specced favoring Haste, Mastery and Crit respectively and post the details here for you to see.

Rammy's Arms Warrior Guide - Part 2: Rage Management

Part 2 of my guildie Ramagos guide on how to play an Arms Warrior.

Hello students, and welcome to another class of L2P Arms. Today we are going to talk about Rage management.

So, to know how to manage Rage you need to know how it's generated. It follows the simple formula of 6.5 * Weapon Speed. To that we have to add Anger Management. Let us see what affects our Rage generation:

Melee Weapon Speed:

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.6 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 16.666' = 16 swings per minute.
16 * 29 = 464 Rage per minute.

6.5 * 3.8 = 24.7 + 25% = 30.875 = 30 Rage per swing.
3.8 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 15.789 = 15 swings per minute.
15 * 30 = 450 Rage per minute.

• Slam delays our melee swings, so every 7-8 Slams will deny one melee swing, that's about 1 swing per minute, or more, depending on how lucky you are with Colossus Smashes.
• Anger Management also produces 1 Rage every 3 seconds, that's 20 Rage per minute.
• Blood Frenzy would generate 20-30 Rage per minute statistically.
• Battle Trance would save us some Rage depending on it's usage. It's proc rate would be once or twice every minute.
• Tactical Mastery lets us keep more than 25 Rage when switching stances, up to 75 total Rage.
• If you Charge you get 15 Rage or 25 if you have Blitz.
• And the glorious Battle Shout.

That makes up for near 520 Rage per minute.

Our spells cost 5, 15 and 20 Rage. Our Rotation being mostly MS-CS-OP, MS-OP-Slam, MS-CS-OP-Slam, MS-OP-Slam-Slam makes them cost 45, 40, 60 and 55 respectively. In a 1 minute time spam you get to repeat the rotation about 11 times.

That makes it near 550 Rage usage per minute.

"OMG, we consume more Rage than we generate!" you might say. This is true. If you went to the dummies, you'll see doing your rotation leaves you OOR. But this are all unrealistic numbers, since they were made with 0% Haste. The more Haste you have the more Rage you'll generate. For example, I have 6.25% Haste, which makes my swings be 3.39. Let us see the same formula we used before and compare the effects Haste has on Rage:

0% Haste

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.6 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 16.666' = 16 swings per minute.
16 * 29 = 464 Rage per minute.

6.25% Haste

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.39 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 17.699... = 17 swings per minute.
17 * 29 = 493 Rage per minute.

16.25% Haste (with someone giving the 10% Haste buff)

6.5 * 3.6 = 23.4 + 25% = 29.25 = 29 Rage per swing.
3.01 Weapon Speed over 1 minute = 19.933... = 19 swings per minute.
19 * 29 = 551 Rage per minute.

And now we are talking. Add to that the fight's incoming dmg and you get more Rage. And to that add Deadly Calm at least twice a fight, Bloodlust and Executioner and you get some more Rage which you'll be able to convert into HSs.

Right now you might be thinking "All this numbers are pretty, but how the hell do I manage my Rage?", I was about to get to it.

Since we are Stance Dancing, our Rage cap is 75 instead of 100. This makes every single point of Rage that surpasses the 75 mark to vanish when you change stances. All Rage lost is Rage you didn't turn into a HS, which is lost DPS. Since our melee hits generate 29-30 Rage per hit means that you don't want to have more than 60 Rage at any given moment, so when you hit 55-60 or higher Rage, you hit your HS button so you get down to 25-30 Rage.

You also want to monitor you BT [Battle Trance] procs, since HS costs 30 Rage while CS and Slam cost both 20 and 15 Rage. Why make a spell that costs 20 Rage free when you can use it in a spell that costs 30.

The only exception is in the Execute Phase, where the only spells you use are MS, OP, CS and Execute.

Rammy's Arms Warrior Guide - Part 1: Rotation and Stance Dancing

Our guilds Arms Warrior has been spending some time writing a couple of very interesting guides for anyone who is interested in knowing a little bit more about how to succesfully play an arms warrior. I liked them so much I asked for permission to post them on my blog, and he was foolish enough to grant it *evil snicker*. So I will be posting a couple of arms dps guides, that in no way have been written by myself, all credit goes to Ramago!

