Idea thread for making Carnage a more viable alternative to Annihilation for Operations. As it stands, Carnage feels really underwhelming... The 100% Armor Penetration is nice, but 40% of that armor is already disintegrated by Mercs and Juggernauts already. After the initial burst of damage from the Force Scream combo, I feel like I can't do much of anything, compared to Annihilation, which I can easily bleed targets to death AND heal my Ops team for 1% every second using Berserk. Carnage, however, has no team focus whatsoever -- it's all about you, yet still feels like something is missing.

One idea -- allow a talent for Gore to apply to all members of your party, and create a talent that makes Force Scream a small cone AoE ability.

Whilst i agree that carnage needs changing to make it different from being yet another single target DPS tree, i disagree with the core idea. Carnage is very viable. Annihilation requires a ramp up time. Whereby DPS increases the longer a fight goes on (due to the fact it takes nearly 30s for Annihilate to be operating at its lowest CD), changing targets/getting cc'd all reduce effective DPS for annihilation and the minor gaps make huge differences. Carnage on the other hand does on demand DPS with short CD's. Having used both in ops, i feel more at home with annihilation but carnage is no slouch either.

Your ideas are good though, but instead i think a better work around would be to make gore last longer, giving a higher effective increase. Force scream, not a bad idea but perhaps by giving it an armour pen buff insted, which lowers the targets chance to block/dodge/parry or something it would work better.

Personally, i think the trees should look like:

Annihilation - Excellent single target sustained damage, good burst, low support

Carnage - Good single target sustained damage, great burst, support buffs, like armour reduction, chance to miss, silence, increase accuracy/alacrity/crit chance

Rage - Medium single target DPS, excellent AOE sustained and burst damage, low support

Its a no win really because everyone likes to play differently, but i feel that if the 3 trees where all very different in how they did things, we'd probably be better off than now where we have 2 viable ops trees and no real AOE.

Idea thread for making Carnage a more viable alternative to Annihilation for Operations. As it stands, Carnage feels really underwhelming... The 100% Armor Penetration is nice, but 40% of that armor is already disintegrated by Mercs and Juggernauts already. After the initial burst of damage from the Force Scream combo, I feel like I can't do much of anything, compared to Annihilation, which I can easily bleed targets to death AND heal my Ops team for 1% every second using Berserk. Carnage, however, has no team focus whatsoever -- it's all about you, yet still feels like something is missing.

One idea -- allow a talent for Gore to apply to all members of your party, and create a talent that makes Force Scream a small cone AoE ability.

All classes need something like this. It seems all the dps are only benefiting themselves. Id like to see more group wide buffs/debuffs to make the group makeup more complex.

All classes need something like this. It seems all the dps are only benefiting themselves. Id like to see more group wide buffs/debuffs to make the group makeup more complex.

Agreed. DPS should be only self-DPS -- especially for the DPS only classes. There should at least be one tree to help the entire group, not just ourselves. Right now, the trees are extremely narrow in terms of utility, which is disappointing considering that we can ONLY do DPS in Ops groups.

Carnage is a great spec. It can put out a lot of damage fast. The massacre -> gore -> ravage -> force scream combo is nuts. Massacre also increase your chance to have an extra attack happen by 30%, which gives you a total of 50% chance for extra attack. 100% crit on force scream. Ravage has roots.

As carnage, tear through all the normal and strong enemies first then go to the elites +. You should be able to take down a strong in 4-5 hits like clockwork. Then for longer fights, time your gore right and make sure the massacre proc is always up.

Ataru strikes are bugged on big mobs. This is common knowledge. This takes a large amount of damage away from the Carnage tree in ops, unless you risk being very close to the bosses, in which case you might very easily take a cleave to the face.

Regardless of these bugs, Carnage is just Annihilation's retarded step-brother in PvP or PvE. There's so many problems with Carnage that I've gotten tired of naming them all. Just look for the other 8 million posts regarding the retarded step-brother with a lisp and a lazy eye.

I've gotta say it:

The trees weren't designed to be on par with each other. If you want to play a spec because you enjoy it more, then do so but don't expect to do top DPS with it.

If you want to put out the most DPS, take the top DPS spec.

The major downfall of WoW was class homogenization. Let's not bring that **** here.

