Is annihilation Tree useless(PVP)?

[Michaelgrin]

I Play this game only for pvp And i am wondering what the best tree is right now for marauder. I love annihilation but it seems any cc shuts you down before you can do anything and tanks out sustain your damage because of cds and shields. im 43 Right now just looking for opinions. And if annihilation is useless what tree should i be building in? thanks.

[Cempa]

Anni and Carnage are very viable when talking team setting...Though the learning curve is steep so stick with it if you like to work hard and get rewarded for it...

[Michaelgrin]

Anni and Carnage are very viable when talking team setting...Though the learning curve is steep so stick with it if you like to work hard and get rewarded for it...

 

I Really enjoy it and im 2 levels away from actually unlocking the move annihilate which will make my rupture up a lot more and not to mention Help the burst.

[Tevzz]

I Really enjoy it and im 2 levels away from actually unlocking the move annihilate which will make my rupture up a lot more and not to mention Help the burst.

 

If you get good at it, it can be viable, no doubt. Don't get discouraged coz people say your spec is crap. I decide to leave my Carnage Mara and main a Veng Jugg for a bit last year, and even if I barely saw any other Veng juggs and people told me to go Smash I still did more than fine!

Edited March 14, 2014 by Tevzz

[Michaelgrin]

If you get good at it, it can be viable, no doubt. Don't get discouraged coz people say your spec is crap. I decide to leave my Carnage Mara and main a Veng Jugg for a bit last year, and even if I barely saw any other Veng juggs and people told me to go Smash I still did more than fine!

 

But can it be as good as Carnage?

[cs_zoltan]

But can it be as good as Carnage?

 

In a long drawn out fight it's better damage wise, also best spec to shut down healers without question.

[Tevzz]

In a long drawn out fight it's better damage wise, also best spec to shut down healers without question.

 

This is true, Anni has the greatest amount of interrupts available the most often. If you manage to stay alive long enough for full Annihilate stacks then you're doing some considerable dmg.

Edited March 15, 2014 by Tevzz

[Dedrayge]

Currently for PVP it would be rage and carnage.

 

Rage provides a lot of AoE pressure and even comes with some increased survivability.

 

Carnage is the best for burning down a single target fast...And even has good sustain to keep the pressure up in between burst...It also comes with extra roots and with 100% armour penetration you can put a dent in tanks...Provided you don't get stunned after using gore.

 

Carnage also provides extra speed with predation which comes in very handy when one wants to get between nodes as quickly as possible and for scoring in hutt ball.

 

A lot of the top tier ranked teams make use of carnage...

 

As of 2.7, carnage will be the best choice for PvP....

[Michaelgrin]

Thank you for all the responses. I like anni but sometimes it feels like the dots dont do enough but we will see.

[Dedrayge]

Thank you for all the responses. I like anni but sometimes it feels like the dots dont do enough but we will see.

 

Well...smart healers will cleanse the DoTs and the spec is highly reliant on them for more than just damage..

[TheCourier-]

Annihilation spec hasn't been viable for PVP ever since patch 1.5, which gutted it's self healing. Right now, carnage does around the same amount of sustained DPS that annihilation spec does, and carnage has much more burst than annihilation spec does.

 

In the top 3 marauder questions thread, Bioware actually admitted that annihilation spec isn't performing well at PVP or PVE.

 

Annihilation spec needs about 5% more sustained damage, and its self healing buffed, along with maybe a buff to saber ward that puts it on a 2 minute CD instead of three minutes, since undying rage got nerfed so much (juggernaut's enraged defense is way better than undying rage).

[arkzehhh]

Personally swap between Carnage/Annihilation myself, Both do similar damage.. so play whatever you want.

 

Avoid Rage unless you enjoy not using your brain , ever. :)

[Spamfritter]

This is true, Anni has the greatest amount of interrupts available the most often. If you manage to stay alive long enough for full Annihilate stacks then you're doing some considerable dmg.

 

Not really. Annihilation lacks the burst needed to take down a healer. It's a much longer fight of attrition with Annihilation. The shorter interrupt is nice but in Carnage I can normally kill a healer with a well executed gore window. If they are at 90% or below health it's pretty much over for them. At full health virtually anything will kill them after I'm done with my big hits. Normally I start off with filler abilities to get them down to 80/85% health and then hit them with the good stuff. Usually they've wasted all their stuns and knock backs before hand.

 

I can kill a healer with either but I find Carnage to be superior for killing healers and tanks. At least in a 1 vs. 1 setting.

