It’s that time of the patch cycle again where I’m looking at openers. This is a good read as it also has some explanation of general feral mechanics.
Edit 14 Dec 2017: Break the opener below if you get Apex Predator and cast Rake as your last Incarn GCD if you don’t want to use Jungle Stalker. You can choose to manually execute or use a /castsequence up to you.
The TL:DR is that you probably want to use a combination of the following for your opener:
- TF after AF for extra globals inside TF during Incarn
- Jungle Stalker for an extra stealth ability after Incarn for a total of 31 abilities
- Consider using a cast-sequence macro for MoC Builds since there is no RNG in the opener.
- Intra-GCD delays are required for maximising openers and can be inserted consistently using bag items (Bloodtotem War Harness, Lightforged Augment Rune, Mana Divining Stone) or off GCD spells (Equipped Trinket, Dash, Survival Instincts, Skull Bash)
I spent quite a bit of time (2 days for initial build then another day and a half for Jungle Stalker). Initially I went down the route of 3 Rakes, but after considering Jungle Stalker (a non-used buff in PvE) I settled on 4 Rakes with Jungle Stalker Rake to close.
A video was posted (perhaps prematurely) and it is linked further below. I think I am close enough to perfect with this opener, plus it introduces multiple quirks, that I am no longer working on openers.
I have finally settled with the following (use a 1023 character macro addon, I used Macro Toolkit):
/castsequence reset=10 Rake, Savage Roar, Ashamane’s Frenzy(Artifact), Mana Divining Stone, Tiger’s Fury, Horn of Valor, Skull Bash, Incarnation: King of the Jungle, Shred, Rip, Rake, Shred, Shred, Ferocious Bite, Shred, Shred, Shred, Savage Roar, Shred, Shred, Shred, Ferocious Bite, Shred, Rake, Shred, Rip, Shred, Shred, Shred, Ferocious Bite, Shred, Shred, Shred, Ferocious Bite, Shred, Shred, Shred, Tiger’s Fury, Ferocious Bite, Prowl
An in-depth explanation of my 2 November 2017 BS/Inc/SR/MoC + Behemoth/SotA opener is as follows. Note: A disadvantage of this opener is that a parry OR slight delay will require you to readjust your finishers. Also AoE damage taken while stealthed for Jungle Stalker will break your 200% Rake.
The following image is an Excel Map I used to construct the opener. Robosaurus Jungle Stalker Opener
Finisher 1 – Potion, Stealth Rake into Savage Roar
- Getting up a quick Savage Roar is probably a good idea, and we want it before the large ticks of AF. We always want 5CP Rip (1 CP Rip followed by 5CP Rip extend was explored but it doesn’t work out very well), but any CP Savage Roar is passable in the opener.
Finisher 2 – Ashamane’s Frenzy, Mana Divining Stone, Tiger’s Fury, Horn of Valor, Skull Bash, Incarnation: King of the Jungle, Shred, Rip
- This looks quite full. The Mana Divining Stone is to insert a delay between Ashamane’s Frenzy GCD start and Tiger’s Fury, and the Horn of Valor (Augment Rune alternatively) and Skull Bash are to insert a delay after Tiger’s Fury for Incarnation. This delay is required for you to cast Jungle Stalker after using your 30th Ability in Incarnation (Finisher 9)
- Why did I use Tiger’s Fury after Ashamane’s Frenzy?
- Ashamane’s Frenzy is a 15 hit channel with 4 Ticks. The way this particular spell works is that it snapshots in a peculiar manner which allows you to cast Tiger’s Fury slightly after. This image explains it.
- Casting Tiger’s Fury after a Off-GCD after Ashamane’s Frenzy allows you to have an extra ability within the Tiger’s Fury buff. Because Behemoth’s Headdress is used, an extra 0.6s is sufficient. This extra 0.6s PLUS Behemoth’s Headdress extends actually snuggly fits in another finisher, hence an additional THREE abilities are buffed. Without this delay, you cannot give Tiger’s Fury to Finisher 6 (Rip), which would have to be moved back to Finisher 5 without this trick.
Finisher 3 – Rake, Shred, Shred, Ferocious Bite
- This is the last finisher that is affected by Ashamane Frenzy’s 30% Damage Buff. Given the AF Buff, direct damage is the ideal choice for this finisher rather than SR or Rip (which is already up). Since SR lasts a minimum of 12 seconds with a 1 CP opener, and it takes 4s for a 5CP SR, I utilised Ferocious Bite here.
- Why the Rake refresh (Over-rake)?
- The Over-rake decision with Tiger’s Fury decision was not made lightly, as the alternative is 3 Rakes rather than 4. There are very complex partial-tick implications if you refresh prior to pandemic (4.5s). Hench it is a good idea to refresh at pandemic where you can.
