Karthis' recent post on his feral raiding spec got me thinking about my spec again. I'd settled into a jack of all trades raid spec: plenty of tank survival, good cat DPS, and Nurturing Instinct for the occasional heal. It plays fine but I'd love to adjust it a bit to get a third point in swipe damage and bring in Infected Wounds.
Ferals just don't quite have enough points to go around. But most of our talents are standalone, not a lot of synergies, so we can mix and match as we want. To help narrow down which cat DPS talents I could do without, I used Toskk's calculator to help figure out how much DPS I get per point in each talent.
Pure Cat DPS talents200 Omen of Clarity: 1 pt = 200 dps
52 Naturalist: 5 pts = 260 dps
27 Predatory Instincts: 3 pts = 80 dps
Bear and Cat DPS talents
80 Berserk: 1 pt = 80 dps
70 King of the Jungle: 3 pts = 210 dps
65 Shredding attacks: 2 pts = 130 dps
17 Ferocity: 5 pts = 85 dps
16 Rend and Tear: 5 pts = 80 dps
15 Improved Mangle: 3 pts = 45 dps
10 Master Shapeshifter: 5 pts = 57 dps (counts Natural Shapeshifter)
40 Heart of the Wild: 5 pts = 200 dps
23 Primal Precision: 2 pts = 45 dps
What does this mean? Consider Shredding Attacks. Toskk's calculator tells me if I put 0 points in it I get 2735 DPS with my current stats. Two points gives me 2865 DPS: 130 more DPS, or about 65 DPS per talent point. This calculation isn't perfect, in particular it's relying on Toskk's model being correct. But it helps a lot.
Hopefully these estimates will give some guidance as to what talents to sacrifice if you need more tanking talents. Those 11 points in Resto to get to Omen of Clarity are very worth it. King of the Jungle is surprisingly nice, too, as is Berserk and Shredding Attacks. Beyond that things go downhill. Rend and Tear is the real disappointment, it really should only take 3 points, although it's so strong for bear DPS it's hard to give up.
Unfortunately looking at this I don't see any room to free up three points. I've already done without Improved Mangle and Master shapeshifter and Rend and Tear is too good for bear DPS. I could drop Nurturing Instinct of course, but I really like that talent. Predatory Instincts looks like the best talent to drop, but I hate to give up even more cat DPS for tank utility and I've grown used to the AoE avoidance. I'm going to try a spec without Rend and Tear and see how that goes. (Update: poorly. Our warriors Thunderclap all the time so Infected Wounds is a waste.)