This will not be a begginers guide (if you want I'll write one later), here I'll talk about the Arms rotation and how encounters affects it. So, the rotation will be either MS - Spell - Spell or MS - Spell - Spell - Spell, this depends on the MS timer. MS is a 4.5 CD spell, which means it allows two spells in between. Everyone who plays meele classes knows the real GCD is not 1 second, but 1.5 seconds, if you didn't, then you know something new.

So why if it allows two spells in between, you sometimes have to do two spells? That's because of Rend and TfB [Taste for Blood, Zinns edit] procs. 

Click for bigger picture

The red vertical lines are second markers. As you can see in my shitty-home-made table, you can see how TfB procs if you use MS every time it's on CD. You might be asking "why didn't you proc TfB on the line where everything lines up?", that's because it might or not proc, depending on your latency and stuff, but idependantly if it procs there or there, the last shown proc will proc where it is shown.

As many of you have noticed while playing Arms, it's very annoying to not know when TfB will proc and go crazy not knowing what to fill your GCDs. That's why you want to line up your MS with your TfB CD, so you can control and force your procs and be in your confy zone. This is why sometimes you want to do a MS - Spell - Spell - Spell parse instead of a MS - Spell - Spell one, just to get the proc.

So the question is, when do we do it? You can make a timer that shows the TfB CD, or you can do it by instinct. As you saw in the graph, the rotation is a pattern, so after a time playing you know in which part of the pattern you are. I could tell you it's MS - 2spells - MS - 2spells - MS - 2 spells - MS - 3spells, but that's nice on a Dummy, in a raid or in a dungeon, when you have to move, or change targets... that won't work. It needs practice and time, you'll get the hang of it.

So... in other matters... Stance Dancing. To be able to do this you need macros, lots and lots of macros... and an organized spell bar. 

Battle Stance

Berseker Stance

As you can see here, I have the same spells in both spell bars, so as to have no trouble when switching stances. Macros I use for Stancedancing are: 

#showtooltip Colossus Smash
/cast Charge
/cast Colossus Smash

#showtoolrip Execute
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Execute

#showtooltip Bladestorm
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Bladestorm

#showtooltip Slam
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Slam

#showtooltip Mortal Strike
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Mortal Strike

#showtooltip Thunder Clap
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Thunder Clap

#showtooltip Rend
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Rend

#showtooltip Overpower
/cancelaura Bladestorm
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Overpower

You can notice I placed a /cancelaura Bladestorm on my OP macro. That's only to stop swirling when I need it. Examples are when you are starting to draw aggro, to stop it from happening, or when only one or two mobs remain. With these you can do your rotation without thinking. The only problem Stance Dancing has is that changing stances has a 1sec CD, so you'll be in trouble if you can't chance stances to OP because it's on CD. You just have to be careful with that, which means, no fucking up your rotation. If you pressed the wrong button and switched stances when you shouldn't, then it will cost you... a lot.

Dps Webring - Feral Cat Eldhorn

I think it is time to do a dps webring for all the poor dpsers out there to get into the action of the questionnaire-meme that has been going around. Someone has probably done this already, but I haven't seen it. Here is a dps version, answered by Love also known as Eldhorn, the Feral Cat Druid. I also now know that Miss Medicina originally started it all, way back in 2009 (wow, time flies when you have fun).

1. What is the name, class, and spec of your primary dpser?
Eldhorn, feral dps druid. I've mained a feral druid ever since Vanilla and never deviated from that path, although I often had to go resto back then because any other spec sucked. There have been times where I didn't feel like the class was rewarding enough in comparison to how much effort it took to become really good, but in the end I stuck with it because it feels like there is always room for improvement.

2. What is your primary group dpsing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
10mans primarily, but I do run 5mans every once in a while to remind myself of why I don't like it. It usually turns into a swipefest where bosses die so quickly that I never get a proper rotation rolling, but every once in a while I get to boost friends alts in ZA/ZG, and that might actually be fun.

