Skills - Ferocious Strike

The adrenaline gain is very small. One strike at the most. with higher beast mastery this is actually a good way to keep mana up. Ironicly though it's very unsuited to the bear pet because of it's terrible attack speed. The amount of extra damge that this attack inflicts is also very noteworthy. Couple it with the 8 seccond recast time and it's almosty worthy to bring along to pvp. Unfortunatly if the pet dies it's useless. That means to realibly count on it you need to spend 3 slot for skills. One for Ferocious Strike, one for Charm Animal and one for Comfort or revive. Not really that much of an adavantage for that many skill slots. The bear attacks at the same speed as all the other pets. Any difference is just in your head. Much research has been done on this topic.

Now try combining ferocious strike with quickening zephyr and debilitating shot, and tell me what you think. You'll have an unlimited pool of energy to fire a debil every other shot, and the target will have to deal with increased casting costs and mad pet damage at the same time. Add another 5 energy pet attack and you can alternate between that and ferocious strike. Add another 5 energy bow attack and you can alternate between that and debil shot. You won't run out of energy. This skill may not be great on its own, but it's the combinations with other ranger skills that can make it superb. If you're just bringing a pet for this skill, you're not really using your pet to anywhere near its fullest potential. If you see your pet as "something I have to bring in order to use ferocious strike," that's totally the wrong mindset.

The more skill slots and attribute points you dedicate to your pet, the more effective it will be. Doesn't this make sense? Having beast mastery at 12 makes your pet do the same base DPS as a max damage bow. Combining that with a max damage bow at marksmanship 12 doubles your sustained DPS. Look at the pet skills, and you might notice that the pet attacks are twice as good as their bow attack versions for half the energy cost, in many cases. Ferocious strike beats marksman's wager by a longshot, and gives a bigger damage boost than any bow attack at comparable level.