Melee DPS
This section will cover melee DPS (i.e., cat form) as completely as I can: theory, practice, talents, and gear. This section is mostly my opinion. Obviously I think I’m right (otherwise it wouldn’t be my opinion) but remember that I am not the All-Knowing Cat God of DPS.

Cat Theory: Ripping Faces Without Getting Noticed
Before we start, we need to be clear on what the job of a DPS class is. It is not to do as much DPS as humanly possible. That’s easy. The job of a DPS class is to do as much damage as possible without pulling aggro. That’s hard.

What this means is that good DPS pays attention to the fight, and to any add-ons available to help (such as Omen, my threat meter of choice). The skill of a DPS player is measured not by how much damage he did overall, and not by how much damage per second he did, but by whether he got as close as he could to the threat cap without going over it.

Imagine a tank who has generated 1000 threat on a mob, and two DPSers. DPSer A has an innate ability that reduces all base threat he generates by 29% (as cats do). DPSer B does not have any threat modifiers at all. Both are melee DPS, and so subject to the 10% rule (see Part 2 of this guide).

DPSer A generates 1300 threat on the mob in five seconds (260 DPS).
DPSer B generates 1099 threat on the mob in five seconds (220 DPS).
Who did better?

The answer is DPSer B. Even though he did 40 less DPS than A, if he had generated 1 more point of threat he would have pulled aggro. He did the very best damage he could safely do under the circumstances. DPSer A, on the other hand, stopped 92 threat away from pulling aggro. That’s extra damage he could have safely dealt, but didn’t. And of course it would be even worse if DPSer A generated 1400 threat on the mob in 5 seconds (400 DPS) – sure he did 400 DPS, but he also just pulled aggro.

Again, A may have helped his party more (he did more damage), but he helped less than he could have. B helped less but did the absolute best he could do, given his class and spec. B would not be doing anybody any favors if he decided to do more damage (and thus pull aggro) to be more "helpful." That's not helpful, it's dumb.

Of course in real life you’d have to be extraordinarily gutsy to go over 100% of the tank’s threat, even though technically you can. Most DPS stops at 90% of the tank’s threat, just to be safe. But the point is that good DPS knows how to do maximum safe damage and never pulls aggro.

Remember: at best, DPS that pulls aggro wastes healer time and mana (and possibly messes up his own rotation). At worst, DPS that pulls aggro dies. And as we all know, you do 0 DPS when you’re dead.

Cat Theory: Efficient Face Ripping
Like all druid forms, cat form is relatively simple in that it doesn’t have a lot of buttons to choose among. However, we still want to do the best DPS that we can.

A cat’s resource is energy. That’s obvious, but we need to think about resource as an energy that is expended, even though it replenishes very quickly. Think about it: we autoattack for a given amount of DPS, and we gain energy at a fixed rate. How do we increase our DPS? By using the abilities that do the most damage per energy. So which abilities are those? Well, let’s look at them, using level 70 values and assuming a feral build and the Mangle debuff (+30% damage to all bleeds):

1.
Claw: 192 damage, 40 energy: 4.8 DPE
2.
Rake: 241.8 damage + 9.1% of AP, 35 energy: 6.9 + 0.26% AP DPE
3.
Mangle: 352 damage + 11% of AP, 40 energy: 8.8 + 0.27% AP DPE
4.
Shred: 640.9 damage +21% of AP, 42 energy: 15.3 + 0.50% AP DPE
5.
4 CP Rip: 1162.2 damage + 31% of AP, 30 energy: 38.8 + 1.03% AP DPE
6.
5 CP Ferocious Bite @ 40 energy: 972 damage + 15% of AP, 40 energy: 24.3 + 0.38% AP DPE

As you can see, no matter what your attack power is, a cat’s most efficient attacks are Mangle, Shred, and Rip. What does this mean? To maximize DPS, NEVER use anything other than Mangle, Shred, or Rip. Obviously Shred is more efficient than Mangle by far, so a cat’s DPS rotation for all mobs in all instances is:

1.
Mangle if the mob doesn’t have the debuff
2.
Shred to 4 CP*
3.
Rip if Rip is not on the mob

Doesn’t matter if the mob is bleedable or not, that’s the way to maximize your DPS. If a mob is bleed-immune, just cut out step #3 and waste the combo points. Do not use Ferocious Bite. Why? See below.

