SWTOR Sith Marauder In Depth Guide

SWTOR Sith Marauder In Depth Guide by Kibaken

Introduction

Hello and thank you for reading this guide. This is the first time I’ve done something like this so try to go easy on me, however I’m open to any criticism or suggestions on how to improve it. My goal is to create a resource for the Marauder community so we don’t turn into ‘that’ class where only a small fraction of the community knows what they’re doing.

From my experience thus far Marauders are quite easy to pick up but fairly difficult to master. There’s a lot going on and a lot to watch so my plan is to try to spell out exactly what to do to make it easier for people to acquire the skill to truly **** things up as Marauders can.

I am writing this guide assuming you, the reader, are familiar enough with MMO/gaming jargon that I don’t need to define terms and spell out acronyms. If you are not familiar with any commonly used terms I suggest finding another term dictionary/resource as you will not find one here.

What’s a Marauder?

Marauders are the dual-wielding (and thus superior) brother of the Juggernaut in the Sith Warrior family. Unlike our bulky brother we have no Tanking/Damage Taking capability and therefore rely on precise, powerful strikes to take down our foes.

Pros
– Great damage
– Easy to learn/Difficult to master mechanics
– Ability to choose from two different forms of damage dealing (direct or over-time)
– Can off-tank to some extent
– Good mobility when available
– Provides 15% damage/healing increase to entire group (5min CD)
– 50% move speed increase/10% defense increase to group on no CD (save for re-generating Fury)
– 90% Accuracy debuff for 6sec on 60sec CD
– Two lightsabers

Cons
– Damage relies on constant monitoring of skill CDs, Rage, incoming Rage and Fury
– Easy to learn/Difficult to master mechanics
– Mobility is limited and comes to a halt while on CD
– Squishy when our CDs are down
– Lack of innate control in PvP
– Melee DPS suffers from movement, close-range AoE damage, and any time off a boss
– Since two lightsabers is obviously superior, you’re going to be focused down/snared/knocked back/controlled
– ^ Partially true, however it will be because your damage can be ridiculous if left unchecked

Talent Overview

We have three talent trees each providing a different style of damage dealing to more better customize playing experience:

If you enjoy making your target bleed to death while charging from point blank Annihilation will probably be the spec for you. Focused around the Juyo tree, you’ll be hitting harder and causing your enemies to hemorrhage in front of your eyes while constantly pressing the attack with Charge. This aggressive style is most commonly found in Dark-Side users and a notable practitioner is none other than Darth Maul.

Carnage, on the other hand, is all about direct damage. You won’t be participating in any set-it-and-forget-it combat: instead every button press will focus on dealing direct damage and will almost directly fall into the next ability like a dance. This spec is based around the Ataru form, combining skill with a weapon and fluid, acrobatic motions with the Force to overpower your foe through superior maneuverability. Notable practitioners include Qui-gon Jinn and Yoda.

Last but not lease, Rage is a spec based around mobility and enemy control and, for that reason, will more than likely fall into the PvP spec of choice but can also do fine in the PvE setting as well. Shared with Juggernauts, Rage gives us another short range charge (Obliterate) and some perks to using the ever popular Force Choke. The quintessential ability of Rage, though, is the incredibly buffed Smash. This spec revolves around the Shii-Cho form, the first form available to all Sith Warriors. It focuses around balance and is often known as a tutorial form to lightsaber combat. Notable practitioners of Shii-Cho are Luke Skywalker and Kit Fisto.

***Note***

If you are Annihilation you should (read: need to) be in Juyo form.

If you are Carnage you should (read: need to) be in Ataru form.

If you are Rage you should (read: need to) be in Shii-Cho form.

Each of these specs is focused around its specific form, no questions asked. There is no reason/need/etc to change forms during berserk or for any other reason. You lose all stacks of Fury and all Rage when you switch forms. On top of that, each spec has specific talents which give benefits for being in their respective form. Not taking advantage of those benefits is just stupid and you should probably play another class if you don’t understand this.

