Darth Hater

Sup all. I was a heavy theory crafter in WoW and I intend on extensively doing the same in TOR. I have put together a build for leveling or operations. I like it currently for leveling but I really feel it is extremely viable for boss encounters. Here is the build. 

When in Beserker stance, Massacre transfers into a one second GLOBAL. This makes using Mass during this stance, which has a limited duration, extremely important. Spamming Massacre while in Beserker stance while costing such little Rage will be the most important aspect of your rotation in a Boss encounter. 

This class has a semi-rotation. Meaning there is no exact order in which you should use your abilities BUT In your rotation it is important to make sure you use your channel and CD abilities until all are on CD. There are also priority abilities. Meaning, abilities you should watch out for and pop as soon as available regardless of what is up. One of those abilities are "Gore". It does amazing damage and the debuff put on your target should be kept up (Unless Beserker is active). Popping Battering Assault whenever it is up, you should never run out of Rage. Use Massacre as a filler if you ever find yourself without a CD ability to use. Obviously, the CD abilities I am talking about are not the PVP abilities that are geared towards effecting target movement speed. I am at work and will update this when I have the full list of abilities at my disposal. 

I am going to update this thread with move information regarding the importance of certain abilities and what buffs will benefit certain scenarios. One thing I am working on and would like some help, is stat priority. I am working on figuring out what the Accuracy cap is and what is more effective for certain specs, Power or Crit. Right now, I think Power > Crit, but I can be wrong but I believe that SUSTAINED bonus damage trumps occasional 50% damage increase on the ability that crits. But, again, there may even be a Power cap. I don't know at the moment. 

Also, I am working on what Relic procs will be best. I would also like to know what the Alacrity cap is. Again, I am a heavy theory crafter and will get to the bottom of this all and update. 

All discussion is wlecome. The best way to discover these things is to work together. Let me know what you all come up with. 

Editted with corrections. 12/21/2011

Glad to know someone will benefit from this thread. Let me know if you come across any information regarding stat differences and numerical effects. 

Will keep my eyes open as I start to mess around with this stuff now. Just hit 31 and just about to start experimenting.

First thanks for the post Mute, I look forward to your findings.

Though I must ask, do you really think carnage will be a better spec for PvE operations? With my time in game the past week/beta testing etc, I do feel like annihilation has potential to eclipse carnage for the best PvE spec.The bleeds from the build create a very strong sustained dps, it may be possible to stack mainly power as well since criticals will be 100% when using Berserk.

My prefered build for Annihilation is http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/sith_warrior/marauder/#::efefe4fe4fe6f3ef8efef24

This of course is subject to the accuracy cap and various other things.

I too am yearning to know what the accuracy cap is and if there is a power cap. If you find anything please share.

As far as a Carnage spec is concerned, I do like the prospect of being able to use viscious slash for no rage and would like to see damage output comparing carnage vs annihilation.

~ Smear

I like what you said here and I it is apparent you're knowlegable. Although, I am no labeling this spec the 'best' spec for PVE. I am simply working on mastering the spec since I like it, then I will move on to the next (probably will use yours as a guide) and compare both results. 

With that said, I cannot see there being any Carnage tree better than the one I created for Operations and/or PVE content. I may tend to play with the 2 filler points I put in Erupting Fury and put it in Defensive Forms to get the speed boost. It may help for chasing bosses after a knockback ability or encounter tactics. 

I want to make sure I get everything down pat with this spec before I start simulating others. Then I want to compare them. Perhaps we can work together on this. Keep me updated on how you make out with your build.

Once I get to 50 I intend to do extensive testing on the annihilation spec. I would agree that I am not saying either spec is the best right now, more testing is needed.

Few questions about your build, I see you put your first 2 points into cloak of carnage? I am assuming this is because you assume bosses will have area attacks and knockbacks that could potentially provide us with much needed rage. Am I correct in this assessment or is that a talent you just chose for leveling purposes? The two points could potentially be in defencive forms giving carnage a 15% speed increase. This would eliminate the need to get rid of Erupting Fury, however Erupting Fury seems like a pretty pointless talent anyway for operations since I assume you have to get the killing blow and not anyone in your party in order for you to get the rage, and in a single boss fight with no adds it is completely pointless. So I can see why you would want to put those points into Defensive Forms.

Also do you use Deadly Throw in your rotation?

Otherwise the build looks perfect and I look forward to your findings on this build.

As far as accuracy goes I wonder if it will be worth it to cap the offhand weapon instead of going straight for power/crit. I would assume so, but will need to find out how much accuracy is needed for it.

Now that is all just theory but these are the things I am most curious about and will be testing is Accuracy, Defense, Power, then Alacrity...

All the bonuses to "Power", "Surge", "Crit" are meaningless if you are missing...Maxing out accuracy is key for carnage.

Can not to damage if you are dead, the more you so the more you are missed the better, hitting the soft cap on defense could be interesting on such a focused dps.

Power bonus apply to the offhand? Both hands? Is or a flat damage boost?