What’s so bad about Ferocious Bite? We all like seeing big sexy FB crits, but as you can see from the numbers above a 5-point FB isn’t even close to even a 4-point Rip. But that’s not the main point. Remember that our main attack is Shred, which costs 42 energy. But we gain energy in ticks of 20. So here’s what happens if you use Ferocious Bite, starting from 100 energy:

1.
Mangle
2.
Spam Shred to 5 CP
3.
Ferocious Bite ==> we now have 0 energy
4.
Wait 4 seconds ==> we now have 40 energy (can’t start Mangle + Shred combo over yet)
5.
Wait 4 more seconds ==> we now have 80 energy
6.
Mangle ==> we now have 40 energy
7.
Wait 0.5 seconds ==> we now have 60 energy
8.
Shred

In other words, because FB sets your energy back to 0, you have to wait 8.5 seconds after every FB before you can Shred again. If you look at the efficiency numbers again, you’ll see that Ferocious Bite isn’t even that much better than Shred, particularly at high levels of attack power. So the interruption to your Shred cycle just isn’t worth it. Only use Ferocious Bite if you’re fighting the last mob in the pull and FB would actually kill the mob.

* Why Rip at 4 combo points rather than 5? Because Rip uses 6% of your attack power per combo point, up to a maximum of 24%, plus a flat damage boost. So at 3 combo points you're getting 18% of your AP + 696, 4 combo points you're getting 24% of your AP + 894; at 5 combo points you're getting 24% of your AP + 1092 (using the level 70 numbers). In other words, you get more going from 3 combo points to 4 than you get going from 4 combo points to 5. This doesn't mean a 5 CP Rip is bad, just that you should only do it by accident.

There are two ways to think about why. The most commonly stated reason is that you might crit on that fifth combo point, meaning you just "wasted" a combo point. There's some truth to that.

The second, less commonly heard reason is to ask what you're getting for your combo point. Even if you could never crit, you pay 42 energy for one combo point from Shred. The question you have to ask yourself is where you want to put that combo point. Look at the level 70 numbers - in the 5th CP slot, that combo point gets you 198 damage. In the 1st CP slot, it gets you 300 damage plus 6% of your AP. So do you want that combo point in the fifth CP slot or the first? Most cats choose the latter when presented with the question in that way.

Again, 5 combo points aren't bad - if you get to 5 accidentally, that's great. But it shouldn't be your goal to Rip at 5.

Cat Practice: How to Kill Stuff
We’ve now already answered our main question: which buttons do we push in what order? To recap:

1.
Mangle if the mob doesn’t have the debuff
2.
Shred to 4 CP*
3.
Rip if Rip is not on the mob
4.
Do not use Ferocious Bite unless it will finish the pull

Some other tips and tricks:

1.
If you’re lucky enough to be paired with a bear form druid, let him apply Feral Faerie Fire. It’s extra threat that you don’t want and he does. Just be sure to communicate with your bear, so the debuff is up.

2.
Similarly, if you’re DPSing with a bear tank, let him apply Mangle. Mangle(Bear) buffs your Shreds and bleeds just like Mangle(Cat). But Mangle is a bear’s best ability and a cat’s worst. So you can let the bear Mangle for you and you just Shred away.

3.
Cower removes 830.7 threat from a mob if it lands. If you use threat meters, you know that’s not a lot. Moreover, it costs you 20 energy to do it. This means you should not rely on cower to save you if you pull aggro. It isn’t like Vanish or Feign Death, which reduce your threat to 0. Don’t rely on Cower – don’t pull aggro in the first place.

4.
There is one key difference between a rogue and a cat: rogues are a lot more survivable. If a rogue pulls aggro he has all sorts of things he can do to save himself. Cats do not. Don’t pull aggro.