***End***

Weapon and Force Attacks

At this point there is no indication in game what constitutes a weapon or Force attack. Logic prevails on most of them, however after testing in the Marauder community the results are quite surprising. This distinction is important for math involving the Malice talent in Rage. At this point, these are where it’s believed our abilities fall:

Weapon Attacks
Annihilate
Massacre
Rupture (Initial Damage)
Battering Assault
Assault
Vicious Throw
Sweeping Slash
Deadly Throw
Crippling Slash
Ravage
Retaliation
Force Charge
Vicious Slash
Obliterate
Gore

Force Attacks
Smash
Rupture (DoT)
Force Choke
Pommel Strike
Cloak of Pain
Force Scream
Deadly Saber
Force Crush
Savage Kick
Ataru Form Procs

Companions

Put simply, we have one melee DPS companion, one ranged DPS companion, one ranged Tank, one melee Tank and one ranged DPS/Healer. The average player will find playing with the healer, while slower, will be a lot less of a headache. To go into more detail (do not read if you want to be spoiled, you meet your future companions before they join up and reading below may spoil what happens in your story):

In order of acquisition:

Vette – Korriban – Ranged DPS

Malavi Quinn – Balmorra – Healer

Jaesa Willsaam – Hutta – Melee DPS

Broonmark – Hoth – Melee Tank

Lt. Pierce – Taris – Ranged Tank

2V-R8 – Dromund Kaas – Annoying as **** Droid (Healer)
While having no combat ability, 2V is able to heal if you require it before Quinn.

Carnage Marauder Guide

What is Carnage?

Carnage is one of the three available Marauder trees focusing around dealing bursts of direct damage with Force Scream (hence the Fus Ro Dah), Massacre and Ravage. In my opinion it is an absolutely amazing solo/leveling spec due to its quick-killing ability, but will also perform exceptionally well in end-game along with Annihilation.

The spec revolves around Ataru Form’s extra damage proc, the free rage given from Blood Frenzy, the insta-crit Force Scream, Gore, Ravage, and Berserk/Massacre spams. Because of the ‘unstable’ nature of the damage dealing Carnage will have a priority-based ability queue and not a rotation like other classes will.

Talents

The Carnage tree is extremely straight forward and most can probably put together the correct spec by just glancing through it quick (protip, it’s this).

Key Talents:

Ataru Form: The ONLY form you will ever be in, Ataru gives us our extra attack that deals a fair amount of damage and allows for one phase of our attack cycle to occur.

Blood Frenzy: Part 1 of the attack cycle triggered by Ataru, every Ataru strike will proc this buff which will grant 1 rage after 6 seconds.

Towering Rage: Part 2 of the attack cycle triggered by Ataru, while Blood Frenzy is active Force Scream has a 100% critical strike chance.

Gore: 100% armor penetration on a 15 second cool-down. Need I say more?

Massacre: No cool-down, costs 3 rage, automatically deals an Ataru strike and increases Ataru strike chance by 30% (for a total of 50%) for 6 seconds. This does roughly the same amount of damage with the Ataru proc as Vicious Slash, and is therefore its replacement (there’s a reason Ataru Berserk reduces the rage/GCD for Vicious Slash AND Massacre).

Other Important Talents:

Rattling Voice -> Sever: Makes your Scream cost less/usable more often. -> Makes your Scream, Massacre, and Ataru proc critical strikes hit harder.

Execute: Ataru procs have a 30% chance to make your next rage dealer do 10% more damage. Necessary to get to Blood Frenzy, however timing the 10% damage proc with a Force Scream is god-like.

Enraged Slash: Essentially makes Massacre’s rage cost 2 (and by extension making Berserk worth 6 Rage due to it lowering Massacre’s cost by 1). **Massacre still requires 3 Rage to use, however will only use two of them (costs 3 but refunds 1).

The above spec is, of course, including the 6 filler skill points. Below are the ones I feel are viable for end-game, marked with my *personal favorites. The placement of them is completely a personal decision.

