Annihilation | Watchman 4.0 Guide

[WiththeForc]

Is good to see a nicer rotation compared to what we had in 3.0 .

I'm still curious though on how does watchman compare to other specs currently

 

Compared to other classes it does very well. Able to keep up with/beat snipers (who are doing very well), and can outperform pts on dotspread fights like dread masters or Nim bestia.

Edited October 24, 2015 by WiththeForc

[Diviciacus]

Oofa, I love you.

 

No joke.

[gunte]

Nice work as usuall Oof/ele! I actually like the new Watchman and yesterday i had (for the first time in months i might add) fun while raiding ^^ It's no 2.8 Watchman of course but then again.. nothing will ever be..

[Bugattiboy]

Nice work Oof. Good to see a guide going up for 4.x. I might try out a few parses on the dummy at some point. I doubt I'll do more than that though. This class is and always will a be a shell of its former self. SoR completely killed any enjoyment I ever got from that class. Edited October 28, 2015 by Bugattiboy

[joshmd]

I guess i can ask again which augments crit power or mastery?

[kingsvell]

Incredible work you ve done here! Congrats and very very thanks!

[Firolas]

Excellent Guide as always Oofalong.

 

The Watchman/Annihilation spec is improved alot since the disaster of SoR 3.0 (from a PVE point of view)

The spec feels alot better and doesn't feel like its apply Rupture/Cauterize do a few moves then reapply..what a nightmare that was.

 

Only question I have for you Theorycrafters/guide writers is how is the self healing in 4.0? Better or worse than say SoR?

[WooliestWorm]

I guess i can ask again which augments crit power or mastery?

If you read the gearing part of the google dac the advice given seems to be to use a mixture of Accuracy, Crit and Alacrity to hit the targets stated.

[revcrisis]

Oofalong have you been able to confirm your tentative statement on relics that SA and FR are still BIS? Thanks.

[oofalong]

Oofalong have you been able to confirm your tentative statement on relics that SA and FR are still BIS? Thanks.

 

Not yet, sadly I didn't win any rolls for relics. I should have some time this week to review the math (although I always prefer having evidence to support my recommendations).

[Faardor]

Force Camouflage removes all cleansable effects when activated.

In your guide you say this is bugged but it seems to work for me, actually it seems to work for stuff it DIDNT cleanse before lol. And I think they fixed it (partially anyway) on it reducing your threat but ill have to do more tests to make sure.

 

As for the rotation, I am not a huge fan of spamming vicious slash, nor not being able to leap at any range.

 

Also someone did some math and Optimized vs full power build costed him 1% DPS on a concealment operative I believe.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Faardor

[oofalong]

In your guide you say this is bugged but it seems to work for me, actually it seems to work for stuff it DIDNT cleanse before lol. And I think they fixed it (partially anyway) on it reducing your threat but ill have to do more tests to make sure.

 

As for the rotation, I am not a huge fan of spamming vicious slash, nor not being able to leap at any range.

 

Thanks for the report. I still plan on studying it more.

 

I didn't exhaustively test it myself. To be honest, most of the time I did spend testing it I had actually forgot to spec into it. I started a long list of stuff it didn't work on before I realized my error.

[g_mK]

Oofalong have you been able to confirm your tentative statement on relics that SA and FR are still BIS? Thanks.

 

I'm inclined to say the FR and SA are better, though crit is better than power or mastery, the crit relic only gives 616 compared to the 945 of FR and SA.

[Iaragnyl]

Nice guide, but i do have a question regarding the set bonus, since it is possible to run 4 piece new set and 2 piece old set and getting the 2 piece proc twice i think it might do more damage to have an 2% damage buff on every skill with an up time of nearly 50% than one autocrit on one ability every minute. It may be possible that the higher mastery on armoring is giving more damage than the proc but i don't know how to calculate this and parses may have the benefit of good rng. So it would be nice if someone can do the math for it and post the results here.

[Xenphon]

Thumbs up for the guide, Oofalong. Excellent stuff. You're a great help to all the marauders in the game.

 

A week into the expansion I must say I am pleasantly surprised with the changes. Annihilation has become miles better than it was in 3.x. I enjoy playing it again, which instantly boosts the enjoyment I get out the game. 3.x was a sad time for marauders. We're back to a more dynamic rotation with shorter dots. It's fun to raid again (probably also helps that the old raids aren't as biased against melee as the new ones).