- The decision to go for the over-rake was heavily influenced by the Jungle Stalker ability allowing a TF-Stealth-Rake inside pandemic for the fourth rake. Given that a Jungle Stalker Rake was in the cards (which was decided so that overall CP was not wasted), it was decided that an overrake would be forced as early as possible with TF. Since a guaranteed 2 combo points was required from the Shred, Rake is the second generator after TF.
- Additionally the time until the next tick (9s rake) was minimised to minimise the partial-tick mechanic, with Rake refresh occurring at Rake=9.99s (casting the following global is below 9s and hence the maximum partial-tick penalty)
Finisher 4 – Shred, Shred, Shred, Savage Roar
- The next three generators are within the Ashamane’s Frenzy 30% damage taken debuff. As the fourth finisher comes up, Ashamane’s Frenzy falls off. Savage Roar, if cast with one CP from the 2nd GCD, will have 1 second remaining, so this is the latest it can be refreshed. Hence Savage Roar is selected.
Finisher 5 – Shred, Shred, Shred, Ferocious Bite
- Given the forced decisions in Finisher 3 and 4, the decision at Finisher 5 is whether to early Rip or to Ferocious Bite. At this point in time the Feral Instinct (+20% damage for 15 seconds when Berserk is Active) is still up, hence the direct damage finisher is selected. The decision rests between AR double dip on TF or 20% extra damage on Ferocious Bite. In this case there is a chance the double dip would get overwritten anyway, so 20% extra damage on Ferocious Bite was selected. Discussions with Baeren were had.
- Ashamane’s Rip double dip on TF is a mechanic where, the base damage of Ashamane’s Rip is determined by the damage dealt by the Rip it procs off, and can then be buffed by Tiger’s Fury again. As such there is a trade-off between casting Rip at the end of a Tiger’s Fury (TF Buffed Rip until next TF) vs casting Rip at the start (Ashamane’s Rip has a chance to tick harder).
Finisher 6 – Shred, Rake, Shred, Rip
- Why is rake cast in the centre GCD and not the first or last geneator? This is to ensure that a pandemic Rake occurs using the Jungle Stalker stealth so that there is no penalty for that Rake.
- The time until the next tick (6s rake) was also coincidentally minimised to minimise the partial-tick mechanic, with Rake refresh occurring at when Rake is between 6 and 7 seconds (casting below 6s is the the maximum partial-tick penalty).
- This is the last finisher that is buffed by Tiger’s Fury. As such a Rip refresh is highly recommended. The alternative was to let Rip drop for a second (discussion with Baeren). Given the Jungle Stalker selection, this was possible – however it would lead to a similar question of whether to drop 2s off each Rip per Tiger’s Fury for the remainder of the fight. As such a pre-pandemic Rip is cast and approximately 12-8.4 = 3.6s seconds are lost, however it will provide substantial TF Rip up-time going further into the fight. Also there are still 11 seconds left on Incarnation at this point which is significant time to proc a nice Ashamane’s Rip.
Finisher 7 and 8 – Shred, Shred, Shred, FB
- There is nothing to refresh (SR/Rip/Rake are sufficiently long), hence I defaulted to 5CP FB. 5CP FB does indeed do more damage per cast than Incarnation Shred, so this isn’t like HFC where you shred over 5CP.
Finisher 9 – Shred, Shred, Shred, Tiger’s Fury, Ferocious Bite, Prowl
- Without Jungle Stalker, the correct option would be to change the last Shred (6.5s on Rake) to a Rake (minimise partial-tick penalty) so that you can maintain a double damage Rake, or alternatively change the FB into a Rake (CP overflow)
- Because this build was built contemplating Jungle Stalker, we can actually utilise a TF -> FB combo to immediately benefit from Behemoth’s Headdress.
- After this, an off GCD Jungle Stalker Prowl is utilised to perfectly cast a 200% Rake with the TF buff. This leads into the second TF phase where Rip, SR require a refresh
Leaving the Opener – Force finishers, Shadowmeld Rake
With a little luck, some Omen of Clarity procs will necessitate the necessary finishers to extend the second Tiger’s Fury such that a pandemic Shadowmeld Rake can be executed. If this is not the case, then Shadowmeld Rake should be used as the last GCD of Tiger’s Fury. Putting Shadowmeld on cooldown is a good idea – if Convergence of Fates is not used then this allows another Shadowmeld directly before the second Incarnation.
Here are some short but relevant videos:
Executing my SR/MoC Jungle Stalker opener (7.3.2 Final)
Opener No RNG explanation (31 October 2017) – This was premature before considering Jungle Stalker. Now defunct but probably a more usable version since it has less caveats and less timing pressures.
Robosaurus was here 