Cloak of Carnage: Cloak generates 1 rage when it reciprocates damage, 3 second cool-down. Okay on any AoE that procs it and it’s decent if you’re off-tanking anything, however it would easily turn Cloak into a DPS cooldown and healers will hate you for it: you shouldn’t be standing in fire.

*Defensive Roll: The only damage you’ll be taking in an Operation should be AoE, this reduces all AoE damage by 30%. Pretty damn nice.

*Enraged Charge: Charge generates one extra Rage. I’m a sucker for mobility and this makes our main (really only) mobility ability even better. Knockbacks are really common and this will help alleviate them. With Carnage’s huge Rage dependence it’s an added bonus.

Erupting Fury: Increases Fury generated from defeating opponents by 2. Meh. In a boss fight (minus adds) you won’t be killing anything until the end, therefore this is extremely situational however decent for leveling/soloing.

Displacement: Deadly Throw immobilize/increased Obfuscate range. You’re melee/bosses can’t be immobilized. Next.

Unbound: Decent for any knockback/slow combos, however since Carnage doesn’t have a close range charge like Annihilation it will (read should) be up when you need it.

*Overwhelm: Ravage immobilizes the target for the duration. “But Kiba, you said bosses can’t be immobilized.” Yes, but you missed the part where I said personal choice. This adds no direct damage increase but offers extreme utility for the spec in PvP, especially spur of the moment ganks planet-side.

Rotation (Or Lack There-of)

As I said, Carnage relies heavily on a priority system. This is mainly due to the cool-downs not matching up perfectly and spiky rage regeneration from Blood Frenzy.

To make it less confusing, the opening rotation should look like this:

Charge -> Massacre -> Battering Assault -> Gore -> Ravage -> Scream

This will be the only time Massacre will be ahead of Force Scream and is to insure there is a Blood Frenzy rolling.

After your opener you will want to keep Ravage, Gore, Force Scream and Battering Assault on CD at all times while weaving in Massacres and Assaults in when you can (Assault -> Massacre = no net Rage loss).

The mid-fight priority is thus:

Gore > Ravage > Battering Assault > Force Scream > Berserk > Massacre

Using Gore into Ravage is incredible burst and should be done whenever possible. Force Scream is, of course, only used when Blood Frenzy is up and is in front of Massacre because of the free crit and the cool-down. You want to try to use Gore, Ravage, and Scream in that order. Priority is that the majority of your attacks and priority abilities benefits from the Gore buff.

There is a specific reason why Ravage should be ahead of Scream during the Gore phase. As of now it seems that if the last hit of Ravage does not hit within Gore it does not benefit from the buff, as shown:

0 – Gore
1.5 – Scream
4.5 – Ravage Start
6.0 – Ravage End, Gore Ends

If not executed precisely, Gore will fade and the last hit of Ravage will go off at the same time and, due to latency/ability delay/etc, this can happen often. A better alternative is what I now have listed above:

-1.5 – Massacre
0 – Gore
1.5 – Ravage Start
4.5 – Ravage End, Scream
6.0 – (Scream’s GCD) Gore fades

This gives Scream’s entire GCD as leeway for latency and the like while insuring all of your key abilities benefit from Gore. By using Massacre before Gore you will have the Massacre buff on for the Duration of Ravage so, in the case that Blood Frenzy falls off before that, you essentially have 4 Massacre-buffed hits to get it back up.

Even though Massacre is at the bottom of the list, when you think of Berserk (which is essentially a free 6 Rage) when using Massacre and the cool-down of all the abilities in front of it you will find yourself using it a lot.

Pretty obvious, however you will, at some point, use Bloodthirst instead of a Berserk for a raid-wide burn phase. Know when it’s coming and have the Fury for it.

Stat Priority

Strength: Our Primary stat. Increases damage and critical chance with melee and Force powers. You want to maximize this.

Endurance: Lets you stand in fire longer. You want it, but don’t go out of your way. Your job is to kill things.

Willpower: You don’t want it, Inquisitors will kill you.

Aim: You don’t want it, Bounty Hunters will kill you.

Cunning: You don’t want it, Agents will kill you.

