Annihilation vs. Carnage in end game, generaly speaking

[jellOfish]

Sup,

 

I am close to 50 and leveled all the way with carnage and it's true that later on it really starts to shine, the burst is nice. However, I've seen an annihilation marauder the other day and he was barely losing any health as far as I could see and was killing the same mobs as me. Is the annihilation tree really that better when it comes to survivability? I'd appreciate advise from people who have tried both.

 

Let's say I would want to grind elites, would annihilation be better than carnage? I ask because the thing with carnage is you have high initial burst with gore + ravage + scream but after you unload the skill, DPS drops as you wait for CD. If anni was better for elite grinding, PvE in general I might be willing to try but I am looking for some good arguments and don't really want to blindly respec just to find out it's about the same. Thanks and much appreciated.

[urcoconuts]

when it comes to soloing content and survival, annihilation takes the cake. The bleed heals are pretty awesome when you use the berserk ability and make all your bleeds crit. using berserk it also heals your group members, so its a good group utility during rough fights.

 

carnage = bursty, flat damage, high damage, low survival, gear dependent

 

annihilation = damage over time, good survivability, damage gets high over time, not as gear dependent.

[Drathmar]

I have tried both the last couple of days.

 

Carnage does have high burst but no where near the self-sustain.

 

Annihilation is our only tree with any self-healing in it at all. With deadly saber + rupture and the way they work, plus the talent to refresh rupture you always have a bleed on your target, and bleed crits heal for 2% of your total hp, and you get a +15% chance to crit if you have full juyo stacks, + another 6% if you have malice from the rage tree.

 

If you are fighting multiple mobs, stacking the bleeds on both mobs heals you more as deadly saber has 3 stacks possible, but if all 3 are on one mob it counts as one tick, however if you rupture a mob with deadly saber up so it has 1 deadly saber stack + rupture, then start killing the other mob as normal you will have 3 bleeds ticking for heals instead of 2, and can just keep reapplying deadly saber + rupture to the non-main mob to keep this up, and you heal for a fair amount doing it.

 

Especially when you have berserk up, which is a lot as we gain fury and rage quickly and berserk makes the next 6 bleed ticks crit.

[jellOfish]

when it comes to soloing content and survival, annihilation takes the cake. The bleed heals are pretty awesome when you use the berserk ability and make all your bleeds crit. using berserk it also heals your group members, so its a good group utility during rough fights.

 

carnage = bursty, flat damage, high damage, low survival, gear dependent

 

annihilation = damage over time, good survivability, damage gets high over time, not as gear dependent.

 

If you had to estimate the difference in killing speed between annihilation and carnage over extended periods and mobs being mixed (i.e. normal, strong, elite), what would it be in terms of %? Same gear, quinn as healer. I understand that there are variables but just a guess is good enough.

[Voblat]

If you had to estimate the difference in killing speed between annihilation and carnage over extended periods and mobs being mixed (i.e. normal, strong, elite), what would it be in terms of %? Same gear, quinn as healer. I understand that there are variables but just a guess is good enough.

 

The thing with annihilation is you dont need quinn.

 

I only use Vette, I tried quinn a bit when I got him, but kill rates are so slow without extra dps, I tried jaesa when I got her, shes good too but I just prefer having the ranged dps, Vette doesnt get in the way and has better survivability than jaesa.

 

Kitted out with appropraite modded orange gear, Vette chucks out insane damage, everything dies very, very quickly, cloak of pain, berserk, and the bleeds give me healing and survivability, charge, roar, disrupt, obfuscate, choke are all interupts to stop the big damage from gold mobs, I've just finished Voss, I soloed everything, even the sel makor avatar using vette, and Im level 47, so not over levelled to make it easier, if anything, 1 level below where I should be.

[jellOfish]

The thing with annihilation is you dont need quinn.

 

I only use Vette, I tried quinn a bit when I got him, but kill rates are so slow without extra dps, I tried jaesa when I got her, shes good too but I just prefer having the ranged dps, Vette doesnt get in the way and has better survivability than jaesa.

