Annihilation vs. Carnage PvE with Parses

[Pestulan]

Yeah, but doing that makes no sense, you want to know the total dps you did during a certain fight, not narrow it down to certain mobs.

 

It does when you're comparing a multi-target parse to a single target dummy parse. The only possible damage difference between Anni and Carnage on the mouse droids is if you take the 20% increase to Smash. Also, we don't generally care about aoe damage, as regardless of how much damage your Smash does, you're probably dwarfed by Orbital, DFA, or Lightning storm.

 

HERE is a parse from last Tuesday's Nightmare KP run where I did 2442dps during the Fabricator fight after being stunlocked for 30 seconds (I actually spiked for over 4k dps at one point 1/2way thru the fight.)

 

But later that night, if you look at my parse on the Karagga fight HERE I did 1453 dps.

 

Keep in mind this is Nightmare mode, not story mode like the carnage parse above me,I'd be interested in seeing a carnage parse for Nightmare mode.

 

Fabricator has a huge damage debuff, so I'm not sure what you're trying to point out. It's not a terribly relevant parse for this discussion, unless you're trying to claim Carnage is better for burn phase (which would require more support and argumentation than just your parse).

 

As for Karragga, DPS numbers on him are probably more luck and skill dependent than spec. Even if you ran it as Anni the next week, it would not be a definitive comparison. If you get more spikes, your damage goes down. If you get grabbed by black hole'd players, your damage goes down. Etc.. It's not an irrelevant fight for comparison, but there are many more and more influential variables in play than just spec.

[Thundergulch]

Fabricator has a huge damage debuff, so I'm not sure what you're trying to point out. It's not a terribly relevant parse for this discussion

 

I'm not "trying to point out" anything, other than the fact that I did that for dps on NM Fabricator.

Why isn't it relevant? Everyone benefits from the damage debuff, this fight is SO easy, and Marauders are constantly doing damage in this fight.

In fact, other than the Infernal Council , this is probably one of the best fights to parse since we don't have to be mobile at all.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Thundergulch

[TradeLA]

I will be interested to hear how the high crit/surge test goes, but I will be surprised if it shows a dramatic change in numbers--especially upwards. I've am already surge heavy by choice and tried adding a little more crit, and haven't been able to best my score on the dummy with what is now my default mod set-up: 1778dps on the dummy. Those are 10 min+ tests to reduce margin of error.

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/589a60f5-7d8f-40ae-96b9-2757e2f3d914/overview#d=0,f=1,t=1,b=1

 

with this build:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/fa91eb4e-024b-405a-b063-c6b4dd6b9ef2

 

I have done multiple 10 minute+ tests since the latest patch, and my results have all been better than my best before the patch--1756dps.

 

I parsed on the tanks last night. We didn't clear it, but in my best attempt, I hit 1476dps. Especially considering it was an aborted attempt and I am missing campaign hilts, that compares favorably enough for me to stick with Carnage for now and try to tweak and hone it rather than investing the time to become as good an Annihilation marauder as I am carnage.

 

Honestly, I expect the calculation at Bioware is to make both specs as close as possible, and if there's more than a hair discrepancy either way now, it won't be for long. It is far more difficult and expensive to design endgame encounters for characters of 8 different classes without having to take into account major distinctions within different specs. In fact, I suspect different balances of power/crit and surge/accuracy probably don't affect dops output by more than 75 points of so. Would love if someone could show me wrong so I could steal their template and push my damage higher.

[thrakkemarn]

YES! 1778 with 109 crit rating and 1078 power (ratings budget of 1187) and 447 surge and 114 accuracy (ratings budget of 561) those are both below the highest budget ratings you can achieve, and I see you have some places where you can still upgrade gear.

 

I'd appreciate it if you could drop another parse or two in just to confirm that the 1778 dps wasn't a fluke, but this totally supports my Power >>>>> Crit argument so thank you!

[Pestulan]

I'm not "trying to point out" anything, other than the fact that I did that for dps on NM Fabricator.

Why isn't it relevant? Everyone benefits from the damage debuff, this fight is SO easy, and Marauders are constantly doing damage in this fight.

In fact, other than the Infernal Council , this is probably one of the best fights to parse since we don't have to be mobile at all.