((This section will need to be updated as more information becomes available, but as of now this will probably be the best allocation.))

Secondary stats available are:

Accuracy: Increases chance for attacks to hit; over 100% it reduces the target’s defense (dodge/parry).

Power: Increases damage done by melee and Force attacks.

Critical: Increases critical strike chance.

Surge: Increases critical strike damage bonus.

Alacrity: Reduces activation time. (There is much debate on whether or not this does/should affect the base GCD (for us attack speed) however at this point evidence is pointing to it only affecting the GCD on activated abilities (for us Ravage) and is therefore pretty terrible.

As for priorities, at this point I’ve been able to piece together this:

Before Crit/Surge Diminishing Return Cap (~30% Crit, ~30% Surge):

Accuracy to 108% > Surge/Crit > Power

After Reaching Diminishing Return Cap:

Accuracy to 108% > Power > Surge/Crit

The weights themselves are a bit misleading due to Crit and Surge’s heavy Diminishing Returns. At around ~30% Crit and ~30% Surge (~80% Crit Multiplier) both stats reach soft caps where getting any more Crit or Surge Rating would not yield as much of an increase as it normally would.

Therefore, after reaching those two ‘caps’ it’s advised to swap your priorities to maximize your Power. This is un-buffed as flat percentage increases from buffs does not add to the DR at all; it’s based on your rating.

What it comes down to is reaching our Main Hand hit cap before adding anything else.

All Special attacks (everything but Assault) have a base 100% chance to hit. It is currently theorized that bosses have an 8% Defense chance (parry/deflect). By increasing our Accuracy to 108% we negate the Defense chance for our special abilities (Ravage, Gore, Massacre, Scream, etc, can no longer be dodged/parried/resisted). Any Accuracy over 108% only increases Assault’s chance to be dodged/parried, and is therefore quite lackluster compared to other stats.

Surge should be brought up to the ~30% DR area as quickly as possible. Scream is one of the main components of damage for Carnage and getting that to hit as hard as possible is one of our main goals.

Crit should be brought up to the 30% DR area as quickly as possible. Ravage, Ataru Procs, and other damage abilities make up a large portion of our overall damage. Because that DR occurs it’s best to make use of it before it falls off.

Power is by far one of the Marauder’s strongest stats. It’s our Attack Power and Spell Power stat rolled into one so, obviously, every one of our attacks benefits from this. Don’t sacrifice a lot of it for a little Crit or Surge, but know that getting to those DR points is fairly important.

Closing

In the long run I feel Carnage is an extremely powerful spec. I feel at home playing a class with a proc-based extra attack (combat swords <3) and this is definitely my personal favorite tree. The added utility immobilize is a god-send in world PvP and even more so in Huttball (protip: immobilize them over the fire). That and, of course, it’s the only spec that revolves around a Thu’um.

Annihilation Marauder Guide


What is Annihilation?

Annihilation is one of the three talent trees available to Marauders. It focuses around your given bleed – Rupture – and grants another bleed through Deadly Saber.

The spec revolves around making sure Rupture and three stacks of Deadly Saber have maximum up-time, assuring the Annihilate buff is rolling at all times, extra incoming Rage due to Empowerment and focusing on maximizing Berserk up-time due to Short Fuse.

Talents

Like Carnage, Annihilation is very straight-forward in what talents are neccessary and bring the ‘proper’ play style to the spec. There are, however, filler talents which I will detail later. A lot of the talents are generic “makes your bleed hit harder or do something else” mechanics, so I’ll only go into the game-changing ones.

My spec can be found here.*

*Note: I prefer Phantom over Ferocity. However, the URL for the spec with Phantom in it had o m f and g in sequence, thus rendering it censored. Therefore, the above spec does not include it. I apologize in advance.

Key Talents:

Juyo Mastery: Juyo will be the ONLY form you will ever be in, no exceptions. I feel I can’t stress that fact enough. The talent itself gives a 3% critical chance increase for your bleeds per stack of Juyo, up to a 15% increase.

