Carnage is very very sad.

[Crazykidddd]

Back in 2.0 carnage marauders were a force to be reckoned with, it was an ultra fun spec that did exactly what it was meant to do: be a deadly glass cannon, and I loved it.

Flash forward to almost every single patch since then, carnage has been either complete garbage or basically flat out unusable, especially for PvP.

In 7.0 you guys gave carnage marauders a "speed demon" feel, the problem is that this speed demon (who's only slightly faster than the other specs due to all having access to predation and the other useful buff to carnage's speed being only a 3 sec duration), zooms around trying to kill people with wet noodles for weapons, and has to constantly use its auto attack just to keep up the 5 stacks of increased crit/speed bcs of the miserable 3 second duration of the buff (which I would be fine with if that was the only issue), but more importantly to be able to use anything bcs you run out of rage every 1-2 abilities. Even the utility that allows you to have infinite gores during berserk is absolutely useless bcs you have to sacrifice your dps with auto attacks in order to increase your rage beforehand so that you can actually use gore, and even then, you might get 2-3 uses per berserk for an ability that does VERY mediocre damage.

Anni and Fury both have way better dps AND utilities AND survivability than it, not to mention that basically all of its tacticals are useless (small bleed on gore, really? the bleed is more worthless than cauterized coronary which no one seems to use bcs the dmg is so low. And the ability that allows your massacre to deal aoe dmg after a smash is worse bcs both smash and massacre deal pitiful amounts of damage.)

I understand that asking for a complete revamp of the class requires a lot of time and effort, though that is not what I am asking.

2.0 kept it simple, ravage and the auto crit on force scream (now devastating blast) both dealt a LOT of damage during the gore window (now Ferocity). Ravage is now that thing that you use when you have no more rage, and the auto crit on devastating blast just hits hard enough to be worth using, but has absolutely nothing special about it.

It seems to me that the baseline for the spec has been created already but what is sorely lacking is a tactical that ties the whole spec together.

Again, the main issues with the spec, in order of importance, are:

1) You're always out of rage, you have to use auto attack ALL the time just to be able to do something which means you can kiss any kind of rotation or desire to set up for burst goodbye.

2) All your abilities deal miserable amounts of damage (relatively speaking). Even with the new utility options for massacre, it barely hits for more than the other spec's basic vicious slash, and only due to the fact that it causes an ataru form strike. This is very sad, especially for an ability that costs as much as a "hard" hitting attack.

Please, lower the rage cost of all abilities or find a way to implement a tactical that would make the spec worth playing first of all, and then fun to play as well and not feel extremely clunky as it does now.

I personally really like the idea of having carnage be a speed demon as that's basically the job it used to have in 2.0 as well, but please increase its damage output.

Maybe reduce the rage cost of all of carnage's main abilities by 1, and make a tactical that goes something like this: "Ravage now builds 3 rage. Using Massacre reduces the cooldown of Ravage by 3 seconds and grants a stack of Ravaging Offense, increasing the damage of your next ravage by 25%. Stacks up to 4 times."

Alternatively, you guys can make Ravage back into a channeled ability (only for Carnage) like it used to be and have this tactical: "The cooldown of Ravage is reduced by 6 seconds. Ravage roots the target and is immune to interrupts, and using Ravage with a stack of Ferocity increases it's critical hit chance by 100%."

Edited March 3, 2022 by Crazykidddd

[Motocross_man]

putting fanged god form back into the game would help the feel of combat dramatically. Either that or a rework. who ever came up with the idea to remove FGF needs to be fired. that's my two cents on the issue. However i agree with everything said above. Edited March 3, 2022 by Motocross_man

[JLazarillo]

I already miss the old Andeddu's Malevolence and my perma-half-Ferocity. That alone felt like it did wonders for my Rage woes. I've just stuck to Fury instead for the time being.

[SoonerJBD]

Carnage was completely ruined by taking Fanged God out of the game. Putting aside the DPS nerf, it isn’t even fun to play anymore because you are so Rage starved. I don’t understand why you would feel the need to nerf what was already the lowest performing Marauder spec in PvE.