3. What is your favorite dps skill for your class and why?
Ooh, tough one. It depeneds a lot on situation. For fights where a lot of low-health adds will gather, Swipe will have to be it, since it's very effective high-burst aoe. The reason I enjoy it in raids and not in 5 mans is because there is actually some challenge in using swipe in raids, when trying to find the perfect opening to do aoe without dropping everything else that is going on in my rotation. For longer fights, where the boss is unavailable some of the time, or where you have to run away, Rip rins my heart, despite it being nerfed over and over due to PvP. PvE nerfs due to PvP <3

4. What dps skill do you use least for your class and why?
My highest level feral skill should obviously be a tool to aid me in my dps, or survivability, which equals dps. But it aint. It's a semi-sprint that can contain trace amounts of utility. Stampeding Roar, oh how I loathe thee. It's not so much because it's bad, because it's not, it's because it was supposed to be my ultimate ability. It's not an ace in the sleeve, it's more like when the last act of a circus fucks up, it completely ruins the entire show.

5. What do you feel is the biggest strength of your dps class and why?
Uptime. And we have it for several reasons:
We are easy to heal, thus we can brave the fray for a little longer without having to bail out for fear of the next teeny tiny aoe thing to kill us.
We have high survivability with Barkskin and Furwall, both useable in Kittycatform.
Very high mobility. We can stick to the boss like shit sticks to fur, and we can dodge like Neo when need be, with Dash, Charge, Skull Bash, all to avoid stuff and get back on target in less time than any other melee.

6. What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your dps class and why?
I'm not sure I should get me started on this one, so I'll try to be brief, and I'll most likely fail.
Feral Charge doesn't work half the time.
Positional requirements for dps messes with things in pretty much every fight. Shred still only being useable from the back is acceptable, if only they'd design any fight with that, and with melee in mind.
We have to stand in melee range. That's a serious drawback, and you can't not agree, because you would be wrong.
Our core mechanic, bleeds, is nerfed over and over, due to it being too good in PvP. This makes our Mastery undervalued, and gear itemization wonky and/or trivial.

Ok, on the whole I'd say PvP is our biggest weakness. Not that we are bad in PvP, since I don't know anything about that. PvP balancing messes with PvE, and I'm sorry PvPers, but I don't care that PvE ruins it for you. It's a PvE game, learn to live with it, or don't.

7. In a raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best dps assignment for you?
Sticking to the boss, focused bursts of aoe. Not interrupting. I would love to interrupt if I had Wind Shear, and when I play my shaman I always volunteer for Kick-duty, but as a feral it costs me 1/4 of my total max of resources, and I can definitely spare that if need be, but all other classes can do it cheaper and/or with a smaller dps loss.

8. What dps class do you enjoy dpsing with most and why?
This is a question that could simply be answered with "All that give me buffs", but a more interesting angle would be those that change my fighting style in the most positive ways.
I'd go with Enhancement Shamans then, since they have Healing Rain, that isn't very powerful in itself, but with my 20% increased healing taken, and high mobility (I can stay in the rain and move around to accomodate for other melees easily), I can use it well to keep me topped without too much help from the real healers. Enh Shammies can also switch to semi-big adds without too much hassle and less ramp-up time than me, and I can deal with aoe to cover for them not having any. Awesome tag team.

9. What dps class do you enjoy dpsing with least and why?
I think the most obvious answer, yet again, is "whoever doesn't give me any buffs". To be a little more specific, I could add that whoever also has high temporary aoe burst might be less useful with me in the group, but then again, if they deal with aoe, I'll just stick to the boss.

10. What is your worst habit as a dpser?
Ouch, soul-searching isn't my forte, but I would say that I'm taking too much space.
DPSers are like children, should be seen (on the meters), but not heard. And I make a lot of fuss over positioning, threat and everything in between, and not even half of that is actually relevant for the raid. I want to think that I make this sound worse than it is, but in reality I could probably solve most of these issues silently. Maybe that's not so much a problem as a dpser but from me as a person.

11. What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while dpsing?
Threat. I admit ferals have high burst damage, and that I could hang back a bit, but hanging back isn't fun. It's something I do because I have to, and I don't like those "have to's". They way Cower works is counter intuitive and it doesn't feel like it's actually designed by someone who knows how feral threat works. Hunters don't use their feign anyway, so they could give it to us, I think.

12. Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other dpsers for PvE dpsing?
Ferals seem to be in the middle of the pack. We've never been awesome except briefly at the start of each expansion. We've suffered a lot from being hybrids and Blizzard never really seem to understand how to make us scale with stats to not have us suck at endgame (paladins having the reverse issue, mostly). Right now we're a bit behind some classes in terms of usefulness and dps, but more than good enough for most encounters. We're melee so we suffer from the overall melee hate that is going on in Cata, but we're not alone there. We've definitely been worse off so I shouldn't complain.

13. What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a dpser?
Recount (Deaths, Damage Taken, Damage Done breakdown), World of Logs, also raidbots.com/comparebot to check my logs for what I can do better. I mostly compare myself to other feral druids, then with other melee, and eventually also any other dps (just to weep a bit). I like to analyse which aspect of a fight is best handled by me or another person in the group for example.

14. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your dps class?
That our ratings matter. At the moment you can reforge full Crit and I wouldn't notice on logs. If you would reforge as far away from optimal setup as possible, it would still be differences so small that they are within standard deviation of a max reforge. Blizzard seem to be on the year long misconception that feral bears have free access to druid utilities like Innervate, Tranquility and Combat Res, and also generally over value our possibilities to self heal. All those tools aint that good.

15. What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new dpsers of your class to learn?
Uptime. The rotations are simple enough, but it seems some people who play Feral forget to use our biggest strength, and often end up doing shit dps and go tanking instead (I like to think most feral bears are failed feral cats). Finding skilled feral dps is like finding a gnome in a toy shop. Over the six years I've spent playing feral I've encountered perhaps three druids as dedicated to dpsing as me, that they actually got passed the learning curve and got really good. I don't think many people choose feral cat as their first mains, and when they jump on it from after having tried something else, it just comes out as too much hassle.

16. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a dps player?
I've been playing this role for several years now, so my lowest level is fairly decent. I can have a really bad day and still perform well.
My weakness is that I dps from the bottom of my energy pool, rather than from the middle. This makes me less flexible sometimes, if I have to switch targets and interrupt. But it's so comfy! I can zone out for 3 seconds and still not cap out energy.

17. Haste, Crit or Mastery, and why?
/cointoss
Doesn't matter.
I'll probably get some Hit and Expertise when I can be bothered. Always nice to not have to hear that *CONK* sound from parries as often, or to miss a Rip three times in a row.
And yes, I can't get parried from the back, but many bosses require me to dps from the front, or at least within the 240 degrees that is considered Shreddable on some bosses in Firelands but where I still might get parried.

18. What dps class do you feel you understand least?
I think I have a general grasp of how all dps classes work, but I think the one I would do worst on if I just logged in to a max level toon and started playing, would be DK. I've only ever played one a couple of levels and then I got my ass handed to me in pvp by a two levels lower DK. This was back in the days when Blood was a dps spec, but still. It threw me off then, and since I am slow with trying new things (still going strong with my feral druid after six years) I just never got around to it again. Rogues and warriors are similar to how druids work, but DKs differ more, so that's why I probably wasn't very good at it.

19. What add-ons or macros do you think are the most important, if any, to aid you in dpsing?
Making all abilities macros, with /startattack in them. That's most important for questing and such, but starting to swing away while waiting for Energy to come up is also important. Macroing trinkets and cooldowns together so that you can pop as many cooldowns as efficiently as possible is also a good idea.
I also use Ovale to help me with rotations when there's too much going on to be able to fully focus on my skills, so I lean on it to gain environmental awareness. Very useful. Good old DBM has saved me from certain death a couple of times, and we all know there is nothing more devastating to your dps output than not dealing damage. Because you're dead.

20. Do you strive primarily for balance between your stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Answered in 17.

5x2 Project for Feral Druids

While writing my own suggestion for the 5x2 Project, aimed at healing priests, druids, paladins and shamans, I also managed to convince Love to give it a go for the Feral druid cat. If you want to know more about the project in general I suggest you check out my original post on the matter. As with my suggestion, we've both tried to keep within the limits of the project rather than making a perfectly efficient solution - because of this there might be some added keys or other key choices that would suit you better, but this is the core of it. Any extras can of course be added as they suit your playstyle and needs.