Deadly Saber: Your next 3 attacks cause the target to bleed, stacking up to 3 times for 6 seconds. Costs 3 Rage, 12 second CD. Keep 3 stacks up as much as possible.

Pulverize: Vicious Slash has a 33% chance and Annihilate has a 66% chance to finish the cool-down of Rupture. Amazing for keeping Rupture up-time to maximum.

Empowerment: Your bleeds have a 30% chance to generate 1 Rage. Makes our bleeds a Rage battery; very useful.

Annihilate: Base cost of 5 rage, 12 second cool-down. Using it gives Annihilator for 15 seconds, lowering the CD of Annihilate by 1.5 seconds and stacking up to 3 times. One of the Marauder’s hardest hitting moves, coupled with Pulverize it’s going to be high in our priority. Because of its cool-down, however, it will not replace Vicious Slash the same way Massacre does.

Other Important Talents:

Blurred Speed/Close Quarters/Enraged Charge: The Juyo form in canon is all about pressing the attack and constantly pushing into your opponent. These two talents bring that to life. Lowering the cool-down on Charge and removing its minimum range, this makes Charge one of our primary Rage builders (behind Battering Assault and in front of Assault).

Hungering: Not really a DPS increase, per se, however you get some very nice survivibility: your bleeds crits will heal you for 2% of your health. While it doesn’t scale with the bleed’s damage it is still a very nice health return.

Enraged Slash: Essentially makes Annihilate’s Rage cost 4 and Vicious Slash’s 2. They still cost 5/3 to activate, however refund 1 Rage right away.

Short Fuse: Makes our Rage-spenders generate an additional 2 Fury. This will cause Bersek to be up a LOT.

The above spec is, of course, including the filler talents.. Below are the ones I feel are viable for end-game, marked with my *personal favorites. The placement of them is completely a personal decision. Unfortunately, a lot of the would-be filler talents for Annihilation are actually required for the spec to work properly. Therefore, this list is relatively short.

Subjugation: Reduced CD on Obfuscate and Disruption. Meh.

*Phantom: Camo reduces all damage taken by 100%. Great for large AoE phases and kind of gives us a secondary Undying Rage.

*Ferocity: Increases the personal movement speed increase of Predation by 30%. I’m a huge fan of mobility and it’s a close tie between this and Phantom, however because of the lowered Charge cool-down in Annihilation it comes out to be much more PvP focused than PvE, however it is still viable.

Cloak of Carnage: Cloak generates 1 rage when it reciprocates damage, 3 second cool-down. Okay on any AoE that procs it and it’s decent if you’re off-tanking anything, however it would easily turn Cloak into a DPS cooldown and healers will hate you for it: you shouldn’t be standing in fire.

Rotation (Or Lack There-of)

Annihilation’s Rage generation is bursty and therefore, like Carnage, relies more on a priority system than anything. You do not want to refresh your Rupture. If it is off CD, wait until the debuff is gone before reapplying it. Rupture gets a tick off as it wears off and reapplying it before it goes away is a huge DPS loss in the long run.

The opening rotation should look like this:

Charge -> Deadly Saber -> Battering Assault -> Rupture -> Annihilate

The mid-fight priority is thus:

Berserk > Deadly Saber > Rupture > Annihilate > *Rage Builder > **Vicious Slash

*Rage builder implies: Battering Assault > Charge > Assault

**You want to insure you have enough Rage to continue with your rotation after things come off CD. This will take practice, however you won’t be using Vicious Slash very often and should really only use it if Rupture is on CD and Pulverize is not on its 6sec CD.

There’s debate on whether or not Ravage should be used. Its priority comes under all your other abilities and the window where it is Viable to use is quite short – only when everything is off CD. You can either try to weave it in or not and I doubt it will hurt.

Pretty obvious, however you will, at some point, use Bloodthirst instead of a Berserk for a raid-wide burn phase. Know when it’s coming and have the Fury for it.

Stat Priority

Strength: Our Primary stat. Increases damage and critical chance with melee and Force powers. You want to maximize this.

Endurance: Lets you stand in fire longer. You want it, but don’t go out of your way. Your job is to kill things.

