Goneras Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 I understand that right now a lot of people think Carnage is the best Ranked WZ spec for marauders followed by Rage. I understand that the improved perdition and snares are great in carnage, and rage has insane AOE smash damage to stop multiple people from capping. However i have been Annihilation since pre 1.2 and i gotta say i think that we are very viable in ranked. 90% of the time i am tops on Damage and Objective and pull on average over 100k Heals, I can burn down healers just as fast as a good carnage marauder and can peel for my healers pretty well. I may not have increased perdition or awesome AOE but to have a 4th person throwing out heals to the whole group all the time my healers love it. We are 3-2 in ranked and the 2 we lost were voidstar's where we just got straight up killed and they planted a bomb. i am not saying that i am any better than anyone else or annihilation is the best spec i just wanted to give it a touch of love and say i think it's Viable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hizoka Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 the ONLY reason people think it is not viable is most are not good enough to play it well, both rage and carnage are faceroll next to annihilation. For nearly every "pvper" out that its easy or nothing. Hell if it was skill based PvP and not gear based the game would be not only better but completely differernt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHorsemen Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 I play annihilation but only when there is a carnage mara in the group. Perd helps in rated so much both for objectives and just in large team fights. I think im 70-6 or something in rated everygame was in juyo forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malimoo Posted July 4, 2012 Share Posted July 4, 2012 I'm pretty sure its not the face roll aspect that makes carnage and rage more viable. Why I stopped pvping as Anni is because of one simple fact: Dispels u stack all your bleeds and a healer push's one button to remove all of them, in essence negating 30% or more of your damage. as Carnage or Rage you don't have any dots or tangible De-buffs to worry about so a dispel wont hurt you much if at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aluvi Posted July 4, 2012 Share Posted July 4, 2012 Guy above already said it, but I just want to repeat it so that it will sink in for the noobies: Annihilation is still amazing if you're against a pug that doesn't dispel your bleeds. If you're in a rated, the enemies healers are likely going to be cleansing your dots. Now, from my own dps tests, dots account for about 40% of an annihilation marauders overall damage done. In reality, in a warzone it will be higher than that. Why? Well, the first thing you do when you charge or walk up to someone is apply dots, and then you promptly get thrown back/cced/rooted/stunned, but at least your dots are ticking on them during this. Versus a dummy, you get to go all out with every melee ability, not just dots. So the dots from a marauder in PvP are actually more valuable than 40%, probably around 50%. Applying bleeds costs almost half of our rage bar also. So.. play a spec where 50% of my damage done and nearly 50% of my resources spent (rage bar) get negated by a single cast, not to mention that HALF of the classes in this game can do this dispel, regardless of what spec they are, heals or dps. Yeah I think I'll pass. I love annihilation. It was my "first love" in this game, and I love the marauder AC in general, but if Bioware doesn't address this by making bleeds uncleansable, or better yet, do something like blizzard did with unstable affliction for warlocks where if a person cleanses it, they get the full damage of the dots done to them instantly + a small stun, then annihilation is a doomed spec. I mean really, if we had to compare the anni spec of a marauder to something else, it would be a feral druid, which do the majority of their damage through bleeds. Can you imagine if feral druids bleeds could be cleansed in WoW? They would be worthless (and really, they kind of already are). The 2nd reason why people are using carnage is the burst. Carnage does great burst damage with gore, ravage, and scream, and this will lead ot killing healers. Heals are the linchpin of the group; once they go down, the rest will follow, and this is crucial for completing the objectives that make you win in PvP. Add to that all the great utility/roots etc, and you have a winner for pvp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Okamakiri Posted July 4, 2012 Share Posted July 4, 2012 I agree with Aluvi. In PVE, Annihilation is the best. In PVP, the bleed dispels have to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TradeLA Posted July 5, 2012 Share Posted July 5, 2012 Not so sure about the annihilation better in pve claim. In my parse tests, over a 10 minute sample on the dummy, annihilation puts out about 100 more dps but it takes awhile to build up whereas carnage starts high and then falls some. You have to stop and restart attacking most bosses, a disadvantage to annihilation, which also requires more focus on the buff/debuff icons to maintain and less ability to concentrate on what is actually going on. Don't consider my own tests conclusive, but would love to find someone who has done extensive parse testing with both carnage and annihilation and found the dramatic difference between specs that so many claim with zero data to back it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goneras Posted July 5, 2012 Author Share Posted July 