Cat DPS. (With Bear capabilities)
These keybindings will be complicated to learn, but very easy to use. All should be within reach without having to move your hands or stretch your fingers. The goal is for this feral to utilize its skills to their full potential and be as useful as it can be to his raid, and to feel that it is pulling its weight. 5 keys, WASD, space and Shift as a modifier will be used on the keyboard, on the mouse I will assume two fingers to be working fully for use of left, right, middle and scroll backwards and forward. These keys, while used in combinations will give you access to pretty much all skills you could ever need.
It will make use of a couple of macros and a few addons, all to reduce the amount of keys used mid combat.

NOTES!

• This setup does require some sort of UI addon or some clever usage of mouse over macros. Suggestions for UI addons are Vuhdo, Clique+Grid or Healbot. Here is a good guide to get you started on that. And here is a good post about some Feral Druid specific macros. If you have any questions about a specific macro mentioned in this post, just ask!
• I've bound E, which means you could probably make use of Q which is about equally accessible. But since it is out of the limits of this project I've not included it for this suggestion.
• I've combined Tiger's Fury and Berserk into one key. Note that even if you always want to use Tiger's Fury with Berserk, you don't always want to use Berserk with Tiger's Fury. Therefore, if you really want to maximize your dps, you can keep TF clickable on your bars if you know you'll get into a part of the fight you'd want to save your Berserk for, like Bloodlust.
• All the healing skills will end up on your caster form bar. This guide does not include a suggestion on how to bind those, but you can check out my healing keybinding guide for some inspiration"

I will skip:
Cower: If you don't want to use 30+ keybindings you'll never get all the skills that have some potential value, and this is one such skill. If you want to go all out from the start it could possibly be good, but just give the tank 5 seconds and you wont catch up on threat in any case. You'll reach 99.9% of your max damage without it.
Claw: Old skill that isn't used at all anylonger (as it is replaced by Mangle at level 10).
CC like Hibernate, Nature's Grasp, Soothe and Cyclone: Even in dungeons these are rarely used mid combat (except Nature's Grasp). Since key sacrifices has to be made somewhere, I've chosen these among others.
Enrage: Macro this to be used with one of your most used skills, like Mangle. You can still cast it before combat as the macro will use Enrage when you press Mangle whether you're hitting something or not.
Faerie Fire Feral: Only used on bosses, and then only every 5 minutes. Put it on your bars and click it while you run.
Maim: The good old stun, very rarely used in a raiding or instancing environment, since it was mainly used as an interrupt and we now have Skull Bash to do that.
Pounce: Bad opener for pve dps, therefore rarely used.
Prowl: Only used out of combat and can therefore safely be clicked. If you happen to quest a lot you could bind it to a key which is used less in solo play, like Tranquility.
Remove Corruption: Since this skill needs you to be in caster form to be used, I suggest you bind it on 1-4 on those bars (along with some healing skills)
Stampeding Roar: As Wowpedia puts it: "This ability is widely regarded as Blizzard's idea of a joke because no practical use has been found for it." While this isn't completely true, it's still not useful enough to warrant its own keybinding. The few situations you might need this (spreading after Blackout on V&T, quick positioning as bear tank), you can click it.
Travel Form: Only 10% faster and you lose all extra healing taken from Nurturing Instincts.

Middle mouse-Cat Form
Shift Middle-Bear Form

Cat:
1-Mangle
Shift1-Shred
2-Rake
Shift2-Rip
3-Ferocious Bite
Shift3-Savage Roar
4-Ravage
Shift4-Berserk with Tiger's Fury macrod into it

Bear form:
1-Mangle (with Enrage macro)
Shift1-Demoralizing Roar
2-Lacerate
Shift2-Bash
3-Maul
Shift3-Frenzied Regeneration
4-Growl
Shift4-Challenging Roar

Multi:
E-Feral Charge
ShiftE-Skull Bash
ShiftScroll Up Once-Barkskin (castsequence)
ShiftScroll Up Twice-Survival Instincts
ShiftScroll Down for Swipe (with Thrash macrod before it in Bear Form)
ShiftScroll Down on friendly target for Tranquility (via Vuhdo or similar addon)
Shift-Left click dead chars portrait to cres (out of combat it will do normal Revive on dead player) (via Vuhdo or similar addon)
Shift-Right click alive chars portrait with mana pool for Innervate (Via vuhdo or healbot)

