Just wondering what the best spec is for mara for pvp?

Fury is the best at the moment..

 

The other 2 are good also. Anni being second after Fury in my opinion.

Carnage is soso but yeah fury. Which is odd considering it has more mobility and a bit more burst but it gets the 6 second cc immunity. Seems like anni would have that, fury should be a little tankier and carnage faster. I can do ok with carnage but in a live match that 6 seconds of cc immunity is a huge dps boost. Way more up time overall than carnage.

Carnage is amazing at the moment, though some opinionated players are having trouble adapting to it and talking it down.

 

Fury is also amazing and Annhilation is a fantastic pressure spec.

 

The burst of carnage particulary spiking healers cannot be ignored especially now you cant **** up your precision window.

It all comes down to your preferred style of play. Lots of people still like Carnage spec over Fury. Personally I play Fury and have done since launch, even when it’s been at its weakest. So my perceptions vary from people who jump specs all the time to play the perceived best at the time.

It’s why I say preferred style of play because I think if you’ve played and enjoyed a spec for years, you will probably be rather skilled at that spec and do just as well or better than if you jump around all the time. I like to think after 6 years playing a Fury Mara that I’ve honed my skills on that spec.

 

If all you are looking for is the perceived “best” spec in this meta, then people will tell you Fury because Carnage took a bit of a nerf hit.

 

(Excerpts from Vulkk - https://vulkk.com/2016/12/22/sith-marauder-annihilation-discipline-swtor-5-0-guide/

What is Annihilation Good For -

The play-style involves a large number of abilities, has less than zero Burst in the opener. The spec is ideal for single target damage dealing. The longer you stay on the boss, the better your results will be, provided you follow the priority of the abilities correctly. The AoE potential hidden inside Annihilation is incredible. Depending on the amount of mobs, their HP pools and the situation, players can spread DoTs very effectively. Rupture for quicker and easier pulls, both Rupture and Force Rend for fights that would last longer than a few seconds. Spreading DoTs became possible and very popular for AoE environment after 3.0, but it was seriously boosted and improved in 4.0 after the alterations Bioware made to the Cooldowns and Durations of the DoTs.

 

https://vulkk.com/2016/12/24/sith-marauder-carnage-discipline-swtor-5-0-guide/

What is Carnage Good For -

The playstyle involves a small number of abilities and has an opener capable of dealing very high amount of damage to one of multiple opponents quickly and efficiently. The spec is ideal for fights involving frequent target switching and/or multiple targets boss encounters. The AoE potential of Carnage is incredible. At the time of writing this guide, even if played to the best of its abilities, Carnage is still a little behind the highest parsing disciplines in the game.

 

https://vulkk.com/2017/02/21/sith-marauder-fury-discipline-swtor-5-0-guide/

What is Fury Good For -

The playstyle involves a large number of abilities*and has a good*amount of Burst in the opener. The spec is suitable for both single and multi target damage dealing. While it performs slightly worse than*Annihilation and Carnage on a single target, the AoE potential hidden inside Fury is incredible. Fury these days is mainly preferred for PvP as it offers great mobility and immunity to crowd control, while also performing very well on the offensive side. It’s still perfectly valid for PvE, as you are about to find out by reading the rest of the guide. There’s an ongoing argument that in 5.0 Fury may be even better at AoE than Carnage. I personally don’t believe that. Fury requires more time, abilities and awareness to perform to its best in AoE environment than Carnage and it’s not even doing better DPS. What it does better than Combat is deliver very high amount of damage with only 1 AoE attack, which helps in leveling and PvP. In the first case mobs are weak enough that most would just die from 1 such attack and in PvP nobody stays still just waiting for you to hit them multiple times.

I agree with Trixxie. Agreed. Raw numbers aside, everyone's playstyles are not the same, preferences and personal opinions make spec choice not cut and dry. People will tend to do better with a spec who's playstyle is more enjoyable to them than that of another spec, even if that other spec technically can put out better DPS.

