Marauder PvP tips thread

[ChaosDogg]

I'm writing this thread just to drop some info on marauder some players might not know and also include some fairly basic stuff for newer players. I don't play carnage or rage so if anyone has anything they want to add, you can post whatever you think might be missing.

 

Fury

Fury is one of the staple mechanics of the marauder class which allows you to use one of your fury abilities when maxed (30 stacks). You have 3 options available to you; Berserk for damage, Predation for group sprint/defense and Bloodthirst for massive group healing and damage output. Here is some info on Fury:

 

 

• The fury buff lasts 60 seconds and is generated upon spending rage on attacks. Some attacks like Smash or Sweeping Slash allows you to keep your buff up or stack fury when you have no enemy targets. With Defensive Forms and Short Fuse, you can expect to generate 4 fury on attacks, 2 from taking damage and 3 for a kill. Knowing how much fury you can generate helps you estimate how soon you can use one of your fury abilities.
   
   
  
• A fury ability buff generally denies you from stacking additional fury while it is active. However it does not stop you from using Frenzy so you can overlap 2 fury buffs such as Bloodthirst and Berserk.
   
   
  
• As Fury lasts 60 seconds, you can opt to Frenzy in the starting room so it is off cooldown earlier. If you want the opening predation, Frenzy under a minute before the countdown expires. If you want a Bloodthirst on first engagement, you can delay it a lot longer. Generally, you should have the carnage marauder provide the predation buff over the other specs where possible.
  

 

 

 

Interrupts

Marauders have access to a slew of interrupts. Only Disruption locks out an ability on interrupt. The general list of interrupts includes CC and the full list includes:

 

-Disruption

-Force Charge

-Force Choke

-Intimidating Roar

-LoS during channeled abilities or at the end of a casted ability also breaks the cast.

 

The general rule of thumb is that if the cast is backloaded (ability fires at the end of the cast), interrupt as late as possible. The reason is that when they are casting, they are not doing anything and you can get faked if you try to interrupt too early. The exceptions are channeled abilities. For important channeled abilities with cds like Innervate/Healing Trance, you can opt to prekick it with Force Charge instead of wasting your lockout with Disruption.

 

 

 

 

Annihilation Damage

Annihilation's strength is in that it can combine DoT based internal damage with a "bursty" ability like Annihilate which can wreck almost any class. You shouldn't have a specific rotation in PvP but your damage priority should look like this while training a target:

 

1) Vicious Throw

2) Annihilate if stacks are running out

3) Rupture

4) Deadly Saber

5) Annihilate

6) Ravage

7) Vicious slash if you have excess rage

8) Assault

 

Keep in mind the following things:

 

• Keep Crippling Slash and Deadly Throw up where possible
   
  
• Berserk on cd but if you need to frontload as much damage as possible, berserk on 3 stacks of Deadly Saber and Rupture
   
  
• Ravage does better damage than almost everything you have if the target is unable to get away and you won't be interrupted.
   
  
• Annihilate over bleeds if you need the burst
   
  
• Force Scream and Smash along with Force Choke can bypass Evasion abilities from Agents, Assassins and other Warriors. This can help you finish off targets that use these cooldowns.
   
  
• Deadly Saber is off the GCD and applies on melee abilities so you should use it before your melee i.e. Deadly saber -> Force Charge
  

 

 

 

Force Camouflage

Camo is one of the best allround abilities if not the best in the game. Camo makes you untargetable provides you with a sprint for its duration and DoTs do not pull you out. For the duration, you take 50% less damage so it's almost impossible to die while you are inside of Camo. However, Bounty Hunter probes can break the ability. Here are a few uses of Camo:

• Escaping (duh)
   
  
• The stealth and sprint abilities allow you to swap objective nodes on close in maps without some players realizing it
   
  
• You need to chase a target ahead of you or do a korean swap when Charge is down. It can also help you place an Intimidating Roar in the middle of the group but using Charge for that is better.
   
  
• You can Camo incoming cc if you use it at the same time the cc is applied even on "instant" stuns like Electrocute and Debilitate. You won't break the cc but they won't be able to target you for the duration. Camo also breaks Force Choke (the other player will still channel it but it doesn't do anything) if used at the same time but if the timing is right, the first tick of Choke can sometimes cause Camo to fail prematurely(need verification).
   
  
• You can make the enemy detarget you while you full bleed him so you ahead on HP in a small scale fight.
   
  
• Break casts by causing yourself to be detargeted.
  

 

One of the downsides of the ability is that if you take damage inside of Camo, your combat timer will pause or break causing you to take much longer to drop combat. This is especially annoying because you won't be able to Sprint or Channel Hatred. The exception is sometimes if the players who caused the damage dies.