 

The random grenades can change your DPS by requiring movement, and how fast your raid finishes the tower puzzle will affect your DPS much more than your spec. In fact, puzzle speed probably has more impact on your DPS than anything else including gear, as debuff uptime coupled with your raid's total dps will increase your effective dps significantly (the boss dying sooner generally means a higher percentage of dps time is during your berserk/lust and laser debuff). So, no. Fabricator is not a good parse fight. It's actually a terrible one for comparative purposes.

 

Karragga or the rancor and probably the closest to a 'Patchwerk' dps benchmark, and even those have some random elements that can heavily effect your dps.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Pestulan

[TradeLA]

I'd appreciate it if you could drop another parse or two in just to confirm that the 1778 dps wasn't a fluke, but this totally supports my Power >>>>> Crit argument so thank you!

 

Here's two more parses I took after the latest patch, a 1760dps and 1766dps.

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/9fdba5e0-2aff-49d5-a050-3ab988895e5b/overview#d=0,f=1,t=1,b=1

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/9bea2d8c-6de2-4435-904d-312f006f95d4/overview#d=0,f=1,t=1,b=1

 

<<YES! 1778 with 109 crit rating and 1078 power (ratings budget of 1187) and 447 surge and 114 accuracy (ratings budget of 561) those are both below the highest budget ratings you can achieve>>

 

Besides the hilts, the only way I can see to improve is to get lvl 61 armorings in the bracers and belt...haven't found that drop in denova or on the gtn, but I look! Have I missed another area?

 

Re:power vs. crit--i had the same theory you did, which is why I took out all but 68 crit and loaded up with lvl 61 power/surge mods. But the numbers I got were about 20 points shy of the parses I got when I added some crit back, and got just over the 30% buffed mark. I tend to agree with the reasoning that there is a balance, some crit is good, the question is how much. Again though, when the numbers are that close, it's hard to be 100% sure even after multiple parses at ten+ minutes.

 

For a point of comparison, I use an Anni marauder named Iakona's parses, which he posted a few weeks ago

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=487377

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/characte...6-5b84a5da26f9

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=487377

 

He had the campaign hilts, but at the time was missing the extra augments that became available in patch 1.3, and was hitting 1826dps on the dummy. As rumored, the upshot seems to be that annihilation will outdistance carnage over an uninterrupted 10 minute stretch, but every time an annihilation marauder has to stop dpsing, it takes a bit to build back up to full bleed strength.

[CrankyBuddha]

Here's two more parses I took after the latest patch, a 1760dps and 1766dps.

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/9fdba5e0-2aff-49d5-a050-3ab988895e5b/overview#d=0,f=1,t=1,b=1

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/9bea2d8c-6de2-4435-904d-312f006f95d4/overview#d=0,f=1,t=1,b=1

 

<<YES! 1778 with 109 crit rating and 1078 power (ratings budget of 1187) and 447 surge and 114 accuracy (ratings budget of 561) those are both below the highest budget ratings you can achieve>>

 

Besides the hilts, the only way I can see to improve is to get lvl 61 armorings in the bracers and belt...haven't found that drop in denova or on the gtn, but I look! Have I missed another area?

 

Re:power vs. crit--i had the same theory you did, which is why I took out all but 68 crit and loaded up with lvl 61 power/surge mods. But the numbers I got were about 20 points shy of the parses I got when I added some crit back, and got just over the 30% buffed mark. I tend to agree with the reasoning that there is a balance, some crit is good, the question is how much. Again though, when the numbers are that close, it's hard to be 100% sure even after multiple parses at ten+ minutes.

 

For a point of comparison, I use an Anni marauder named Iakona's parses, which he posted a few weeks ago

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=487377

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/characte...6-5b84a5da26f9

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=487377

 

He had the campaign hilts, but at the time was missing the extra augments that became available in patch 1.3, and was hitting 1826dps on the dummy. As rumored, the upshot seems to be that annihilation will outdistance carnage over an uninterrupted 10 minute stretch, but every time an annihilation marauder has to stop dpsing, it takes a bit to build back up to full bleed strength.

