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Carnage PvE/PvP spec corner, with beverages!

J-Slh

By J-Slh
in Sentinel / Marauder

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J-Slh

J-Slh

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Posted (edited)

*Points to an imaginary bar* Here, have an imaginary beer and take a sit while I babble on about the Marauder talent tree I am most looking forward to, the Carnage tree.

 

For those of you that have no idea what the Carnage spec is and what it involves, or you don't know about the Fury mechanic, let me quote myself:

 

Carnage tree - A steady DPS / PvP-oriented tree. No need to keep stuff (DoTs) up.

 

Notes:

 

Ataru Form: Enters an acrobatic lightsaber form, increasing accuracy by 3%. In addition, your successful melee attacks have a 20% chance to trigger a second strike that deals 229 energy damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds.

 

Ataru form hit: Has 1.5 second internal CD, does energy damage. Talents boost that damage, its crit chance and it periodically boosts the damage of your other finishers.

 

Fury: Activating an attack that spends rage and defeating opponents builds Fury. When 30 stacks of Fury are built, you become Furious, enabling the use of Berserk, Predation and Bloodthirst.

 

Berserk: Requires and converts 30 stacks of Fury to go Berserk. Lasts for 6 charges. This effect varies based on your current lightsaber form:

 

Shii-Cho Form: Vicious Slash costs no rage and strikes 1 additional nearby enemy.

Juyo Form: Increases the critical chance of your bleed attacks by 100% and causes bleed damage to heal your party for 1% of max health each tick.

Ataru Form: Reduces the rage cost of Vicious Slash and Massacre by 1 and reduces their global cooldown by 0.5 seconds.

 

Predation: Requires and converts 30 stacks of Fury to issue Predation to you and your party, increasing movement speed by 50% and melee and ranged defense by 10%. Lasts 10 seconds.

 

Bloodthirst: Requires and converts 30 stacks of Fury to issue Bloodthirst to you and your party, increasing all damage and healing dealt by 15%. Lasts 15 seconds.

 

 

I feel like an idiot when I am doing it to be honest, but anyway, let's move on. My take on the spec, its advantages and disadvantages can be summed up to this:

 

Pros:

 

- Revolves around a steady (1.5 second internal CD) proc.

- Can generate Fury while being hit, letting you get to 30 stacks faster.

- Increased Movement Speed

- Lots of rage to use (well, I had no problems until 40)

- No need to keep up abilities on the target. (Not even bleed, it is not cost efficient)

- Easier to level up with

 

Cons:

 

- Revolves around a steady (1.5 second internal CD) proc.

- Fairly boring to play, nothing exciting happens.

- Figuring out what abilities to NOT use is a pain.

 

Keep in mind that the above is my point of view on the talent tree, you are welcomed to disagree but do us all a favor and voice your objections so that we all benefit in the long run.

 

Anyway, now that we got the starting info out of the way, we are examining this PvE tree:

 

<<

http://goo.gl/aoHB4 >>

 

(Tried to color that red but wouldn't work T_T)

 

This is, from what I can gather reading through the talents, is the most single target DPS tree I could think of. Before we delve more into the wrongness of the claim I just made, let me explain the reasoning with which I chose each talent.

 

Carnage Tree

(Hell yeah, massive letters!)

 

Tier 1 Talents (5 points):

 

- Dual Wield Mastery: I don't think that needs an explanation, your offhand strikes do more damage, which is cool.

 

Now, in high end PvE, I don't think that the Marauder will be targeted many times hence I found the other two talents a bit "useless", however you cannot advance without spending points so I spent 2 points in:

 

- Defensive Forms: Getting 2 Fury when attacked shouldn't matter in high-end PvE, but the 15% movement speed increase is sweet.

 

Tier 2 Talents (10 points):

 

- Narrowed Hatred: More accuracy is always better, especially when this talent increases both melee and Force chance to hit.

 

- Enraged Charge: +1 rage when charging. Which means 3 + 1 (from the talent) + 6 from Battering Assault = 10 rage to start with. I think it is a good number!