 

The damage output is very good, too. Parsed ~6650 earlier in a mix of 208/216/220 with 208 MH, so it seems we're in a very good place compared to the other classes, as well. Hopefully they will come out with new operations before long, too. Should be fun. So ye, credit where credit is due, BW. You fixed a lot of the problems with the class. Well done!

[oofalong]

Bant posted his analysis. I concur with his stat allocations. I have updated my guide accordingly. More importantly, his analysis shows that Anni | Watchman is the strongest DPS spec out there (ignoring Engineering | Saboteur).

 

For those who care, our methodologies are basically the same - it's a model - however, his automatically solves for the optimal stats whereas mine requires the user to specify their stats. In theory, through trial and error with my model you arrive at the same results. Further, I build my model to compare builds; it was meant to answer the question: What's the best next upgrade I can make? I am a big fan of the analysis he has done, and I strongly recommend people use that the determine how to gear their (other) toons.

[Anbokr]

I haven't played swtor in years, but came back to my marauder and feel like trying out annihilation. So I just have one question, coming from WoW, there's a mechanic where refreshing your bleed within 3s of it falling off simply adds +3s to the refreshed bleed. For example, if I rupture again with 1.5s left on my current rupture bleed, my rupture dot will now be up for 10.5s instead of 9. Does this mechanic exist in SWTOR or must I wait for my rupture dot to completely fall off in order to maximize dps?

 

I assumed this mechanic exists because just going off the guide it seems rupture is being refreshed every 6-7.5s rather than ever 9s? Or the refresh mechanic does not exist and it's simply more efficient to cancel the old rupture and apply a new at the 6s breakpoint rather than 9?

Edited October 27, 2015 by Anbokr

[WiththeForc]

I haven't played swtor in years, but came back to my marauder and feel like trying out annihilation. So I just have one question, coming from WoW, there's a mechanic where refreshing your bleed within 3s of it falling off simply adds +3s to the refreshed bleed. For example, if I rupture again with 1.5s left on my current rupture bleed, my rupture dot will now be up for 10.5s instead of 9. Does this mechanic exist in SWTOR or must I wait for my rupture dot to completely fall off in order to maximize dps?

 

I assumed this mechanic exists because just going off the guide it seems rupture is being refreshed every 6-7.5s rather than ever 9s? Or the refresh mechanic does not exist and it's simply more efficient to cancel the old rupture and apply a new at the 6s breakpoint rather than 9?

 

This mechanic does not exist in this game. The reason rupture is seemingly being applied early is due to alacrity reducing the gcd and dot times to allow the rotation to flow at a faster rate

[WiththeForc]

Also oof, bant's calculations are pretty good, but based on your model for a 224 anni Mara you can get .07 more dps (night and day, I know) if you go with 7 acc augs + 1 enh, 7 alac augs + 2 enh, and 7 crit enh + 2 crit crystals. Reason I mention this is because it's slightly easier to gear this way since you only need 2 extra enhancements rather than farming for how many enhancements he has down on his calculations

[Anbokr]

This mechanic does not exist in this game. The reason rupture is seemingly being applied early is due to alacrity reducing the gcd and dot times to allow the rotation to flow at a faster rate

 

Thanks for the info!

[Ardarell_Solo]

Also oof, bant's calculations are pretty good, but based on your model for a 224 anni Mara you can get .07 more dps (night and day, I know) if you go with 7 acc augs + 1 enh, 7 alac augs + 2 enh, and 7 crit enh + 2 crit crystals. Reason I mention this is because it's slightly easier to gear this way since you only need 2 extra enhancements rather than farming for how many enhancements he has down on his calculations

 

Interesting, I'd have to totally change what I'd been doing for 216 :-)

 

In the thread Oofalong mentioned I only saw an example for gearing no finalized stats yet. And I thought it was for 220. Did Bant post something else I missed?

 

And I'm impressed you're doing those calculations as well, the method seems pretty complicated. How do you do it?

 

I've also tried to shift stuff in the rotation to make better use of Devious wounds. For that I analyzed how Rend and Rupture tick. I found out the only chance to have two ticks of Rupture under the buff you'd need to place it right before Annihilate. Which is only possible if you delay both Rend, Rupture Annihilate by one GCD every 4 blocks. I'm seeing a DPS loss doing that. (On a side note you also lose 1 tick of Rend under Devious Wounds that way compared to Oofalongs rotation). If you're interested I can post the exact tick times for both.

 

I'm very impressed by what you're doing on actual boss fights (I've always been :-) ) . I don't suppose you'd share some secrets how you adapt your rotation situationally or filler placement?