 

Kitted out with appropraite modded orange gear, Vette chucks out insane damage, everything dies very, very quickly, cloak of pain, berserk, and the bleeds give me healing and survivability, charge, roar, disrupt, obfuscate, choke are all interupts to stop the big damage from gold mobs, I've just finished Voss, I soloed everything, even the sel makor avatar using vette, and Im level 47, so not over levelled to make it easier, if anything, 1 level below where I should be.

 

So you say that you can chain pull elite mobs without quinn in annihilation?

[Voblat]

So you say that you can chain pull elite mobs without quinn in annihilation?

 

You may have a couple of seconds for topping health back up with channel hatred and wait for the odd cloak of pain cooldown , but I still think its quicker than with quinn because you are effectively, with a properly geared dps companion (whichever you choose) almost doubling your damage output .

 

An example, the quest on Voss that has you get samples from mobs and ends with three gold level 45's, I was 46 when I did that, I could kill one of those in the time it took for saber ward to expire, thats 12 seconds.(put it up as the fight started, still had the bubble as the mob died)

 

I know I couldnt kill anywhere near that quickly with quinn, I may never have to channel hatred or whatever, but its still slower.

[cesmode]

I have tried both the last couple of days.

 

Carnage does have high burst but no where near the self-sustain.

 

Annihilation is our only tree with any self-healing in it at all. With deadly saber + rupture and the way they work, plus the talent to refresh rupture you always have a bleed on your target, and bleed crits heal for 2% of your total hp, and you get a +15% chance to crit if you have full juyo stacks, + another 6% if you have malice from the rage tree.

 

If you are fighting multiple mobs, stacking the bleeds on both mobs heals you more as deadly saber has 3 stacks possible, but if all 3 are on one mob it counts as one tick, however if you rupture a mob with deadly saber up so it has 1 deadly saber stack + rupture, then start killing the other mob as normal you will have 3 bleeds ticking for heals instead of 2, and can just keep reapplying deadly saber + rupture to the non-main mob to keep this up, and you heal for a fair amount doing it.

 

Especially when you have berserk up, which is a lot as we gain fury and rage quickly and berserk makes the next 6 bleed ticks crit.

 

Hold on.

 

I need to put my reading glasses on, and my thinking cap to read this because it actually might help me.

 

So what you are saying is:

 

A pack of 3 mobs, lets say 3 normal mobs...

 

Mob 1: Charge in, Deadly Saber, Rupture

Mob 2 and 3: just go through normal rotation

...I'lll have 3 dots ticking? how?

[jellOfish]

You may have a couple of seconds for topping health back up with channel hatred and wait for the odd cloak of pain cooldown , but I still think its quicker than with quinn because you are effectively, with a properly geared dps companion (whichever you choose) almost doubling your damage output .

 

An example, the quest on Voss that has you get samples from mobs and ends with three gold level 45's, I was 46 when I did that, I could kill one of those in the time it took for saber ward to expire, thats 12 seconds.(put it up as the fight started, still had the bubble as the mob died)

 

I know I couldnt kill anywhere near that quickly with quinn, I may never have to channel hatred or whatever, but its still slower.

 

You got me convinced

 

Just one more question. How does a typical rotation look? I figured it's build around rupture and deadly saber but an example rotation would help. Also, is there a way how to apply bleeds on an AoE basis? Say, you buff deadly saber, use smash on a pack of 3 mobs and it get's applied to all of them? If so that would be sweet.

[Drathmar]

You got me convinced

 

Just one more question. How does a typical rotation look? I figured it's build around rupture and deadly saber but an example rotation would help. Also, is there a way how to apply bleeds on an AoE basis? Say, you buff deadly saber, use smash on a pack of 3 mobs and it get's applied to all of them? If so that would be sweet.

 

 

 

No way to apply bleeds AoE.

 

General rotation is:

 

Force Charge -> Deadly Saber -> Battering Assault -> Rupture -> Assault OR Annihilate (depends on if you got a rage tick from bleeds yet) -> Ravage

 

Then just fall into a priority (while mixing in rage builders):

 

1.) Deadly Saber whenever up

2.) Rupture whenever up

3.) Annihilate whenever up

4.) Ravage whenever up

5.) Vicious Slash when nothing else to do

 

Rage Building Priority:

 

1.) Battering Assault

2.) Force Charge

3.) Assault

 

Also use force choke once you have all your bleeds ticking to save yourself from damage or as an interrupt on mobs that need it.