[JamesJordan]

I really hope they bring back Fanged God Form. When I first read that they were removing it from the game I thought they were going to replace it with a new tactical or rework the class with the benefits of FGF in mind, but the fact they just straight up removed it has been a real bummer. Focus/Rage budgeting in 7.0 hasn't been too fun.

[Night-runner]

It has taken dome getting used.

 

Requires a bit more skill working TwinSaberThrow and blade barrage in to appropriately bridge the focus gaps between Precision windows

[alexroof]

I feel like thrown back in time around (game update 4.0 - 5.0) as "assault" was kind of part of your rotation to obtain the needed fury/focus.

 

BUT back then carnage/combat made some dps nowadays well it is ok but still compared to other classes it is really **** AGAIN

[Sappharan]

putting fanged god form back into the game would help the feel of combat dramatically. Either that or a rework. who ever came up with the idea to remove FGF needs to be fired. that's my two cents on the issue. However i agree with everything said above.

 

Fanged God form would not solve the problem, it would merely make playing Combat less odious. It deals meager damage and has crap tacticals. They either don't care about buffing certain Combat, or they hate it. Either way, the result is the same...and we suffer for it.

[mandalicstab]

a passive ability adding rage when ataru form procs should be good .

[Crazykidddd]

Yeah I have to agree, the fanged tact just made the class playable but required you to spam a garbage attack over and over. They need some way to incorporate a different focus in the rotation that is not based off of massacre, and also make it fun and deal a lot of damage (you are supposed to be a glass cannon after all), and I think the options I mentioned would be a good way to do that. Edited March 7, 2022 by Crazykidddd

[vfreelancerv]

completely agree. the spec is in a horrible spot overall (utility, damage, cc) . The spec needs its burst returned, or given some sustain that was lost with removal of fanged god

[HakunaMatahtaah]

putting fanged god form back into the game would help the feel of combat dramatically. Either that or a rework. who ever came up with the idea to remove FGF needs to be fired. that's my two cents on the issue. However i agree with everything said above.

 

FGF wouldn't help anything because you generate enough rage for a proper rotation if you're using the right implants. I do not have an issue with the massacre spam tactical being taken out. The comment "hits like a wet noodle" feels far more accurate. I can get crits on vicious throw up to 75k, but that's ONE ability. The point is it should be balanced with other classes. People who enjoy playing it should be able to play it and have the opportunity to hit just as hard as any other spec or class. I think ADD a new ability. One that procs for crit like vicious throw and devastating blast. Or push a proc on massacre, cause you cannot spam it, so it can get a 50k crit. Perhaps as someone else mentioned, an extra hit on ferocity, more alacrity on beserk, buff furious power a little.

 

There are SO MANY options, just to push it up to comparability with other specs.

[timovdt]

As some one who only plays mara as an of class i'm not in the best position to reply but i do agree with it being rather bad, but i can't agree with returning fgf, even tho the class might preform better with it is still a verry boring tactical that dumbs down the spec allot, also the fact that you need specific legendary's to make atleast one full rotation feels a bit meh (for all specs) and should not realy be a thing,

 

All specs should work out of the gate and sets/leggos should enhance or adjust playstiles rather then make the spec useble.

 

But With carnage i think the problem lies deeper, it together with lightning has had the issue of being over nerfed time and time again,

 

even to ling managed to hold on due to leggos/sets carnage did not have that luck, and then got saddled with fgf wich gave whoever the dev was who was incharge of this spec a very bad impression of what this spec should be,

 

now with this version of carnage having one or two things that still feel nice it is just broken from a fundemental level and needs a complete overhaul in order to fix it.

Now its is possible to make this spec preform with some slight balance changes i don't think those that played during the FGF era wil enjoy it , nor will those that played it before FGF, as so many of it skills have been adjusted in a way it will always be clumsy unless they change them up again

 

Mainly (will use sentinel names here sorry bad with mara names )

Zen

Precision

blade barrage

sweep

blade rush

 

I think all of those could be changed in one way or another to help the spec.

