8/2 Sentinel/Marauder Questions

[KeyboardNinja]

Main post on the Sentinel sub-forum (including draft questions!): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6604989#post6604989

 

We have three questions to fill. One of those needs to be about PvP. As a general structure, I see the following immediate points:

 

• Watchman/Annihilation viability in PvP due to ramp up time and low burst
  
• Focus/Rage viability in single-target PvE fights due to low sustained DPS (~9% behind on dummy parses)
  
• RNG issues in Combat/Carnage
  

 

Other wildcard issues that I have on-hand:

 

• Guarded by the Force/Undying Rage don't appear to work at all on Lightning Field
  
• Centering/Fury do not build during Transcendence/Predation or Inspiration/Bloodthirst (*major* issue for Focus/Rage)
  

 

I'm not sure there are any really huge outstanding issues besides the ones I've listed, but this is all about what the community feels are the most significant issues. Weigh in and make your voice heard!

 

Note: I really would like this to be about both Sentinels and Marauders. We're the same class anyway. I'll be cross-posting this to the Marauder sub-forum to ensure everyone gets to see it, and will be PMing Gudarzz (Marauder rep) and Oofalong (awesome sauce) for further thoughts.

Edited August 2, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[Okamakiri]

I agree with your points, but I would also add that Carnage/Combat still has rage/focus issues. Ever since they removed the range/focus discount on Berserk/Zen, Carnage/Combat rotation has changed into a sine curve on the DPS meter. Massive spike, followed by a massive dip due to excessive Assault/Strike usage.

[KeyboardNinja]

I agree with your points, but I would also add that Carnage/Combat still has rage/focus issues. Ever since they removed the range/focus discount on Berserk/Zen, Carnage/Combat rotation has changed into a sine curve on the DPS meter. Massive spike, followed by a massive dip due to excessive Assault/Strike usage.

 

I'm not sure I would agree with that, actually. So long as you're managing your Blade Storm/Force Scream procs effectively, using Twin Saber Throw/Dual Saber Throw as filler and not delaying Master Strike/Ravage by more than a few seconds, there aren't really any serious Focus/Rage issues. Combat/Carnage most certainly does use Strike/Assault a whole heck of a lot more than either of the other two specs, which is perhaps a bit annoying. Given how high the spec parses though, I'm not sure how this could be helped without uber-buffing things.

[Okamakiri]

Well that's what I mean by issue. There is no issue in terms of DPS and it is possible to maintain sufficient resource level for fluid rotation all the time. However, to maintain that level, the amount of Assault/Strike required seems excessive. In PVE it's manageable as you can maintain a high DPS uptime on target and don't have to spend rage/focus on any abilities outside of your rotation. In PVP though things are a lot messier and can result in a very inconsistent DPS output.

 

I do agree that it seems to be more a quality of life issue and fixing it would ultimately result in a buff to our DPS, which we don't really need. Then again, there are still other classes that beat us on some fights consistently, so maybe returning the rage/focus discount on Berserk/Zen wouldn't be so bad.

[Okamakiri]

Maybe a talent deep in Carnage/Combat tree that makes snare/healing debuff free would be a good start at least for the PVP side of things?

[Ceile]

As a Carnage/Combat Marauder/Sentinel, the only things I can think to change is extending the CD of Slaughter to 21s and increasing the proc % of slaughter. Or making it so that Slaughter cannot proc when Gore is on CD, and maybe while the Gore buff is active, but this might be counter-productive.

[NogueiraA]

We need a rework on Rage/Focus first talents.

The talent +7.5% crit chance on Dispatch/VT should be in the first line. We need to spend points in useless talents to get this one.

[MarkXXIV]

I thought carnage and annihilation were both terrible in pvp. I guess I am doing it wrong. LF changes that will make carnage/annihilation wanted in ranked warzone. Edited July 30, 2013 by MarkXXIV

[KeyboardNinja]

We need a rework on Rage/Focus first talents.

The talent +7.5% crit chance on Dispatch/VT should be in the first line. We need to spend points in useless talents to get this one.

 

Having this instead of the force crit chance would be super-nice for Combat/Carnage, but it would also move the force crit chance well out of reach of Watchman/Annihilation, which is the spec where it does the most good. Alternatively, the AoE buff could be moved up, but then it moves out of reach of Combat/Carnage, which doesn't *need* it, but benefits significantly.

[CellPerfect]

Having this instead of the force crit chance would be super-nice for Combat/Carnage, but it would also move the force crit chance well out of reach of Watchman/Annihilation, which is the spec where it does the most good. Alternatively, the AoE buff could be moved up, but then it moves out of reach of Combat/Carnage, which doesn't *need* it, but benefits significantly.