 

One thing you can do it easily improve and PROBABLY push over the 1800 mark would be to get 2 pvp boundless ages relics instead of your current setup. You'd lose 60 str and a fair bit of endurance but you'd gain over 200 more power, and since you arent really going for crit anyway, I'd say that power is definitely >>> STR for you. (1 point of power = .23 damage, 1 point of str = .20 + miniscule crit increase)

Edited July 19, 2012 by CrankyBuddha

[marshmallow]

Okay, just did a test after finishing up 16 man HM EC last night, and winning some gear. I've jumped my power up to 1116.

 

I got about 1930 DPS on the dummy.

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/3654

 

Its the 13:07:22 - 13:12:58 section. That 1891 was after waiting for combat.

 

I'm on the road to 2k DPS.

[Thundergulch]

Okay, just did a test after finishing up 16 man HM EC last night, and winning some gear. I've jumped my power up to 1116.

 

I got about 1930 DPS on the dummy.

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/3654

 

Its the 13:07:22 - 13:12:58 section. That 1891 was after waiting for combat.

 

I'm on the road to 2k DPS.

 

Very nice, is your AskMrRobot profile up to date? I looked up a Vexo on there to check your gear,is that the toon that you did this with?

[marshmallow]

Very nice, is your AskMrRobot profile up to date? I looked up a Vexo on there to check your gear,is that the toon that you did this with?

 

Not yet, I'll update it when I get home tonight.

[TradeLA]

I got about 1930 DPS on the dummy.

 

.

 

Impressive...what I notice is unique about your parse is that you are using rupture as part of your carnage rotation, which is non-standard, and judging by your results, something worthy of testing...

[Truescopes]

Okay, just did a test after finishing up 16 man HM EC last night, and winning some gear. I've jumped my power up to 1116.

 

I got about 1930 DPS on the dummy.

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/3654

 

Its the 13:07:22 - 13:12:58 section. That 1891 was after waiting for combat.

 

I'm on the road to 2k DPS.

 

Still not quite as high as annihilation parses that have been posted around. But you're getting there for sure, GL on 2k ^^

[TradeLA]

Still not quite as high as annihilation parses that have been posted around. But you're getting there for sure, GL on 2k ^^

Can you link to some of these annihilation parses for comparison?

 

And marshmallow, can you discuss how you weave rupture into your rotation?

[Aluvi]

I did parses on both a few months ago when I had completed my full rakata level pve gear, with perfect enhancements/mods etc. Annihilation comes out about 5% ahead, but carnage has much much higher burst potential. They're both good in certain fights., depending on the fight mechanics.

 

In PvP, carnage is all around good. Annihilation is fine in normal pvp, but in rateds, your bleeds get cleansed and your dps and self healing drops to zilch.

[marshmallow]

Can you link to some of these annihilation parses for comparison?

 

And marshmallow, can you discuss how you weave rupture into your rotation?

 

Basically I throw in a rupture before every burst, because it's always up. I also like to think of the ataru form as another bleed that is up all the time.

[TradeLA]

What do you mean by thinking of ataru like a bleed that is up all the time? How does this affect your priority/rotation?

 

Actually, your numbers are better than I've ever seen against the dummy, annihilation or carnage. would like to figure out why--those relics and the campaign help, but your gear has a few weak points...It goes against all conventional wisdom to use rupture in a carnage rotation--could you please do a parse without rupture and report how it affects your output?

Edited July 20, 2012 by TradeLA

[marshmallow]

What do you mean by thinking of ataru like a bleed that is up all the time? How does this affect your priority/rotation?

 

Actually, your numbers are better than I've ever seen against the dummy, annihilation or carnage. would like to figure out why--those relics and the campaign help, but your gear has a few weak points...It goes against all conventional wisdom to use rupture in a carnage rotation--could you please do a parse without rupture and report how it affects your output?

 

Okay, I tested without rupture and only got a measly 1800 on the dummy.

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/4055 The 1758 was after waiting to get out of combat.