5.
If you have 5/5 Furor, you can make a macro to powershift. Powershifting is the process of instantly going from cat form to cat form, and hence gaining the 40 energy from Furor. To powershift, wait until you have 0 energy, then hit your macro. Here’s the basic macro:

/cast Cat Form

6.
Remember not to refresh your Rip before it expires (the last tick of damage is when the bleed expires). The point is not to keep Rip constantly on the mob, the point is to constantly be getting the maximum damage from the 30 energy it costs to cast Rip. As you get more comfortable with your own timing and latency (and as you get more and more combo points from upping your crit chance) you can learn when to hit the Rip button so that the new Rip starts just after the old Rip expires.

7.
Energy ticks every 2 seconds in cat form whether you need it or not. This means that you can time your initial attack to go off right before an energy tick, even if you're at 100 energy. Doing so means you get an energy tick right after your initial attack, effectively lowering the energy cost of that attack by 20 energy.

8.
The most important thing to a druid's DPS is more energy, which makes abilities like Omen of Clarity and two-piece Tier 4 exceptionally good for sustained DPS. If you get an OoC proc, ideally you'll use it on a Shred, since Shred costs the most energy of the three abilities you're using (this shouldn't be hard, since you also Shred most often). However, it's more important not to interrupt your DPS cycle than to use OoC on a Shred as opposed to a Mangle. If the Mangle debuff is down, go ahead and burn OoC on Mangle.

Cat Talents
A full-on PVE DPS cat build would look like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxGMcfroezioVxhz, with 5 talent points left over to spend wherever you want. If this looks remarkably similar to the full-on PVE tanking build, that’s because it is. Here are the core cat DPS talents:

1.
5/5 Ferocity – anything that reduces the cost of Mangle (and, until you get Mangle, Claw and Shred) means more DPS. Moreover, it’s pretty clear that Blizzard designed the optimal cat DPS rotation around having this talent, so not having it will screw with your energy management something fierce.
2.
3/3 Sharpened Claws – as will become clearer below, cats never have enough crit chance.
3.
2/2 Shredding Attacks – Shred is our main attack in PVE DPS, so it needs to be made cheaper by any means possible. 1/2 Shredding Attacks is useless, but 2/2 SA makes the energy regen numbers click into place.
4.
2/2 Primal Fury – the more combo points you have, the closer you are to keeping Rip up 100% of the time. And Rip, as you know, is by far our most efficient special attack.
5.
5/5 Heart of the Wild – it’s a subtle thing, but this talent is actually the key to our scaling. Not many people know this, but Blizzard actually fixed the scaling issues cats were having in T5 and T6 with this one talent.
6.
1/1 Leader of the Pack – again, you need more crit. I don’t care how much crit you have. It’s not even close to enough.
7.
1/1 Mangle – this ability may be the worst of your big three, but it’s still better than Claw and Rake. And it has the all-important +30% to Shred and bleed damage buff. It’s not our hardest-hitter, but this ability defines the entire cat form.
8.
5/5 Naturalist (honorable mention) – something else not many people know is that, mechanically, cats scale better than any other class in the game (whether our gear is holding us back is another question). This talent is one of the reasons why.
9.
5/5 Predatory Instincts (honorable mention) – cats should have massive amounts of crit chance, and this talent makes all that crit more valuable. It’s also valuable for periodically reducing the inevitable damage melee DPS tends to take.

Cat Gear
Here’s what your various cat stats do for you:

1.
Attack power (from strength, agility, and attack power): autoattack and all abilities hit harder
2.
Crit chance (from agility and crit rating): autoattack, Mangle, and Shred hit harder; Rip is up more often due to more combo points
3.
Hit rating (from hit rating): decreases the chance of all abilities to miss
4.
Expertise (from expertise rating): decreases the chance of all abilities to be dodged and to be parried. Since cats attack from behind, this is exactly equal to hit rating in terms of increasing DPS. Twice as good as hit rating when attacking from the front (e.g., soloing)
5.
Haste (from haste rating): decreases the time between your autoattacks only. People often say this is bad for druids, citing figures like 60% of our DPS coming from excepțional attacks. This is both true and not true. Haste gets better for us the higher our attack power, because the higher our attack power the greater the percentage of our DPS comes from autoattacks. At what point, if any, do you start caring about haste? Don't ask me that. Just go use Tossk's DPS gear calculator.

