Marauder Maxing - PvE

[TrickyNinja]

Hello Fellow Marauders,

I was working on a Xeno HM run the other day and had a very rude, condescending player tell me that because my marauder had 22k hp (with all buffs on mind you) that I was terrible and had no clue what I was doing. What Captain Condescending didn't realize was that not everyone has had the time to fully maximize the potential of every character, or that no one asked for his opinion that he was making a point to degrade me for no reason.

 

Anyway, my marauder is full 61s/63s and I'm at the point where I can start focusing on swapping out mods to maximize my damage instead of focusing on picking up a higher level piece of gear to just get higher stats in general for that slot. There are a few rules I have followed so far:

• Stack up on Power. All my gear is augmented with Overkill augments for the 12 End./18 Power.
  
• Have 4 Campaign/DG armor mods for the set bonuses (love the cooldown on Frenzy)
  

 

Captain Condescending also told me that the Player stats view was bugged for Melee. I have never heard this before and was basing all my gear off the stats for Melee, as opposed to Force. He said you have to look at the Force stats for the real picture. My melee view shows over 1k primary damage, almost 600 bonus damage, ~38% crit, and 107% accuracy. When I look at the force stats, it shows lower damage and crit at 45%. Is it true that the melee view of the player stats are incorrect?

 

What mods/enhancements should I be looking for and what are the ideal targets for crit, accuracy, surge, strength before stacking up on power? Should my strength be higher than my endurance? I wasn't trying to make endurance higher than my strength but it is slightly as a result of my gear. I do mostly end game PvE raids and have never heard anyone complain about having too high HP, especially when I'm not even focusing on increasing endurance.

Edited March 20, 2013 by TrickyNinja

[Aetrus]

Hi. I mostly PvP so I can't help you with specifics, but I can definitely say first that the melee window isn't bugged when you view yourself (I've noticed Accuracy bugged when viewing other players, and a few other quirks), and that 38% crit is way too high (you PvE so I'll assume Carnage?) so when you start min-maxing, look to replace any Accuracy/Crit enhancements with Power/Surge. You'll want no more than 25% crit buffed, and you'll probably sit around 78% Surge.

 

Also yes, if you're running Overkill augs your Endurance will be higher than your Strength. Your HP will go down a little as you min-max, since the mods and enhancements you'll want give high secondary stat at the expense of Endurance. (72/44/13 mods instead of what you'll want, 56/34/44.)

[Omophorus]

Melee stat pane isn't bugged, you just have different stats for melee & Force attacks.

 

Your stats sound a little out of whack, so there's definitely room to optimize mods.

 

You want the *listed* melee Accuracy to be only around 100% (if you hover over it, you'll see that Special Accuracy appears at 110% which is the magic number).

 

You want between 100 and 300 Crit Rating. No more, no less.

 

Anything not needed to get listed melee Accuracy to 100% should be put into Surge, and Crit Rating 100-300 should be put into Power.

 

All mods should be unlettered (e.g. Advanced Deft Mod 27, NOT 27A or 27B), all enhancements should be low Endurance (e.g. Acute, Adept, Initiative enhancements), and all armorings should be Might or Campaign/Denova (with high Strength).

Edited March 20, 2013 by Omophorus

[TrickyNinja]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Very helpful. Combining the input from both of you with information I just found on the Noxxic website (which is awesome btw, didn't know about this until now) I think I have what I need to get towards maxing out effectively.

 

If you don't mind my asking, I didn't play WoW and this is my first major MMORPG like this, but how are the effective "max" numbers determined? I see comments about diminishing returns where at a certain point you don't get much more out of the stat (at least not what its worth). Is there a combat formula thread or something I can look at to see how those numbers are determined?

 

Thanks again for your advice

[bbare]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Very helpful. Combining the input from both of you with information I just found on the Noxxic website (which is awesome btw, didn't know about this until now) I think I have what I need to get towards maxing out effectively.

 

If you don't mind my asking, I didn't play WoW and this is my first major MMORPG like this, but how are the effective "max" numbers determined? I see comments about diminishing returns where at a certain point you don't get much more out of the stat (at least not what its worth). Is there a combat formula thread or something I can look at to see how those numbers are determined?

 

Thanks again for your advice

 

I would recommend staying away from Noxxic. They are awful, because they offer lots of terrible advice and misinformation. The post below is pretty much right. Your melee accuracy should be 100% if annihilation, and actually 1%-2% over if you are carnage. You should take all of the non-lettered mods, because they have less endurance, with the benefit of extra power. I'm not sure, but you should probably be using strength augments, because of the extra crit chance you get from strength. But its probably very negligible in the case of the marauder, so your fine with power ones. Critical rating should be 100-300 as the post below said. However, if you are carnage, you probably want to be up near 300, because massacre is used very often and its surge is buffed from its tree. Having near 300 crit for annihilation is recommended too, because it means more self-healing.