5, 2012 Well i do ranked not many mind you but have gone 9 - 3 and i have been wrecking shop. The top 4 marauders on my server ( i am not one of them) all run Anni like me and all break 800k to 1 mil damage in ranked with over 100k heals i am usually around the 600k to 800k mark cause i do a lot of objective defending cause i can hold off 3 or 4 people without dying until my back up arrives. And i understand what you are saying about the dots getting cleansed but in ranked especially we target healers first no matter what and they drop like fly's with 3 dps killing them, so there healers are never up long enough really to do much dispelling of my dots. So for my team and the top 3 teams on my server ( 2 imp and 1 repub ) anni marauders are the way to go. i have talked to them and it feels that the consensus is with us on defense like civil war, novare, and VS we can hold objectives solo and survive until back up arrives and that helps out more cause we have 7 attackers for the other objectives and so far it is seeming to work. our best ranked team on our server has gone 43-6 and they rock two anni marauders. so as the title says i think we are still very viable in pvp including ranked Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerain Posted July 5, 2012 Share Posted July 5, 2012 Annihilation pvp in rateds just isn't viable when you're focusing down people. You can't get bleeds up fast enough to tick and do full damage and you def really can't pop off berserk to heal yourself really. The control and burst Carnage has just trumps Annihilation for 8 man group pvp. If it was 4 man group pvp being top dog still then Annihilation comes out on top. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swarna Posted July 5, 2012 Share Posted July 5, 2012 (edited) Annihilation's best usage right now is to pressure targets that aren't being focused by your team's main assist train. A good example of this is locking down a healer (or two) while your team bursts down an enemy damage-dealer. You're going to contribute less if you try to use Annihilation to focus fire targets when you have, for example, 2 or 3 Pyro PT's on your team that kill targets faster than can you get your peak damage set up. If you want to assist in focus fire, both Carnage and Rage are more optimal in that regard. Edited July 5, 2012 by Swarna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bathrobe Posted October 30, 2012 Share Posted October 30, 2012 A lot of people in this thread are partially correct. Yes, dispels can significantly reduce Anni's damage, but they won't stop it. No healer should have the luxury to cast his dispel on ever cd if your team is doing their job. Even if he does, the sheer number of debuffs flying around in ranked means that there's a good chance that your dots will get missed. However, for argument's sake let's assume the very worst case scenario. The healer is able to use his dispel every time the cd is up, and it always removes only your dots. Even then, in the very worst case, he can't stop your dots completely, only cut them short. He'll be able to reduce your dots effectiveness anywhere from 50-70%, depending on timing. That is in the extreme worst case scenario. If your dots were doing 40% of your damage on the test dummy, that means you're now doing 70-80% of your potential damage, and that is because this mother****er is using almost a third of of his global cooldowns to dispel. This is going to reduce his effectiveness as a healer FAR more than it hurts your ability to DPS. And it's not like the other specs don't face similar problems. Take Carnage/Combat, for instance. Smart players will watch for a Carnage Mara's burst window, and CC them during their gore/berserk. The gore/zen window is the only time when a Carnage Marauder can catch up to an Annihilation Marauder's dps. In order to do their top dps, they need a full stack of 30 fury, and odds are the team will want them spending most of their fury on the buffed predation. That short six second window is where the vast majority of their damage comes from, and even then, it's not significantly more than a normal annihilation burst rotation. Annihilation damage peaks nearly as high, and doesn't dip nearly as low as a Carnage Mara. A team that knows the appropriate time to CC a Carnage Mara will cripple their damage. Rage depends on keeping a rolling shockwave to maximize its smash. It's also very easy to know when they're going to smash because they'll use one of their leaps to generate the Autocrit. Rage generates the highest numbers, and by stacking 3-4 rage maras/juggs and timing their smashes, they can deal some absolutely ludicrous burst, but outside of a fully buffed smash, their damage is lackluster compared to both Carnage and Anni. With Rage spec, you're putting all your eggs in one basket, and if you don't kill someone with that smash combo, it's going to take time to set up again. The strongest teams on my server don't seem to have much trouble countering Rage-stackers. At this point, it becomes a question of utility. Carnage definitely wins this battle, with its amazing mobility control (speed for your team, roots for theirs), but Annihilation's still brings plenty in the way of utility, and our heals are the least of it. With a six second cd interrupt and a twelve second cd charge, Annihilation Maras are an absolute nightmare for any class that wants to cast. Against a well-played Anni mara, a healer is going to be limited entirely to instant casts unless he gets a great deal of peeling from his team. If they're focused on stopping the Anni Mara, they're not going to be nearly as effective with their damage train. If