Group Ranked: Viable Spec Discussion in 4s - Carnage vs Fury

[revcrisis]

Let me preface this by saying I've been a 2,000 rated Marauder in Season 1-3 and this post is solely about group ranked 4s. I'd like to hear the opinions of some good Maras that have played in past seasons and post on this board. I love the class and with the recent survivability and control buffs coming next week, I think Maras and Sents have a legitimate spot in group ranked again. By picking up the right utilities, a good mara will be extremely slippery and tanky during the right moments. Also, we get a 90 second breaker now!!

 

The question becomes whether to run Fury or Carnage. Perhaps some PVE folks can help out here as well. What's your opinion on the viable spec to run for a (bursty) split DPS comp. Hard Swaps are always nice, but don't always work when facing excellent tanks and healers. In that case, we'd be doing split DPS.

 

Carnage:

• Reliable burst every 12 seconds via gore+devastating blast. 100% armor pen. This will hit for 10-12k usually.
  
• Very good burst with gore+ravage every 18 seconds. We won't be able to get a full ravage off in most instances.
  
• Massacre spam outside burst windows. Key question here is does this spec bring enough to a split burst comp? Does it have enough DPS output to pressure a target and force the enemy tank to decide who to guard swap to?
  

 

Fury:

• Reliable burst every 12 seconds or so via Raging Burst. This will usually hit for 8-10k usually. Passive 30% armor pen.
  
• Furious Strike every 9 seconds. This ability hits like a truck and is one of the hardest hitting abilities in the game when it crits. A Raging Burst crit + a Furious Strike crit can do 22k damage in 3 seconds. Unfortunately the stars don't align all the time.
  
• Question here is whether it has enough sustained DPS to pressure a target. Cascading Power provides a sustained DPS lift, although I'm not sure if it's enough.
  

 

Carnage has always been the go-to Marauder spec for 4s in Seasons 1-3. Does Fury have a place in Season 4 to overtake Carnage? Let me know your thoughts.

Edited March 6, 2015 by revcrisis

[-Yui-]

I love the class and with the recent survivability and control buffs coming next week, I think Maras and Sents have a legitimate spot in group ranked again.

 

You mean the reversion of a nerf and an arguably worse version of Undying available to us in 2.7? /s

 

Back on topic...

 

Are you asking if Carnage does enough burst to force a guard switch? Yes.

Does Fury have enough sustained DPS to pressure a target? Yes, although Vengeance is probably better as a melee pressure class. Not much use for sustained damage anyway, with other classes/specs (Hatred, I'm looking at you) putting out a lot more overall pressure than Fury could ever do.

 

In regards to your last question, Fury and Carnage will both be competitive, but ultimately Carnage should be more popular due to its more greater and more consistent burst windows.

[CellPerfect]

I would go with carnage over fury, however I think fury would do fine if you prefer it. Carnage has the better sustained dps and I believe it would be easier to line up the burst as carnage compared to fury. The main problems with carnage are that you could shut it down easier and it's less mobile than fury. With a good grouped team that has good coordination of CCs, etc. I think you can overcome these issues quite easily. This is not to say that fury would be bad, because it too has some great burst, but I always have preferred carnage for the group ranked situations.

 

On another note, I think it also depends on what you are going up against. If you go against classes that have a lot of boosts to defense or lower your accuracy (examples being PT tanks, anyone with a saber ward / deflection, etc.) carnage is going to do much worse because of its heavy reliance on white damage. Fury has a lot more force attacks compared to carnage, so those accuracy reductions don't hurt fury nearly as bad as they do to carnage.

[revcrisis]

Let me clarify. I'm assuming I'm facing an excellent tank and healer.

 

Obviously Carnage has great burst because of 100% armor pen and 30% alacrity during berserk. Gore is up even quicker than 12 seconds when you have berserk up. The issue is the damage is very spiky. It's up and down every 10~12 seconds, huge spikes. It's very Deception Assassin like. I don't know if Carnage brings enough raw DPS to get a target low. Outside of gore+devastating blast, there's really not that much there. It's amazing burst, but it's also healable burst. I think PVE folks have also expressed concern with DPS output of Carnage in the recent Operations. I'll have to test this in 4s more before I make a decision.