 

Tier 3 Talents (15 points):

 

- Ataru Form: This is the basis of the tree, so I don't see why would anyone would not select to include it into his/her spec.

 

- Ataru Mastery: More damage per Ataru Form hit.

 

- Execute: I like when the tree has synergy with my other abilities, so 10% more damage on Vicious Slash, Force Scream etc, looks sweet.

 

Tier 4 Talents (20 points):

 

- Blood Frenzy: Every 4 Ataru Form procs you get 1 rage. Worth it.

 

- Towering Rage: Blood Frenzy is always up so Force Scream is a guaranteed crit. If Execute has proced, then you get a Force Scream +10% damage crit.

 

- Enraged Assault: Battering Assault is your main Rage generator but it is on a 15 sec CD, so lowering that to 12 would help.

 

Tier 5 Talents (25 points):

 

- Gore: Our own Colossus Smash. For 6 seconds, Rage spenders and Ataru Form procs do more damage.

 

- Rattling voice: Lowers the CD of Force Scream from 12 secs to 9 and its rage cost from 4 to 2.

 

Now at this point, since this is an attempt in making the most single target DPS tree we can possibly make, I didn't want to include Unbound.From all of them, I decided that AoE damage is more common to encounter in PvE, so I go back to the Second Tier and put some points into:

 

- Defensive Roll: -30% off AoE damage.

 

Tier 6 Talents (30 points):

 

- Sever: Crit Damage Bonus to Massacre, Ataru Form Hit and Force Scream. Hell yeaps.

 

Now I am torn. I find being able to immobilize an enemy with Ravage for its duration somewhat useless in high end PvE. Looking at the tree, however, every talent left on the tiers below this one is more or less for PvP usage. So I look back down the tree to find a suitable talent and in its place I chose to put some points to:

 

- Cloak of Carnage: I still maintain that you wouldn't get hit much, but I prefer this to Overwhelm.

 

Tier 7 Talents (31 points):

 

- Massacre: This is what we wanted baby!

 

Of course, it is not over since we have 10 more points to distribute. I ended up thinking about it for longer than I thought it would take me. The choices before me were the following:

 

Combo #1:

 

Annihilation: Enraged Slash / Cloak of Annihilation

 

Rage: Ravager / Malice

 

Combo #1 is, according to my opinion, the most "all around" option, meaning you don't use your 10 points to go to the Second Tier of either Annihilation or Rage.

 

Cloak of Annihilation has good synergy with the Cloak of Carnage talent lowering the CD of Cloak of Pain considerably when you use Retaliation. I dunno how often you will get to use Retaliation though, since you are not expecting to being hit by anything. Enraged Slash is a must talent, since it refunds rage from rage spenders. Ravager is useful as well, lowering the CD of Choke to 50 secs from 60. It also reduces the CD of Ravage to 27 secs. Malice provides more crit chance for your Force Scream and Force Choke, which is good for Choke, since Scream has already 100% crit chance due to the Towering Rage talent.

 

Combo #2:

 

Annihilation: Enraged Slash / Quick Recovery

 

Rage: Ravager / Malice

 

As above, Enraged Slash is a must talent, since it refunds rage from rage spenders. Ravager is useful as well, lowering the CD of Choke to 50 secs from 60. It also reduces the CD of Ravage to 27 secs. Malice provides more crit chance for your Force Scream and Force Choke, which is good for Choke, since Scream has already 100% crit chance due to the Towering Rage talent. Quick Recovery provides a boost to your AoE DPS skills, in order for then to be of some use during AoE pulls.

 

 

Combo #3:

 

Annihilation: Going 10 points in

 

OR

 

Rage: Going 10 points in

 

Annihilation's 2nd Tier talents have more to do with bleeds, but as far as I have seen, being a Carnage Marauder deems the use of Rupture as a waste of rage, unless you got rage to spare. I personally don't prefer this, but it is your choice.

 

Rage's 2nd Tier talents have more to do with the Shii-Cho form. Brutality is there as well as Payback, but I think that is more of a PvP talent. I personally don't prefer this, but it is your choice.