But its not only the abilities its also allot of the new utilities that are just awfull

 

i get what they where trying to go for in making it follow more closely to the ataru idea ontop of trying to apease both the FGF players and those that played before it but i think they failed to understand that trying to do that is literaly inpossible

 

As one group enjoyed it for its higer skill and burst windows while the other had a spammy intro spec to mara/sent that had allot of "pace" behind it

 

i personaly would like them to embrace the ataru idea but true different means then stacking speed buffs

 

I'm rather biased towards some skills that i find under used in this class in general but there are a few things i think they could do to actualy make a more fun version of what we have atm

 

First of slightly rework Zen and precision to be ONE CD instead of two (don't crucify me yet and let me explain)

having both skills seperated has its upsides but also some downsides the upsides is being able to be flexible and adding a bit to the skill ceiling,

 

the down sides are more for the casual player as actualy being good on this spec can be rather hard due to the verry high apm requirement vs all other specs in this game

 

having both of these mixed into one would help out allot of newer players with sentinel as this "zen" would be more simmilar to a normal CD then its current version

 

Next of i would actualy turn this new "zen" back into a timed skill, this would again add some of the old mechanics like the clashing blast clipping in wich veteran carnage/combat players could easly abuse while with the rest of my suggestions a newer player would feel to stressed about learning this at the start

 

third is that i would add back the channeld of ravage/blade dance (maybe update the animations slightly to be more in line with ataru) while keeping there current verions aswel and allowing them to proc ataru without the ICD

 

fourth would be to adjust the rage/focus and centering stacks generation so you have a rotation alternating between blade dance + blade barage windows during precision for your main damage (still making clashing blast clipping possible) and a downtime window of building up to the blade dance + blade barage window, perhaps make both of these cost focus and make skills sutch as blade rush cheaper/free and having to use skills sutch as lance clashing blast and dual saber trow zealous strike to maintain damage and rage/focus respectivly

 

and the final change i would suggest/do is adjust the current utlities in according with this rework + slightly adjust blade dance/ravage to be castable while moving and being imune to interrupts and giving a 0.5 second cc imune during the start up for the animation

 

Imo you get a bit of everything we have had over carnage/combat its existance in this game

and with some clever balance of the resources of this spec it could be something both sets of players could enjoy

 

anyways thats my way to long take on this spec ^^

[Skettitangles]

Just wanna give this post a bump as I feel the Shards of Mortis is a bad option for Carnage in 7.1 and would much rather see a tactical introduced for Carnage that significantly buffs Ravage to be a reliable component of the Carnage Marauder burst window as it is rage-free and if it hit harder, would do a hell of a lot to balance the spec's sustain and burst window damage output without screwing it over for Rage management

[vfreelancerv]

Back in 2.0 carnage marauders were a force to be reckoned with, it was an ultra fun spec that did exactly what it was meant to do: be a deadly glass cannon, and I loved it.

Flash forward to almost every single patch since then, carnage has been either complete garbage or basically flat out unusable, especially for PvP.

In 7.0 you guys gave carnage marauders a "speed demon" feel, the problem is that this speed demon (who's only slightly faster than the other specs due to all having access to predation and the other useful buff to carnage's speed being only a 3 sec duration), zooms around trying to kill people with wet noodles for weapons, and has to constantly use its auto attack just to keep up the 5 stacks of increased crit/speed bcs of the miserable 3 second duration of the buff (which I would be fine with if that was the only issue), but more importantly to be able to use anything bcs you run out of rage every 1-2 abilities. Even the utility that allows you to have infinite gores during berserk is absolutely useless bcs you have to sacrifice your dps with auto attacks in order to increase your rage beforehand so that you can actually use gore, and even then, you might get 2-3 uses per berserk for an ability that does VERY mediocre damage.

Anni and Fury both have way better dps AND utilities AND survivability than it, not to mention that basically all of its tacticals are useless (small bleed on gore, really? the bleed is more worthless than cauterized coronary which no one seems to use bcs the dmg is so low. And the ability that allows your massacre to deal aoe dmg after a smash is worse bcs both smash and massacre deal pitiful amounts of damage.)