[Voblat]

You got me convinced

 

Just one more question. How does a typical rotation look? I figured it's build around rupture and deadly saber but an example rotation would help. Also, is there a way how to apply bleeds on an AoE basis? Say, you buff deadly saber, use smash on a pack of 3 mobs and it get's applied to all of them? If so that would be sweet.

 

The person above gave it quite detailed.

 

On a single gold, I cloak of pain, force charge, set deadly blade whilst mid air so the first bleed comes from force charge, then I hit battering assault, annihilate, rupture, that puts three bleeds on, if retaliate is active I hit that, then force choke, this gives time for the bleeds to tick out without taking any damage, whilst Vette still continues to dps, by this point the mob is either close to death if a level below you, or at most half health for stuff at or plus one level, likely you will have enough fury for berserk now, so hit that, lay the bleeds back on (same charge/deadly/battering/annihilate or ravage) which also gives you healing and away you go.

 

Hit interupts as needed , they are key to surviving higher level gold fights, but that would be the basics of the fight.

 

For a group of mobs throw in a smash/pommel strike as needed , same with cripple/savage kick, golds are immune to both but it works on silvers.

[jellOfish]

The person above gave it quite detailed.

 

On a single gold, I cloak of pain, force charge, set deadly blade whilst mid air so the first bleed comes from force charge, then I hit battering assault, annihilate, rupture, that puts three bleeds on, if retaliate is active I hit that, then force choke, this gives time for the bleeds to tick out without taking any damage, whilst Vette still continues to dps, by this point the mob is either close to death if a level below you, or at most half health for stuff at or plus one level, likely you will have enough fury for berserk now, so hit that, lay the bleeds back on (same charge/deadly/battering/annihilate or ravage) which also gives you healing and away you go.

 

Hit interupts as needed , they are key to surviving higher level gold fights, but that would be the basics of the fight.

 

For a group of mobs throw in a smash/pommel strike as needed , same with cripple/savage kick, golds are immune to both but it works on silvers.

 

Specced annihilation, tested it and I like it. However, it's much more difficult than it looks considering I was used to completely different gameplay from carnage. One think that bugs me a bit is fighting groups of normal mobs. Elites are easy as the dots have time to tick away but normals die so fast that he heals don't really have time to kick in. I switched to quinn for now until I get used to the play style.

[Papakwesi]

Carnage + Quinn = problem solved, while lvling.

[Voblat]

Specced annihilation, tested it and I like it. However, it's much more difficult than it looks considering I was used to completely different gameplay from carnage. One think that bugs me a bit is fighting groups of normal mobs. Elites are easy as the dots have time to tick away but normals die so fast that he heals don't really have time to kick in. I switched to quinn for now until I get used to the play style.

 

What I do with the standard two weak/one strong group, is set the pet on a weak, then jump in on the strong, force charge, deadly saber etc , the AI normally sends the second weak mob to you , by this point, so with your bleeds on the strong mob, I then smash, switch target to the weak and pommel strike, this is usually enough to kill any weak mob.

 

If you have your dps companion geared, the other weak will also be dead, then just burn the remaining health of the strong mob.

 

I really enjoy the class , but it isnt straightforward to get the best out of it, I'm probably not making the most efficient use of skills myself , but I've done everything on anni spec from day one, and always used vette, so I've got from level 10 to 48's worth of mob kills to get this technique, and it works for me.

[Masoa]

What's nice is that with Quinn you can do orange quests with ease.

 

Generally goes like this as anil:

 

Force Charge -> Smash -> Deadly Saber -> Rupture -> Anil/VS to open up Rupture

 

Quinn pulls healing agro off the others, you keep tunneling down your target. Quinn easily keeps himself up. You pull the next guy off him, kill him, and finally the last guy...

 

You're about to die... so your force cloak quinn pops you a quick heal cds come off you and you resume on target now on Quinn...