 

 

 

Force Choke

Force Choke disables both you and the target which makes it pretty crappy but it is still cc. Apart from generic cc, you can use choke to:

 

• generate rage
  
• intercept players attempting to interrupt caps or delay them from reaching objectives
  
• pull targets out of cover (snipers)
  
• cc players on defensive abilities to delay them
  
• interrupt casts
  
• gain an advantage in 1v1 with choke and full bleeds
  

 

 

Also for some reason, Force Choke immunes Low Slash from Assassins if you both use it at the same time (haven't checked this in the latest patch).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

will post more when i have the time

Edited June 15, 2012 by ChaosDogg

[ChaosDogg]

Keybinds

Keybinding is essential for playing a melee class fluidly. You need to be able to keep mobile and marauders have a lot of binds so it does pay to have everything bound. Some players may not be used to memorising a completely set of new binds which they made. The general advice for this would be to start with a small set of abilities you frequently use and then slowly expand your keybound ability selection. Within a couple of weeks (for first timers), you should be pretty set with your layout. For learning purposes you can always, increase the scale of your bar and icons using the interface editor so you can see the spells and keybind more easily.

 

Everyone binds their keys differently but here's a few pointers:

- The left half of your keyboard is far easier to hit. Keys like Q,E,1,2,3,4,5,6,R,T,F,G,V etc etc are easy to hit binds which you should use for your staple abilities. Mouse buttons are also incredibly to use so keep that in mind.

 

- Cluster your bar layout so you can see all your important cooldowns at a glance.

 

- Use modifiers like shift, ctrl and alt e.g. shift+1. Try to keep the modifiers and the base bind similar in function so you don't get confused at first i.e. shift + 4 = choke ctrl + 4 = intimidating roar and they are both ccs.

 

- If you need the extra space, you can unbind your default binds such as, sit and draw weapon buttons so you free up Z,X,C as they are not essential in combat. Some other ones which some people may not find obvious but are useful for finding extra bind space are ` and Caps Lock.

 

 

 

Another thing that I do personally and recommend to other people is that if the ability has no cooldown or you don't need to see its cooldown, put it on a separate bar and uncheck the "enabled" box in the Interface editor. This clears up a lot of clutter on your screen. If you have your binds memorised, you won't need the extra bar anyway and it will allow you to see your cooldowns better.

 

 

 

Stat Layout and gearing

Stat prioritization is important in RPGs in general and swtor is no exception. The main stats for marauder are strength, crit, surge and power. Accuracy comes on some gear naturally but you should not go seeking it out extensively. The gist of PvP gearing should be that you push your mainstat as much as possible and keep your secondary stats optimized.

 

Crit is probably one of the most important stat at first because if you can get a decent amount of it (~30% on your character pane), it will lend to your burst greatly. However, surge works in conjunction with crit by increasing the damage of your critical strikes. They are sort of co-dependent on each other. However, some abilities have a very high crit change or auto-crit (Smash as rage spec), so you would devalue your crit. The catch is that crit and surge will both DR (diminishing returns). Surge DRs heavily around 250-300. Crit rating will also be diminish but you will still see significant yields at most reasonable gear levels. Strength boosts the damage of all your abilities and gives minimal crit chance. This crit chance does not share DR with crit rating. Power yields more bonus damage than strength but lacks the tacked on crit.

 

It should be fair then to assume that your gearing priority should be:

 

Crit at desired value > Surge soft cap (75%) > Power

 

 

 

Battlemaster gearing

Theoretical stuff aside, you need to consider the practical gearing process. BM gear only has surge on your implants and you cannot access surge enhancements as Empire. Your first priority to optimize as BM is to buy augmented gear from the GTN. You do NOT need to purchase battlemaster/war hero shells as any low level ones will do. Here is a list of what you will need:

 

• 3x Advanced Might Augment 22 (Overkill Augments will do too)
  
• 2x Lightsaber (Augmented)
  
• 1x Chest slot (Augmented)
  

 

When you transfer the mods to your new shells, keep the pre-existing battlemaster shells as you will need them to trade in for war hero.

 

 

 

War hero gearing

War hero has the widest customization range but you should not worry much about it until you have at least full gear. Your priority in obtaining gear should be mainhand weapon > gloves/legs/boots > head > chest > earpiece/implants> offhand>relic> the rest. If you are carnage, move the offhand purchase up a few ranks as it is more important than the other specs. What you may notice is that the War Hero marauder gear will come with an overload of crit. Here's a few things which you can do to alleviate this:

 

• Use the power implants and earpieces
  
• Use the Vindicator's Lighstaber to upgrade as these provide power instead of crit. You can use a vindicator lightsaber in an augmented offhand.
  
• After purchasing all your slots you may find the cheapest Power Surge Mods in "War Hero Vindicator's Handgear". This is the Jugg variant.
  

 

Finally, do not forget to augment all your war hero gear as you get them because the bonuses are on the armoring and not the shell. An alternative route some people take (generally Rage spec) is to outfit themselves with Juggernaut armouring to benefit from the bonus damage after Charge.

 

 

PVE gear

Modded belt and bracers are available from your legacy vendor on Dromuund Kaas. You will need at least a PvE armoring 25 to justify the expertise tradeoff in the armoring slot. Remember you cannot use PvP armoring in belts and bracers because they are slot-specific. However, the mods can be pulled from PvP armour and put into these. Ideally you would use your power mods. When you upgrade from BM to War Hero, strip the mods before you trade it in (the vendor will accept the shell even if it has no mods).

 

Matrix cube is also very handy as your second relic if you don't run too low on expertise.