 

How does force crit chance help watchman / annihilation? As far as I'm aware the dots are NOT force damage and do not benefit from the 6% crit chance increase so is there something else I'm forgetting?

[KeyboardNinja]

How does force crit chance help watchman / annihilation? As far as I'm aware the dots are NOT force damage and do not benefit from the 6% crit chance increase so is there something else I'm forgetting?

 

The DoTs are force damage.

 

Generally speaking though, because of the way the skill trees are arranged, the ideal Watchman/Annihilation spec doesn't take all three points in the force crit, since the off-hand damage is superior. Focus/Rage spec does something similar, which is annoying. Bioware should really either move the off-hand damage talent up the Combat/Carnage tree, or they should move it down and make it more accessible to the other two specs.

[CellPerfect]

The DoTs are force damage.

 

Generally speaking though, because of the way the skill trees are arranged, the ideal Watchman/Annihilation spec doesn't take all three points in the force crit, since the off-hand damage is superior. Focus/Rage spec does something similar, which is annoying. Bioware should really either move the off-hand damage talent up the Combat/Carnage tree, or they should move it down and make it more accessible to the other two specs.

 

So that makes them a physical effect that does force damage correct? (tech cleansers can cleanse tech and physical effects so that's why I call it a physical effect, otherwise they should not be able to cleanse them). I agree that the offhand damage should be moved back down to where it was pre 2.0. All the specs benefit from it greatly so that would certainly help.

[KeyboardNinja]

So that makes them a physical effect that does force damage correct? (tech cleansers can cleanse tech and physical effects so that's why I call it a physical effect, otherwise they should not be able to cleanse them). I agree that the offhand damage should be moved back down to where it was pre 2.0. All the specs benefit from it greatly so that would certainly help.

 

I should be more precise: they are a force *attack*. There is no such thing as "force damage". "Force" and "Tech" are attack types. They are also used to describe effect types and gate cleanses by healer class. If an effect is a "force" effect, then its ticks are force attacks.

 

Being a force attack has two effects. First, it bypasses defense and has the potential to also bypass armor and shield (if it does internal or elemental damage). Second, it uses your force crit chance (rather than your tech crit) on attack rolls. This is an important thing to keep in mind. If the bleeds/burns in annihilation/watchman spec were tech attacks, their crit chance would be pitiful (since Aim and Cunning affect tech crit, not Strength or Willpower), and thus the damage would be somewhat unfairly low.

 

More importantly, all of this can be verified by a simple trip to the script files:

 

SpellDamage: SpellType=>Force, StandardHealthPercentMin=>0.02, Slot=>None, Coefficient=>0.2, StandardHealthPercentMax=>0.02, AmountModifierPercent=>0.01, DamageType=>Elemental

 

The above is the DoT applied by Overload Saber. Notice the "SpellType=>Force" bit there.

 

I don't think that either Scoundrels or Commandos can cleanse Marauder bleeds. I haven't tried in a while though.

Edited July 30, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[Domatron]

 

I don't think that either Scoundrels or Commandos can cleanse Marauder bleeds. I haven't tried in a while though.

 

They both absolutely can baseline, the dots are applied as physical damage. (I do it on my dps Merc all the time) It's a really poor design and if they actually were force damage so only sorcs/sages could cleanse them it would go a long way. I don't see the reason that this is the only dot spec in the game that can have dots be cleansed by all 3 heal ACs.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Domatron

[Bryanseven]

Main post on the Sentinel sub-forum (including draft questions!): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6604989#post6604989

 

We have three questions to fill. One of those needs to be about PvP. As a general structure, I see the following immediate points:

 

• Watchman/Annihilation viability in PvP due to ramp up time and low burst
  
• Focus/Rage viability in single-target PvE fights due to low sustained DPS (~9% behind on dummy parses)
  
• RNG issues in Combat/Carnage
  

 

Other wildcard issues that I have on-hand:

 

• Guarded by the Force/Undying Rage don't appear to work at all on Lightning Field
  
• Centering/Fury do not build during Transcendence/Predation or Inspiration/Bloodthirst (*major* issue for Focus/Rage)
  

 

I'm not sure there are any really huge outstanding issues besides the ones I've listed, but this is all about what the community feels are the most significant issues. Weigh in and make your voice heard!

 

Note: I really would like this to be about both Sentinels and Marauders. We're the same class anyway. I'll be cross-posting this to the Marauder sub-forum to ensure everyone gets to see it, and will be PMing Gudarzz (Marauder rep) and Oofalong (awesome sauce) for further thoughts.

 

So sorry to necro this thread, but weren't we next to have questions answered when the class rep program was suspended? Any news on this Gundarz, Keyboard, Oofalong?

