Situational Annihilation abilities.

[drummerinthesun]

Alrighty. So I feel I can do decent dps with my Marauder. I'm a Vengeance Jugg first, but I am enjoying the Annihilation rotation as well. I have a couple of questions about the rotation, however. I'm using Annihilate on cooldown (rage permitting) and anticipating as best I can the rage needed to keep that up. I've read the Compendium by Oofalong so I know the priority, however I have a couple of situations I've run in to. The questions I have are as follows:

 

1. Vicious Slash and Rupture. I have TORAssist running to keep track of the bleed duration of Rupture so I don't clip it. The question is, is when DS, Rupture, Annihilate, and Ravage are on cd, is it best to spam Vicious Slash to fish for a Pulverize proc? Is this a ability to use pretty often? Is Rupture the priority to get procced when Annihilate and DS are on cooldown?

 

2. Vicious Throw. When a target is below 30% I find all of my time is spent mashing important abilities. Throw, Annihilate, Rupture, Charge+DS, and then it's time for another Throw or Annihilate. Do I throw the bleeds out the window in order to build enough rage to just spam Annihilate and Vicious Throw?

 

3. Ravage. Vengeance gets great burst when all of our bleeds are up and we hit Ravage. With such short timers on most abilities in this spec, when is it best to use Ravage? On cooldown if you can? Save it for when all other abilities are on cooldown?

 

4. Annihilate. One of the top parses I've seen got over 90 Annihilate hits in a 5 minute parse which was around 6.3 seconds between each Annihilate. The most I've ever gotten is around 84. Is Assault used a lot before Annihilate comes off CD in order to maximize the uses?

 

5. Dual Saber Throw. To use or not to use? I feel it does good damage but I often become rage starved if I use it too often.

 

6. Maximizing bleeds. Vengeance prioritizes bleeds over the other big hitters like Ravage and Vicious Throw, using those abilities as filler. Is this true for Annihilation? Or does Annihilate get absolute priority over them?

 

I guess that turned into a few more questions than I had originally planned. I haven't seen much info on these forums about Annihilation, though, so hopefully this will help others out as well.

[kennethdale]

Alrighty. So I feel I can do decent dps with my Marauder. I'm a Vengeance Jugg first, but I am enjoying the Annihilation rotation as well. I have a couple of questions about the rotation, however. I'm using Annihilate on cooldown (rage permitting) and anticipating as best I can the rage needed to keep that up. I've read the Compendium by Oofalong so I know the priority, however I have a couple of situations I've run in to. The questions I have are as follows:

 

1. Vicious Slash and Rupture. I have TORAssist running to keep track of the bleed duration of Rupture so I don't clip it. The question is, is when DS, Rupture, Annihilate, and Ravage are on cd, is it best to spam Vicious Slash to fish for a Pulverize proc? Is this a ability to use pretty often? Is Rupture the priority to get procced when Annihilate and DS are on cooldown?

 

Vicious Slash is filler, and only that. It CAN proc Rupture but its not worth blowing all of your rage to try and putting it out there. That filler time is best spent with the other abilities you ask about later: Ravage and DST. Ravage is definitely a hard-hitter for Anni but unlike Vengeance, we don't get the talent-boosted damage nor do we get a boost to Armor Pen like Carnage Maras do. I tend to like to *try* to line it up with getting both bleeds up > Berserk > Ravage. If it doesn't happen and I just Ravage as filler, meh, not worth wasting a CD trying to fill in with something else that won't hit as hard or won't give me the 3 rage from a full-channel.

 

2. Vicious Throw. When a target is below 30% I find all of my time is spent mashing important abilities. Throw, Annihilate, Rupture, Charge+DS, and then it's time for another Throw or Annihilate. Do I throw the bleeds out the window in order to build enough rage to just spam Annihilate and Vicious Throw?

 

Never, EVER ignore your bleeds. Unlike Vengeance, Bleeds are the VAST majority of DPS for Annihilation. Its just another thing to squeeze in and I typically end up dropping Vicious Slash more often than not during Executes simply because its damage is not as good as Annihilate or VT, it costs rage unlike DST or Ravage, and its not a bleed. I can't seem to find it at the moment but its also important to note that you don't HAVE to use Charge to apply DS, it is simply that these two abilities line up perfectly to make it very possible to use them and since they are rage-positive, its a nice boost.

 

3. Ravage. Vengeance gets great burst when all of our bleeds are up and we hit Ravage. With such short timers on most abilities in this spec, when is it best to use Ravage? On cooldown if you can? Save it for when all other abilities are on cooldown?

 

Its a high priority filler. It doesn't hit nearly as hard as it does for Carnage Maras or Vengeance Juggs so its not nearly as important but it still hits like a truck AND builds rage.

 

4. Annihilate. One of the top parses I've seen got over 90 Annihilate hits in a 5 minute parse which was around 6.3 seconds between each Annihilate. The most I've ever gotten is around 84. Is Assault used a lot before Annihilate comes off CD in order to maximize the uses?

 

This is typically down to an issue of client-server lag. Its unavoidable assuming that your active ability queue is set to 1s (meaning you can press an ability up to 1s before it comes off CD and it will be the next used ability) that to a certain degree your presses are not going to register that exactly. Also, I am pretty amazed that someone could get up to 6.3 between without clipping the parse. That seems damn near mathematically impossible since you need at least 4 annihilates with a longer CD than 6 seconds...I dunno I'm not great at math so someone else can comment on that.

 

5. Dual Saber Throw. To use or not to use? I feel it does good damage but I often become rage starved if I use it too often.

 

DST is great filler because it hits decently hard, applies DS, and costs no rage. Its best to use in my opinion when Annihilate is just about to come off CD and you need something to fill that GCD without burning rage.

 

6. Maximizing bleeds. Vengeance prioritizes bleeds over the other big hitters like Ravage and Vicious Throw, using those abilities as filler. Is this true for Annihilation? Or does Annihilate get absolute priority over them?

 

This is a difficult question to answer. Part of the reason Impale/Shatter are prioritized so high is that they can reset the CD on your biggest hitter: Ravage. Annihilate is a different sort of beast. Annihilate is your hardest hitting, single attack (ie: not DoT damage) and is pretty much the source of most of the specs burst but as I stated earlier, your bleeds are going to make up the vast majority of your DPS. The other reason Annihilate is so high is that you really have only a 9 second window or 6 GCDs to use it (assuming 4 stacks of Annihilator) before your dps plummets. My personal opinion is that if bleeds are coming off CD at the same time as Annihilate I will DS>Charge>Annihilate>Rupture so I'm effectively losing 1 GCD of Annihilate but I'm also maximizing my chances at building enough Fury to hit Berserk with 30 stacks on or just after that Rupture which is the other source of burst for Annihilation.

 

I guess that turned into a few more questions than I had originally planned. I haven't seen much info on these forums about Annihilation, though, so hopefully this will help others out as well.

 

 

My 2p in blue.

[drummerinthesun]

Thanks so much for the response. It really cleared some things up for me. I can definitely improve on this based on what you've said. I find it a little disheartening that I can put out as much dps here without the polish I did with my Jugg that was in similar gear, but I definitely love getting on the dummy and hashing things out to get better.