Shifting Perspectives: How top feral cats provide essential value to their guilds
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!
You finally did it. On your last Raid Finder run, you finally outrolled that silly heroic-geared rogue who kept auctioning gear you could use and completed your four-piece tier 13 set. An extra Ravage every 30 seconds! Free damage! Awesome!
Take another look. Guess what? It's the other part of that set bonus that's really special. Don't get me wrong, I love Ravage to death (Tendonnnnn!!), but it's just a bit of extra damage. Raidwide Frenzied Regeneration, in contrast, is so powerful that progression guilds regularly work it into their cooldown rotations. In some isolated cases, it may allow you to run with one less healer than normal.
Why is it so powerful? Two reasons. First, it's the only one of the four raid-wide tank cooldowns granted by four-piece tier 13 set bonuses that's accessible to a DPS class. (Well, theoretically, DPS plate-wearers could get it, but they'd take a large hit to their DPS from having to wear tank gear. It's effectively a free bonus for feral DPSers, since they share gear with feral tanks. This is exhibit A for why the feral tree is being split in Mists.)
Second, it's the most powerful raid-wide cooldown in the game at this point. Other cooldowns come close in strength, such as Power Word: Barrier, but none come close in duration. It can't stop damage spikes, true -- but assuming you can take it, it'll help your healers patch things back up ASAP and keep them patched up for a good, long time.
Let's take a closer look at how it works and how to use it effectively. First, the tooltip.
Frenzied Regeneration 3-minute cooldown, requires Bear Form. Increases maximum health by 30%, increases health to 30% (if below that value) and converts up to 10 Rage per second for health for 20 seconds. Each point of Rage is converted into 0.30% of max health.
Now, in and of itself, this isn't too special, especially because the ability was nerfed in a quiet hotfix. While you get the 30% health increase and the 3% heal per second, your raid will only get a 15% health increase and a 0.75% heal per second. That's still decent, as you'll be pumping out 40k HPS (in a 25-man raid), but the big issue is the rage requirement. No rage means no heals, for you or your raid. For a tank, this isn't a problem as they'll have a steady rage income, but trying to use this as a DPS is near impossible. Thankfully, there's the glyph.
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration When Frenzied Regeneration is active, healing effects on you are 30% more powerful, but you no longer convert rage into health.
Guess what? That +30% healing effect granted by the glyph is shared, is not reduced like the heals per second are, and stays active for everyone even if you shift out of Bear (though you lose it for yourself). Let me repeat that. You have the best raid cooldown in the game (+30% healing and +15% HP for 20 seconds), and it's only two GCDs away. If you're not already using this, you should be, ASAP. It's easy as pie!
Well, almost. Remember, this is supposed to be tank-only. When you shift into Bear Form, you get a debuff that prevents your Frenzied Regeneration from working raid-wide for 15 seconds. This is fine, though; it takes this ability from no-brainer to planning-required, which is more interesting. Many fights have moments where you're not DPSing anyway, so you can wait for some or all of those 15 seconds without enduring a penalty. For others, though, it becomes a judgment call whether your raid needs the DPS or healing more.
Mass Regeneration in Dragon Soul
Morchok His Black Blood of the Earth phases last 15 seconds, during which you don't do anything useful anyway. Pop it and help your healers get through that first Stomp (especially sub-20%).
Yor'sahj This is the one fight this tier where an unglyphed Frenzied Regeneration is helpful. If your healers are struggling with Deep Corruption, then this adds an extra method of healing that won't add any stacks. However, if your healers are having trouble with the pure raid damage (typically a red/yellow combo on normal, black/red/yellow on heroic), stick with the glyphed version.
Zon'ozz This is a DPS race, so I would not recommend shifting out here unless you're off tanking anyway for the Black Blood phase.
Hagara Here, I'll shift to Bear as Hagara is entering her lightning phase, since you typically don't need a ton of DPS on the elemental. This enables me to pop Frenzied Regeneration as people are chaining the lightning, which helps counteract Lightning Storm and Storm Pillars.
Ultraxion This is where it gets cool. Due to the Last Defender of Azeroth buff, your Frenzied Regeneration now lasts for 40 seconds, with a 90-second cooldown. With two ferals, you can have a near 90% uptime, though it's typically not necessary. It's most helpful near the end of the fight, obviously. If you're tanking, unglyph FR and enjoy leading the healing meters. :)
Warmaster Blackhorn Stick with DPS here; no real good opportunity to go Bear.
Spine of Deathwing Obviously, your focus is going to be burning the Tendons down. Personally, I like going Bear immediately after a Tendon dies in order to pop Frenzied Regeneration as we're starting our roll, but it's not necessary.
Madness of Deathwing This fight is another judgement call. There are a couple of spots where it really comes in handy (phase 2 at sub-10%, Burning Tentacles on the fourth platform), but having extra DPS also comes in handy, so see what works best for your raid.
Looking for the latest and greatest in feral cat druid guides? Shifting Perspectives has the answers! Check out our guide to soloing instances and raids, as well as our top gear recommendations and feral guides to the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple and the Fall of Deathwing.