 

Basically what I mean by I think of ataru as a bleed is this, it deals additional damage every time you use massacre, so you want to be using massacre as much as you can. With rupture and using massacre all the time, the ataru form extra damage is ALMOST similar to deadly saber, the only difference is deadly saber deals much more damage but cannot be up ALL the time. You need to have the massacre buff up all the time, this way it is actually dealing more damage than deadly sabers would. My rotation ends up like this: Charge, Battering Assault, Rupture, Massacre, Gore, Ravage, Force Scream. In between the next burst you should use massacre at least 2 times (sometimes more depending on what you're fury is at) while waiting for gore to come back up, with mixed in assaults, and you should also be building fury to berserk for you're next big burst. I use rupture before every big burst, never in between (it should never be up between bursts anyways or you're doing it wrong) This way you always are building rage, even while doing a huge burst, because of blood frenzy. You should never be low on rage. This rotation basically maximizes you're gores to squeeze out all of the damage you can get out of it.

[Thundergulch]

You're killin me man lol.

 

Here is a screenshot of my current stats as Annihilation... after a 12 minute parse on the ops dummy I got 1605 dps.

and had 1600 dps on Nightmare KP last night.

I'd sure like to know how I can get more dps, (aside from the obviious such as upgrade my hilts to 68).

I've been Annihilation Marauder since beta,I'd like to think that i know how to play the spec, but my dps doesn't even compare to yours.

[Saferai]

Okay, I tested without rupture and only got a measly 1800 on the dummy.

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/4055 The 1758 was after waiting to get out of combat.

 

Basically what I mean by I think of ataru as a bleed is this, it deals additional damage every time you use massacre, so you want to be using massacre as much as you can. With rupture and using massacre all the time, the ataru form extra damage is ALMOST similar to deadly saber, the only difference is deadly saber deals much more damage but cannot be up ALL the time. You need to have the massacre buff up all the time, this way it is actually dealing more damage than deadly sabers would. My rotation ends up like this: Charge, Battering Assault, Rupture, Massacre, Gore, Ravage, Force Scream. In between the next burst you should use massacre at least 2 times (sometimes more depending on what you're fury is at) while waiting for gore to come back up, with mixed in assaults, and you should also be building fury to berserk for you're next big burst. I use rupture before every big burst, never in between (it should never be up between bursts anyways or you're doing it wrong) This way you always are building rage, even while doing a huge burst, because of blood frenzy. You should never be low on rage. This rotation basically maximizes you're gores to squeeze out all of the damage you can get out of it.

 

Could we get some parses from you where you don't stop right after using a 2nd bloodthirst? I know the first post did his testing this way but it does inflate the average a good bit.

 

I don't think there is much of a gap between annih and carnage after watching this thread progress, maybe a couple percent. I like that the specs have seemingly opposite strengths, it is just disappointing to me that the content so far has been designed in a manner that blatantly caters to one spec over the other for 2 entire raids, NM KP favored annih and HM EC favors carnage.

 

Annih really suffers when it doesn't have something to beat on to maintain juyo and annihilate stacks. Annih has the additional weakness of force charge being awful on certain fights which really needs to be addressed if their going to keep designing fights where it can't be used because it randomly changing your positioning, causing you to be unable to move for 1.5 seconds and incidentally interrupting while not being a cast lockout like real interrupts.

 

While most of carnage's flaws have been slowly addressed in the last couple of patches such as it's poor fury gen, clunkier rage management and rotation, annih's weaknesses have been largely ignored. The spec performed well with them because encounter design at the time made them virtually a non factor. If encounter design continues on it's current course they will need to be addressed, otherwise marauders will be pigeonholed into playing only one of their specs =/

Edited July 20, 2012 by Saferai

[TradeLA]

This idea of weaving rupture into the carnage rotation moving the needed up that much is the biggest new concept to come out of this thread, and if it's true, I hope the 99.99% of carnage marauders who don't use it are paying attention, especially the few who parse.

 

Since carnage was weaker for so long, there wasn't much theorycrafting done on it since the long-outdated Mach 5 marauder guide and the abandoned threads at mmo-mechanics, where no one ever took on writing a compendium. As Bioware has tinkered with carnage, there is more interest now.

 

Adding rupture takes more than just throwing in rupture, it means always maintaining a higher rage budget to pay for the extra two rage rupture demands, so requires a little adjustment in style to get used to. I notice the number of assaults that Marshmellow throws is significantly higher than my own parse, I assume for that reason. Will practice and see if I notice significantly higher numbers. Hope others will try it out too.

