Surge vs. Accuracy at Endgame for Carnage

[Veritaffle]

Hey everyone,

 

I have a question about secondary stat gearing at endgame for Carnage.

 

Since Carnage only requires 3% accuracy from gear (i.e. 3% talents + 3% Ataru + 1% companion), and Surge suffers substantial diminishing returns at high levels, there very quickly comes a point where you're over cap for accuracy and hitting serious diminishing returns on surge (i.e. over 74% surge)

 

I see three options:

 

1) Take talent points in Cloak of Carnage instead of Narrowed Hatred

 

2) Accuracy > Surge after Accuracy cap and 74% surge

 

3) Surge > Accuracy after Accuracy cap and 74% surge

 

What's the best plan here? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Edited April 19, 2014 by Veritaffle

[twotilmidnite]

Surge to 75, 100% accuracy. Then start stacking Alacrity

 

In all seriousness, though. I feel it's better to just take the heavy DR hit and keep stacking Surge. I mean, I see no real point to stack ONLY 75ish Surge just to pick up one or two extra accuracy enhancements.

[Karlbadmanners]

Alacrity over power? Seriously? I'm just surprised since that goes against almost all that I've read up on for gearing

[TACeMossie]

Alacrity over power? Seriously? I'm just surprised since that goes against almost all that I've read up on for gearing

 

There are 0 cases of alacrity over power.

 

In fact, if you get comm-only gear, then alacrity is the best secondary stat you can get, as you can get Quick Savant enhancements off pants (BiS for power) while you can't get Adept or Initiative enhancements for comms.

 

Dont do that though, bad idea. Well you can get 1 quick savant enhancement if you want once optimized, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Edited April 22, 2014 by TACeMossie

[twotilmidnite]

Yeah. It was more of a joke. No alacrity is ever needed. Even from comm gear. If you start using alacrity, you'll screw up your proc timers.

[TACeMossie]

Yeah. It was more of a joke. No alacrity is ever needed. Even from comm gear. If you start using alacrity, you'll screw up your proc timers.

 

Actually because the proc is a 20 second lockout, you can get up to 5% before it starts screwing with procs, and after 7.15% alacrity it goes back to being beneficial.

[Vodrin]

Actually because the proc is a 20 second lockout, you can get up to 5% before it starts screwing with procs, and after 7.15% alacrity it goes back to being beneficial.

 

It's still terrible compared to power, or just about any other stat.

[TACeMossie]

It's still terrible compared to power, or just about any other stat.

 

Terrible compared to power, yes. But it doesn't compete with power outside of augments, and if a DPS isn't augmenting for Main Stat, hes doing it wrong.

 

Terrible compared to Accuracy, to an extent. Once you get over 436 accuracy (normal specs) or 206 accuracy (Carnage spec) then Accuracy stops affecting a huge percentage of your damage, being delegated to offhand and auto-attack duty.

 

Terrible compared to Surge, to an extent. When you get over 500 surge, it starts hurting badly. When you get over 700 surge, its pretty much useless.

 

Terrible compared to Shield... if you're a tank.

 

Now this new tier of gear - Dread Masters - gives you 1020 stats to play around with in the tertiary area. 204 of these are delegated to accuracy, which comes from 2 enhancements or implants/earpieces. This leaves 816 stats to be put between Surge and Alacrity.

 

So lets say you decide to put all 816 points into surge - that gives you 77.95% surge. But what if its 714 surge and 102 alacrity? That gives you 76.96% surge as well as 1.472% alacrity. So its sacrificing 0.99% surge, which only affects critical hits, for 1.472% alacrity, which boosts everything. Now would you say its useless? Since alacrity isn't screwing with Combat's procs, I wouldn't say so.

 

And its better than the boost to accuracy for the offhand, with the mainhand having pretty much 100% accuracy, the offhand would get 1.363% more accuracy by having 3 accuracy pieces instead of 2 + 1 alacrity.