 

Either way it's a lot of fun playing and maximizing WM/Anni again. Very thankful about that. I really had a hardtime doing Cora and Revan HM on the old rotational chaos we had...

[Lodinn]

Appreciate the work Oof

 

Leap taken out is still a huge hit to me but that's not a thread for this, ya know.

 

DS usage now seems more complicated cause it's floating between blocks, other than that philosophy is largely the same as in 3.2.1. Did you try loosening or removing windows between AN and RU as there's more breathing space for aligning FR/Ravage now?

As soon as I learn to live with using FR on cooldown it seems more and more like priority system. No more Ravage clipping, no more short 6s RU reapply/AN windows meaning fillers will be an essential part of the rotation now. Also it seems one needs to swap keybindings for Assault/Vicious Slash, at least i feel i have more spare rage to toy with than before.

 

tl;dr: Spec seems powerful but seek rotation somewhere else. In 4.0 Anni is bound to follow priorities, period. Too many fillers

[Ardarell_Solo]

Appreciate the work Oof

 

tl;dr: Spec seems powerful but seek rotation somewhere else. In 4.0 Anni is bound to follow priorities, period. Too many fillers

 

Quite the opposite: What you're describing was actually 3.2.1. when all CDs and dot durations were conflicting.

 

In 4.0. there actually IS a rotation - with everything aligning perfectly if you do it right. It's 36 seconds long with a clean opener leading into it and less than a third of the rotation is actually filler spots. Check Oofalongs link in the OP for details :-)

Edited October 28, 2015 by Ardarell_Solo

[oofalong]

I finally got a chance to raid on my very under-geared Mara last night (HM DF), and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I stayed Anni for all of the fights; DoT spreading on Draxuus and CZ seemed more than adequate. I continue to be pleased with the changes to the discipline.

 

Also oof, bant's calculations are pretty good, but based on your model for a 224 anni Mara you can get .07 more dps (night and day, I know) if you go with 7 acc augs + 1 enh, 7 alac augs + 2 enh, and 7 crit enh + 2 crit crystals. Reason I mention this is because it's slightly easier to gear this way since you only need 2 extra enhancements rather than farming for how many enhancements he has down on his calculations

 

This is a good point. I didn't even look at the standard token stats. We now have way too much accuracy by default. I am going to edit the section in the guide about this, but I don't think I will get an opportunity to do so until this weekend.

 

Interesting, I'd have to totally change what I'd been doing for 216 :-)

 

In the thread Oofalong mentioned I only saw an example for gearing no finalized stats yet. And I thought it was for 220. Did Bant post something else I missed?

 

Yes, Bant's analysis for all tier levels can be found here or click here for each tier's stats: 216, 220, 224.

 

And I'm impressed you're doing those calculations as well, the method seems pretty complicated. How do you do it?

 

I presume Beastfury used my model. It is publicly available, which means individuals can save a copy of it. Once you have created a copy you can edit the gear mods on the Character's Gear tab. Changing the inputs will automatically adjust the expected DPS value.

 

I've also tried to shift stuff in the rotation to make better use of Devious wounds. For that I analyzed how Rend and Rupture tick. I found out the only chance to have two ticks of Rupture under the buff you'd need to place it right before Annihilate. Which is only possible if you delay both Rend, Rupture Annihilate by one GCD every 4 blocks. I'm seeing a DPS loss doing that. (On a side note you also lose 1 tick of Rend under Devious Wounds that way compared to Oofalongs rotation). If you're interested I can post the exact tick times for both.

 

I am going to model out Beastfury's rotation/opener to see how the expected DPS compares. As you point out, the challenge becomes delayed abilities.

[oofalong]

Appreciate the work Oof

*snip*

tl;dr: Spec seems powerful but seek rotation somewhere else. In 4.0 Anni is bound to follow priorities, period. Too many fillers

 

Thanks, I must say I really like the new playstyle. I think you could make a case that its a strict rotation or a priority system. Personally, I always enjoyed specs that had a degree of predictability, but had opportunities to maximize DPS due quick decision making. We definitely had this pre-2.10, but I think a lot of this is back albeit in a different way.

 

For one I really enjoy having two different sets of CDs to manage. Most things are on a 9s cycle, but two important abilities - DS/OS and Force Rend | Melt - follow 12s cycles. And, when you mesh these together I find it all a lot of fun. It leads to a 36s rotation. On top of this, we now have the opportunity to alternate between Assault | Strike and Vicious Slash | Slash depending on available resource; this trade off yields 60%+ more damage in that GCD.