New Marauder: Annihilation or Carnage?

[bawnawz]

I respec'd quite a bit and the niche that worked for me was to put 2 points in quick recovery and put the rest in rage.

 

Two points in quick recovery and 2 points in force alacrity reduce the cooldown of almost all your abilities to 9 seconds. It also makes your smash only cost 1 rage, making it efficient enough to be used even on single targets. Obliterate does roughly the same damage as deadly saber, but its instant, and it just seemed like at lower levels even silvers don't live that long. This spec for me was the most fun because i could rotate through more abilities and i didn't feel like i was spamming vicious slash as much. Also you don't have that subconscious begging for silver mobs for your dots to tick on, as smash is effective on single targets and especially on multi-mob packs, which you will see 2+ in your pulls most of the time.

 

At 30 you have a couple options. If you stay rage, you can do this:

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#100bZZG0RrdbM.1

 

Essentially you can charge in, generating 3 rage. Channel force choke, reducing your incoming damage, doing some damage of your own, and generating another 3 rage. And then, through talents, your smash will be a guaranteed crit, and do +75% damage, all at the cost of 1 rage. You can pick up your rotation from there, weak mobs are decimated by your opener.

 

Otherwise you have enough points to really deck out your ataru procs (gives crit force scream, generates rage, and increases damage on next attack) but with this spec, your reliant on procs, and have to watch to make sure you're getting your force screams in correctly.

 

Or you can go with annihilation and continue to dot.

 

 

But, imho, having a cheap, low-cooldown smash at low levels, makes up for just about anything the other specs can come up with, and with obliterate you don't really lose anything damage wise. The ONLY thing that kept me from trying rage sooner was i thought obliterate had a minimum range like charge does, so i thought i would have to run out of combat to use it. Thats obviously not the case, and once i realized it, i have loved playing rage.