 

 

Enjoy your zero downtime gameplay.

 

Operations? Enjoy your rogue that provides tons more utility.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Masoa

[revial]

While I'm all about equipping my Companions well, it's a huge stretch to say an epic geared DPS Companion can 'nearly double' your DPS.

 

I think it's far safer to say they can do about 30% of your DPS, assuming you're both in epics. If your DPS Companion is able to come remotely close to similar damage as you, then I suspect there's a lot of room for improvement in how you play this class. :/ I'm not saying they're useless, but let's not overstate how effective they are. I will say that the Tanking Companions are about as close to useless as possible, at level 50.

 

On another note, once you're rolling in epics, doing your level 50 dailies gets awfully trivial. I just use Quinn (his initial heal from range is a nice aggro magnet to pull the ranged mobs into one clump as well), so there's no downtime, and kill things too fast for any DPS Companion to have enough ramp up time to make much of a difference.

[Debiru]

I did some testing at lvl 42 whit ani and carnage.

 

Foudn that whit quinn, i got better DPS as carnage, and the diffrence on my HP pool after fight was max 5% from normals to elite mobs.

 

Alone whitout a commp, i did some better on normal\silver mobs as carnage, but had maby 10% more whit ani.

 

As i play on a pvp server, i whould use quinn anyway for safty.

 

 

But my bigest issue whit ani is that it is to statick, if you miss rotation you lose dps and healing and you need to following the rotation 100%, so you effectly get alot less utility.

 

 

carnage IS utility, becouse there is no notable rotation, but as it is skill on demand play you got utility when ever you need it.

 

i use abilitys on the pre tense i "see" what does te most dmg.

 

I.E on a Silver mob, i whould charge, ARP hit then ravage and finish of whit massacre, as liver mob is usualy dead at this time.

 

normals i charge aoe stun and just 2 3 GCD them whit any high dmamge hiting skill off CD\GCD.

 

 

But i got jumped alot as i play pvp server, and so far i lost 1 fight, becouse I messed up, i hadnt bothered to keybind and was just messing around and was a n00b, got my act together and keybound and i havent gotn killed yet on a full pvp EU server, and im lvl 45.

 

 

Naa, i say i pref carnae for the utility, and atleast the profund illusion of better dmg.

 

Also that i have seen others who where in beta when they had combat log comparing ani to carnage, saying it was obvious at that time carnage did more, way more dmg, but some skill have been re fitted, so unless we get a dmg metre, we wont know yet.

[BrolleunHunter]

Carnage still needs something, and especially when compare to Annihilation and Rage. I am not saying the specialization is broke, but is lacking in fury building, rage building, and damage somewhat; though mostly due to the Ravage Bug.

 

If Gore would just last 12 seconds, and if Erupting Fury built Fury when an Ataru form proceed I think the specialization would almost be solid, but that is just me.

 

I just loath how quickly Annihilation can build fury compared to Rage and Carnage. Annihilation has to be the biggest crutch for Marauder and people still can't get this class right.

Edited January 4, 2012 by BrolleunHunter

[Ardim]

Sup,

 

I am close to 50 and leveled all the way with carnage and it's true that later on it really starts to shine, the burst is nice. However, I've seen an annihilation marauder the other day and he was barely losing any health as far as I could see and was killing the same mobs as me. Is the annihilation tree really that better when it comes to survivability? I'd appreciate advise from people who have tried both.

 

Let's say I would want to grind elites, would annihilation be better than carnage? I ask because the thing with carnage is you have high initial burst with gore + ravage + scream but after you unload the skill, DPS drops as you wait for CD. If anni was better for elite grinding, PvE in general I might be willing to try but I am looking for some good arguments and don't really want to blindly respec just to find out it's about the same. Thanks and much appreciated.

 

 

Annihilation basically gives you a self heal while Carnage doesn't, which is why Anni Marauders tend to survive better than Carnage Marauders. With points in Hungering, and with the Deadly Saber bleeds and Rupture on a target, you can restore 18% of your maximum health when you hit Berserk.

