Thanks for commenting. Could you please answer three other questions? Should I take it from the evenness of your Deadly Saber and Rupture bleeding that you hold Berserk/Zen until you see you have three stacks on Deadly Saber? I notice your latest parse has exactly the same number of attacks of each type as your last parse and you have a little less than the maximum number of Annihilates--when and why do you hit something else first? Why do you hit Bloodthirst/Inspiration in the opener rather than under 30% when VT/Dispatch is available and potential DPS is higher?

The current top listed Marauder/Sentinel parse, Ele'thon seems to be invalid, i.e. rule breaker. I suspect no one noticed because it's in German. He hits Berserk/Zen before he has registered the number of attacks needed to build up sufficient Fury. He's got leftover fury from the previous 29 second dummy session he did a few seconds before the submitted parse. That can't be duplicated in raid conditions. He then hits Frenzy (Tapferer Ruf) which proves that's not where the early Fury came from, because if it was, it would still be on cooldown. I know he posts a lot here...is there an explanation I've missed? It's a good parse but don't see how this works.

The dulfy guide may be flawed but is absolutely right about Dispatch right before Zen. The timing is not so difficult that you can't hit it virtually every time and the results are worth it. TST is more dubious. As the Dulfy writer mentions, the timing has to be closer, and you risk having to let gore sit unactivated for a fraction of a second before TST activates. Even if you nail it, it is not the big dps boost that Dispatch is, and on this one, I agree with KNB, especially in raid conditions, it's more likely than not an overall dps loss and a distraction from more important things.

That's actually not correct re: combat. Best for Combat is same as Watchman. You just spec into the healing talent on the second tier of the Watchman tree and be sure you use "cauterize" in your rotation as suggested. It may not be as good for combat as watchman, but is certainly better than a DF SA that only single procs. Look at what the top combat/carnage sentinel/marauders on the dps leaderboard are wearing and running in their skill trees and you will see.

While your apms are going to vary from minute to minute, on average, getting in 47 attacks instead of 50, in apples to apples comparison, would seem to translate to a 6% loss. What I don't understand is why people wouldn't be doing Dispatch right before PS since it's been shown that if you do them in quick succession, the PS will affect Dispatch, leaving room for an extra attack inside the PS window.

I didn't mean not use Zen at all, I meant it's less important to line up Zen with Master Strike. I'm guessing that if you break every Master Strike at 2.7, the extra effort required to delay Masterstrike a GCD or two or to delay Zen until Masterstrike comes off cooldown becomes a losing proposition that just distracts the player (as KBN seems to be confirming).

I think what Emperor Norton is saying is not that it is worth it to interrupt Master Strike before the third tick but that the third tick hits at 2.7 seconds and if you let the channel continue to its end you waste .3 seconds. If true, that's an important addition to the initial post. Also, at what point the third tick hits when Zen is up and MS is only 2.3 seconds total would be nice to know, if it hits before 2.3--I don't think it does. If true this also means that Zen only effectively shortens Masterstrike by .4 seconds, not .7 seconds, making it less important to hit the two at the same time.

Good to know. What about when berserk is running and the channel only lasts 2.3? I'm trying to figure out how the top parsers are getting 49APMs and 3600-3700dps. My gear's not quite as good, but it's close and I can't break 46APMs and 3300-- http://www.torparse.com/a/527835/time/1387698811/1387699115/0/Log http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/d3bdde6b-4334-489d-91c9-839f9b6e155b

Looking at the latest parses on the leaderboard, looks been some changes/new discoveries since last time KBN updated this thread. For one thing, I notice the leaders are cancelling out of ravage/masterstrike before it finishes. Have to look closer at the parses to see what else is different, but using the old style, I used to be in range of the leaders and now I'm significantly behind.

Jump from the top to bottom or over the new weird geometry and you get an instant death with a "Kill Target: Damage 0" message. Pretty annoying complication for 4th boss of DP. Started after patch 2.5.

http://dulfy.net/2012/02/10/empirerepublic-abilities-translation/#marauder If we really want to get a larger discussion going between marauders and sentinels, making this a sticky could probably be a good idea...

KBN, something I think has to be established for the devs to consider anything like building rage/fury during inspiration, etc. is that we are, in fact, whether its movement or animation issues, lagging a little behind snipers and even other ranged classes with all operation bosses, even the ones with very little movement. If "fixing" something means it will break what they see as a proper class balance, I'm sure they'd rather let whatever the individual class problem is stay broken.

no offense, but click vs. hotkeys has nothing to do with it--if you have a trick to parse the same while chasing Ciphas around the field in TFB NM, or not lose dps you'd get if you were hitting a dummy while running between cores in Operator IX HM, while a sniper barely has to move at all--please share with the community. The fact that there are exactly two marauder/sentinels (#28 and #40) on the TFB HM/NM Dread Guard leaderboard shows the deficit at it's worst. Yet there are no bosses where ranged/snipers are at a deficit. They dominate nearly every boss. Sure there is. Marauder/sentinel's damage should be a fraction higher against a dummy or stationary boss, and lower against targets we have to chase or run between. What makes no sense at all is making melee equal to ranged against completely stationary single targets, and lower against everything else.