 

Annihilation isn't useless in PvP. It can get you good numbers and the rotation is easy. The problem is that maintaining your stacks of annihilate in the PvP environment is hard or impossible in some circumstances. Annihilation has a long ramp up time before it starts doing significant damage. This isn't ideal for one on one encounters as you may not really have a chance to start doing allot of damage because of how short PvP fights tend to be. In a coordinated group setting Annihilation shouldn't be underestimated, but ideally a class with more burst would be part of the team make up to help compensate for this deficiency.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Spamfritter

[Tevzz]

Not really. Annihilation lacks the burst needed to take down a healer. It's a much longer fight of attrition with Annihilation. The shorter interrupt is nice but in Carnage I can normally kill a healer with a well executed gore window. If they are at 90% or below health it's pretty much over for them. At full health virtually anything will kill them after I'm done with my big hits. Normally I start off with filler abilities to get them down to 80/85% health and then hit them with the good stuff. Usually they've wasted all their stuns and knock backs before hand.

 

I can kill a healer with either but I find Carnage to be superior for killing healers and tanks. At least in a 1 vs. 1 setting.

 

Annihilation isn't useless in PvP. It can get you good numbers and the rotation is easy. The problem is that maintaining your stacks of annihilate in the PvP environment is hard or impossible in some circumstances. Annihilation has a long ramp up time before it starts doing significant damage. This isn't ideal for one on one encounters as you may not really have a chance to start doing allot of damage because of how short PvP fights tend to be. In a coordinated group setting Annihilation shouldn't be underestimated, but ideally a class with more burst would be part of the team make up to help compensate for this deficiency.

 

I never said Anni deals with healers better, but it does better at preventing them from healing in general since it does have more interrupt potential, in terms of actually taking them down, its miles away from Carnage though.

 

I also run Carnage and find it much better, not to mention I like it much more. But just because Anni is considered bad, doesn't mean once you excel at it you'll still do bad. Heck, Vengeance before 2.6 was quite meh as well, but it didn't prevent me from wrecking people with it. A lot depends on the player themselves and people tend to over exaggerate and say "Skill Tree X doesn't perform as well, therefore it is horrible and unviable" which is far from true.

Edited March 27, 2014 by Tevzz

[xMaranathax]

I plan on moving my Carnage Mara over to Annihilation this weekend. I have played Carnage from the beginning, and I am getting sick of having to burst through the Gore Window. Its great 1v1, but more often times than not, some lucky Guardian throws Awe, or I get a flashbang, or just weird random stuff that players get lucky on and I lose my opportunity to deal damage.

 

I love the aspect of being able to dent tanks, and slice through healers like butter, but its too unpredictable for my play style. Now, I am NOT saying that its a bad class. Its probably the best pvp spec for mara's right now, but I want something challenging, and I think Juyo is the answer.

[Tevzz]

I plan on moving my Carnage Mara over to Annihilation this weekend. I have played Carnage from the beginning, and I am getting sick of having to burst through the Gore Window. Its great 1v1, but more often times than not, some lucky Guardian throws Awe, or I get a flashbang, or just weird random stuff that players get lucky on and I lose my opportunity to deal damage.

 

I love the aspect of being able to dent tanks, and slice through healers like butter, but its too unpredictable for my play style. Now, I am NOT saying that its a bad class. Its probably the best pvp spec for mara's right now, but I want something challenging, and I think Juyo is the answer.

 

 

Well, despite the fact that I plan to stick with Carnage as my main, I made a Sentinel to go Focus at first...but then I got bored of Focus, and then the nerf hit so I'm trying Watchman right now, and honestly the Watchman animations are 100000x better than the Annihilation ones sadly :S

 

So far, Watchman isn't really challenging in terms of rotation, its very easy actually, because you have a clear priority system that get VERY close to an actual rotation. The bigger issue is surviving long enough to get your 4 Merciless/Annihilate Stacks. And even then, as soon as the fight stops for more than 24 seconds (say you just wiped the enemy team and are capping a node or something and you go reinforce your off-node) your DPS drops a lot. If you're able to stay in a very long zerg then it can dish out decent damage and getting all the dots to tick at once + Force Choke is some pretty big damage, especially if nobody cleanses it.

Edited March 27, 2014 by Tevzz

[Vodrin]

I never said Anni deals with healers better, but it does better at preventing them from healing in general since it does have more interrupt potential, in terms of actually taking them down, its miles away from Carnage though.

 

I also run Carnage and find it much better, not to mention I like it much more. But just because Anni is considered bad, doesn't mean once you excel at it you'll still do bad. Heck, Vengeance before 2.6 was quite meh as well, but it didn't prevent me from wrecking people with it. A lot depends on the player themselves and people tend to over exaggerate and say "Skill Tree X doesn't perform as well, therefore it is horrible and unviable" which is far from true.

 

This is so true. I have been periodically respecing to watchman on my sent just for a change of pace and find it quite viable. Is it less powerful than combat? Yes, absolutely it is. But it is far from terrible and a good watchman sent/annihilation marauder is still a useful team mate due to the interrupts and additional group heals. Personally I just find combat much more fun because of what you can do to any target when you manage your burst correctly. Watchman/annihilation really does not burst, it kills with heavy pressure.