Willpower: You don’t want it, Inquisitors will kill you.

Aim: You don’t want it, Bounty Hunters will kill you.

Cunning: You don’t want it, Agents will kill you.

((This section will need to be updated as more information becomes available, but as of now this will probably be the best allocation.))


Secondary stats available are:

Accuracy: Increases chance for attacks to hit; over 100% it reduces the target’s defense (dodge/parry).

Power: Increases damage done by melee and Force attacks.

Critical: Increases critical strike chance.

Surge: Increases critical strike damage bonus.

Alacrity: Reduces activation time. (There is much debate on whether or not this does/should affect the base GCD (for us attack speed) however at this point evidence is pointing to it only affecting the GCD on activated abilities (for us Ravage) and is therefore pretty terrible.

As for priorities, at this point I’ve been able to piece together this:

Before Crit/Surge Diminishing Return Cap (~30% Crit, ~30% Surge):

Accuracy to 108% > Surge/Crit > Power

After Reaching Diminishing Return Cap:

Accuracy to 108% > Power > Surge/Crit

The weights themselves are a bit misleading due to Crit and Surge’s heavy Diminishing Returns. At around ~30% Crit and ~30% Surge (~80% Crit Multiplier) both stats reach soft caps where getting any more Crit or Surge Rating would not yield as much of an increase as it normally would.

Therefore, after reaching those two ‘caps’ it’s advised to swap your priorities to maximize your Power. This is un-buffed as flat percentage increases from buffs does not add to the DR at all; it’s based on your rating.

What it comes down to is reaching our Main Hand hit cap before adding anything else.

All special attacks (everything but Assault) have a base 100% chance to hit. It is currently theorized that bosses have an 8% Defense chance (parry/deflect). By increasing our Accuracy to 108% we negate the Defense chance for our special abilities (Rupture, Annihilate, etc, can no longer be dodged/parried/resisted.). Any Accuracy over 108% only increases Assault’s chance to be dodged/parried, and is therefore quite lackluster compared to other stats.

Surge should be brought up to the ~30% DR area as quickly as possible. Berserk’s up-time coupled with the massive amount of passive Crit/Crit Multiplier talents in Annihilation make bleeds hit like trucks of cocaine. Remember that Surge loses a lot of its luster post-DR cap so make sure to hover around 35% for maximum efficiency.

Crit should be brought up to the 30% DR area as quickly as possible. Surge and Crit are two stats that almost literally go hand-in-hand. Because of the large Crit and Crit Multiplier talents present in Annihilation maximizing the amount of Crits you get is important. A whopping 15% from Juyo Form means, buffed, you’ll probably be sitting at ~50% Crit for your bleeds.

Power is by far one of the Marauder’s strongest stats. It’s our Attack Power and Spell Power stat rolled into one so, obviously, every one of our attacks benefits from this. Don’t sacrifice a lot of it for a little Crit or Surge, but know that getting to those DR points is fairly important.

Closing

Annihilation is an extremely strong spec. DoT based specs always do very well on fights where little movement or little target switching is required. At time of writing I have yet to start Hard/Nightmare Operations, however from doing Eternity Vault several times there are a few encounters where Annihilation will definitely shine. The self heals and quicker Charges make us less squishy and more mobile at the same time. Annihilation will do well as either a PvE or PvP spec.

Rage Marauder Guide

What is Rage?

Rage is one of the three trees available to Marauders and is also the tree we share with our Juggernaut brothers. It plays in Shii-Cho (our shared stance), is extremely straightforward and revolves heavily around the mantra “build Rage, spend Rage.”

Rage utilizes Force Crush and Force Choke to increase the damage of Smash which just so happens to be an instant-crit when used shortly after Charge or Obliterate. It provides decent single-target damage with phenomenal AoE potential.


Talents

The Rage tree, like Carnage and Annihilation, is quite straightforward in terms of which talents are optimal for PvE. My sample spec is this.


Key Talents:

Obliterate: A secondary, 10m range Charge. During a boss fight this will be your main source of Dominate.

