Loving Cat myself. I have done a few things different to yourself. In regards to Natures Swiftness, I took it because it does a nice big free heal and most importantly it only has a minute cool down, which is half the cool down on renewal and still does a pretty big heal. Obviously as we start to get more and more life, Renewal gets a bit more attractive.
My other difference is that I took Typhoon as I found that once I had popped a 5 point bleed on the mob, I could typhoon them away, start on another mob and the first mob would be dead by the time they got back to me. Not to every ones taste I imagine but it makes me smile.

Anyway, I’m also loving it my kitty.

I’ve got to admit, I find myself hitting Mangle before starting into Shreds, too, even when running with a group, with all the baddies facing the tank and their backs to me. Habits do die hard. I’ve started overcoming it by consciously reminding myself before every fight, that Shred now benefits from bleeds instead of a Mangle debuff. Sometimes that’s enough to help me replace that priming Mangle with a Rake.

I actually like Nature’s Swiftness. I have found often enough, especially when I was running the Theramore scenario with non-healers, that I wanted a quick heal (for me or them) and didn’t have a Predatory Swiftness proc. I certainly don’t think NS a must-have talent. But I like it.

I’ll second (third? fourth?) that with Glyph of Savage Roar, Ravage is always (at least in PvE) the best opening move. Good enough that you don’t want to open with a stealth breaking Faerie Fire. Ravage does over 750% base damage man! 975% with Savage Roar up! With +40% crit chance! It’s a big, big deal.

Another reason I like the Glyph of Savage Roar is that when you hit those first five combo points, if you use them on a Savage Roar, (1) it means you applied five combo points without the Roar buff up and (2) you’ve effectively delayed how quickly you get off a damaging finishing move. Just fighting solo dudes in the wild, putting those first five combo points into a Ferocious Bite (all with a 30% Roar buff, thanks to the glyph) usually means the fight is over just like that. Starting with a 0-point Roar, 12 seconds is enough to get 5 combo points, Rip or Bite and either hit another 0-point Roar or sometimes even get another combo point or three and Roar again, depending on how many extra combo points I procced off crits. The only time we need a five point Roar is on boss fights.

What that does mean is that I’ve deprioritized Faerie Fire to the point that it’s almost an afterthought. Other than boss fights, things die faster than I can get it applied. Which, I know, not applying the armor reduction debuff makes me sound bad. But dudes are already dead man! Sometimes doing all the cool things just slows you down.

I also think we need to change a little bit how we think as cats. The conventional wisdom is to get 5 combo points so you can Rip, right? We really should be trying to reach 5 combo points so we can Ferocious Bite. Then we Rip when (1) Rip isn’t already active and (2) the target has the health pool to support it. As long as you keep (1) in mind, the result is the same as conventional wisdom suggests it should be . . . but (2) means that by consciously trying to Bite we won’t waste combo points as often on targets where a Ferocious Bite would actually end the fight. Especially good to keep in mind now that Ferocious Bite renews Rip duration on targets under 25% health.

That thought process also makes us adjust how we prioritize stats. Conventional wisdom says Mastery > Crit. Which makes sense if the point is to apply Rip. However, if the point is to Ferocious Bite, then more Crit means faster combo points means more opportunities to Bite. That mechanic, crits = combo points = extra Bites, makes it harder to math out just how valuable crit is, but I’ve always been happy with it.

Me, I use the glyph of savage roar (only-costs-energy 0 combo point savage roar for 12 seconds), which works in stealth. Roar, pounce, faerie fire, mangle, rake, shred (Macroed to tiger’s fury, so if it’s up it goes off, letting me shred in any position) until 5 points then rip. Continue shredding until tiger’s fury wears off, and mangle. I have 4 pieces of the t13, the 2pc of which gives you ‘ferocious bite renews rip at 60% or less’ which is a HUGE bonus, and the reason I haven’t replaced any of my core gear yet, so every time I hit five points, or if rip is starting to wear off (I was stunned, or had to boogie out of an AOE / OwItHurts type move and didn’t get back in time) ferocious bite at whatever just to renew rip. I didn’t realize until yesterday that several of the previously bear/cat only things are now ‘in forms’, and I can use thrash. (If it was usable before, I r teh bad durid.)

Power auras, at least the ‘temporary fix for 5.0.4′ one I have doesn’t come with any built in auras, but google makes with the predone ones pretty easily. I just set it up to show a red cross with a timer and do a sonar ding when predatory swiftness procs, because I tend to over-focus on the center of the screen and my button bars, and miss the relatively tiny buff icon. If anyone wants my aura export, feel free to ask, but it’s pretty easy to noodle out yourself.