[oofalong]

Depending what spec you are looking for, there are a couple of good guides out there. Personally, I think this is the best/most comprehensive for Annihilation. Of course I wrote it so I am biased.

 

The Min/Maxing for Carnage is not too much different except you can reduce your accuracy rating by 180 due to the +accuracy skills and ataru form.

[Midarion]

I don't recommend to reduce the accuracy for carnage. The best stats are 104.xx Precision, ca. 30 % crit, 77 % surge and POWER (as much as you can get )

[Midarion]

30 % crit buffed

[Amantino]

If you have 22k hp it means you have some endurance-heavy mods somewhere. A fully BiS marauder has 21,7k hp.

[Airwolfe]

You want between 100 and 300 Crit Rating. No more, no less.

 

I'm still looking for the nitty gritty exacts on this detail. High parses I'm seeing on one of these infamous threads..a certain someone parsed 1900-2100 a bunch of times with apparently a base crit rating of 34% (so 39% with coordination), that's 322 crit rating.

Other sources state that no more than about 180 crit rating is optimal.

The old gospel people always talked about in 1.2 or prior (last time I did all this min maxing) was that 30% base (or was it 25% base) crit is the target. Which is somewhere in the middle of the road there.

 

All of that lays out a pretty wide margin.

WTB a link to an mmo-mechanics sim spreadsheet to really answer this question, on this forum. I see a lot of out of date stuff on there..maybe I'll dig more later but if someone has that bookmarked..would be nice.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Airwolfe

[oofalong]

this model is still accurate. Accounting for armor, that model shows a crit rating of 322 provides DPS of 2,119 while crit rating of 152 provides DPS of 2,103 - holding all else equal except for power as that is the trade-off with crit rating. This is <1% difference. IIRC the model shows max DPS of 2,120 with 278 crit.

 

This is all consistent with what Omophorus advised as well.

 

@Airwolfe since you are looking for the nitty-gritty, you need to think of crit rating not crit %. Melee critical chance (%) is a function of strength and crit rating as well as buffs. Force critical chance is a function of those same factors plus willpower.

 

Strength of 2253 achievable via buffs, datacrons & stim equals 13.72% crit %. Willpower should be 147 which contributes 1.17% to Force crit. You should also have +1% to all crit from max affection with Vette and +5% from the Imperial Agent buff. Finally, Malice will provide +6% to force crit. And base crit is 5%.

 

After all of this, you then factor in crit rating. In your example, 322 crit rating equates to a crit chance of 11.53%.

 

Anyway all of these pieces add up to a Melee Crit of 36.25% and Force Crit % of 43.42%. With the 5 stacks of Juyo your bleed crit would be 58.42%.

Edited March 22, 2013 by oofalong
add'l info

[arkitip]

As for the more "famous" parsers and their crit rating, it's important to realize that in order to get some of these very high dummy parses you need to have a lot of RNG luck with crits and procs. So, for that situation, a high crit rating serves their needs very well.

 

Theoretically, you shouldn't see larger than a 1.5% gap in DPS difference between 100-300 crit rating. A while back I did 4 hours worth of parsing to test it. 10 parses of 6 minutes each in 4 different set ups: Carnage@164/328 crit and Annihilation@164/328 crit. In Carnage I averaged literally 2 DPS more with 164 crit, in Annihilation I observed around a 1.25% increase when I had 328 crit.

 

My personal opinion is that specs that have critical chance boosts in their talent trees should aim for being at the upper end of the crit rating spectrum, and classes without should aim for the lower end.

Edited March 22, 2013 by arkitip

[Omophorus]

The interesting thing with the Crit Rating thing is that different sims or sim assumptions cause some minute fluctuations, but the end result regardless is that the difference is less than normal variation between trials.

 

Thus, there becomes two viable paths, which are almost entirely a matter of taste rather than optimal performance.

 

1) Crit on the low end of the spectrum (120-130), yielding a slight reduction in variation between runs, with lower odds for hitting the top end.

 

2) Crit on the high end of the spectrum (280-330) yielding more variation between runs but a slightly improved possibility of a remarkable sample due to slightly more RNG "wiggle room" at the top.