 

Fury on the other hand is really an interesting spec for me. It's also re-worked completely in 3.0. I think there's actual potential for it to be an excellent 4s spec. You have 2 heavy hitting moves in Fury instead of one in Carnage. You have passive 30% armor pen. You have 15% surge bonus to every move - you can reach 92% surge in 174s. You have a second leap. And, it's the tankiest of the 3 mara specs. If this spec can bring enough sustained, which you say it can, it might be the most viable burst+sustained spec to play.

[LunarAshes]

The problem with Carnage is that anyone worth their salt will cc you during Gore and you really can't do anything about it. Fury avoids that problem and provides a lot of extra utility, like an extra 10% (!) defense chance with 75% uptime, the ability to leap while rooted and an extra slow on Force Crush. Whenever I PvP nowadays, it's in Fury because Carnage is just too frustrating to keep playing.

[Atlanis]

Well no Sentinel Spec is viable for Endgame at all, I would only take a Sent into a Raid/Rated if I have no other option. Played 4 Classes as DPS and can say Sent is a far far bit off in the whole mix of required skill and return of DPS rate. Not talking about survivability/mobility everyone knows Sent are like a training dummy in that compartment.

[detora]

Carnage has always been the go-to Marauder spec for 4s in Seasons 1-3. Does Fury have a place in Season 4 to overtake Carnage? Let me know your thoughts.

 

I'm getting a team together soon and this has been a topic we're debating as well. I initially wanted to go Fury because its burst is harder to slow down. But the one main advantage of Carnage that I think people overlook is using Pred (along with Unbound) is far less of a dps loss than it would be in Fury. Unbound is incrediblty valuable for the team to get out of roots and maintain time on target. Even without Berserk, Gore-Devasting Blast-Viscous Throw is good for 20k+ damage in 3secs.

 

Carnage has better sustained dps though. So, even if you're running hardswitch, you still need to put out good enough dps to force a guard swap. So here I feel carnage is probably a bit better. And lets face it, Massacre spam is annoying as hell so the tank will take notice who you're on.

 

Personally, if I do decide to play Fury it will be on a Jugg. I think the utility a Jugg dps brings can be more valuable, and the DCDs are stronger than Marauder's to deal with derp hatred/PT comps.

[revcrisis]

Carnage has better sustained dps though.

Debatable. Carnage is extremely hard to maintain uptime on a target at times because the main filler ability is a 4-meter massacre. With Fury you have a bunch of 10-meter abilities in your rotation with a second leap. Carnage might have better dummy-parsing sustained but in a ranked PVP match the sustained of Fury might be better.

[MiaowZedong]

The main disadvantage of Fury for PvP is that you can almost never use your Fury stacks (other than those generated with the Frenzy CD, and even that can be a gamble) to cast Predation. Using Predation instead of Berserk starves you for resources completely and means you will have to use the auto-attack. Berserk is a big burst increase for Carnage but you can deal damage without it, while Fury without Berserk has no burst and no pressure.

 

In all other respects, Fury is IMO superior to Carnage. However, most good PvPers I know prefer Carnage because it allows them to pretty much spam Predation for speed buff and root break.

Edited March 9, 2015 by MiaowZedong

[revcrisis]

The main disadvantage of Fury for PvP is that you can almost never use your Fury stacks (other than those generated with the Frenzy CD, and even that can be a gamble) to cast Predation.

This is a valid and interesting point. Your burst definitely suffers in Fury spec if you use predation, not so much in Carnage. Although, it depends on the composition you're running as your teammates may not need or benefit from predation. If I'm playing with a Sniper as my DPS partner and a PT tank (hold the line), most likely we won't be benefitting from Predation much.

 

Anyways, I've been playing Fury in 4s this week and it's definitely viable. The burst and sustained pressure is there. Carnage, honestly feels really lacking. It's harder to keep uptime on my target and while the burst is still godly, it's too much spike damage. A good healer can heal through the burst, as there's not enough sustained pressure to really make my target play defensively.

Edited March 11, 2015 by revcrisis

[MisterPepssi]

I prefer Carnage, but I find Them to be equally viable. Also massacre animation is smex:D