Yeah, potential revival of the no-Annihilate-VSspam variant of the Anni build, picking up autocrit and omega Smash talents. Going to be a soft **** with limited (read: no) Carnage investment though. May not even have points to fill out Defensive Forms, but that would be way way sad. Would have to model it in the skill builder sometime ...

Maximum burst yes, but the Short Fuse change means you can get your "high DPS but not MAX" window off pretty damn often, and the Berserk lasts through CCs. E.g. Carnage can carry itself passably with Berserk'd Massacres instead of relying completely on Gore-or-fail.

Nah. The point of the game is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. If you get a ***** because you can click a blue object with epic style, good for you. Personally, I PvP to fight and beat the **** out of my enemies. I could care less about PvE clicky objects. Of course, I do click them, but that's not the point. The point is to smashface. Clicking objects is fun because it forces the enemy to do predictable things -- whereupon you smash their face.

1. You have a nice skill that costs 2 rage that does diddly damage that provides a 50% slow. Replacing that with a slightly weaker slow that does 4x the damage, for the same rage cost, is generally a good idea. In a general fight where the concept of a snare "matters" at all, you will typically have 4.5-9.0 seconds of contact time. Wasting a 1.5s GCD (33%-17% of your DPS time) on a ****** Crippling Slash is not a great investment. 2. A 30% slow provides the necessary snaring for pretty much every single opponent you face except for an IA healer and some very, very, very rare other cases. Ferocity is useful for objective-whoring, usually at the start of a match, and rarely for other instances. For use mid-fight, a +50% run speed buff is pretty much just as effective as a +80% run speed buff for almost all cases. It's pretty rare when that last +30% actually makes a meaningful difference in a fight. Ferocity is a good choice if you run with a premade or otherwise focus on objective tagging with 110% effort. Otherwise it's entirely mediocre -- although still pretty fun. Tbh, sounds like you're not using all your abilities, and you're not using Vicious Slash enough. In a general fight, I dump all my abilities and have to use Assault to build more rage to spam more damage. And that's with Empowerment. If you need Ferocity, you're doing it wrong. If you use Crippling Slash, you're doing it wrong. Etc etc. Very circular reasoning that won't get you anywhere. Unless you're right, of course. But, you're not.

Seeping Wounds is excellent for increasing DPS by replacing 1 crippling slash with 1 vicious slash once every ~10 seconds for most combat events where your target isn't a brain-dead moron. Also, more rage = more pain, instead of investing in an irrelevant talent that does nothing 99% of the time.

AnniRage more viable in 1.2 when you can Berserk for stacks instead of Force Crush.

Blade Storm should be used on IAs or Assassins who are popping their 100% dodge cooldown in order to burst or finish them (but not to do general damage to them). Any other use of Blade Storm for Watchman is Very Likely A Bad Idea Although You Could Potentially Fabricate A Silly Scenario Where It Would Be Effective.

Force Crush: Progressively slows the target from 60% to 10% movement speed The snare on Force Crush increases every second, and becomes a 90% snare during the last bit. So yes, they appear to stand still, especially in the last 2 seconds. The more clear test is Crippling Slash + the snare on Rupture from Annihilation. People don't get snared by 80%.

Edit: Whoops, wrong thread.

Assault is a better rage builder for the most part. I didn't know your mez lasted 0.4 seconds, but ok. I find that standing on top of my opponent is a terrible idea due to knockbacks. This is my current Anni spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#100bIrRrRzsGzZuMM.1 Wish I had more points to blow for Ferocity, Malice, etc.

First, I don't know about you but the actual distance in-game seems a lot closer to feet than meters. Regardless, I'm pretty sure we're talking about "5". Second, if the value of the second point is nil -- or an arsehair away from zero, then any other talent in all the trees becomes more useful.

Snares don't stack, run speed buffs don't stack, and there are a few other things which have odd results, like fire/acid trap damage, which may simply be other things and not related to that stacking. Same-class debuffs don't stack (Sunder), but the same effect (Sunder) stacks from multiple classes. Stuff's quirky across the board. Edit: When you use Cloak and Undying Rage, you take more than 0 damage. If they stacked fully, you would have 119% damage reduction from those abilities alone. Or do you take 0 damage? I'm pretty sure you take >0, but my memory isn't clear.

You can chain interrupts with 1/2. You only need 2/2 if you are slow (in the brain), significantly slowed (in the feet), your target is exceptionally good and knows you may have a minimum charge range and will risk running into you rather than running away from you while you are snared as they step to cast, or if you want to melee root a melee class, etc. 5' is really really short and easy to get to in the majority of situations.

You've tested / seen testing that it in fact grants 45% damage reduction? Potential results: - 25% damage reduction (Saber Ward overrides Cloak, no stack) - 40% damage reduction (20% and 25%, stack multiplicatively) - 45% damgae reduction (20% and 25%, stack additively)

Marauders require more skill to play competently. Whether they are "hard" or "easy" is subjective and a pretty silly waste of discussion. That aside, Marauders are balanced. Pros: 1. High sustained DPS with moderate burst that is difficult to mitigate. 2. High personal defense via cooldowns. Cons: 1. Low team utility. 2. Poor array of CCs. The 1.2 changes grant a lot of buffs to the weakest Marauder spec. It makes a net neutral set of changes to the Rage (AOE Smash Smash) spec. It makes a net neutral set of changes to the most common bleed / self-heal spec. The playability of Marauders is slightly improved across the board due to the utility changes with interrupt and the AOE mez. Overall, 1.2 doesn't really change much.