[Luckeyduckey]

Gudarzz is MIA (seen him stream though ). Regardless, the issues are almost the exact same as before ( nice job Bioware). I don't really play Carnage, and don't want to talk about Rage, because of 2.7...

 

Annihilation:

 

I feel there are two things this spec needs to find it's niche. Self healing. This should be the self heals spec. Madness already surpasses our healing by a mile, but we should focus on both raid and self heals. Leave the raid heals as they are, I think it's fine. Maybe 1% - 2% buffed, but no more. Self heals, I feel should be 3%. 3 x 6 = 18% healed over Berzerk, compared to 1 x 6 = 6%. 6% is a joke, really. Really, you could leave the .5% for normal crits, but bump up Berzerk's for burst healing. The other thing I feel would work well would be making Berzerk instantly grant 4 stacks of Annihilator. Cool idea, yeah, but in PvP, it's brutal to keep up. How big a buff is this in PvE? Not sure, but in PvP, it would allow a Marauder to leap in and quickly build Fury and pop Berzerk, but also allow the Marauder to keep the buffs up when there is down time (Pop Berzerk to instantly refill the stacks when the boss becomes "attackable" again. Or you could just buff Annihilation's damage by 200% and make DoTs uncleansable, since you prefer easy methods

[Aluvi]

Carnage

 

Slaughter & Execute Procs

Slaughter and Execute need to be 100% proc. It's a 20 second cooldown for Slaughter, and Executes cooldown is tied to Force Scream. It is infuriating when you spam for a proc, only to get stunned and lose it before you can use it. If they are going to have those long cooldowns, it needs to be 100% proc rate. I believe it was designed to"always be up when you need it" based on those %s. And sure, in PvE, it is. In PvP you get stunned, rooted, knocked back, etc, and things don't go like they would on a PvE rotation.

 

Rage Management in Carnage

 

Rage management in Carnage for PvP relies on the marauder being on target 100% of the time, building Rage with assault. In PvE, that's fine. In PvP, you can be stunned/rooted/slowed/knocked back and in some way shape or form out of range of a target to build rage on for 50% of the time, depending on how well the enemy team shuts you down. There needs to be a way to make the "Rage mileage" for Carnage better in PvP.

 

Annihilation

Annihilation, what can I say. It is by far the weakest PvP spec for Maras. Make the dots uncleansable. Just make Annihilation 6 or 7 second cooldown, period, for use in PvP. The ramp up time is too long for PvP to really get going with it. Since the healing nerf to it, the survivability of it has been lacking. Every other Mara spec has auto crit, while Anni does not, and the healing is helped greatly by crits on dots. Well, Berserk gives auto crits but that takes a while to build up. Does Rage build while Berserk is active and dots are ticking? IF not that should be addressed. I havent played Anni in ages so I dont know.

 

The damage output on Anni is just not very good in PvP. It builds up slowly, lacks burst, and doesn't provide the survivability that it used to. the spec just feels weak. I've dueled people with it, and people that I crush easily with Rage or Carnage, I have a hard time with Anni.

 

Rage Spec

 

If the current iteration of 2.7 goes through, Rage spec is effectively dead. It will do less overall damage than Carnage and other PvP specs, and have crappy single target to boot. The very nature of an aoe spec is that it does good aoe damage, but not as much single target, which makes it less potent for bursting down single targets. Lethality Snipers are the same way, do as much if not more damage, and yet, no one bats an eye at them. PTs do similar damage, and have more single target and stuns.

 

I have basically given up on the Warrior at this point for Rage spec. Although I still enjoy Carnage, there are much better classes / specs out there, and Ranked Arena will be dominated by Ranged dps.

[Luckeyduckey]

Carnage

 

Slaughter & Execute Procs

Slaughter and Execute need to be 100% proc. It's a 20 second cooldown for Slaughter, and Executes cooldown is tied to Force Scream. It is infuriating when you spam for a proc, only to get stunned and lose it before you can use it. If they are going to have those long cooldowns, it needs to be 100% proc rate. I believe it was designed to"always be up when you need it" based on those %s. And sure, in PvE, it is. In PvP you get stunned, rooted, knocked back, etc, and things don't go like they would on a PvE rotation.

 

Rage Management in Carnage

 

Rage management in Carnage for PvP relies on the marauder being on target 100% of the time, building Rage with assault. In PvE, that's fine. In PvP, you can be stunned/rooted/slowed/knocked back and in some way shape or form out of range of a target to build rage on for 50% of the time, depending on how well the enemy team shuts you down. There needs to be a way to make the "Rage mileage" for Carnage better in PvP.