Finally Alacrity, the more someone who strikes twice to someone elses once strke is more deadly...what abilities and how much does it affect recharge and global cool downs? Recharge is always a good thing

Reason I say these in that order Carnage seems to crit a lot at the high end tree with force screem and extra attacks they way it is so surge and crit seem a bit redundant and more then likely close to being capped the way it is with Atrau.

(I Personally feel that the Atrau form should not boost movement speed but Alacrity and/or Power making it more aggressive)

Quote from Smear »

Once I get to 50 I intend to do extensive testing on the annihilation spec. I would agree that I am not saying either spec is the best right now, more testing is needed.

Few questions about your build, I see you put your first 2 points into cloak of carnage? I am assuming this is because you assume bosses will have area attacks and knockbacks that could potentially provide us with much needed rage. Am I correct in this assessment or is that a talent you just chose for leveling purposes? The two points could potentially be in defencive forms giving carnage a 15% speed increase. This would eliminate the need to get rid of Erupting Fury, however Erupting Fury seems like a pretty pointless talent anyway for operations since I assume you have to get the killing blow and not anyone in your party in order for you to get the rage, and in a single boss fight with no adds it is completely pointless. So I can see why you would want to put those points into Defensive Forms.

Also do you use Deadly Throw in your rotation?

Otherwise the build looks perfect and I look forward to your findings on this build.

As far as accuracy goes I wonder if it will be worth it to cap the offhand weapon instead of going straight for power/crit. I would assume so, but will need to find out how much accuracy is needed for it.

Good questions--I will alaborate. I put the two points in cloak of carnage because even though you may not be tanking, most boss encounters will do damage to you. This may be from avoidable or random raid damage that is part of said encounter. If everyone in the raid is taking random damage from an ability, I will have a 100% of gaining rage everytime I am hit by unavoidable damage. Much better than going for the speed increase. 

Although, like I said before, it may be viable to go with Defensive Forms over Erupting Fury because taking either one is for filler purposes only. It is so we can get to the second to top branch. This decision is totally up to the player and in no way should effect damage output results. Except for the fact that Defensive Forms may get you to the boss faster after raid tactics or knockback abilities. But, if there are adds, Erupting Fury might prevail. Again, we are talking fractions here. 

To answer your other question; no, I think Deadly Throw is a waste of Rage. The damage is not as high as other prioritized abilities and it costs 3 Rage, which is not cheap. The focus of Deadly Thow seems to be for PVP since it has a moving imparing effect. After hitting 50, I cannot see a Marauder with the Carnage tree ever running out of CD abilities to use, excluding Deadly Throw. I also can't see us running out of Rage given Battery Assault will have a much shorter CD of 3 seconds less and Vicious Slash costing close to nothing. I believe it would be best to use Vicious Slash only as a filler if you ever get the opportunity to use a filler, unless Beserker is active. 

Quote from Ravenous33 »

Now that is all just theory but these are the things I am most curious about and will be testing is Accuracy, Defense, Power, then Alacrity...

All the bonuses to "Power", "Surge", "Crit" are meaningless if you are missing...Maxing out accuracy is key for carnage.

Can not to damage if you are dead, the more you so the more you are missed the better, hitting the soft cap on defense could be interesting on such a focused dps.

Power bonus apply to the offhand? Both hands? Is or a flat damage boost?

Finally Alacrity, the more someone who strikes twice to someone elses once strke is more deadly...what abilities and how much does it affect recharge and global cool downs? Recharge is always a good thing

Reason I say these in that order Carnage seems to crit a lot at the high end tree with force screem and extra attacks they way it is so surge and crit seem a bit redundant and more then likely close to being capped the way it is with Atrau.

(I Personally feel that the Atrau form should not boost movement speed but Alacrity and/or Power making it more aggressive)

 

 

I disagree on some things here. I do not think sof capping defense is worth it at all. Marauder gear targeting our needed stats should give us enough Endurance where we do not need to worry about being squishy. In an Operation or Raid, party members should be taking very little damage if they are doing their job right, given we have healers and tanks to absorb a majority of the encounter damage. 

I think our focus should be on Power. Until Alacrity effects GCD, we just do not have any reason to sacrifice Power or Crit gear to pick up the Alacrity. Alacrity only effects casts and channels at the moment, so it feels more of a healer stat. 

Since I am under the impression that sustained damage will always trump chance damage, I would say Power > Crit. But, from what I hear, there are other trees that have a Crit buff to abilities making 34% a soft cap since with the talent points in said passive, it will make Crit 100% when passive buff is active. But that is other trees and this thread is about Carnage. 

With that said, I think the following is the stat order. Keep in mind, this is excluding our main stat of STR because STR is a primary stat and we are talking secondary stats here. Nevertheless, we should always choose the gear with more STR regardless of END rating. 

Stat priority: Accuracy (until soft cap) > Power > Crit > Alacrity

If you do not understand how the stat priority works, Alacrity is basically the last stat you should care about and all the other stats should be trumped by the one before it. Alacrity should only be on your gear if you made all possible adjustments to top the ones before it. 