Blizzard hates melee

I feel the need to vent some nerdrage. And what better place to do it than the vast expanses of internet, where no one can hear me scream anyway? This time I thought I would aim my fuming angers at the way melee is being treated in WoW. This might seem odd since I main a healing priest, probably as far from meleeing as you could possibly get (I did get a killing blow on a player with my staff in a BG once though, kapow!). But second in line is my enhancement shaman, and the more I play it, the more I realize that Blizzard are treating melee really unfairly. They must hate us.

You don't have to be a genious or play a melee class to realize this however. Melee all over the place made sad faces when the world first kill of heroic Ascendant Council was made without any melee at all. Why? Because the fight was too difficult with all those melee around, and they only died anyway. In my guild we usually joke about how all the melee always die and how worthless they are, it's something of a going war between casters and melee. In Wrath this was funny, because when melee died it was because they were bad. In Cataclysm however, they die because of how the fights are designed. It made me think - why do we choose melee for our raids anyway? It's not because of their awesome dps, because right now there are plenty of ranged that outperform most melee (mages, shadow priests, locks). I can think of one really good reason - interrupts. Most ranged don't have good interrupts, elemental shamans are probably the only ones with an interrupt that doesn't have a cooldown that takes half a lifetime, and all interrupts require ranged to stop their casting. Oh how troublesome! But how many melee do you need for some interrupting? Not very many.

There are so many reasons for why melee are being penalized more than ranged;

1. Many fights require people to spread out, melee having naturally alot more trouble doing this than ranged since they all need to be close to a specific point in the room (most often the boss) to be able to deal damage. In some cases the boss (target) is big enough to allow melee to spread out more easily, but never even close enough to the amount of area ranged have to spread out in. On tougher fights this will make people avoid taking too many melee to the raid because the damage will be too tough to handle (this is one of the reasons they didn't bring melee to hc AC).
2. The area in which a melee can do damage is significantly smaller than the area in which a ranged can do damage. Melee range in which melee do most of their damage is about one fourth of the range in which most ranged do their damage, and that's just taking one axis into account. If you take the abovementioned issue into account we have to start counting into pi and since I can barely count my  own fingers I will leave it at saying that ranged have close to over 9000 times more area in which they can deal damage. The small working area of melee makes it alot more difficult to find a suitable area to deal damage from when the room is filled with "bad stuff on the ground" or other things to move from.
3. Further enclosing the work area for melee is the fact that they do alot better damage when standing behind their target than just anywhere around it, like ranged can do. On some fights you're even required to stand in front of the target (red phase Maloriak), which changes nothing for ranged but gimps melee dps. 
4. Having a small working area also means switching targets takes ages as compared to ranged. Whereas a target switch for a ranged takes half a second, for melee there is all the travel time inbetween to account for as well.
5. Not being able to attack several targets that are standing farther apart than melee range, without loads of travel time inbetween, means there is no such thing as multi-dotting as melee. All their damage has to be done to one target, which naturally has to be less good than when you can multiply your damage by attacking several targets simultaneously.
6. Standing in melee range means not seeing jack shit, and all tanks can vouch for this as well (in fact they probably suffer alot more from this issue than melee). Yet again, alot of bosses are large enough, or have footplates large enough to allow melee to stand somewhat away from their target, but still nowhere close to the comfy oversight of the room that ranged have.
7. Ranged used to be bad at moving around and doing damage, something that melee had less problems with. This was a factor that balanced the two with eachother. Not so anymore, as most ranged have gotten tools to allow them to deal good damage (albeit not best damage) while moving around.
8. Alot of encounters require the dps to handle targets which should be avoided in close combat. Larvas on Magmaw, Blood on Cho'gall and adds on heroic Valiona & Theralion to mention a couple of examples. 
9. Without range you can't deal any damage to Nefarian in phase 2 or Atramedes in Air phase. This isn't the end of the world because you can still complete the encounters but the point is that there is no equivalent for range, ie they can't deal damage during an entire phase of a boss. This further penalizes a raid that decides to go with alot of melee.