 

Marshmellow, do you avoid using force scream directly after a gore and try to tack it on to the end of the six-second window so that the pause after the scream hits does not fall in the window? Or do you hit force scream as soon as possible to get it back on cooldown and get to the next force scream asap?

 

Re: ending after a bloodthirst, I actually think that's a good place to end because it is something that can be replicated and serve as an endpoint for comparing multiple parses. If go by time and instead say "five minutes", one parse might have bloodthirst and another might not, making a poor comparison. Not knowing how many bloodthirsts are in a sample makes it harder to compare.

[Saferai]

Re: ending after a bloodthirst, I actually think that's a good place to end because it is something that can be replicated and serve as an endpoint for comparing multiple parses. If go by time and instead say "five minutes", one parse might have bloodthirst and another might not, making a poor comparison. Not knowing how many bloodthirsts are in a sample makes it harder to compare.

 

You can just as easily time it by ending when BT comes off cooldown, without the added effect of essentially inflating the average of the parse. Any 5+ min parse that the player didn't use BT in is um, player error to be nice about it. The standard most ppl are comparing these to is 5 min intervals with one BT. Therefore anyone looking at these parses with that mindset won't be making an accurate comparison. You wouldn't want ppl posting parses where their using an arp debuff or the NM Pilgrim buff ect to artificially misrepresent their numbers. Using the most powerful cooldown in the game without accounting for the fact that it's benefit to average damage is controlled by it's five minute cooldown is essentially the same. When comparing avg dps performances, you don't have ppl purposefully inflate their averages.

[TradeLA]

I can see your point. A five-minute interval with one BT in it fine so long as everyone sticks to the same standard. Personally, I prefer ten-minute intervals to reduce margin of error, but I know that cuts the number of samples in half.

[marshmallow]

TradeLA, no Edited November 4, 2012 by marshmallow

[TradeLA]

TradeLA,

 

I do wait to use force scream at the very end of the gore buff. If ravage is not up but gore and berserk are, I use Gore, berserk, massacre x3, force scream. You should just be able to fit in the last scream if you do it right.

(editing this post a bit to include new info)

 

I try to do 3 massacres and a force scream at the end, but I don't think it is always possible--you have to have berserk up to reduce the GCD of massacre by .5 secs, I think, for at least a couple of the strikes and possible all three.

 

Going to follow the new guideline--approx 5 mins, 1 bloodthirst parses--and post some results comparing logs with rupture woven in and without. Results so far not showing a bump, but still adjusting to keeping a higher rage reservoir for the burst, which may make a difference. If anyone else has parses to throw in here, please do...marshmellow, can you do a 5 min/1 burst parse?

Edited July 21, 2012 by TradeLA

[AwkwardGinger]

Going to preface this by saying that I don't know how to upload parses->ergo, this will be without parses. I'll look it up another time.

 

My annihilation build was giving me ~1100-1200 dps in SM EC, on line with a full rakata/black hole/fully augmented anni marauder in my SM EC group. I went Carnage for friday's run, and I was pushing closer to 13/1400, spiking higher on tanks. This was while using rupture.

 

My Gear is this http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/357421f4-7773-43ea-b5b1-c7bda1bfb648 but without 8 of the power augments.

 

My spec is included there, and I use rupture so I take the 3/3 in Malice for force crit. Minor dps gain.

 

On Nightmare Pilgrim I was pulling ~1600 dps, and Thundergulch (who is in my guild) might have the parses to upload.

 

The biggest thing that I noticed was that Annihilation seemed to burst higher, because if Carnage's ArP rotation is messed up, then they sit at 5-600 dps until they get it right again.

 

Other notes: in regards to mobility, I find carnage is far superior. On our Tanks run in SM EC I had to go from stormcaller to firebrand because firebrand was ~20% higher. When time came for the ground phase, I jumped back to stormcaller and used predation to get back to the stormcaller shield generator in the span of about 2-3 seconds. Annihilation would have spent some time being bait before they could get over there.

 

In summation: it is my staunch belief that Carnage is a viable end-game dps spec. I'm going to stay carnage for awhile until I break my "1" key from spamming massacre too much.