The cat "rotation" is, in reality, a series of debuffs with varying priorities. Under ideal circumstances, you are able to keep all of them up for the length of a boss fight.
1. If there is not another source for Faerie Fire or Feral Faerie Fire in the raid, apply it. 2. Get behind the boss and stay there. 3. Get Savage Roar up quickly and do not allow it to drop if at all possible. If dropped (this is unavoidable on many encounters), get it back up again. This cannot be over-emphasized. Not having SR up puts your DPS in the toilet. 4. Get Mangle up, or ensure that it is on your target (via another cat, a bear druid's Mangle, or an arms warrior's Trauma). 5. Get Rake up. 6. Shred to 5 combo points. 7. Rip at 5 combo points. 8. Here's where things start getting weird. You now have a series of cooldowns and debuffs to juggle for the length of the fight, with the aim being never to allow Savage Roar, Mangle, Rake, or Rip to drop (or at least to keep their dropped time to a minimum). Keep reapplying them as necessary. 9. If Omen of Clarity procs, use it for a free Shred. If Rip and Savage Roar are both up with 8 seconds or more to go on their timers and you have 5 combo points, use Ferocious Bite. It is very difficult incorporating FB into the rotation as it consumes all of your energy. If you are learning cat DPS, don't bother using it at all until you're adept at recognizing the periods where FB can be used without endangering another debuff. 10. Tiger's Fury at 35 energy or less (assuming 3/3 King of the Jungle). 11. Time Berserk around a trinket or weapon enchant proc (ideally both, but there's an element of luck there). Using it during Bloodlust/Heroism isn't as important.
Sound complicated? It is. Cat DPS is arguably the game's most difficult rotation, and certainly the easiest to screw up. If you have any amount of latency or don't have a Mangle bot (being able to drop Mangle from the rotation simplifies matters greatly), it becomes still more difficult.
I highly recommend use of the mods FeralByNight and/or BadKitty to school yourself on the proper rotation. Although FeralByNight is no longer being updated (and the community sorely misses Nightcrowler, its author) the basics are still there. It's a "suggester" mod telling you the most ideal skill to use at a given moment. While not flawless, it's an invaluable tool that shows what an ideal rotation looks like, in addition to giving you a breakdown on your exact stats (chance to hit, crit, etc.) versus a given target. There is no better way to get a handle on what cat DPS looks like when you're new to the spec.
After you're more familiar with with the basics of a cat rotation, you should download and use BadKitty. BadKitty allows you to watch debuff timers and clearcasting procs without "suggesting" skills, and it's significantly easier to customize and use than FeralByNight. Additionally, experienced feral players with a better handle on the rotation and the particulars of a given fight will recognize when FeralByNight gets things "wrong" (i.e. FBN will keep suggesting the same rotation regardless of fight conditions), and get better DPS out of the more hands-on approach afforded by BadKitty.
Plenty of other players customize other debuff and cooldown mods to work with cat DPS, but whatever you do, the default UI does not work very well with the spec and should be avoided at all costs.
Cat dps - how to rip , tear and general cat fight stuffs