While the best marauder/sentinel dummy parse might be equivalent to the best sniper/gunslinger parse, the statistics at Torparse--where snipers are consistently the top damage dealers, and sentinels sometimes not even in the top 50 for HM/NM--reveal that in practice, marauders are significantly far behind snipers. It's a combination of two things. --First, as I think you yourself have observed KNB, that the variations do to the inconsistency of procs mean that for every amazing marauder/sentinel parse, there are a lot of ok ones and a terrible one. To my knowledge, snipers are not subject to as high variability. To do an overall comparison, you can't compare the top scores, you have to compare the average or mean. --Second, the mechanics of most of the bosses--particularly in TFB--make the movement required for melee to be a big disadvantage.

Not sure this is any different than marauder's burning out with a second bloodthirst and blowing all rage at the end of the parse, but I agree that against a dummy it's pretty equal...but this does not equate to raid damage, where the handicap of having to constantly move and chase targets nearly always puts snipers over marauders as reflected in the endgame op statistics at Torparse. We have to work harder, and still will usually come in with lower dps than an equivalently geared sniper.

Congrats and I appreciate your thoughts, but on this first one,, it strikes me as a huge nerf in terms of pve for the sake of pvp advantage. --First and foremost, if you take out the smaller but significant percentage chance that strikes other than massacre have of producing gore and execute, you have both less of a chance of procing execute in the rage-building phase, and less of a chance of procing a second gore window after the first. That is a significant net loss of dps, particularly in the sustained stationary close encounters that are our specialty. --it reduces the relative value of lesser used attacks like rupture, and forces the player to more heavily use nothing but massacre, assault and battering assault in the rage-building phase to try to generate an execute proc. --It also further complicates the rotation and max damage output of a class that is already quite complicated as opposed to making it more accessible and easier for the newer players who are the ones most having trouble with rage generation. While this might aid you in pvp, where you may try to to save your gore window until the optimal moment when the target isn't going to instantly try to flee out of your range, in pve, bosses are most often relatively or completely stationary. This is another advantage that may be a help in pvp, but in pve, most bosses have no knockback, and certainly aren't using them selectively to counter gore. It doesn't hurt pve, but wouldn't be high up on a list of potential chances. It would need to generate a very significant amount of rage to help, as it is only usable at best every 18 seconds, and the need to use massacre to get the procs, plus the relatively low damage of dual saber throw make it very low on the priority list. Still, that would be a help, and from a pve perspective, the best of the suggestions. Here are some other potential suggestions-- Potential skill tree ability that allows channel hatred to proc execute as well as, or alternatively to, generating fury. This makes the opener we usually front load in pve with adrenal shots, relics and bloodthirst more reliable, and allows the "Force Scream at the beginning of the first gore window and end of the second" method many of us use as a rotation to be used in the opener, simplifying things. If people complain it is too much of a power boost, position it in the tree such that it means sacrificing some power for the reliability. Lower "Close Quarters" in the annihilation skill tree so it is usable in carnage as well. This would allow us to use Force Charge to help build rage throughout combat. Since FC already works this way in the opener, and for annihilation, it doesn't add an additional complication to frustrate people new to the spec the way adding rage-generation to saber throw could. Since we already use FC in the opener, it doesn't give us the bigger burst we'd get if DST could be worked into the opener to generate rage as well. Alternately, just make FC usable at close range for all marauder specs. Something to keep in mind--we advanced users will be the ones commenting the most, and perhaps willing or able to handle additional complexities, but better to address the issues we have in a way that is easier for newbs to grasp and not frustrate those who feel things are already complicated enough.

Thanks to Emperor Norton for the pro-tip! It's given me a very nice boost! I'm in all Underworld gear except two arkanian armorings and kell dragon bracers. Here is my new best parse: 3030.84 I made plenty of mistakes, far from my most flawless execution, but by putting Dispatch before PS, I get that plus Blade Rush, TST and Blade Storm all into my second PS window. Bumped my best parse up almost 80 points over the previous best I reported in this thread with the same gear. It's not even something that takes that incredibly precise timing, just by hitting Dispatch first and PS second, it works out nearly every time.

