Burst DPS for a non-tanking Bear

There's a small number of boss fights in Cata where a Bear tank is going to find himself without anything to tank. Rahj in HoO when he's recharging his energy, Throngus during his shield phase, Magmaw while he's impaled, Halfus Wyrmbreaker if you're tank swapping because of the MS debuff, Omnotron before the second unit becomes active. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There may be a few more (especially on later raid bosses I haven't seen yet).

So what's a Bear to do during these times?

1) Make sure F3 is on the target. Most of the time this won't be an issue since you were already tanking the target previous to that, but for Omnotron or Magmaw (his impaled head is technically a different boss, so it doesn't carry the debuffs over) you may have to apply it before dpsing.

2) Go cat if you haven't already.

3) If you're at least 8 yards from the target, Charge, then Ravage! (if you're specced into Stampede).

If you've specced into King of the Jungle...
4a) If the boss doesn't have the Mangle debuff or the debuff is within 20 seconds of expiring, Mangle

5a) Rake

6a) Pop Tiger's Fury

7a) Pop Berserk

If you haven't specced into King of the Jungle...
4b) Pop Tiger's Fury

5b) Pop Berserk

6b) If the boss doesn't have the Mangle debuff or the debuff is within 20 seconds of expiring, Mangle

7b) Rake

Then...
8) Shred to 5cp (if you're not already there)

9) Rip

10) Shred spam. Mash that button. Even when you hit 5cp, don't stop. Just Shred.

11) Refresh Rake when it's within 2 seconds of expiring. (Berserk will almost be over by this time.)

12) Refresh Rip when it's within 2 seconds of expiring. (If you get this far, it's most likely the last thing you're going to do before you have to go Bear again.)

13) If you have to go Bear again before you get to step 12, hit Ferocious Bite to dump your combo points.

If that's all too confusing to visualize, here it is in flow chart form:


Remember, this is intended to tell you what you should be doing if you have about 40 seconds or less of total DPS time before you have to be tanking again. If you have longer, you can start this way for the first 30 or 40 seconds, but then you should drop into a standard cat rotation.