 Blizzard used to be pretty good at leveling the issues of each dps type, making it so that they had about equal amounts of strength and weaknesses. But in Cataclysm they have removed alot of what made ranged more difficult, like running and dpsing, limited resources (mana) and somewhat less survivability. Only to mages is mana something of concern, hunters don't even have mana anymore! Most of the ranged have, as mentioned, gotten tools to allow them run and dps and all ranged have fairly good survivability (better than melee nowadays tbh). I'm not saying that ranged dps is a cakewalk (or am I?), but right now the only thing that makes ranged more difficult than melee in raids is that they often have to take care of adds where melee don't have to. But that is only because melee aren't good enough to take care of it. It is time to include more fights that require melee (without interrupts, and please no Blackwing Lair solutions) and that penalizes ranged more.

How to use Combat Loggers - Damage Done & Dps

I got a mail from Florian, suggesting to do a post on how to understand log information. I thought it was a splendid idea since logs are something I myself use alot to learn more about my own, and other peoples performance, and that I also often get questions about. Therefore I thought I'd make a series of posts on how to decipher the information gathered by various combat log loggers. I myself use Recount, and therefore this guide will be based on that addon - but other addons such as Skada (which means "damage" in swedish by the way) or Worldoflogs work in the same way and will provide the same type of information. Note however that they don't necessarily record the same amounts, for instance does it seem like Skada accounts for more absorbs from disc healing than recount does. So the numbers might differ, but the functions are the same.
The question I will try to answer for these posts are;
What kind of information does a combat logger provide and how can I use it to improve my (or others) performance?

First out is the most common used mode of combat loggers -  the damage done and dps modes.

Damage Done
A common mistake made by people who use these kind of loggers is to assume that being on top of damage done (or healing done, which I will discuss in another post) means you're doing it right. It is true that being on top, or high on that list, is an indicator that you're doing something good, but as we will soon see there are a million reasons for why someone outperforms someone else on these meters, and the answer isn't always "because he is a better player".

This is an example of the Recount window. Name, damage done (dps, % of total). Highest dps doesn't equal highest damage done.

When looking at the damage done meters you can with a glance see who is doing the most total damage on the current fight (or overall). This is helpful because dealing damage is ultimately the way to achieve your goal, which in WoW almost exclusively is to kill something. What you can say about the ones on top of these meters is that they're at least not slacking. But are they necessarily doing a better job than anyone else? Here are some things to think about when trying to decipher Damage Done information (not taking into account gear differences between players);

Class differences
It's a good thing that classes differ in WoW, but it also means that each class has their strength and their weaknesses. Even if one assumes that, at least in a raiding environment, people are playing the specs that is the strongest for their class, there will be some classes that simply are better than others. This will never change, there will always be a couple of classes that overall do more damage than others. When writing this survival hunters, unholy death knights and affliction/destruction warlocks are among the classes that deal the most damage right now. This can change from one patch to the next, and keeping an eye on this is good if you want to understand some of the information from a combat logger. By knowing about these differences you can also assign dpsers to the right positions. For instance some dpsers deal better aoe damage, some better point damage. Some are more punished by constant target switching (like combo point users), and some less. All these things factor in for who in the end will do the best damage.

Fight differences
Before you go off yelling at someone for being so low on damage, take a moment to assess the fight you've just done. In what way does it allow the players to do their part? Some fights require melee to run around alot, which of course will make it difficult for them to do damage on the boss. Or a fight requires for some people to use continous cc. Even if doing damage is a big part of what dpsers are supposed to do in a fight, there are tons of other things they might have to do as well. The goal of the fight is ultimately to kill the boss, this isn't always (actually quite rarely) achieved by pure damage. Often there are other things required by players that will take their attention from doing damage. A hunter who has to kite adds or a dpser who has to step in and do some emergency healing are a few examples. All dps classes have the possibility to do other things in a fight than damage. If someone is low on damage done, you should take a moment to think about what that player might have done in the fight besides dpsing, but that was still necessary and beneficial to the fight as a whole. For the vast majority of fights you actually want a dpser who can do other stuff than dps rather than someone who does great damage but can't cc/kite/avoid fire.