they ignore the anni Mara, then the healer is going to have to choose whether to spend a third of his GCDs to cleanse dots, or let them tick and try and use his limited-healing to the fullest. I'm not trying to argue that Anni is objectively better than Carnage or Rage. But it's certainly still viable, especially with a team that understands how to make the most of its potential. Anni will never be as good at assist-training as Carnage or Rage, but it can do things neither of those specs, and indeed no other class, can accomplish nearly as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omophorus Posted October 30, 2012 Share Posted October 30, 2012 (edited) I agree with Aluvi. In PVE, Annihilation is the best. In PVP, the bleed dispels have to go. Disagree with the PVE comment. I've been a huge Annihilation fan for a very long time, but Carnage does the same or better damage, with better on-demand burst. Yes, it is squishier. Yes, it is slightly more susceptible to gaps in uptime, but with the way current content (EC and TFB) is designed, Annihilator is far too easy to lose stacks of, and that punishes Annihilation DPS severely. Conversely, the need for focused burst phases in PVE emphasizes the strengths of Carnage. For some perspective, and I don't think I'm anywhere near the best Marauder around... With basically all tuned Black Hole gear, WH main hand hilt, Rakata offhand hilt, I do 1850-1900ish DPS on an Ops dummy as Annihilation. The first day or two after I swapped to Carnage and remodded my gear appropriately, I was hitting 1700-1750, but within a couple days of practice, I was clearing 1850 and still making a ton of mistakes. The amount of headroom left is staggering, and Carnage's ability to apply damage more or less at the drop of a hat is amazing. Annihilation is always my fall-back spec. It's safe, it's sturdy, it does very consistent damage. You really can't go wrong with it, but as it stands right now, at a sufficiently high level of play it's just never optimal except when soloing (where it is undeniably king). Edited October 30, 2012 by Omophorus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArchArcher Posted October 30, 2012 Share Posted October 30, 2012 (edited) Maybe if a healer dispells annihilation marauders dots he would take 50% dmg that those dots would have done and stun them for 2sec ? Maybe make it skill tree related skill. Right now it's not really great to be anni mara on wz's cuz your dots vanish right away. Edited October 30, 2012 by ArchArcher Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoranporan Posted October 31, 2012 Share Posted October 31, 2012 (edited) wait what? you cant dispell force crush? you can't cc break choke? uwaaaa !! Edited October 31, 2012 by zoranporan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AsiriusNazriel Posted October 31, 2012 Share Posted October 31, 2012 Maybe if a healer dispells annihilation marauders dots he would take 50% dmg that those dots would have done and stun them for 2sec ? Maybe make it skill tree related skill. Right now it's not really great to be anni mara on wz's cuz your dots vanish right away. No they don't. I don't know what healers you're running into but I don't have problems with my dots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aluvi Posted October 31, 2012 Share Posted October 31, 2012 No they don't. I don't know what healers you're running into but I don't have problems with my dots. Not every healer does, and some would actually rather let the bleeds tick and just heal the damage for bigger numbers. The few that I have run into that do dispel consistently ruined that warzone for me though. I played as anni yesterday, because I was solo queuing. It was fun, and I had slightly more survivability, did 450k damage and 75k heals. The problem that I run into is that rage is just so good now, and mediocre rage maras put out slightly more damage. They also can come far too close to killing me in one on ones. I also seem to handle anni maras with no problem when I go rage. Rage is just so much burst, and you can deliver that burst and then force crush and vanish, oblit, smash again, and you are so far ahead. I felt like I severely outplayed the rage players as anni, and just barely won. Perhaps this is somewhat due to my heavy power itemization, but it feels more like rage is sadly the better one on one spec, which is very flawed in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AsiriusNazriel Posted October 31, 2012 Share Posted October 31, 2012 (edited) Not every healer does, and some would actually rather let the bleeds tick and just heal the damage for bigger numbers. The few that I have run into that do dispel consistently ruined that warzone for me though. I played as anni yesterday, because I was solo queuing. It was fun, and I had slightly more survivability, did 450k damage and 75k heals. The problem that I run into is that rage is just so good now, and mediocre rage maras put out slightly more damage. They also can come far too close to killing me in one on ones. I also seem to handle anni maras with no problem when I go rage. Rage is just so much burst, and you can deliver that burst and then force crush and vanish, oblit, smash again, and you are so far ahead. I felt like I severely outplayed the rage players as anni, and just barely won. Perhaps this is somewhat due to my heavy power itemization, but it feels more like rage is sadly the better one on one spec, which is very flawed in my opinion. They overdid it with the Rage regeneration. It's a stupid easy button now. Good Rage specs had to work at it, now everyone who specs rage has 0 issues with rage