I understand that asking for a complete revamp of the class requires a lot of time and effort, though that is not what I am asking.

2.0 kept it simple, ravage and the auto crit on force scream (now devastating blast) both dealt a LOT of damage during the gore window (now Ferocity). Ravage is now that thing that you use when you have no more rage, and the auto crit on devastating blast just hits hard enough to be worth using, but has absolutely nothing special about it.

It seems to me that the baseline for the spec has been created already but what is sorely lacking is a tactical that ties the whole spec together.

Again, the main issues with the spec, in order of importance, are:

1) You're always out of rage, you have to use auto attack ALL the time just to be able to do something which means you can kiss any kind of rotation or desire to set up for burst goodbye.

2) All your abilities deal miserable amounts of damage (relatively speaking). Even with the new utility options for massacre, it barely hits for more than the other spec's basic vicious slash, and only due to the fact that it causes an ataru form strike. This is very sad, especially for an ability that costs as much as a "hard" hitting attack.

Please, lower the rage cost of all abilities or find a way to implement a tactical that would make the spec worth playing first of all, and then fun to play as well and not feel extremely clunky as it does now.

I personally really like the idea of having carnage be a speed demon as that's basically the job it used to have in 2.0 as well, but please increase its damage output.

Maybe reduce the rage cost of all of carnage's main abilities by 1, and make a tactical that goes something like this: "Ravage now builds 3 rage. Using Massacre reduces the cooldown of Ravage by 3 seconds and grants a stack of Ravaging Offense, increasing the damage of your next ravage by 25%. Stacks up to 4 times."

Alternatively, you guys can make Ravage back into a channeled ability (only for Carnage) like it used to be and have this tactical: "The cooldown of Ravage is reduced by 6 seconds. Ravage roots the target and is immune to interrupts, and using Ravage with a stack of Ferocity increases it's critical hit chance by 100%."

 

100% agree. Good breakdown of the problems and proposed solutions.

[vfreelancerv]

Just wanna give this post a bump as I feel the Shards of Mortis is a bad option for Carnage in 7.1 and would much rather see a tactical introduced for Carnage that significantly buffs Ravage to be a reliable component of the Carnage Marauder burst window as it is rage-free and if it hit harder, would do a hell of a lot to balance the spec's sustain and burst window damage output without screwing it over for Rage management

 

Yeah exactly. It already has sustain issues even with the implant. I don't think the return of massacre spam is the answer to its problems, but rehashing it to consume more rage with its old benefits is not the way to go

[Beyrahl]

There's a lot of things they could do to make it better.
First make it not as reliant on swiftness by giving it maybe some of this - I put a lot of time into this feedback and I only PvP in this game since 2.0.
Then add sunder back to driving lance - the fact it removes the sunder is so silly. 
Carnage used to gain accuracy as part of ataru.. That would be incredibly helpful for PvP specifically. 
Accuracy is just dated imo and unfair by design in PvP.

While it can definitely do some damage with shards of mortis right now it can't really take the heat and dish. 
Most carnage or combat players you're seeing now are getting away with taking quite insignificant amounts of damage when they preform well. 
While they're good for sure, it doesn't make it suddenly good. It's more of a perfect situation - if another class was put into that situation it'd likely preform better or even flat out wipe an enemy team causing them to run/hide/avoid and ultimately lower the performance for the match as uptime goes down. 

If changes are made they need to do it with what already does well and why in mind. 
Looking at Lethality, AP, Pyro, Shieldtech, Lightning, Madness, and Fury. Why are they doing better than most of their counter parts? 
Talent choices? Pruned too hard? Not modernized? (talking about like ED not being scaled etc, dated dcds) 
While some things I didn't list do good damage, they're lacking in areas. 

Carnage areas of lacking are.
- Swiftness reliant 6s duration 5x stacks, pain to rebuild, easy to make it fall off.
- Swiftness critical - Literally what's carrying the class for the most part.