 

As such, I believe that once you start using Dread Masters gear, Combat spec can take a single piece of alacrity safely, as it doesn't go over the dangerous 5% threshold while also providing more damage than the other options do.

[Nomaad]

Someone on my server stated that if you play carnage or dotsmash spec, should be using power augs over strength, any comment on this? Edited April 24, 2014 by Nomaad
error

[TACeMossie]

Someone on my server stated that if you play carnage or dotsmash spec, should be using power augs over strength, any comment on this?

 

Its a personal preference thing. More Strength causes crits to happen more often, though not as much damage comes from it, while more power gives more damage, for less crits, and the damage difference is quite minimal. Since you're power is going to be incredibly high, and auto-crits dont make up too much of your damage (sweep in dotsmash is about 20% of the damage dealt, while Rage has 26.5% of the damage as auto-crits and Carnage has 18.8% of its damage as auto-crits), so while you shouldn't be grabbing Crit just yet for those specs, mainstat is still superior to power (0.2205 bonus damage/point vs 0.2415 bonus damage per point, with mainstat giving about 0.002% extra crit per point over power. At dread forged gear level the % dps boost from power is about 0.0126% per point, while the % boost from strength is about 0.013% per point) even though there is no +6% or +9% boost available (e.g. Guardians strength booster).

 

And Carnage gets a lot of its damage from its non-auto-crit attacks.

[Vodrin]

Terrible compared to power, yes. But it doesn't compete with power outside of augments, and if a DPS isn't augmenting for Main Stat, hes doing it wrong.

 

Terrible compared to Accuracy, to an extent. Once you get over 436 accuracy (normal specs) or 206 accuracy (Carnage spec) then Accuracy stops affecting a huge percentage of your damage, being delegated to offhand and auto-attack duty.

 

Terrible compared to Surge, to an extent. When you get over 500 surge, it starts hurting badly. When you get over 700 surge, its pretty much useless.

 

Terrible compared to Shield... if you're a tank.

 

Now this new tier of gear - Dread Masters - gives you 1020 stats to play around with in the tertiary area. 204 of these are delegated to accuracy, which comes from 2 enhancements or implants/earpieces. This leaves 816 stats to be put between Surge and Alacrity.

 

So lets say you decide to put all 816 points into surge - that gives you 77.95% surge. But what if its 714 surge and 102 alacrity? That gives you 76.96% surge as well as 1.472% alacrity. So its sacrificing 0.99% surge, which only affects critical hits, for 1.472% alacrity, which boosts everything. Now would you say its useless? Since alacrity isn't screwing with Combat's procs, I wouldn't say so.

 

And its better than the boost to accuracy for the offhand, with the mainhand having pretty much 100% accuracy, the offhand would get 1.363% more accuracy by having 3 accuracy pieces instead of 2 + 1 alacrity.

 

As such, I believe that once you start using Dread Masters gear, Combat spec can take a single piece of alacrity safely, as it doesn't go over the dangerous 5% threshold while also providing more damage than the other options do.

 

I was speaking more from a PvP perspective so I should have been more clear. With current PvP gear you can't really stack accuracy and surge high enough (while still going for main stat and power) to justify even looking at alacrity. Maybe in PvE it does make sense to have a few pieces of it, just not with PvP gear.

[Mr_Fuzzle]

A note on Alacrity for Carnage and why it's NEVER useful.

 

Ataru Form

Instant

Enters an acrobatic lightsaber form, increasing accuracy by 3%. In addition, your successful melee attacks have a 20% chance to trigger a second strike that deals 577 - 621 weapon damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds.

 

Therefore it screws up the proc timers no matter what because Ataru procs on attacks that aren't Massacre (and the potential second Ataru proc from Massacre) will not occur at the correct times. It's better to just cap out on Accuracy and put the rest into Surge.

[Nomaad]

Hey thanks for your reply TACeMossie, very much appreciated, after posting I replaced my power augs with str and found I gained an extra 100-150 dps in dot smash spec.