 

The end result is so close that there is no noteworthy justification to select one over the other. #2 provides a tiny bit more opportunity to flex the e-peen, but there's no guarantee that a great run will occur when needed most. #1 provides a tiny bit more stability between runs, but a smaller chance of having a ridiculous chart-topper.

 

The only things that we should all agree on (provided 61+ gear, which is simple enough to be table stakes in this discussion) is that less than 123 Crit Rating is foolish for PVE due to the excellent returns on the initial points into the stat, and any drastic expenditure over 300 (recognizing that 320-330 may be where one falls due to itemization limits) is better spent on Power due to the DR curve on Crit Rating.

 

As a matter of personal preference I choose option 1, in part for consistency, and in part because of Big Number Syndrome (which Power does a better job of satisfying than Crit). I would never fault someone for taking option 2.

 

On an interesting note, one of LagunaD's old sims for Carnage/Combat actually indicated that the low end of the crit range could provide slightly higher DPS despite the crit damage buff on Massacre, but again a sim comes with assumptions and the difference was minute.

 

I would hesitate to say that the crit damage bonus on Massacre is rationale in and of itself to choose more Crit Rating, as the majority of Gore window damage comes from Ravage and Force Scream. Ravage gains no special benefit from higher crit rating, and Force Scraem gains no benefit whatsoever if used properly. For all intents and purposes it does balance out and is heavily dependent on the nature of the individual fight (uptime, percentage of damage concentrated into Gore windows, etc.).

 

The biggest argument I would make for Carnage-primary Marauders to consider the low end is that one can utilize the exact same gear for trash clearing on Rage, and for that particular purpose, higher Power is undeniably superior due to the overwhelming percentage of damage concentrated into auto-crit Smashes.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Omophorus

[Airwolfe]

Anyway all of these pieces add up to a Melee Crit of 36.25% and Force Crit % of 43.42%. With the 5 stacks of Juyo your bleed crit would be 58.42%.

 

Mainly thinking about carnage/combat crit rating atm.

[Airwolfe]

the majority of Gore window damage comes from Ravage and Force Scream.

 

On current live rotation, that's only true half the time.

Other half (in a perfect world)=3 (berserk) massacre+force scream.

And it seems to me..that the latter rotation is generally higher than ravage (assuming you get at least 3 ataru procs out of it, possibly true even if less)?

Edited March 23, 2013 by Airwolfe

[arkitip]

On current live rotation, that's only true half the time.

Other half (in a perfect world)=3 (berserk) massacre+force scream.

And it seems to me..that the latter rotation is generally higher than ravage (assuming you get at least 3 ataru procs out of it, possibly true even if less)?

 

You can only get 2 ICD Ataru procs out of the Massacre x3 Gore window because the ICD is 1.5 seconds. You do get the 3 forced Ataru procs.

 

And usually Ravage -> Force Scream should do more damage than Massacre x3 -> Force Scream. You'd have to get extremely lucky with RNG 1 way and extremely unlucky with it the other way to flip that around.

[Omophorus]

On current live rotation, that's only true half the time.

Other half (in a perfect world)=3 (berserk) massacre+force scream.

And it seems to me..that the latter rotation is generally higher than ravage (assuming you get at least 3 ataru procs out of it, possibly true even if less)?

 

Out of 2 Gore windows, you get 2 Force Screams, 1 Ravage, and 3 Massacres (or 2 Massacres and a Vicious Throw, depending).

 

3 Massacres is generally less than a full Ravage, and totals maybe 1/3 of your overall Gore window damage. Remember that Ravage can proc Ataru strikes too, and has the same propensity to do so if the Massacre buff is active at the start of a Gore window as 3 Massacres would.

 

I stand by my statement that the majority comes from Ravage and Scream, which is a true statement, and neither of two has any exceptional benefit from increased crit chance (above and beyond the normal crit mechanics for Ravage).

[Hizoka]

Hello Fellow Marauders,

I was working on a Xeno HM run the other day and had a very rude, condescending player tell me that because my marauder had 22k hp (with all buffs on mind you) that I was terrible and had no clue what I was doing. What Captain Condescending didn't realize was that not everyone has had the time to fully maximize the potential of every character, or that no one asked for his opinion that he was making a point to degrade me for no reason.

 

Anyway, my marauder is full 61s/63s and I'm at the point where I can start focusing on swapping out mods to maximize my damage instead of focusing on picking up a higher level piece of gear to just get higher stats in general for that slot. There are a few rules I have followed so far:

• Stack up on Power. All my gear is augmented with Overkill augments for the 12 End./18 Power.
  