- Shards of mortis - Ramps up devastating I guess.. Still hits bad. Inferior to Defel spliced genes in almost all ways, fury doesn't require a DPS tactical to do well.
- Lacking ranged root - Deadly throw is a nice way to give back trauma and a ranged root. This also makes the spec less swiftness reliant. Driving lance definitely helps staying on target with swiftness now that roots are basically not possible outside of leap. This sort of makes driving lance a bit too good versus it's other options - at least in non arena situations. The hinder spam effect is quite obnoxious. 

- Lance/gore's lack of damage, this ability used to auto crit and would do respectable damage. Now only Dispatch and vicious throw do. This hurts its burst window which I think if swiftness was made not so good, it'd be reasonable to ramp this up or add an auto critical to it.

- Devastating DogUhhh - Fill in the blank, the prosecution used to be a decent way to get a bit of damage out for this ability. Now shards of mortis is now that way. But ultimately it's still a bit lackluster even with taking a tactical dedicating to ramping it up. Scream and ravage used to be this spec's bread and butter for damage now it's rather disappointing. Ps. I would love scream back instead - really. 
- Massacre/Blade rush reliant - I am not kidding. It's almost like they fused FGF into our talent tree. Here's an example without even making use of frenzy on CD. I just hope the damage can be spread out from just one ability, it's tragic and is very uptime reliant for DPS which isn't too great for PvP as uptime isn't always great.
- Accuracy & Devastating blast - If you can't land your damage you just won't get a proc fast enough for devastating blast. Most games people do die very fast and you will run into this issue in PvP. It feels awful while already doing not that great of damage in the first place. It's a very wind up feel when everyone is literally GO GO GO now, we've got dot explosions, instant eradicate and so on. Having a way to proc this off of leap would change the spec for the better. 
- Lastly defensives. Defel spliced genes is too good, literally. Without this the class isn't as good simply put. But it cannot receive anything until defel is dealt with. Which is a terrible position to be in for both annihilation and carnage. While Fury is enjoying the life of defel spliced genes without much if any damage loss. 

Anyway, I love the spec. I would quit this game long ago if it wasn't for it. But it's most definitely a mere shell of what it used to be. Some for the better, most for the worse. 
As I like to say, dashing blade master.
What better use of both your escapes for a slow & auto crit on your mad dash? 

 

[AdjeYo]

After playing around with Shard of Mortis a bit, I can definitely say it's very nice. You can get some serious damage out of auto-crit Dispatch (via implant), buffed by Shard of Mortis. Seriously, that can hit in the 100k on a high roll. For instance this parse gets an average Dispatch crit of 92k. And that doesn't seem to be an outlier. I have trouble thinking of any class that can hit that hard with a single ability (of course, it's totally fair given how much setup it requires).

Crashing Blast hits very respectable for an autocrit. For instance it hits harder than Concentration's Focused Burst. All in all, with Shard of Mortis, Carnage has a burst window that is very hard to compete with. The new controlling effects immunity is the cherry on top that helps protect that burst from getting interrupted with stuns and pushes.

I can't speak much for PvP, I haven't seriously played ranked in ages. If Defel Spliced genes is so important, perhaps making it (or some other major defensive boost) baseline would be a solution. That would help Combat in PvP, while not buffing it too much in PvE. Because right now in PvE Combat is in a pretty good state. It can run into some troubles if uptime is low (a lot of classes do though, and it's not like it takes ages to get back up to speed), but overall performs quite well in both sustained as burst single target damage.

Edited October 2, 2022 by AdjeYo

[Beyrahl]

22 hours ago, AdjeYo said:

After playing around with Shard of Mortis a bit, I can definitely say it's very nice. You can get some serious damage out of auto-crit Dispatch (via implant), buffed by Shard of Mortis. Seriously, that can hit in the 100k on a high roll. For instance this parse gets an average Dispatch crit of 92k. And that doesn't seem to be an outlier. I have trouble thinking of any class that can hit that hard with a single ability (of course, it's totally fair given how much setup it requires).