Dominate: When you use Charge or Obliterate your next smash will be an instant crit; 15 second duration.

Shockwave: Every damage tick of Choke and Crush increases the damage of your next smash by 25%, stacking up to 4 times (maximum of 100%).

Dark Resonance: Gives 30% Force critical strike damage increase. Instant Smash crits that deal 100% more base damage. Yeah.

Force Crush: The bread and butter ability of Rage (and quite amazing for PvP) Crush will be the main applicator of the Shockwave buff due to its cooldown compared to Choke. It deals damage over time culminating with a large burst of damage at the end. In addition, it slows targets progressively from 60% to 10% movement speed; this obviously has no effect on bosses.

Gravity: Put simply, reduces Crush’s Rage cost by 1 (total of 3). Take this so Crush can be used right after Charge.


Other Important Talents:

Relentless Fury: Predation is a very nice cooldown; if you’re put in the tank’s group you’ll be invaluable for high-damage phases.

Shii-Cho Mastery: You’re going to be in Shii-Cho form; passive armor pen is nice since Smash is reduced by armor.

Enraged Slash: Very valuable for Rage; Shii-Cho’s berserk removes Vicious Slash’s Rage cost, therefore while using Berserk you’ll actually get 1 Rage every time you use it. Berserk = gives 6 Rage = very, very valuable.

Undying/Interceptor: Due to wanting to take Gravity these are two filler talents that you can choose to only put one point in. Interceptor gives a 20%/40% speed increase for 5 seconds after using Obliterate and Undying gives a passive 1%/2% damage reduction and 15/30 second reduced cooldown on Undying Rage. Which you value two points in is a matter of personal preference.

The above spec is, of course, including the filler skill points. Below are the ones I feel are viable for end-game, marked with my *personal favorites. The placement of them is completely a personal decision.

*Strangulate: Both this and Payback are complete filler and don’t provide any direct damage/utility bonus. Only a few fights have CCs for Payback and only a few fights have pushback for Strangulate. It’s personal preference.

*Payback: Both this and Strangulate are complete filler and don’t provide any direct damage/utility bonus. Only a few fights have CCs for Payback and only a few fights have pushback for Strangulate. It’s personal preference.

Cloak of Carnage: Cloak generates 1 rage when it reciprocates damage, 3 second cool-down. Okay on any AoE that procs it and it’s decent if you’re off-tanking anything, however it would easily turn Cloak into a DPS cooldown and healers will hate you for it: you shouldn’t be standing in fire.

Defensive Roll: The only damage you’ll be taking in an Operation should be AoE, this reduces all AoE damage by 30%. Pretty damn nice.

Enraged Charge: Charge generates one extra Rage. Compared to other things for Rage this is very lackluster.

Narrowed Hatred: You may be saying: Kiba you dumb@ss, why would you not take an Accuracy talent in a PvE spec? My answer is one of lack of necessity. If we had no Accuracy on gear and relied solely on dropped enhancements to get it Narrowed Hatred would be a godsend. At this point it’s very easy to get the extra 8% Accuracy you need. Therefore, I feel that 3 points in this is a bit of a waste compared to other talents.

*Defensive Forms: Makes up for the lack of Defensive Roll/Hungering for raid survivability.

*Quick Recovery: As you can see by my cookie-cutter spec above this is by far my favorite filler talent. It comes down to this or Narrowed Hatred and, once you get enough Accuracy on your gear, this completely overshadows everything. Not even for the reduced cool down (your Smashes are based around Shockwave, not Smash’s cooldown) but the reduced Rage cost means more Rage can be spent on filler damage (Vicious Slash) thus increasing overall damage once you’re passed the Accuracy cap. Very, very strong skill for Rage.

Rotation (Or Lack There-of)

Rage, like Carnage and Annihilation, relies on a priority.

To make it less confusing, the opening rotation should look something like this:

Charge -> Crush -> Battering Assault -> (4x Shockwave) Smash

You can supplement Scream before the Smash if you have the Rage for it and don’t yet have 4xShockwave.