 

Annihilation

Annihilation, what can I say. It is by far the weakest PvP spec for Maras. Make the dots uncleansable. Just make Annihilation 6 or 7 second cooldown, period, for use in PvP. The ramp up time is too long for PvP to really get going with it. Since the healing nerf to it, the survivability of it has been lacking. Every other Mara spec has auto crit, while Anni does not, and the healing is helped greatly by crits on dots. Well, Berserk gives auto crits but that takes a while to build up. Does Rage build while Berserk is active and dots are ticking? IF not that should be addressed. I havent played Anni in ages so I dont know.

 

The damage output on Anni is just not very good in PvP. It builds up slowly, lacks burst, and doesn't provide the survivability that it used to. the spec just feels weak. I've dueled people with it, and people that I crush easily with Rage or Carnage, I have a hard time with Anni.

 

Rage Spec

 

If the current iteration of 2.7 goes through, Rage spec is effectively dead. It will do less overall damage than Carnage and other PvP specs, and have crappy single target to boot. The very nature of an aoe spec is that it does good aoe damage, but not as much single target, which makes it less potent for bursting down single targets. Lethality Snipers are the same way, do as much if not more damage, and yet, no one bats an eye at them. PTs do similar damage, and have more single target and stuns.

 

I have basically given up on the Warrior at this point for Rage spec. Although I still enjoy Carnage, there are much better classes / specs out there, and Ranked Arena will be dominated by Ranged dps.

 

Great points, but you mean dominated by PTs

[Bryanseven]

Good points aluvien, SO basically:

 

1)Carnage is very susceptible to RnG during pvp, and needs a small QoL buff to rescource generation.

 

2)Annihilation has a long ramp up time for it's damage, lacks the staying power to reach it's potential and lacks the burst damage to make them relevant in wz's.

 

3)The rage tree will now be lackluster in it's designated function, Aoe burst damage and needs some adjustments to it's single target damage to compensate for this.

 

According to the dev's sentinel answers they see annihilation as the pressure / sustained spec, Rage as the Burst damage spec and carnage as the middle of the road spec. Is this still accurate?

[Lafay]

1)Carnage is very susceptible to rng, agreed, needs consistent execute procs so that we dont have to run a 3rd pt app to tell us every time it is up so we dont have to watch our buff bar instead of the fight. Using a 3rd party app may or may not be against the tos in this case, non the less it us undetectable by BW and gives the person using it a clear advantage. It could use some QOL upgrades to rage generation but really its not bad at the moment if speced correctly (2,1,2 in first row)

 

2)Annihilation has a long ramp up time for it's damage, no burst, 50% of the specs damage is clensable and it even when the dots are not cleansed its damage single target is laughable and easily healed/cc'd through. For both pvp and pve, the only use for this spec right now is the first 11 points. To fix: This tree needs its healing buffed back to pre-nerf, that was a mistake by developers that have no sense of balance. Also annihilate needs to have its crit rate buffed by 2-3% for each juyo stack for a total of 12-15% increase crit chance for annihilate. the build up is way too slow, if this remains, i think the anni tree should get unstoppable so that it actually gets that chance to ramp up. Jugs got our overwhelm we might as well get their unstoppable. Also, make the dots unclensable.

 

3)The once aoe heavy rage tree is being nerfed into oblivion without a clue by the developers. This nerf alone will account for many $ lost as all the people that play this spec will simply leave as this is perfect timing for ESO and wildstar to gain its suscripers/f2pers. The only way this is going to work is if they increase its single target damage in pvp to make up for its rapeing of its aoe. I suggest making smash a single target ability as they have outlined but make it so if other targets are in range of the smash (5m) the damage they would have taken all goes to one target.

IE:

 

Before/now:

Player smashes 1-5 targets for same damage (7-9k) 8k-45k total

 

After:

Player smashes 1 target for 7-9k

Player smashes 1 target for 8-10k (if 1 other person was near the smash) 8-10K total

Player smashes 1 target for 9-11k (if 2 other people were near the smash) 9-11K total

Player smashes 1 target for 10-12k (if 3 other people were near the smash) 10-11K total

Player smashes 1 target for 11-13k (if 4 other people were near the smash) 11-12K total

Player smashes 1 target for 12-14k (if 5 other people were near the smash) 12-14K total

 

This is the only way the nerf will even out the damage. Even then healer tank combos will breath a sigh of relieve as this nerf will make them unkillable by anything less than 3 very good dps. If not, then its goodbye 10-15% of your suscriber/f2p warriors. I can only hope devs will get this information relayed to them as it is money in their pockets if they don't pull this off correctly, not to mention pissing off the entire warrior community.

 

~Lafayette