[CellPerfect]

A note on Alacrity for Carnage and why it's NEVER useful.

 

Ataru Form

Instant

Enters an acrobatic lightsaber form, increasing accuracy by 3%. In addition, your successful melee attacks have a 20% chance to trigger a second strike that deals 577 - 621 weapon damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds.

 

Therefore it screws up the proc timers no matter what because Ataru procs on attacks that aren't Massacre (and the potential second Ataru proc from Massacre) will not occur at the correct times. It's better to just cap out on Accuracy and put the rest into Surge.

 

Just tested this out and it isn't quite true. I put two pieces of alacrity in my gear (both 168 enhancements so a total of 158 alacrity rating) and I hit the training dummy with auto attacks and I was able to get ataru form hits twice in a row. If what I quoted is true then I should not be able to get back to back ataru hits on the dummy with something other than massacre, but I was still able to.

 

Another way to test this out that I just tried is to have berserk up and auto attack the dummy. Once again I was able to get ataru form hits back to back with auto attacks and this time I had 30% alacrity (actually 32.25% because I had the alacrity pieces still in).

 

Based on this I see two possible explanations. The first is that either the skill is bugged and it can proc more than once every 1.5 seconds even though it says it can't. And the second is that alacrity actually lowed the 1.5 second internal cool down of ataru form.

 

I would argue that the second explanation is actually true (contrary to what most people say) purely because I have tested something similar out on a pyro merc who had at least 4% alacrity (maybe more) and I was able to reset rail shot, cast 3 power shots and get the rail shot reset to proc. (so the rotation went Rail shot > power shot > power shot > power shot > rail shot > power shot > power shot > power shot > rail shot). Assuming alacrity does not lower the internal cool down of 6 seconds on that reset, this should not happen but it does. The same thing seemed to happen with ataru form hits as I stated earlier. I could be completely wrong about all of this, but something just doesn't seem to add up here.

[Mr_Fuzzle]

Just tested this out and it isn't quite true. I put two pieces of alacrity in my gear (both 168 enhancements so a total of 158 alacrity rating) and I hit the training dummy with auto attacks and I was able to get ataru form hits twice in a row. If what I quoted is true then I should not be able to get back to back ataru hits on the dummy with something other than massacre, but I was still able to.

 

Another way to test this out that I just tried is to have berserk up and auto attack the dummy. Once again I was able to get ataru form hits back to back with auto attacks and this time I had 30% alacrity (actually 32.25% because I had the alacrity pieces still in).

 

Based on this I see two possible explanations. The first is that either the skill is bugged and it can proc more than once every 1.5 seconds even though it says it can't. And the second is that alacrity actually lowed the 1.5 second internal cool down of ataru form.

 

I would argue that the second explanation is actually true (contrary to what most people say) purely because I have tested something similar out on a pyro merc who had at least 4% alacrity (maybe more) and I was able to reset rail shot, cast 3 power shots and get the rail shot reset to proc. (so the rotation went Rail shot > power shot > power shot > power shot > rail shot > power shot > power shot > power shot > rail shot). Assuming alacrity does not lower the internal cool down of 6 seconds on that reset, this should not happen but it does. The same thing seemed to happen with ataru form hits as I stated earlier. I could be completely wrong about all of this, but something just doesn't seem to add up here.

 

The auto attack is broken into three separate main hand strikes at different times.so you can proc ataru off the first striker of your first auto attack and then 1.5 seconds later off the second or third strike off your second auto attack. Not the best way to test this out.

[CellPerfect]

The auto attack is broken into three separate main hand strikes at different times.so you can proc ataru off the first striker of your first auto attack and then 1.5 seconds later off the second or third strike off your second auto attack. Not the best way to test this out.

 

Ahh that could do it, but doesn't the ataru form strike happen at the end of the GCD? When I got them back to back they both happened at the end of the GCD. Unless it procs and then waits to do damage until the end of the GCD? I probably shouldn't be think about this when I'm tired though haha