 

What is thought to be 'better' or 'worse' has an insidious way of effecting people's spec choice as well. Fury has a lot going for it now and has left Carnage a less desirable choice for some PVPers. The changes to Carnage not only effected the DPS of the spec but also it's style of play and the traditional build is no longer the most effective one. That said, some people like the playstyle change, some people don't. - For some reason, I am finding, there are certain individuals who have taken offense to those who prefered the way the spec played before 5.6. I'm not really sure why that is when it's a question of preference. Is it easier to play now? Sure it is, and that may be why some people are taking offense to those who would have rather have seen the playstyle left as it was. I'm sure there are some who find they are doing better with Carnage since 5.6. than they had prior to the change, when it was harder to play optimally. That is a perfectly valid view point.

 

The differences between the specs dps wise are more readily seen in PVE with parses. PVPers don't measure their overall DPS by parsers so it's a bit nebulous perhaps to them. Parsers are the only reliable way to measure DPS levels scientifically. Even though you can get that 'figure' by hovering over the wz end board, that's only going to tell you what you were doing the moment you died, not overall. So you can AOE your way to crazy "DPS" if timed correctly as the match is about to end, but that's not going to tell you which spec is performing better than another. If you don't parse, you have no idea what level of DPS you are capable of and it's the only reliable way to see not only the differences in DPS potential, but also to have any sort of fair comparison in terms of skill between those who play the same spec. WZs are never even ground to measure fairly peoples potentials. They do however measure your overall performance that match. It's all about healers, skank tanks, and the lack thereof on one team or the other. Even still, skill will always enter the equation.

 

While I play Carnage, I'd recommend Fury for PVP to someone who's new and doesn't have any preconceived ideas about the specs. In terms of raw numbers/potential [parse numbers], Fury out plays the other two specs optimally played. It's anti-cc passives and it's extra leap [they can leap to snipers] make them extremely well suited for PVP and more reliable because it's so much harder to shut them down compared to Anni or Carnage. As of the recent nerf to Carnage [which accounts for about a 650-800 DPS loss] In fact, Fury can burst better than Carnage potentially. - They all work though and you can do well with any one of them once learned. Most importantly, it's about having fun.

Edited December 25, 2017 by WayOfTheWarriorx

there are scenarios where annihilation and carnage are optimal but if you're taking every possible scenario into account (and how often they occur) fury is unquestionably the best overall Edited December 25, 2017 by yellow_

I agree with Trixxie. Agreed. Raw numbers aside, everyone's playstyles are not the same, preferences and personal opinions make spec choice not cut and dry. People will tend to do better with a spec who's playstyle is more enjoyable to them than that of another spec, even if that other spec technically can put out better DPS.

 

What is thought to be 'better' or 'worse' has an insidious way of effecting people's spec choice as well. Fury has a lot going for it now and has left Carnage a less desirable choice for some PVPers. The changes to Carnage not only effected the DPS of the spec but also it's style of play and the traditional build is no longer the most effective one. That said, some people like the playstyle change, some people don't. - For some reason, I am finding, there are certain individuals who have taken offense to those who prefered the way the spec played before 5.6. I'm not really sure why that is when it's a question of preference. Is it easier to play now? Sure it is, and that may be why some people are taking offense to those who would have rather have seen the playstyle left as it was. I'm sure there are some who find they are doing better with Carnage since 5.6. than they had prior to the change, when it was harder to play optimally. That is a perfectly valid view point.

 

The differences between the specs dps wise are more readily seen in PVE with parses. PVPers don't measure their overall DPS by parsers so it's a bit nebulous perhaps to them. Parsers are the only reliable way to measure DPS levels scientifically. Even though you can get that 'figure' by hovering over the wz end board, that's only going to tell you what you were doing the moment you died, not overall. So you can AOE your way to crazy "DPS" if timed correctly as the match is about to end, but that's not going to tell you which spec is performing better than another. If you don't parse, you have no idea what level of DPS you are capable of and it's the only reliable way to see not only the differences in DPS potential, but also to have any sort of fair comparison in terms of skill between those who play the same spec. WZs are never even ground to measure fairly peoples potentials. They do however measure your overall performance that match. It's all about healers, skank tanks, and the lack thereof on one team or the other. Even still, skill will always enter the equation.

 

While I play Carnage, I'd recommend Fury for PVP to someone who's new and doesn't have any preconceived ideas about the specs. In terms of raw numbers/potential [parse numbers], Fury out plays the other two specs optimally played. It's anti-cc passives and it's extra leap [they can leap to snipers] make them extremely well suited for PVP and more reliable because it's so much harder to shut them down compared to Anni or Carnage. As of the recent nerf to Carnage [which accounts for about a 650-800 DPS loss] In fact, Fury can burst better than Carnage potentially. - They all work though and you can do well with any one of them once learned. Most importantly, it's about having fun.