The mid-fight priority isn’t really a priority, per se: it completely revolves around your buffed Smash. Therefore, it looks kind of like this:

Crush-Smash > Choke-Smash > Berserk-Slash > Battering Assault > Scream > Vicious Slash > Ravage

The Smash rotations involve stacking 4xShockwave and using Obliterate before Smashing.

As soon as your Crush-Smash is done start timing a Choke/Obliterate in order to be able to uber-Smash again when Smash gets off CD.

Due to the passive armor penetration Ravage isn’t too bad but I would only use it while Battering Assault is on CD and you don’t have enough Rage to Vicious Slash (Assault is bleh imo).

Pretty obvious, however you will, at some point, use Bloodthirst instead of a Berserk for a raid-wide burn phase. Know when it’s coming and have the Fury for it.


Stat Priority

Strength: Our Primary stat. Increases damage and critical chance with melee and Force powers. You want to maximize this.

Endurance: Lets you stand in fire longer. You want it, but don’t go out of your way. Your job is to kill things.

Willpower: You don’t want it, Inquisitors will kill you.

Aim: You don’t want it, Bounty Hunters will kill you.

Cunning: You don’t want it, Agents will kill you.

((This section will need to be updated as more information becomes available, but as of now this will probably be the best allocation.))

Secondary stats available are:

Accuracy: Increases chance for attacks to hit; over 100% it reduces the target’s defense (dodge/parry).

Power: Increases damage done by melee and Force attacks.

Critical: Increases critical strike chance.

Surge: Increases critical strike damage bonus.

Alacrity: Reduces activation time. (There is much debate on whether or not this does/should affect the base GCD (for us attack speed) however at this point evidence is pointing to it only affecting the GCD on activated abilities (for us Ravage) and is therefore pretty terrible.

As for priorities, at this point I’ve been able to piece together this:

Before Crit/Surge Diminishing Return Cap (~30% Crit, ~30% Surge):

Accuracy to 108% > Surge/Crit > Power

After Reaching Diminishing Return Cap:

Accuracy to 108% > Power > Surge/Crit

The weights themselves are a bit misleading due to Crit and Surge’s heavy Diminishing Returns. At around ~30% Crit and ~30% Surge (~80% Crit Multiplier) both stats reach soft caps where getting any more Crit or Surge Rating would not yield as much of an increase as it normally would.

Therefore, after reaching those two ‘caps’ it’s advised to swap your priorities to maximize your Power. This is un-buffed as flat percentage increases from buffs does not add to the DR at all; it’s based on your rating.

What it comes down to is reaching our Main Hand hit cap before adding anything else.

All Special attacks (everything but Assault) have a base 100% chance to hit. It is currently theorized that bosses have an 8% Defense chance (parry/deflect). By increasing our Accuracy to 108% we negate the Defense chance for our special abilities (Smash, Vicious Slash, Obliterate, etc, can no longer be dodged/parried/resisted). Any Accuracy over 108% only increases Assault’s chance to be dodged/parried, and is therefore quite lackluster compared to other stats.

Surge should be brought up to the ~30% DR area as quickly as possible. Insanely powerful Smash crits are the pride and joy of Rage; getting those as big as possible is your top priority.

Crit should be brought up to the 30% DR area as quickly as possible. This affects Scream, Crush and Choke heavily due to the passive 30% Force crit bonus from Dark Resonance but Vicious Slash, Ravage, Battering Assault and Obliterate couldn’t hurt from critting as well.

Power is by far one of the Marauder’s strongest stats. It’s our Attack Power and Spell Power stat rolled into one so, obviously, every one of our attacks benefits from this. Don’t sacrifice a lot of it for a little Crit or Surge, but know that getting to those DR points is fairly important.

Closing

Rage is fun. Big numbers, bigger numbers in groups, and a very easy and straightforward playstyle. It brings a massive amount of passive damage reduction plus a reduced cooldown to Undying Rage make us incredibly hard to kill – rage-inducing even. I find that in-between Smashes its damage potential drops quite a bit but you shouldn’t have any problem pulling your weight.