 

For the talent tree mentioned above, I went with Combo #2.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

That would be all I had to say, I hope you enjoyed your imaginary beverages :) If you have any objection please do voice it! We are all trying to learn here! As a side note, excuse any grammar error, since I am not a native English writer.

 

Thank you for reading and thank you for your time!

James.

 

P.S.: I will have the PvP equivalent probably tomorrow or the day after, so please look forward to it!

 

------------------------------

 

People that have helped me make this whole thing better (Thanks for your input!):

 

Nergalus.

Edited by J-Slh
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eXsDaken

eXsDaken

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From a PVE perspective I agree with your build and I'm looking forward to the differences in the PVP build. Nothing to really comment on in the current build because I'm coming from a main PVP view.

 

Question or discussion I would like to start is gear and secondary attributes. Which ones do you look for or what do you think should be main focus from a PVE and PVP stand point.

 

I personally would look for power and accuracy. Reason for taking on more accuracy to me is anything over 100 will ignore damage. But having some attributes in Critical or surge would help with crits and bring out the best burst damage.

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J-Slh

J-Slh

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I use Shii-Cho form, but for no apparent reason. Well maybe the +2% reduced damage from Defensive Forms, come to think about it.

 

On a side note: I got early access and I am trying to level up my Marauder as fast I can (given that the universe seems to be against me on that), so you might think I have forgotten this thread but fear not, I am just trying to get to 50 fast before the 23rd (I will be leaving for the holidays aka no SWTOR =/ ) and provide a better analysis on both the PvE and PvP side of the tree. So, apologies for the delay.

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J-Slh

J-Slh

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I use Shii-Cho form, but for no apparent reason. Well maybe the +2% reduced damage from Defensive Forms, come to think about it.

 

 

I should add: "Until I get the Ataru Form". Remember, the Ataru Form is the basis of the whole tree :)

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MiseryMachine

MiseryMachine

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Some clarification is needed. Towering Rage states that it increases the crit chance of Force Scream by 100%. It doesn't say that it sets the crit chance at 100%. Wouldn't it then stand that, if your crit chance is 15% un-buffed, then Towering Rage would make your next Force Scream have a 30% crit chance? It's a great skill to have, but far from the "auto-crit" the OP is proclaiming. Anyone have any numbers on this yet?
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JustinxDuff

JustinxDuff

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Some clarification is needed. Towering Rage states that it increases the crit chance of Force Scream by 100%. It doesn't say that it sets the crit chance at 100%. Wouldn't it then stand that, if your crit chance is 15% un-buffed, then Towering Rage would make your next Force Scream have a 30% crit chance? It's a great skill to have, but far from the "auto-crit" the OP is proclaiming. Anyone have any numbers on this yet?

 

Towering Rage makes Scream a guaranteed crit. Even if you had 0 base crit it would still have a 100% chance to crit, it adds the whole value not a percentage of the current crit chance.

Edited by JustinxDuff
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CorruptedKiller

CorruptedKiller

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Hi guys,

 

Thought i'd provide some discussion on carnage pvp spec, here is what i am thinking of going with or something similar with feedback!

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#100ZGMrbddrRrsZRr.1

 

Ive gone deep in the carnage tree with a few points in rage tree to get payback, ravager and stagger. I've tried to go with talents that will give me the most uptime on my target. Im thinking a full ravage on someone who cant move should be awesome!

 

My questions are:

 

How much accuracy do we need in pvp? depending on this we may have to swap points in my build above into "narrowed hatred"

 

Is it worth spending 2 points in cloak of carnage?

 

I may be a bit of the mark with some stuff but at least it gives us some discussion until OP is back.

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J-Slh

J-Slh

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Hey fellas, I am storming through the content in order to reach level 50 before Friday. I want to apologize for not updating as much as I wanted but I hope you will understand. After Friday I will have at least 10 days during which I can indulge in as much theorycrafting as needed.

 

I will post the tree I will be playing in PvP, and come Friday I will post the full explanation in the post I have reverved in the front page. Again, many apologies.

 

Here it is.

 

I know you might have some objections here and there, but I promise I have reasons for every talent :)

Edited by J-Slh
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