I beat down Urobi (And lawdy, a bunch of other ones… ) and plop goes the staff and some cloth pants. My guild is of the opinion that it’s the game mocking me because I refuse to go any sort of caster druid; almost all the leather drops I get are int/spirit, and while the staff is very, very nice… it replaces my beloved firekitteh staff that I worked my furry little behind off to get. It’s just too good to not use, and now I’m not a firecat, which I dearly loved. I am sadness.

As to clicking on buttons, I use a combination. 1-6 are in easy reach of my left paw, near the movement keys, and those get the most used skills. Everything else I click on aside from the ‘ohcrap’ stuff, which is generally on ctrl-spacebar, and the slightly less important ‘ohpoop’ which is alt-spacebar. Those are relatively easy to hit left handed. The mouse has 15 buttons on it (The Steelseries Cataclysm mouse, which is very, very nice as well, if slightly expensive… expecting them to come out with a panda themed one shortly) but honestly, aside from healing I haven’t used most of them. Cat stuff moves so fast that I just can’t keep it up with the mouse as well as the keyboard.

Sadly, I’ve neglected my bear side (I’m dual spec cat/bear (screw ‘feral’ and ‘guardian’. :P ) while leveling. I will remedy this as soon as possible… although I never get to use it. Our guild tanks are very happy being tanks, and I can out DPS our level 90 mage GM at 87, so… :D

I run Nature’s Swiftness because I pvp with it, and at 85 it was generally healing more than renewal but I’m not sure it’s scaling as well. But for PvP it is more useful because I can use it for instance CC as well. I’ve had Predatory Swiftness for an age (because it was always great in PvP), but having both is a great plus. But yes – I need my Weak Aura for it because there isn’t any indicator apart from the buff in your list of buffs. Mine comes up with a big green ‘POWER’ … although it has now evolved into a POWER that fades as the buff duration runs out.

Basically I try and take down one thing at a time, so my ‘rotation’ as such is Stealth -> Glyph of Savage Roar -> Ravage -> FFF -> Rake -> Mangle x times -> Rip/FB. Basically half the time against a single mob I’ll just FB because it’ll die before I get there. The one thing I’m not liking about feral these days is it is feeling a lot slower that it used to. Admittedly in my PvP gear I don’t have a lot of haste, and I’m still learning to ‘savage roar before anything’

If I have a couple of mobs then I’ll usually FFF -> Rake -> Rip on the first then go to town on the second. Although I started out levelling as Boomkin and killing multimobs was so much better, just dot and run and run and run. But I found I couldn’t gather up enough mobs – I don’t think I’d have the problem now I’m over in the Steppes as there are lots of mobs about, and not so many players.

“I haven’t messed around with training dummies, so I have nagging questions like, is there a better DPS boost in the short term hitting Rip on the first Finisher and getting Savage Roar on the second, or is it better the way I’ve been doing it, getting Savage Roar in early?”
-> Glyph SR (it’s not optional at all for kitties!). The 30% boost to all damage is so important it’s the first thing you hit asap.

“And Thrash, IS it a DPS boost to replace one of your early Mangles with a Thrash to get the DoT cooking and reduce incoming damage? The few times I’ve tried, the HUGE energy cost feels like it sucks the guts right out of my rotation.”
Cat thrash is a dps boost on single target if you use it during a clearcast. It’s a dps boost on aoe if the mobs will live 9 seconds or longer.

“And Ravage. If you have Incarnation, as I do, besides looking really cool with armor and stuff, it lets you instantly activate Prowl if you want, it lets you use your prowl-only abilities like getting off a Pounce stun, and use Ravage ignoring positioning requirement for the entire 30 seconds. So, how much more of a DPS boost is getting 30 seconds of Ravages off? Am I supposed to use Incarnation as a PvP ability, Pouncing on opponents to stun them? For straight PvE fights, how does Ravage compare to Shred?”
Ravage > shred whenever you can. It does higher dps than shred, with only 5% more energy cost.

Come to the fluid druid forums (run by Alaron)! The cat community is awesome and has taught me so much :) http://fluiddruid.net/forum/

So now I need to find one of these tome of the clear mind so I can change my cats spec…

My cat rotation is pretty much the same as yours except I always forget to get Savage Roar up… in longer fights I do but the shorter ones ugh! I can never get it up.

I just have to gear up and get ready for heroics and also get ready for tanking…

Now, for a Bear tank, NS for that Rebirth in forms or the HT self-heal is pretty damn cool.