Annihilation is and will be the best spec if you are pugging and are solo suppressing/killing healers because the rest of your team sucks. This is a very common event, which is why Annihilation is strong. If you are in a premade with support and your raison d'etre is to actually gib people fast and hard, with bonus utility (e.g. you do not need to carry your team's damage on your back because you have other DPS focus fire), then Carnage will pull ahead. If you are in a coordinated premade, or are more specifically trying to bust down healer x guard formations, then Rage will still be very effective. I think the overall outcome of the changes is good in that it will provide Marauders 3 viable specs for different purposes. Note: Rage is already plenty good, I think they are making the Rage changes to reduce the biggest hits Juggernauts can achieve, and make the spec more sustained-DPS-friendly with Vicious Slash Spam.

1/2 is necessary. 2/2 is optional for very specific things. Note: If you are going 2/2 to use charge as a rage builder, you are wrong. Assault is a more efficient rage builder, although this may change in 1.2, where enraged charge no longer "costs" you 4 talent points in Carnage.

1. It does not combine attacks that happen "almost at the same time". 2. The display combines parts of attacks of the "SAME ATTACK". Same attack = offhand hits accumulate into the "mainhand" damage. Same attack = "it is the same attack recognized by the game". Ravage's first 2 ticks accumulate into the same damage display. So does Assault. This is probably related to the "Flurryblows" tag for ability data. However, all offhand hits function the same way. When you crit an Annihilate, it pops up "3800!", and then a fraction of a second later, the offhand hit procs for 400 in small print, and then is combined with the initial hit, which has a little "bounce" and changes to "4200!". So yes: "learn the mechanic".

... 20%. Edit: And for the last *********** time for the audience that seriously needs to L2R: Rage is taking as many nerfs as it is getting buffs. NERFS: - Predation is no longer "perma" - 3s higher cooldown on Force Scream - 3s higher cooldown on Smash - Slower upfront Smash cycles (pre: 3 omega Smashes over 18 seconds; post: 3 omega Smashes over 24 seconds) - 2 higher rage cost on Smash The nerfs are pretty significant, but the buffs aren't bad as well. It's a net neutral, not this random "IT COULD BE AWESOME GUYZ" ********.

Why are we talking about solo PvE?

My current gear (which is not 100% optimized, because I'm a lazy ****) has around 203 Surge, +9.8% Acc, around 280 crit rating, and whatever power+str equates to ~448 damage bonus with my buff. Going off memory. Don't remember if that was in my PvE or PvP gear though. Yes, once you start pushing unfavorable DR, you want to stack power. Accuracy trades Surge. After 200, maybe a little more, Acc > Surge. Particularly for Anni and Carnage, for which EVERY SINGLE ATTACK (except Force Scream) gets affected by defense checks, and more importantly have an off-hand hit check. Note: Rupture's force-based DOT rides the direct damage component, which is a melee attack, and susceptible to dodges and ****. Note that enemies in PvP frequently have a 10% base avoidance rate. Any combination of tank + Inquisitor (e.g. you're attacking a Sorc with any type of tank in proximity) will likely bump to a 15% avoidance rate. The point here is that it takes a decent bit of Acc to hit +10%. You honestly won't have a ton of item slots left to invest in "overloading Surge" past 200, if you maintain +10% Acc as well. Other sidenote: Also, Deadly Saber's effect again rides normal attacks. Every GCD in Annihilation spec is spent on a melee attack -- BA, Assault, VS, Annihilate, Rupture(DD). All are melee and face defense checks, and almost all have offhand hit checks. So, Accuracy is a bit underrated by the pug fotm "I PARROT MECHANICS LOLOL" zerg on the forums. And, last note: 1.2 Rage will include a ****ton more VS spam and a ****ton less Force Scream and Smash.

N o .

I think the point is related to the concept of "stealthy ops are horribad for sustained fights", and "Marauders have 57 defensive cooldowns and predationpredationpredawhat" for group fights and "force charge up platforms what" and "hey look 3 roots ignore resolve ***" aspects of the class. Also, Carnage can do that burst every 15 seconds from the start of the fight until their keyboard breaks. An Ops can pull off higher burst once every disengagement from combat with a bonus every 3 minutes. Disengaging combat tends to be unreliable as a strategy in most Warzones, although solo defending a door/cap point is viable. However, for those 1v1 / 1vX stealth matchups, an Assassin is clearly superior.

200 surge rating puts you at just around +21% surge (71% surge). Crit rating is wide depending on what spec you are and how much you personally want to crit. If you are Annihilation and interested in sustained DPS period, then lean towards 250. If you are Rage, you lean towards 250 (edit: post-1.2, lean towards 350). If you want more reliable crits, then push higher towards 350. If you are Carnage and want more reliable burst, push towards 350. If you want the graphs, go to sithwarrior.com on their mechanics forum. Or plug in the respective formulas into an online graphing calculator to view the results. As far as a full analysis backing it all up, that sounds tedious. I did that a long time ago (before they nerfed surge) based on datamined formulas for abilities (again, off sithwarrior.com) and the approximations haven't changed much, except surge sucks so bad you only want 200 of it.

Using it regularly is a horrible idea.