Comparing Players
The only good way to compare two players are when they happen to play the same spec and the same class. Even then you have to take the above into account, since one of those two might be doing something else than dpsing, because he has to! They don't have to play the exact same spec however, instead if they don't and you notice that the one is dealing less damage than the other, you have grounds for discussing his choice of spec, when the other might work better.

Hitting the right target

One of the best way to use the Damage Done feature, at least in Recount, is that it will tell you exactly what targets a player had. This is great, because there are fights where you want people to hit, or not to hit, certain targets. If those targets die too slow or die too fast (depending on what you want) you can easily check who wasn't doing their job. A great example is when ranged are supposed to kill adds in an encounter. If the adds die too slowly, you might first check if all ranged actually help out, before you draw the conclusion that your ranged damage is too low and take extra help from melee.

Two fire mages in a raid, the one on the right dealing slightly more damage. Can you see a difference in skill usage?

Skill Usage
If you've taken the above into account and still feel like someone is low on damage done, you've got a reason to dig a little deeper. The best way to do this is by checking what skills the player has used and see if they seem to actually know how to play their class as good as possible. By checking the players top 5 damage abilities you get a good insight in how that player seems to play their class. If you happen to have two players who play the same class and spec and that were supposed to do the same things during a fight, you can compare their skill usage to try to find out what the one is doing better than the other. That way you have a great foundation to discuss why the less good player is playing the way he does. "Oh you're using this skill alot more than the other guy, why is that?" or "Would it perhaps work better if you tried to use this skill more and that skill less?" and so on.
This is also a good way to see how tanks are using their skills. If a tank is doing bad threat, you can check which skills they use to evaluate what they might have to change in order to do better.
You can also check how efficient damage dealing items work, like trinkets or bombs.

DPS
One of the questions I got was "what is the practical difference between Damage Done and Dps anyway?". It's a good question actually, and overall people tend to ascribe too much value to dps. The biggest difference between dps and damage done is that the one is interesting before a fight and the other after a fight. Dps only tells you how much damage a player has been able to produce per second for as long as he did damage overall, hence dps - damage per second. The last part is important, because if you manage to do 90.000 damage over 3 seconds you will have some damn impressive dps (30.000). But if you die after those 3 seconds, or in any other way stop doing damage, you will overall only have done those 90.000 damage and that isn't very useful for most boss fights. What you want to know before a fight, when asking about someones dps, is how good they'll probably deal with the fight. Damage done will tell you how good they actually dealt with the fight (taking into account the above factors). You don't need players who can dish out enormous amounts over a short period or players who can dish out a small amount over a long period, you need players who can dish out a decent amount over a regular boss fight period. So in what ways does dps matter?

Most boss fights in raids have an enrage timer. That means that if you have people that deal too low overall damage, you won't manage to kill the boss before he enrages. Even in fights where there are no enrage timers, like heroics, you can't go on forever because the healer will eventually go out of mana. By checking a persons dps, or when people ask for a certain amount of dps for a group, it is because they want to make sure that you can deal enough damage for you all to be able to deal with the encounter. But like I mentioned, all the dps in the world isn't worth anything if you can't deal it for the full duration of the fight. What people want to know is your average dps, because it tells alot about your average damage done, which ultimately is what they're after. All classes have their highs and lows in dps, when using cooldowns or when having to move from fire things will go up and down. Telling people about your dps in an optimal situation might allow them to assess how much damage you can deal in a regular fight situation, which is far from optimal. But again, your dps isn't worth anything if you die, because you will be low on damage done which almost always is worth more.

There are a few times where a high dps actually does matter alot. Those are the burn phases. There are a couple of bosses that have it, and the old Sarth 3D encounter is a good example of where being able to dish out as much damage as possible as fast as possible really was all that mattered in the fight. But these encounters are rare.

If someone is low on Damage Done but high in Dps you can see whether this was due to the player dying (or otherwise failing to deal damage) early in the fight, or because he had to go do other stuff (cc, heal). In this way dps can tell you whether there is potential in a player or not because someone with very low dps will almost always deal less damage overall as well. So again, you want to know that the player can hold a good average dps, which tells you that he will deal a decent amount of damage while also dealing with other parts of the fight.

That concludes this part of the series!