Edited June 16, 2012 by ChaosDogg

[truevalon]

A pvp tip from me; Against pyro/vanguards obfuscate after they use incendiary missile and thermal detonator. At this point most of them will try a railshot followed by a rocket punch and another railshot and this will most likely make their railshots miss.

[SpiritOfMage]

Some common misunderstanding is that force camouflage boost our movement speed! If you dont have the talent Phantom, you acctually retain you original movement speed while using force camo. The 30% ms boost it provides, cancels itself with the natural - 30% ms that is applied on every character entering stealth.

[ChaosDogg]

Sry i never played without phantom except when I was levelling.

[Yescek]

Some common misunderstanding is that force camouflage boost our movement speed! If you dont have the talent Phantom, you acctually retain you original movement speed while using force camo. The 30% ms boost it provides, cancels itself with the natural - 30% ms that is applied on every character entering stealth.

 

I did not know this. Thank you.

[SpiritOfMage]

Sry i never played without phantom except when I was levelling.

 

Well pre 1.2, Phantom, PvP wise was a mandatory talent, but it didnt provide any ms boost. Now you'd be better off putting those 2 points somewhere else.

Edited June 4, 2012 by SpiritOfMage

[Spiderbubble]

Well pre 1.2, Phantom, PvP wise was a mandatory talent, but it didnt provide any ms boost. Now you'd be better off putting those 2 points somewhere else.

 

Phantom is very nice in PvP still. 6 Seconds with that movement speed gets you far away from combat and gives you time to escape much easier.

 

My biggest tip for PvP though: Use Rage spec. While Annihilation has more utility, Rage has burst, which is just way more helpful to fight healers. As Annihilation, I always had issues with healing operatives, but with Rage they're not much of an issue at all. Plus, I like having a 50% crit chance on my Vicious Slash (35% naturally, and 15% from the talent giving 15% crit chance ONLY to Vicious Slash), and having Vicious Slash return it's full cost if it crits. During a Berserk, you can build anywhere from 6 to 18 rage, with an average of 12. That's a full bar of rage pretty much guaranteed while you're smacking people in the face for a lot of damage (in fact, you can hit 2 people with it!)

 

One nice thing about the Marauder is that each tree has some very mixed weapon/force damage outputs. Compared to say, Marksman Sniper, who has almost entirely weapon damage, it's much easier to do consistent damage on tanks.

[Ballfro]

Phantom is very nice in PvP still. 6 Seconds with that movement speed gets you far away from combat and gives you time to escape much easier.

 

My biggest tip for PvP though: Use Rage spec. While Annihilation has more utility, Rage has burst, which is just way more helpful to fight healers. As Annihilation, I always had issues with healing operatives, but with Rage they're not much of an issue at all. Plus, I like having a 50% crit chance on my Vicious Slash (35% naturally, and 15% from the talent giving 15% crit chance ONLY to Vicious Slash), and having Vicious Slash return it's full cost if it crits. During a Berserk, you can build anywhere from 6 to 18 rage, with an average of 12. That's a full bar of rage pretty much guaranteed while you're smacking people in the face for a lot of damage (in fact, you can hit 2 people with it!)

 

One nice thing about the Marauder is that each tree has some very mixed weapon/force damage outputs. Compared to say, Marksman Sniper, who has almost entirely weapon damage, it's much easier to do consistent damage on tanks.

 

I am not following the logic here for you saying Rage spec is best. Because on one type of class you have an easier time killing that makes it the best? What about the other two healing classes? I'd prefer to have multiple interrupts with the Annihilation tree then an easy button for one class. Also, the sustained damage you have with Annihilation is very sneaky. People don't realize that you just put 3 stacks of Deadly Saber on then as we as a full rupture along with just popping berserk to make those 100% crit, so before they know what hit them you pop Annihilate followed by Ravage and they are dead, proceeding to the SWTOR forums to cry about how OP Marauders are. It's not Rage Marauders they are crying about, I promise you that lol.

[ChandlerL]

Force Choke

Force Choke disables both you and the target which makes it pretty crappy but it is still cc. Apart from generic cc, you can use choke to:

 

It can feel crappy compared to other stuns out there but for let's saaaay an Annihilation spec it can do a few things: If you've front loaded your damage including your dots you can use it allow the dots to tick away, possibly with an active Berserk for self-healing while the reprieve allows your CDs to tick down to availability-- bursting, set up, and closing abilities such as Annihilate, Battering Assault and Force Charge respectively.

 

btw, good advice in your interrupt section. Knowing what to interrupt as well as oftentimes using it towards the end of your target's "casting" will increase your edge.

 

Be mindfull of pushing one spec over the other. They're all viable at the moment and are better matched to a preferred playing style that allows an individual player to excel because it fits them. Comfort and morale go a long way in this.

 

Well formatted mini-guide as well, mate. +1

Edited June 13, 2012 by ChandlerL

[ChaosDogg]

Sorry to say although I didn't get much feedback, I'll try to finish this up tonight and someone can continue on in future when things change. I have been losing interest in the pvp endgame due to lack of variety and I won't be resubbing for the time being.