Tradewind - Marauder - Carnage 4/36/6 - 2966.51 DPS http://www.torparse.com/a/342690/time/1374092849/1374093152/0/Damage+Dealt

That's a really good parse. 15 seconds short of 5 mins, I assume it would trend down some, but then go way up between 5 and 5:30 due to bloodthirst, and would likely beat the top scores in the dps record thread-- http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=637291 Though those were all done before anyone had 75s. It looks like you always pop zen right before or after a precision slash, is this correct? So in essence, if zen becomes available in the focus-building phase, you will wait until your first PS to pop it. MS you always wait until the second PS window to pop it. The exception is when MS comes off cooldown right after the second PS window, in which case you will pop it rather than wait another 10 seconds or so. Also if Zen AND MS become available right after the second PS window, you will pop both in the focus-building phase-- Is that about right?

I've been using the method two PS windows with a BS (with OA active) at the beginning of the first and the end of the second since 2.0 hit the test server and posted my results about it three months ago here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=628368 I have been working with it and refining it for the last three months. Some of the people who responded had some good points I incorporated. Here's my best parse, with adrenal and relic: 2953 My gear is here. In brief, three 69 armorings, the rest of my gear is optimized 72, no crit. I agree with all the basics that you are suggesting, but I think you are undervaluing the necessity of using Blade Rush to proc OA and HoJ as quickly as possible after the first use of PS. Using MS and/or TST in the first PS window significantly lowers your chance of getting the procs you need for an optimal second window. You end up having to monitor your buff bar much more during the first PS window as well as getting a higher percentage of "fails" where you have to spam a combo of BR and Strike in between the two windows. While this might result in a slight DPS gain on the dummy (though I doubt it) where you have nothing else to focus on and can micro-manage your rotation, it has a distinct disadvantage when you are actually battling a boss in an operation, have less time/attention to monitor your rotation and buffs, and are constantly having to focus on other things. Taking this into account, what I have had the best results with is this-- First window: PS>BS>BR>BR (and another BR if Zen is up) Second window: PS>Dispatch>BR>BS or, if MS is up: PS>MS>BS (with Dispatch next, outside the PS window) or if MS and Zen are up: PS>MS>Dispatch>BS I hold TST in reserve in case I run out of focus in the second PS window, in which case I replace BR with it. If I don't have to use TST, I might cast it during the focus-building phase, I use it like rupture, but below rupture in priority. By using this combination on autopilot, no matter how distracted I get in battle against an ops boss, even if I can't watch my bar for procs at all, I am almost guaranteed to get a quick proc of OA and HoJ in the first PS window. The only thing I really need to concentrate on is being sure OA procs during the rage-building phase and that I have enough focus built up to get through my full two PS window burst phase. ZEN As I wrote in my original post about this subject, the problem with trying to match Zen up with the burst phase is that not only are you delaying each and every following Zen, but that you will build up to a full 30 charges at a slower rate. The reason for this is that all the high damage attacks you hit during the burst phase are Focus spenders that all build Centering if Zen is not active. But if you activate Zen at the beginning of the burst phase, each Focus spender expends a charge of Zen and DOES NOT build any Centering at all. On the other hand, if you use Zen during the focus-building phase--where you are hitting Strike repeatedly, which doesn't build Centering whether Zen is running or not--then during the burst phase, with Zen not running, your Centering builds back up quickly. Zen also helps you proc OA quickly and more certainly before the first PS window comes up, and then get your focus up high. As a result, I find delaying Zen more than a GCD or two to be a big loss despite the fact that Zen works so well with PS and MS, and that the 15% Zen damage boost you get from the set bonus is better applied during the burst phase than the focus-building phase. In general, Zen is cast as soon as it comes off CD. This probably also impacts your debate over how many points to put into the skill tree for building Centering vs. the 7.5% increased damage for Dispatch. MASTER STRIKE For the above reasons, I rarely delay hitting MS. I hit MS during the focus-building phase if it is not going to ruin my chances of proccing OA and building enough focus for a successful burst phase. If Zen is running and is going to run out before the second PS window, I'll hit MS in the first window, otherwise I'll delay it a few seconds and hit it in the second window. I know a lot of people insist that MS in the first window is the way to go every time when possible, and that might get you the greatest damage in the shortest possible time, but it just means greater chance of delaying the second PS window, and more time spent micro-managing your buffs and rotation when you need to be watching your feet and/or chasing the boss. I'd rather hit Zen and MS at the beginning of the focus-building phase than delay both until the first PS window, that is for absolute sure. If I'm almost at 30 stacks of centering when I get to my second PS window, I'll go for PS>Dispatch>BS>FS, hitting Zen as soon as possible and putting MS outside the PS window. I'd rather have a 2.3 second MS outside the PS window than a 3 second one inside that crowds out Dispatch, or delay the start of the second PS window so I can both get MS in the window and have it be 2.3 seconds as well. OPENER For the same reasons listed above, I start with Force Leap>Zealous Strike>PS>BR>BR>BR and then BS if OA has procced, Dispatch if it has not but HoJ has, all of which falls in the PS window. Then, assuming HoJ has procced, I proceed to PS>MS and end with Dispatch, or BS if I used Dispatch in the first window. I focus most of my attention on positioning, and chances are even if I take my eyes off the buff bar at the wrong moment, all my procs will hit where they are supposed to any way. THE STRIKE/ZEALOUS STRIKE "FILLER" Not taking account lag and incremental losses of fractions of seconds, a "filler" between the two PS windows is, in fact, needed; in practice though, thanks to those factors, the filler usually isn't necessary. On autopilot I put the filler there any way to avoid being focus-starved or not being able to hit BS before PS expires, and there is a real advantage to hitting ZS between windows rather than delaying until the end.. But if my attention is free enough and ZS isn't up, I'll often skip the Strike filler and go straight from the first PS combo to the second one. A lot is determined whether you are trying to set a record on the dummy or practicing for ops, the more your system depends on micro-adjustments, the worse its going to hold up against a boss. I think a lot is also determined by where you prioritize BS with OA in a PS window against Master Strike, a lot of people insist on making Master Strike the top priority instead and many also seem to get good results, it may just be two different schools with neither truly trumping the other. I suspect that the Bioware method is to provide the illusion of choice with most paths leading to the same result, because trying to program for players with vastly different damage results would be a huge headache. That's my two cents. Sorry if I messed up a translation somewhere in there, I'm used to speaking in Marauder lingo, not Sentinel.

