Yeah with all this being said I honestly prefer using Carnage for PvP. I like the play style and utilities that come with it. The only reason I would spec Rage is merely because of the output in total damage at the end of a match that can be obtained. Nice signature by the way Omophorus.

Awesome, love the comment BlznSmri. It's nice when a fair amount of people in a thread end up finding something to agree upon in the end. This thead has helped out a lot. Thanks again everybody.

Yeah I'm sticking with the conclusion I came up with earlier. Again this thread is about Marauder Annihilate vs. Marauder Smash and only comparing a Marauder to itself. This is not a thread for which classes need buffed/nerfed. Thank you everybody for all your input.

I agree, Annihilate does not crit very often, which is very disappointing. As for the balancing of dps classes I have to disagree. Marauders (and Assassins for that matter) are at a disadvantage just for being a melee class. With melee you have to make sure you're right on top of the target to do damage and are more susceptible to damage being right there in the action whether it's PvP or against a boss in an Operation. A ranged dps is able to avoid more damage and attack at a greater range than a melee can and it is because of this that melee dps should be rewarded for dealing more damage. If anybody needs a dps buff it would be the Assassin to the level of a Marauder dps but this is not what this thread is about. I have pretty much come to the conclusion that the way the Annihilation and Rage trees are are pretty close to how they should be. Maybe if there was a way to insure that Annihilate crits would make things better.

Good talk Zamppa, good talk

Here Here Zamppa! I was pretty upset when I couldn't use Chain Lightning with Wrath anymore and not to mention the nerf to Force Bending as well for healing. Those were the days for a sorc. What I'm basically asking for in a summation is for the damage of Annihilate to be increased. There's nothing like getting the satisfaction of just completely melting somebody. And again, Marauders should be able to put out the most dps hands down.

I'll make an argument against my own opinion. With enough rage built up, Annihilate can max instantly at anytime you like just as long as it's not on cool down obviously. Sure Smash can be casted instantly just like Annihilate, but you won't get the most out of it by doing so. You have to go though the timed process of getting 4 stacks of Shockwave then either Force Leaping or Obliterating to insure that Smash with get a critical hit, so because this process takes longer you should be rewarded the higher crit, but I don't know that you should be rewarded the higher crit and the AoE'ness of Smash together. Perhaps a way to 'fix' or balance Rage spec more would be to distribute the damage of Smash more based on the number of enemies hit. So for example if you were to Smash 1 enemy you might crit them for 6000 damage, but if you Smash 2 enemies instead you would do 5500 damage to each of them instead of 6000 to each of them (my math is obviously not to scale for this but there would have to be an equation to figure out what this damage distribution would be that a programmer would be able to determine). Thoughts?

My point exactly. Let's take a PvP scenario and compare the two trees. When you're trying to burn someone as fast as you can Rage spec is going to win every time over Annihilation. Of course Annihilation is geared more towards PvE while Rage is definitely a PvP spec. The way this can be more balanced in my opinion is to increase the amount of damage Annihilate does. I think an Annihilation Marauder should be able to come in and finish off an enemy with one blow (Annihilate) better than simply Smashing with Rage. Now as for the imbalance of Rage spec, yes this argument can be made and is usually brought up by those who don't roll a Marauder and get killed by them. If any adjustments are to be made to Rage spec I do not believe that they should be nerfed. I do think that Marauders and Sentinels should be the classes that deal the most damage out of any other one just because they are purely a dps class and are melee, and they are indeed ranked the highest dps class in both PvE and PvP. This should stay this way. Now back to Annihilation vs. Rage, I think that Annihilation should be brought up to the level that Rage is currently at in regards to PvP. Go ahead keep coming up with thoughts, ideas, agreements, and disagreements. This is a good talk.

So my question is why does an AoE Smash hit harder than a single targeted Annihilate? Standing alone Annihilate can hit harder than Smash but when you get 4 stacks of Shockwave, Obliterate for a Smash crit, then Smash, Smash will hit harder than Annihilate (i.e. Currently I can Annihilate for ~4500 and Smash for ~6000). There is no way with the current tree design to make Annihilate hit that hard. The only buff you can get towards Annihilate only allows you to use it more often. There are also ways to make the CD of Smash lessen as well, but I'm sure at this point in the game we are all very familiar with the different specs and how they work. I'm just saying regardless of PvE vs PvP Annihilate should hit significantly harder than Smash. In scenarios were burst dps is more favorable, you don't have time to let DoTs work their damage in so instead of using Rupture, for example, you would use Annihilate, which is great and all, however, in comparison to Smash it doesn't hit hard at all. My solution to this is not add something in the tree to make Annihilate hit harder but simply buff it in general to hit harder so that this effect can be applied to all cases both PvE and PvP. By no means do I think Marauders are weak whatsoever, just saying I think Annihilate should hit harder than Smash. What do you guys think?