There's plenty doing larger hits. (This is just to spread info, of course you know specs that can do it. I am just happy to list.)
Rage, Lightning, AP, Marksmanship, Engineering, technically dot explosions on both viru & madness, Fury, Immortal (taunt crushing blow), concealment and arsenal.
I don't have screen shots of all the specs, but heres AP with two different 100k+ then 115k for halted offense (is getting nerfed by 15% soon) but for Juggernaut it does require a tiny bit of situational setup. So not really applicable to PvE. 
Fury can hit over 100 with trauma raging burst.
Crushing blow does require at least one stack of pooled hatred. 
Arsenal can do it with priming shot.
Concealments backstab is no joke. 
Roll ambush for marksmanship.
can't remember the engineering tactical. 
We're definitely in a burst meta for PvP.

 

 

22 hours ago, AdjeYo said:

I can't speak much for PvP, I haven't seriously played ranked in ages. If Defel Spliced genes is so important, perhaps making it (or some other major defensive boost) baseline would be a solution. That would help Combat in PvP, while not buffing it too much in PvE. Because right now in PvE Combat is in a pretty good state. It can run into some troubles if uptime is low (a lot of classes do though, and it's not like it takes ages to get back up to speed), but overall performs quite well in both sustained as burst single target damage.

Pacify/Ruthless aggressor would be a great gain if defel is flat out removed. 
When they work on both pve/pvp it does get weird. Auto crits will always rule king in PvP, they tried branching away from them but only went right back to them. 
I think the spec needs its damage spread out a bit more and not so reliant on cheese things like descent last expansion and now swiftness this expansion. 
It feels so gimmicky and bad in PvP. 

[AdjeYo]

4 hours ago, Beyrahl said:

There's plenty doing larger hits. (This is just to spread info, of course you know specs that can do it. I am just happy to list.)
Rage, Lightning, AP, Marksmanship, Engineering, technically dot explosions on both viru & madness, Fury, Immortal (taunt crushing blow), concealment and arsenal.
I don't have screen shots of all the specs, but heres AP with two different 100k+ then 115k for halted offense (is getting nerfed by 15% soon) but for Juggernaut it does require a tiny bit of situational setup. So not really applicable to PvE. 
Fury can hit over 100 with trauma raging burst.
Crushing blow does require at least one stack of pooled hatred. 
Arsenal can do it with priming shot.
Concealments backstab is no joke. 
Roll ambush for marksmanship.
can't remember the engineering tactical. 
We're definitely in a burst meta for PvP.

Note that Combat hits that on operations dummy, with the good old 35% baseline DR. That's more DR than what dps or healers will have, so that's why you'll see bigger numbers outside of dummy. None of the specs you listed do more on a training dummy with a single hit than Combat does with Dispatch. More than that, the average crit of Dispatch does more than the maximum hit of any of the specs listed here.

Combat certainly isn't hurting for burst in it's Zen-buffed Precision window. It's a shame that Lance hits so little, which makes Lance -> Crashing Blast a rather disappointing Precision window.

[Kyovarde]

The bigger issue to me is that while ST puts up good numbers the playstyle feels awful compared to SotR era Carnage/Combat.

Also, AoE feels gimpy as hell compared to pretty much every other class/spec I've played.  Even /w Ferocity/Precision our cleave attack feels like it does next to nothing and Lance/Gore needing to be lined up is just...inconsistent.  

 

[codydmaan]

Well if u look at the parse stats their pulling 32-33k dps on dummies so apparently their in a good spot damage wise

[AdjeYo]

1 hour ago, codydmaan said:

Well if u look at the parse stats their pulling 32-33k dps on dummies so apparently their in a good spot damage wise

Do remember that this was before the new tactical was made. Back then Carnage had truly awful damage. Now it's in a solid spot.

[codydmaan]

9 hours ago, AdjeYo said:

Do remember that this was before the new tactical was made. Back then Carnage had truly awful damage. Now it's in a solid spot.

Ahh true

[StarLionAzure]

I don't know... when you go from a third from the bottom parsing spec to 5th highest average parse and 3rd highest max parse, data seems to suggest that this spec is in a decent spot... finally.

https://parsely.io/parser/stats