This information doesn't match my results at all. I'm 21 points of strength--and 1 DG power relic instead of an underworld one--short of full 72s, and with gore up, the difference between my non-crit FS and the ones that do is 2500-3500 pts vs 7500-8500, more if I have an adrenal going or a relic in-use: http://www.torparse.com/a/318357/time/1372830925/1372831702/0/Damage+Dealt Crit FS vs non-crit FS is a huge chunk of damage.

Yes, actually I am finding it is a significant gamechanger. It improved my damage without any rotation changes, but I also found trying to line up ravage and berserk helped. Enough, in fact, that I think ravage+berserk might be a little better than ravage+gore if forced to choose. I dumped a little surge for 150 points of alacrity and saw a boost. I'm carnage by the way, all underworld gear except some arkanian enhancements and 1 implant. I saw anther endgame marauders on my server sporting a little alacrity now too.

You used to want Cerulean Nova, but it looks like they switched the type of damage it does with Kinetic Tempest since the DG relics, so now I think you actually do want KT.

Thanks for the reply. Great work! I haven't even seen a sniper/gunslinger parse that high on live. I guess it really comes down to where the priority of proccing Execute and Slaughter comes in relation to squeezing off the highest value attacks as soon as they come off cooldown. Also, how to simplify the priority or rotation, because while one might work best against the dummy, the more complex it is, the more difficult it is to maintain in combat when dealing with all the other factors. I'm not sure if even against the dummy I could make the on-the-fly calculations as well as you can, but I will give it a try. I assume you keybind? What bindings do you use? Also on live, I took Twin Saber Throw out of my rotation because someone in that previous thread observed it's damage was lower than Massacre. But I don't think that's true in practice, and the fact that Twin Saber Throw is free makes it the better option. Rupture/Cauterize does more damage than Massacre/Blade Rush, but Massacre/Blade Rush has a much higher chance of proccing execute and slaughter. For that reason I've only used it selectively, but you seem to be getting great results just using a straight priority, so I'll have to rethink my strategy. Thanks again for sharing. I assume anyone following this thread by now has come to the conclusion that Bioware does not hate Combat. It just seems that it is complex enough that not everyone will choose the class and dominate the other classes. Without using some kind of strong priority or rotation system, Combat/Carnage does considerably less damage that the other classes, so one person might be getting 2800-2900, while another will get 2200-2300 with the same gear.

That's a really strong parse, and I'm wondering how you're getting there. I'm in this gear, which is probably a little below yours: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/de2a614d-371d-4e55-98f4-054b5947adca and got this parse on live with the two-piece bonus: http://www.torparse.com/a/211194/time/1367803992/1367804322/0/Damage+Dealt Using the GENERAL rotation discussed here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=628368 In my own experiments on the dummy, I haven't been able to get anywhere near as high as my results with a general rotation using any priority strategy...could you discuss in more detail what priority system you are using to get those results?