In an MMO its all abulout numbers. From gear to DPS everyone wants to pull out the biggest numbers no matter what. This game is flawed in so many levels when it comes to the class balance it's nuts. No true dedicated healer, utility spread out all over the place, and lack of true individuality between classes because they tried to mix too many flavors into each main flavor. Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry. Almost every class in this game is Neapolitan, yet each scoop has a "best" tree that has nothing to do with playstyle. You can compensate with player skill and whatever else you want, but players will always circumvent the system and find the one best way.

Because everything's spread so thin, don't expect any balance to happen until a true expansion happens. That coupled with BioWares uncanny tight leash on information, as opposed to En Masses transparent and open Dev team that visually cares about it's player base should tell you all you need to know.

I think it just sucks that Massacre ends up being your filler move, when Force Scream crits for 4k, and Annihilation's bleeds do more damage than Ataru strikes. and "set it and forget it" which caters the movement heavy role of a melee dps.

If Massacre applied some sort of damage over time component, it would really help to keep it in line with other abilities. Maybe it could stack with applications of Massacre?

I think it just sucks that Massacre ends up being your filler move, when Force Scream crits for 4k, and Annihilation's bleeds do more damage than Ataru strikes. and "set it and forget it" which caters the movement heavy role of a melee dps.

 

If Massacre applied some sort of damage over time component, it would really help to keep it in line with other abilities. Maybe it could stack with applications of Massacre?

I just think the Ataru Strikes need to do more damage, we control our flow of damage yet Carnage offers us yet no increase to critical strikes or major damage bonus to the small amount of damage it provides or any other ability other than Scream. Hell Rage has a shorter CD on this move than we do.

I seriously think they should switch Erupting Fury from Carnage with Brutality in Rage and make it effect Massacre.

There needs to be a talent in the Carnage tree that increases offhand scaling, and Ataru scaling with stats. Basically it will give us a definitive and unique focus on stats over Annihialate.

If offhand damage came within 75-80% of MH damage, you would have an increased weigh on having accuracy for instance. As well as Ataru strike being higher damage. So stacking power + accuracy would be THE stats for Carnage maras for instance.

I do enjoy the playstyle of Carnage a lot more, and for Flashpoints its definately more of a useful spec I think (at least on the tons of trash you are encountering).

What about "Your Massacre strikes apply Vulnerable to your target, increasing all damage taken by 1%, this ability stacks up to 5 times".

This would allow for stronger scaling attacks (a-la juyo form), along with an incentive to bring a carnage marauder(damage increase), instead of an annihilation(offheals).

Carnage will be a trash spec until they fix tracer missile and sunder armor. Currently the two debuffs stack with themselves so if you have 3 Mercs and 2 Juggs you get 20%x5=100% armor penetration the entire time. In raids this means Gore is worthless. In addition the tracer missile stacks from other bounty hunters make Heatseeker Missiles hit harder making BHs overpowered when stacked.

They need to fix debuffs in general honestly because other classes have debuffs that don't work correctly either.

Carnage needs Gore to be a 100% uptime ability with less armor penetration %. Currently your entire rotation revolves around a tiny window of damage. This is terrible design because unlike WoW that kind of burst won't insta-kill anyone and simply limits you 70% of the time in PvP. In PvE this is beyond stupid because if you get targeted by some sort of mechanic requiring you to move away then your Gore burst just got wasted. The reason Annihilation does so much better is because despite the idiotic 3x Annihilator buff ramp up the damage is still MORE mobile than the supposed mobile spec(carnage).

Carnage needs to have Accuracy matter. The spec is designed around off-hand and ataru strikes and high accuracy through talents but the value of that accuracy ends up being non-existent because off-hand strikes are pathetically weak. If there were a talent that made off-hand strikes scale with Power/Strength like the main hand then Carnage would be far more unique. To compensate for the large buff they could just nerf the base damages of abilities until Carnage was in a good place.

If they don't want to make accuracy more valuable for Carnage then the talents granting increased accuracy need to be replaced. Currently there isn't a reason to go above 98%/108%(normal/special) accuracy. Carnage's talents bring us to 96/106 automatically and this severely limits our gearing options because accuracy is present on almost all good enhancements. It's idiotic to put accuracy boosting talents into a tree if that tree doesn't gain a huge benefit from accuracy. Carnage would be much better off if those 3% accuracy boosts from Narrowed Hatred and Ataru Form instead increased the damage of Ataru strikes by a large amount. Currently ataru strikes do not hit very hard and do not do enough to close the gap between carnage and annihilation.

There's already an organized idea thread, not just for Carnage, but for marauders in general.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=320961

Stay organized. Get visibility.