 

Is that how wz dps works ? I mean I thought of it at some point but after taking my overall damage and dividing by minutes played it was the same as my shown dps so assumed that’s how it’s measured. Do you mean that it’s based on what you before the end ? Or maybe I misunderstand? Possible to clarify, just curious about it ?

there are scenarios where annihilation and carnage are optimal but if you're taking every possible scenario into account (and how often they occur) fury is unquestionably the best overall

 

Pretty much. If you are new to marauder stick to fury.

Is that how wz dps works ? I mean I thought of it at some point but after taking my overall damage and dividing by minutes played it was the same as my shown dps so assumed that’s how it’s measured. Do you mean that it’s based on what you before the end ? Or maybe I misunderstand? Possible to clarify, just curious about it ?

 

DPS stands for 'damage per second'. Parsing is used to calculate that damage over that specified amount of tine, which comes out to TTK [time to kill]. Let's say that comes out be 8.7k dps for that fight in a WZ. Once the fighting stops it resets calculating until you start fighting again, what you did on the previous fight is irrelevant because you can only calculate DPS over a single continuous amount of time. That 8.7k from the first fight only applies to that fight from the moment it started until the moment of death of one of the combatants. Now you run to the next node and are attacked by an ememy, once again, the DPS starts being calculated at the start of this second fight and will continue to be calculated until one of the combatants dies, when they die, DPS calculation stops again. Let's say that fight your DPS was 8.5k. So now you have to two sperate fights that have taken place each with it's own TTK/DPS ratio.

 

Another words, DPS isn't meauring the amount of total damage you did overall, it's measuring how long it took you to do that amount of damage in that one fight/of space of time. Two people could do the same exact amount of damage and have completely different DPS measurements. If it takes you 30 seconds to do x amount of damage and it takes the other guy 45 seconds to do that exact amount of damage, your DPS will be higher than the other guy's DPS because you were doing more damage each second than he was which is why you did that amount of damage faster.

 

A WZ is not one continuous fight, it's one fight here, 20 seconds later a new fight starts, after that fight ends you might not get into another fight for a minute. Each fight is it;s own calculation, Fight ends DPS resets and whatever DPS you did before in another fight has no baring on the calculation of the next fight.

 

It's easier to understand if you use a parsing program when you are in a WZ, as each fight is represented in the form of stats. Doesn't matter how many fights you have in a WZ, each fight is it's calculation. The DPS when you hover over your name on the scoreboard at the end of the WZ is the DPS you did in the last calculated fight [start of fight til end of fight]. Like in an Operation, there might be 6 different bosses in the Operation, each boss fight is measured individually, at the end of the Operation there is no overall 'DPS' rating or 'averaging' of all the fights - -

 

I hope I'm explaining it a way you can understand and I haven't confused you even more now, I confused myself a couple of times there heh

 

It can be a bit confusing , your best bet is just to download a parsing program and go smack a dummy around for a while so you can see how it's measureing your DPS and also you could look at each individual fight you got in in a WZ as long as that fight had a definate start and finish

Cool, explanation is very comprehensive and clear.

I am familiar with pve parse and how it works there just always thought as said earlier that wz dps is just total dmg/time in the war zone. Therefore if you are out of the fight fe guarding or dead you lose out.

But never really thought of it and/or it didn’t matter to me,.

there are scenarios where annihilation and carnage are optimal but if you're taking every possible scenario into account (and how often they occur) fury is unquestionably the best overall

 

this 100%

I am familiar with pve parse and how it works there just always thought as said earlier that wz dps is just total dmg/time in the war zone. Therefore if you are out of the fight fe guarding or dead you lose out.

Don't switch your brain off just because somebody wrote a wall of text. You are correct. The WZ dps shown on the scoreboard at the end is (total damage) / (duration of match in seconds). Just look at the numbers at the end of a match and do the math. Time it if you really want to be certain.

 

I like to say that the inherent virtue of the internet is the instantaneous spread of information, but it's inherent vice is the instantaneous spread of misinformation.

Edited January 1, 2018 by teclado