Example: I am Accuracy capped so I changed all my mods to give increased Power. One modification had the same level of Power but a parralleled secondary stat of Crit or a secondary stat of Alacrity. I put the modification with the secondary stat of Crit. 

Good posts Mute, I agree with everything you have said.

For optimal raid preformance i.e Min/Maxing I would not agree with your carnage build. Your current build is heavily focused around Vicious slash by going into the 2nd tier of Rage to get the increased crit chance which is unecessary. The reason for this is that once you gain Massacre you no longer use Vicious slash in your rotation, I mean you could continue to use vicious slash but why would you? For the same rage cost you can Massacre and gain an auto proc of Ataru form which to me is garenteed extra damage vs. a chance to crit. Not to mention you could have 100% uptime of blood frenzy. The only time I would consider using VS would be during frenzy due to the 1.5 Internal cool down of Ataru form hits and the fact that you would be using massacre every 1sec instead of 1.5 sec.

VS is not better than mass no matter how you look at it.

The spec I am about to link should be the best PvE raid spec due to its focus as using Massacre as your main rage dump. It also provides good passive damage reduction, ataru form procs and AoE.  The reason I picked up talents the way I did is because there are 2 facts about 90% of the raid encounters in swtor.

1. Periodic Add spawns that need to be cleaved down (hence the pick up of Quick Recovery)

2. Periodic AoE damage (hence the pick up of talents like cloak of carnage and defensive roll)

5/31/5 Carnage Build PvE Min/Max

Hope this helps!

-Rab of Strictly Business

Quote from Rabtv »

For optimal raid preformance i.e Min/Maxing I would not agree with your carnage build. Your current build is heavily focused around Vicious slash by going into the 2nd tier of Rage to get the increased crit chance which is unecessary. The reason for this is that once you gain Massacre you no longer use Vicious slash in your rotation, I mean you could continue to use vicious slash but why would you? For the same rage cost you can Massacre and gain an auto proc of Ataru form which to me is garenteed extra damage vs. a chance to crit. Not to mention you could have 100% uptime of blood frenzy. The only time I would consider using VS would be during frenzy due to the 1.5 Internal cool down of Ataru form hits and the fact that you would be using massacre every 1sec instead of 1.5 sec.

VS is not better than mass no matter how you look at it.

The spec I am about to link should be the best PvE raid spec due to its focus as using Massacre as your main rage dump. It also provides good passive damage reduction, ataru form procs and AoE.  The reason I picked up talents the way I did is because there are 2 facts about 90% of the raid encounters in swtor.

1. Periodic Add spawns that need to be cleaved down (hence the pick up of Quick Recovery)

2. Periodic AoE damage (hence the pick up of talents like cloak of carnage and defensive roll)

5/31/5 Carnage Build PvE Min/Max

Hope this helps!

-Rab of Strictly Business

 

 

The reason you would be using VS is because when in Beserker it is on a 1 second GCD as opposed to 1.5 GCD. Also, you are incorrect, It does not cost the same Rage. I would encourage you to re-read my other posts as I have stated that before. Vicious Slash costs one rage at most in the final build. Mass costs 3. Like I said, you are using VS during Beserker. VS still does more damage especially since you need to realise that you are getting FIVE extra strikes every TEN than you would any other ability while Beserker is active and it is extremely Rage efficient. By the time you would have to build up for another Mass, you are getting numerous additional VS casts. 

I also do not agree with you taking Quick Recovery over brutality. You are putting points in an AOE centric passive which has no effect on a boss encounter as opposed to 15% extra crit chance. Even if you use Vicious Slash once every few minutes, the +15% crit is still extremely more viable. 

Because of these points, your spec is not optimal.

but that's where you are wrong... VS and Mass are BOTH effected by the lower GCD and rage cost when Berserk is up. They both cost 1 rage during Berserk and 2 rage outside of berserk so there IS NO POINT in using VS because it is suboptimal. Because of this you are wrong.

And just to clarify, you pick up the AoE damage increase because it is SUBOPTIMAL to VS over Mass.

For a clearer definition of what Berserk actually does please read the tooltip

Btw Berserk -1 rage to Mass/VS and Enraged slash refunds 1 rage when you use VS OR Mass.

Hope this Helps!

-Rab of Strictly Business

Quote from Rabtv »

but that's where you are wrong... VS and Mass are BOTH effected by the lower GCD and rage cost when Berserk is up. They both cost 1 rage during Berserk and 2 rage outside of berserk so there IS NO POINT in using VS because it is suboptimal. Because of this you are wrong.

And just to clarify, you pick up the AoE damage increase because it is SUBOPTIMAL to VS over Mass.

For a clearer definition of what Berserk actually does please read the tooltip

Btw Berserk -1 rage to Mass/VS and Enraged slash refunds 1 rage when you use VS OR Mass.

Hope this Helps!

-Rab of Strictly Business

Rab is correct. I was looking at an incorrect tooltip. 

The art of min/maxing involves admitting where you're wrong and making the correct adjustments.

Thank you Rab for pointing this out. Unfortunatly most of the databases are still in beta.