 

Annihilation damage is basically constant throughout a fight, but it's pretty good. I end up as one of the top damage dealers when I PvP and I deal the most DPS in a group most of the time when I run Flashpoints and such. As for Carnage, I can't really say that much about it since I switched from Carnage to Annihilation at around level 23.

[BarcodeX]

Annihilation has to be the biggest crutch for Marauder and people still can't get this class right.

 

True that. Most Marauders I've seen/talked to/know are Carnage or Rage spec. Hardly any are Annih spec and I LOVE it for PvP. I average about 250k dmg per match with a good amount of kills and low deaths (thank God for Force Camo).

 

IMO once you got your skill rotation down and got your movement reflexes down, PvP in WZ should be easyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Edited January 4, 2012 by BarcodeX

[Ardim]

True that. Most Marauders I've seen/talked to/know are Carnage or Rage spec. Hardly any are Annih spec and I LOVE it for PvP. I average about 250k dmg per match with a good amount of kills and low deaths (thank God for Force Camo).

 

IMO once you got your skill rotation down and got your movement reflexes down, PvP in WZ should be easyyyyyyyyyyyy.

 

 

Indeed. Anni spec is simply amazing. The only time I really struggle against targets is when I have very low health with Force Camo on CD, or when the guy has pocket healers...

[Drankathar]

level 36 here and really enjoying my anni spec mara. Dont need to use Quinn yet, tho sometimes I do when I just want to explore. Had a dual with an equal levelled carn mara with simular gear, the dots helped me take him down with more than 1/2 my health left. Whilst I know carn dont get good till later levels, it makes me happy that I havent had such a hard time leveling.

 

One thing i have noticed that makes a big difference is to keep upgrading your gear, a +2 str increase does make a difference.

[BarcodeX]

level 36 here and really enjoying my anni spec mara. Dont need to use Quinn yet, tho sometimes I do when I just want to explore. Had a dual with an equal levelled carn mara with simular gear, the dots helped me take him down with more than 1/2 my health left. Whilst I know carn dont get good till later levels, it makes me happy that I havent had such a hard time leveling.

 

One thing i have noticed that makes a big difference is to keep upgrading your gear, a +2 str increase does make a difference.

 

Wait till you get Annihilation skill (last talent on Annihilation tree). The damage on that is freaking amazing including the crit. I've been able to take down opponents of half health when I only have 1/4th health due to that skill in my skill rotation (of course I popped out of Force Camo but still ).

[Bealsebub]

I levelled as Anni with Quinn, I did all my Claas Quests solo and never broke into a sweat, no matter what the game threw at me, I reached 50 in under 5 days played and took everything layed back.

No idea if it would of been better with Vette but with Quin I had zero down time and I killed Golds faster than most were killing Silvers.

[jellOfish]

While I'm all about equipping my Companions well, it's a huge stretch to say an epic geared DPS Companion can 'nearly double' your DPS.

 

I think it's far safer to say they can do about 30% of your DPS, assuming you're both in epics. If your DPS Companion is able to come remotely close to similar damage as you, then I suspect there's a lot of room for improvement in how you play this class. :/ I'm not saying they're useless, but let's not overstate how effective they are. I will say that the Tanking Companions are about as close to useless as possible, at level 50.

 

On another note, once you're rolling in epics, doing your level 50 dailies gets awfully trivial. I just use Quinn (his initial heal from range is a nice aggro magnet to pull the ranged mobs into one clump as well), so there's no downtime, and kill things too fast for any DPS Companion to have enough ramp up time to make much of a difference.

 

 

I have to agree here. I tried to equip Vette with the best stuff I could find. She does do nice damage but I guess Quinn is simply too good to no use him instead. Vette's damage simply doesn't make up for the healing. For normal mobs it doesn't really matter if you do not have a DPS companion since they die fast anyway. For the stronger mobs, I find that I rather kill a bit slower with zero downtime than kill faster but use hatred after the mob to top me off. Yesterday I was farming elites for a bit. They were of equal level and with the anni spec now and Quinn, I was able to chain pull mob after mob after mob while I pretty much never dropped below 80%. The heal from the dot ticks is some serious business considering how fast you build fury.