Unlike tank gear listings, I do believe in DPS gear listings, because the difference between the short-term and long-term analysis (at least in PVE) is very small. Which means I am going to point you to the most complete, most nuanced, most accurate source of cat DPS gear there is: http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksDPSGearMethod. Seriously. Just go there, and use the gear generator. It’s better than anything else available as of January 2008. Certainly better than anything I could tell you. Yes, it's better than Emmerald (because it's customized for you). Yes, it's also slower than Emmerald, and is thus less of a quick-reference guide.

What’s all that text and the big confusing graph at the top of the page? Let me break it down for you:

If you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize attack power and crit chance are complementary stats. The more AP you have, the bigger your crits, and thus the more valuable your crit chance. And a crit is double damage, and regular damage is defined by your AP. So crits essentially make your AP work dublu for you (more than double with 5/5 Predatory Instincts). Thus, the bigger your crit chance, the more extra mileage you get from your AP.

Now think about it for another 30 seconds or so and you’ll realize that if each stat increases the other, there’s got to be some magical balance line where a given amount of extra AP is worth the same (in terms of increasing your overall DPS) as a given amount of extra crit. In fact, there must be a whole bunch of these points, for different amounts of AP or crit. After all, AP and crit each have a “cost” to put on an item. This line would tell you how to get the most bang for your buck. Of course that line would only be valid for a given attack rotation. But cats, as we know by now, only have one attack rotation. But if you could stay at that magical line, you’d be getting the absolute most out of your item points.

The big graph you see on Tossk’s page is a map of the balance line between AP and crit. The way the graph works is this: find your AP and your crit chance on the graph. If that puts you above the line (as it almost certainly does), then you have too much AP for your crit chance – your DPS would be higher if you could take some of the AP on your gear and translate it magically into an equivalent amount of crit. If you’re below the line, the opposite is true: you have too much crit, and not enough AP.

Of course you can’t actually just trade in AP for crit, much as you might want to. What the graph really shows is that the optimum mix of crit and AP for a cat is insanely crit heavy. Think about it: if you have just 2000 AP (which a cat can achieve without a single epic), you ought to have 46.00% crit chance. I don’t know what your crit chance was when you had 2000 AP, but mine was nowhere near 46%.

And what that means is that all cats who can equip feral attack power weapons (which will give you plenty of AP right there) should focus their gear heavily towards agility, which is the most efficient source of extra crit. This is the real reason you will hear cats say “agility >>> all.” It has nothing to do with all the different things agility gives you; it has to do with the fact that you don’t have enough crit.

Aldor vs. Scryer
A word on the choice of the Aldor vs. the Scryers. Neither of the factions provides any gear that can't be replaced, and neither provides any recipes that you absolutely must have, unless your guild dictates it according to some Master Crafter Plan, and can't be persuaded after you copy and paste this section. The one thing they do provide that you can't replace or buy is inscriptions. This means in my opinion, for feral druids especially, that the choice of faction should predominantly be based on the choice the tanking inscriptions, which are more varied than the DPS inscriptions. However, for those of you who are determined to make your choice based on the DPS inscriptions:

The two factions' inscriptions add up to exactly the same amount of item points, so you don't need to worry that one faction has objectively more value in their inscriptions than the other. The only question you need to ask is whether you want your inscription to emphasize critical strike chance or attack power.

If you've read this far, you know that the mathematical answer to that is almost certainly that you don't have enough critical strike chance. For this reason almost all cats should prefer the Scryer inscriptions.

Why almost all? There is a school of PVP thought that goes like this:

1.
PVP is all about crits
2.
Except [high level] PVP is full of people at or near the resilience cap (-25% chance to be critted)
3.
Therefore PVP is no longer all about crits
4.
PVP is all about hitting hard without relying on crits
5.
Therefore PVP is all about armor penetration and attack power

I'm not a PVP expert so I can't really comment on that school of thought. However, if it seems persuasive to you, then you may prefer the Aldor inscriptions for PVP. I don't care how persuasive it seems to you for PVE purposes, though - for PVE you want more crit chance.