management. Bioware needs to redo Rage into a spec that is similar to say Madness as far as the difficulty in the number of abilities and statuses that a player has to keep track of, as well as rage pool management. - Allow sweeping slash to setup a reduced version of AOE smash (since it is an AOE ability), that way you can proc AOE smashes but at a reduced modifier. - Allow an ability like force scream or the current version Crushing Darkness to proc a single target enhanced smash This way you reduce the amount of AOE damage, while making sure that the specs are viable for both PVP and PVE, and for both single target and mass AOE. I think this would be the best way, it would add complexity to the spec, it would make it so that good players would adapt, and the bads would still remain bads. Opinions? And you're right about the itemization. Anni is a heavy crit build in my opinion, you're forced into picking one or the other when you're itemizing your sets. Once you go Anni or Rage, you need a different set of gear for optimal performance. Edited October 31, 2012 by AsiriusNazriel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quangus Posted October 31, 2012 Share Posted October 31, 2012 (edited) Not every healer does, and some would actually rather let the bleeds tick and just heal the damage for bigger numbers. The few that I have run into that do dispel consistently ruined that warzone for me though. I played as anni yesterday, because I was solo queuing. It was fun, and I had slightly more survivability, did 450k damage and 75k heals. The problem that I run into is that rage is just so good now, and mediocre rage maras put out slightly more damage. They also can come far too close to killing me in one on ones. I also seem to handle anni maras with no problem when I go rage. Rage is just so much burst, and you can deliver that burst and then force crush and vanish, oblit, smash again, and you are so far ahead. I felt like I severely outplayed the rage players as anni, and just barely won. Perhaps this is somewhat due to my heavy power itemization, but it feels more like rage is sadly the better one on one spec, which is very flawed in my opinion. One thing some people in general still dont get is that even though rage/focus is famous for the aoe damage they still can do excellent single target damage as well, as very effectively described by aluvi, so yeah, this is my preferred weapon to fight others one on one or alone vs many. As for direct encounters with the watchman/anni spec, i think it all comes down if the other has defensive roll or not. If he has not, assuming same skill and gear level though, he will get destroyed since his litte self-heals means next to nothing when eating all smashes unprotected. Whenever i fight competent watchmen/anni maras i will notice the difference quite soon and then can adapt to the circumstances. And usually that means one of two things: fight or escape Edited October 31, 2012 by Quangus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lafay Posted November 1, 2012 Share Posted November 1, 2012 (edited) I dont think annihilation needs crit to be good, but i could be wrong. The training dummy says power is better anyway. My pve gear has somthing like 85 crit rating and i can get 2000 dps on the ops dummy without any adrenals or clickys (5 min parse). When you figure 40% of your damage comes from bleeds that are (with the correct build) criting average 70-80% of the time due to berzerk uptime, you dont really need all that much crit. This may be different in PVP though, as i do not have all power gear to test this. I play both anni and rage relatively well and in a pug environment I can get about the same numbers. When i pug rage, i die fast and cant do many objectives, just damage. When i pug anni, i survive much longer and can 1v1 any class to cap nodes and kill defenders. I get much more objective points and win more often because of it (pug). Now if I am with a premade with a healer, rage all day and just smash face until they dont wana come out of their spawn. This is why you don't anni in a premade, rage is just that much better when you already have a healer covering your squish butt. Any extra healing here on anni spec would be useless if your healers are doing their jobs. I think aluvi has just been rage and carnage for so long he forgot how to solo people on anni lol... anni mara vs rage mara will be close if you dont have defensive roll. If you do have it, then it wont be a faceroll but you should win. It wont be by a whole lot but still. Maybe sometime we should go duel as rage vs anni aluvi and see? Might be a good learning experience for both of us. Edited November 1, 2012 by Lafay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AsiriusNazriel Posted November 1, 2012 Share Posted November 1, 2012 I dont think annihilation needs crit to be good, but i could be wrong. The training dummy says power is better anyway. My pve gear has somthing like 85 crit rating and i can get 2000 dps on the ops dummy without any adrenals or clickys (5 min parse). When you figure 40% of your damage comes from bleeds that are (with the correct build) criting average 70-80% of the time due to berzerk uptime, you dont really need all that much crit. This may be different in PVP though, as i do not have all power gear to test this. I play both anni and rage relatively well and in a pug environment I can get about the same numbers. When i pug rage, i die fast and cant do many objectives, just damage. When i pug anni, i survive much longer and can 1v1 any class to cap nodes and kill defenders. I get much more objective points and win more often because of it (pug). Now if I am with a premade with a healer, rage all day and just smash face until they dont wana come out of their spawn. This is why you don't anni in a premade, rage is just that much better when you already have a healer covering your squish butt. Any extra healing here on anni spec would be useless if your healers are doing their jobs. I think aluvi has just been rage and carnage for so long he forgot how to solo people on anni lol... anni mara vs rage mara will be close if you dont have defensive roll. If you do have it, then it wont be a faceroll but you should win. It wont be by a whole lot but still. Maybe sometime we should go duel as rage vs anni aluvi and see? Might be a good learning experience for both of us. Is that in PVE gear or PVP gear? How does the training dummy actually say that power is better? I can do 1920 parsed DPS on WZ dummy in PVP gear with a slightly modified spec that includes Ravager instead of Defensive Roll. Beserk uptime isn't as big as you make it sound to be. If you can show a parse in PVP gear on a WZ dummy with a build that Stacks power, then this would really shed light on the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Okamakiri Posted November 1, 2012 Share Posted November 1, 2012 Disagree with the PVE comment. ... Check the date of the post... I've been Carnage for months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omophorus Posted November 1, 2012 Share Posted November 1, 2012 Check the date of the post... I've been Carnage for months. Didn't even notice that this was a necro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aluvi Posted November 1, 2012 Share Posted November 1, 2012 I dont think annihilation needs crit to be good, but i could be wrong. The training dummy says power is better anyway. My pve gear has somthing like 85 crit rating and i can get 2000 dps on the ops dummy without any adrenals or clickys (5 min parse). When you figure 40% of your damage comes from bleeds that are (with the correct build) criting average 70-80% of the time due to berzerk uptime, you dont really need all that much crit. This may be different in PVP though, as i do not have all power gear to test this. I play both anni and rage relatively well and in a pug environment I can get about the same numbers. When i pug rage, i die fast and cant do many objectives, just damage. When i pug anni, i survive much longer and can 1v1 any class to cap nodes and kill defenders. I get much more objective points and win more often because of it (pug). Now if I am with a premade with a healer, rage all day and just smash face until they dont wana come out of their spawn. This is why you don't anni in a premade, rage is just that much better when you already have a healer covering your squish butt. Any extra healing here on anni spec would be useless if your healers are doing their jobs. I think aluvi has just been rage and carnage for so long he forgot how to solo people on anni lol... anni mara vs rage mara will be close if you dont have defensive roll. If you do have it, then it wont be a faceroll but you should win. It wont be by a whole lot but still. Maybe sometime we should go duel as rage vs anni aluvi and see? Might be a good learning experience for both of us. You can ask Sage'Optimus... we dueled a few times, he was anni, I was Rage, I ended the duels with 50% hp and didn't use undying rage... Crit matters because you need the heals, not for dps. From a dps standpoint, power probably is better. But if you want to stay alive, crit rating is where it's at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lafay Posted November 2, 2012 Share Posted November 2, 2012 hmm interesting... you sure he knew anni well enough? I dont think I have seen him play anni before. 50% is a huge margin of victory though. With mild crit rating and class buffs you should be around 28% crit, now count 15% more because of juryo form and thats 43%. If you had a ton of crit you could hit maybe hit 48% crit rating, not much of an increase. If you say he is good at anni and you still wooped his *** that hard then i guess ill believe you but to be honest i never have problems 1v1 vs any marauder when im on anni. to answer the previous guys question, the mk5 ops dummy is what i tested my PVE gear(85 crit rating 1302 power) on and got just over 2000. I have not tested my PVP gear on the pvp dummy yet. My pvp gear does have 180ish crit rating though. I think aluvi might be right with the heals part being better with more crit and overall dps bettter with power. Almost every piece of crit i took out of my pve gear and turned in to power resulted in a dps increase in anni spec is what im saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinatore Posted November 2, 2012 Share Posted November 2, 2012 You can ask Sage'Optimus... we dueled a few times, he was anni, I was Rage, I ended the duels with 50% hp and didn't use undying rage... Crit matters because you need the heals, not for dps. From a dps standpoint, power probably is better. But if you want to stay alive, crit rating is where it's at. Hey Aluvian, I still think Anni is the best 1v1 spec...especially against rage. I feel its my personal best skill tree and I'm tweaked enough for it to work with the amount of power that I have stacked too. I'm pretty sure I could win in a duel. Sage is definitely a derpsmasher at heart =) and hes good at it. Rogean is also very competent at playing Anni as well. Love seeing a fellow Mara from the server adding good feedback to this forum, we def need more of it. Seeya round buddy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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