Annihilation vs. Carnage, Crew Skills & Which Mods

[PhoenixRizingnSL]

I have a lvl 21 Sith Warrior Marauder that I have on Carnage right now. While looking for some help with mods I read a post that says annihilation is easier to level and it got me thinking if I should switch. I know that most all of this has to do with personal preference so here's some about how I prefer to game.

 

I prefer to play solo....I will do a flashpoint or pvp every once in awhile, but not often, I don't even do Heroics for the most part. I like to all of the missions on a planet and normally the missions are all green when I do them. I recently got Treek and I love having her as my companion. I would probably have her main function as healing with my marauder since I it's melee dps. I have a great guild and a great group of friends on here now so I am trying to do more of the heroics flashpoints.

 

Also, I was doing Synthweaving for my crew skill, but I have found an orange set of gear that I really like and since I don't do a lot of the social missions I don't get as many commendations, so I'm thinking I should change that too. (which sucks cause I'm over 100 on all 3 crew skills, but I am willing to start over)

 

Suggestions?

Edited May 16, 2014 by PhoenixRizingnSL

[Vizantir]

Annihilation is getting a very substantial buff come 2.8 and it's more user-friendly with leveling. Carnage is inferior until you reach level 45 (Massacre) and it requires more of an investment into learning and micromanaging procs and your rotation.

 

Annihilation offers higher sustained DPS over Carnage, but it has little burst for the situations that need it. Carnage's burst is pretty much second to none, whereas Annihilation just has Annihilate.

 

A good chunk of your DPS will come from the bleeds you put on your target, along with skills like Annihilate (cooldown decreases every time you use it), and Ravage. The rest comes from filler.

 

For Annihilation, you will want to have your crit rating at ~100 for higher crit chances from your bleeds. Any more than that is a waste. Once you hit 100, you will want to focus the rest of your stats into Accuracy (get melee accuracy to 100%), Surge (72-74%), and the rest in power.

 

If you choose to go Carnage, do not invest anything into your crit rating, and just go all power.

 

For either build, *never* use Alacrity.

 

As for crew skills, it all boils down to what you want to do. I advise you to stay away from Armstech/Armormech, as they don't make anything relevant to your class and your companions receive no major crafting bonuses for them.

 

My personal recommendation is Synthweaving. Reasons are as follows:

 

 

Jaesa

receives a +5 Critical bonus to Synthweaving.

 

For Synthweaving, you don't *have* to only make armor. Synthweaving is IMO much more useful for making Augmentation Kits and Augments (Might/Resolve/Redoubt). To that end, you may want to go Synthweaving/Archaeology/Slicing. Slicing will get you the materials needed for high end augments that are required for end game gearing.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Vizantir

[MCaliban]

Carnage/combat is a great burst spec that's provides some of the output in PvP if your skill level is high enough. (The average player's skill level is not high enough.)

 

Annihilation/watchman is good sustained DPS and I believe is the best for endgame PvE. But it has ramp up time. If you're doing solo leveling content, fights with specific enemies rarely last long enough for that sustained DPS on a single target to matter.

 

In my opinion, rage/focus is the best spec for regular leveling. It's easy and it gives you good AOE so you can quickly kill lots of standard level mobs. When you're leveling, you don't need to worry about fighting that one elite dude. Your healer can easily handle that. It's the times when you have a strong and two standard mobs or five standard mobs all attacking you that you're going to take the most damage.

 

Is this your first toon? If so, sythweaving is a fine choice. It's important to understand that in TOR, if you see someone running around in all oranges with blue mods and actual augments, that person has a level 55 toon sending them hundreds of thousands of credits or crafting all that stuff for them. That said, the higher your level, the easier it is to go back to older planets and farm heroics for comms.

[Vizantir]

Yes, Rage is another good option for leveling. However I wouldn't invest too much of your attention into it, as the output is quite inferior to Annihilation/Carnage at endgame.

[xMaranathax]

If you choose to go Carnage, do not invest anything into your crit rating, and just go all power.

 

I strongly disagree. I try to run 20% crit on my Carnage, simply for the fact that we have 1 auto crit ability proc, Execute, thats RNG based. We use Massacre to proc Execute, so having 20-25% crit helps due to the talent Sever, which increases Crit dmg 30% of Massacre and Force Scream.

 

When I run Anni, I run all power/surge due to the Auto Crit from Berserk, and you can build Fury like mad while in Anni spec.

 

This seems to work much better for me in PvP.

[Lotharofxev]

When it comes to crew skills, I find Biochem / Bioanalysis / Diplomacy to work well. The "home-made" adrenals, buffs, and medpacks are pretty good and if you don't have a 450 Biochem you will want one when you hit 55 and start raiding.