• Have 4 Campaign/DG armor mods for the set bonuses (love the cooldown on Frenzy)
  

 

Captain Condescending also told me that the Player stats view was bugged for Melee. I have never heard this before and was basing all my gear off the stats for Melee, as opposed to Force. He said you have to look at the Force stats for the real picture. My melee view shows over 1k primary damage, almost 600 bonus damage, ~38% crit, and 107% accuracy. When I look at the force stats, it shows lower damage and crit at 45%. Is it true that the melee view of the player stats are incorrect?

 

What mods/enhancements should I be looking for and what are the ideal targets for crit, accuracy, surge, strength before stacking up on power? Should my strength be higher than my endurance? I wasn't trying to make endurance higher than my strength but it is slightly as a result of my gear. I do mostly end game PvE raids and have never heard anyone complain about having too high HP, especially when I'm not even focusing on increasing endurance.

 

if you are using power augments you simply prove you are bad. point for point STR will always be better then power... it doesn't matter whats in the rest of your post because you starting off showing you know nothing about the class.

[Sprgmr]

So riddle me this: If i swap my power augs (half of my augs) I actually lose 2 bonus damage (and thus primary damage) to gain a mere 0.6% crit chance.

 

if you are using power augments you simply prove you are bad. point for point STR will always be better then power... it doesn't matter whats in the rest of your post because you starting off showing you know nothing about the class.

[Hizoka]

So riddle me this: If i swap my power augs (half of my augs) I actually lose 2 bonus damage (and thus primary damage) to gain a mere 0.6% crit chance.

 

because your str scales better with the inquisitor buff then power does with the warrior buff as you have more of it. What is the larger number in the end 5% more of 2200 or 5% more of 1000.

 

In terms of scaling and even at low levels 1 str will always be better then 1 power.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Hizoka

[oofalong]

Power contributes 0.23 to bonus damage, while Strength contributes 0.20. However, Strength is boosted by the Sith Inquisitor/Jedi Consular buff by 5%. Thus, the comparison really becomes 0.23 vs. 0.21 (1.05 * 0.20 = 0.21). The increase in bonus damage is thus 0.02 per point of power. Considering Power Augments provide an extra 252 (18 * 14 = 252) Power, the increase to Bonus Damage is 5.04 (252 * 0.02 = 5.04).

 

Strength also increases crit %. These 252 points in strength contribute 1.21% to crit %. Specifically from 1894 strength to 2146 based on full 63s gear and Exotech Stim.

 

Thus, the true comparison becomes 5.04 more Bonus Damage vs. 1.21% more crit. My math demonstrates that our overall damage is increased via the extra crit %. However, it is close.

 

Note for classes with a +9% to primary stat skill, there should be no question on this as that becomes 0.504 more Bonus Damage vs. 1.25% crit %.

[Thundergulch]

if you are using power augments you simply prove you are bad. point for point STR will always be better then power... it doesn't matter whats in the rest of your post because you starting off showing you know nothing about the class.

Wrong!

There is a point where POWER overtakes STR, and you do more damage,but up until then STR is more beneficial,but it's not hard to get to that point with the ease at which BH gear is obtained and lvl 63 stuff being on the GTN.

My bonus dmg is almost 1100 with about 1350 power,I do more dps with this setup than when I did with max STR.

 

And I'd also toss in that with Beserk being available quite often in a fight, you don't NEED to max out STR.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Thundergulch

[arkitip]

Wrong!

There is a point where POWER overtakes STR, and you do more damage,but up until then STR is more beneficial,but it's not hard to get to that point with the ease at which BH gear is obtained and lvl 63 stuff being on the GTN.

My bonus dmg is almost 1100 with about 1350 power,I do more dps with this setup than when I did with max STR.

 

And I'd also toss in that with Beserk being available quite often in a fight, you don't NEED to max out STR.

 

Hizoka is wrong about a lot, this isn't one of those times.

 

You're mathematically incorrect, and anecdotal evidence won't change that.

[Thundergulch]

Hizoka is wrong about a lot, this isn't one of those times.

 

You're mathematically incorrect, and anecdotal evidence won't change that.

Mathematically incorrect? Check it for yourself on Askmrrobot.

Go max power, look at the numbers, then go max str.

It's not that hard to figure out which is better.

 

Obviously you forgot to read the part where I said my dps is higher with max power than with max str.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Thundergulch

[SgtKlavier]

Mathematically incorrect? Check it for yourself on Askmrrobot.

Go max power, look at the numbers, then go max str.

It's not that hard to figure out which is better.

 

Did so, and augmenting with strength was better, so........