Jump to content

[Guide] Mad Maul 1.4


Xethis

Recommended Posts

Plaga pls know that I am not blindly defending my position and trying to counter you just because you don't agree. I am happy that Assassin has a play style that you enjoy so much. If you are having success exploiting every defensive option Assassin has then go rock it. Just know that I do not think Mad Maul is the best pvp option, I have stated it many times. You really don't have to tell me about what specs are good, I still rock them all. I still go in WZ's as 23-1-17, 0-14-27, 0-28-13, and even 23-14-3, I play these specs all the time, and some of these specs I have played for weeks and months at a time. I do know them very well. Once again my guide was directed at pve, with a pvp option if you will.

 

In PvP gear: My stats for primary combat skills in the 3/7/31.

 

DoTs

Discharge: 3081 Energy

Creeping Terror: 2173 Internal

Crushing Darkness: 1767 kinetic

 

Damage:

Assassinate: 3011-3428 kinetic

Maul: 2308-2627 kinetic

Thrash: 722-822 x2 kinetic

Death Field: 1835-1899 internal

Force Lightning: 3155 energy

Crushing Darkness: 1196-1260 kinetic

Shock: 1526-1590 energy

 

Overcharge Saber: 100% damage increase on Discharge for 15 seconds.

 

So a 3k DoT with the ability through Overcharge to make it 6k that you can spam on people for 15 seconds is not worth adding 18% damage to the ability for pve or pvp? I will ask what you think of that especially in PvE without the ability for the NPC's to be adaptive.

 

I wonder how you think my 2k internal damage dot is weak. That is without any critical ticks with death marks. Against armored boss with very high mitigation skills.

 

I am wondering in pve if you've parsed out your dps outputs from a standard madness spec to use induction and have an improved force regeneration. I regularly in tank with induction in pvp hit my proc'd mauls for 4-4.8 k. I assume your close to those results.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 53
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

In PvP gear: My stats for primary combat skills in the 3/7/31.

 

DoTs

Discharge: 3081 Energy

Creeping Terror: 2173 Internal

Crushing Darkness: 1767 kinetic

 

Damage:

Assassinate: 3011-3428 kinetic

Maul: 2308-2627 kinetic

Thrash: 722-822 x2 kinetic

Death Field: 1835-1899 internal

Force Lightning: 3155 energy

Crushing Darkness: 1196-1260 kinetic

Shock: 1526-1590 energy

 

Overcharge Saber: 100% damage increase on Discharge for 15 seconds.

 

So a 3k DoT with the ability through Overcharge to make it 6k that you can spam on people for 15 seconds is not worth adding 18% damage to the ability for pve or pvp? I will ask what you think of that especially in PvE without the ability for the NPC's to be adaptive.

 

I wonder how you think my 2k internal damage dot is weak. That is without any critical ticks with death marks. Against armored boss with very high mitigation skills.

 

I am wondering in pve if you've parsed out your dps outputs from a standard madness spec to use induction and have an improved force regeneration. I regularly in tank with induction in pvp hit my proc'd mauls for 4-4.8 k. I assume your close to those results.

 

You sir are an idiot. I suggest you go and learn what Overcharge Saber actually does before coming here and spouting garbage. That and using tooltips to judge how much damage your attacks do, I mean really?

 

Here, because I doubt you could do it yourself:

 

Overcharge Saber

Instant

Cooldown: 120s

Overcharges your current lightsaber charge for 15 seconds, increasing the damage and healing dealt by all Charges by 100%.

 

That means the little bits of energy damage that have a 50% chance to proc while lightning charge is active are what is being increased by 100%. Nothing whatsoever to do with Discharge. I've actually taken OS off my main bars, as I do not do high enough level PvE for it to be necessary to gain that little extra DPS, and it's not even worth the time to activate in the heat of PvP combat.

 

I'll say it again, actually try the freaking spec out before coming in here posting garbage to defend your biased opinions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey there,

 

tried your build out of curiosity but it seems behind to vs. a regular madness rotation.

 

Here are 2 10 min parses on op dummy for each build. Same buffs and everything. I guess its save to say I am much more used to my regular rotation but I don't think i missed much on yours to be equal to 70dps lost.

 

Regular Madness

 

Mad Maul

 

I am pretty much BIS in that Toon.

 

I was really hoping for something new to be finally able to beat maras, snipers and PTs more, but I am afraid this isn't it =/

 

Edit: BTW discharge dot & DF Timer are NOT the same - u lose DPS if u reapply the dot before it runs out (as in every 15 sec instead of 18)

 

Did some testing too for a while and I have to agree with Razz here. I have ran your spec for pvp and I personally love it as a fun hybrid build. I get to dot up everyone and then do mauls.

 

For pve, the problem of this build vs pure madness build is that it doesn't really add anything new, it merely changes dps potential of the skills around. A few broad points:

 

One big limitation when starting madness dps is making mistakes and run out of force. Razz has his rotations down pat, he is not likely to run into force starvation issues and his dps won't be lowered by mistakes. Mad maul, with force regen ability, actually lowers the difficulty by allowing mistakes and then making up for it by the abundant force. This is a much friendlier build for sure.

 

That being said: While it is great to be able to thrash non stop, one thing I noticed while practicing mad maul is that when I am using blackout and force cloak I am storing a lot of force. Sure there is no danger of going into starvation but the GCD limits me from doing anymore. I am pretty much certain with my pure madness rotations that I am squeezing out everything and keeping my energy as low as possible to add in the next hit. Throw the whole saber strike under 50 force nonsense or the like out of the window, the key is not to be starved to force a change in the next skill you want to hit. Saber strike when you really need to do that next skill and force is almost there.

 

Thrash does the same damage in either build. Your maul hits harder in mad maul but pure madness has stronger dots and one additional dot. Using Razz's log as a comparison, mad maul's maul did 37 dps over the maul in pure madness. Creeping terror's 200 dps was exchanged for 160 more dps from more thrashes. Just from his log, the dps from these skills actually equaled out. However, all the other dots were hitting harder in pure madness, that may account for the difference in dps between these two logs. Of course, these are two logs but I pretty much read the same things in my practices. The problem is the hated GCD, sure we got more force, but we can't spend it.

 

BUUUUUTTTTT: the force regen skills will come in handy during 30% phases. This isn't going to be shown on logs because we can't use execute on dummies, but mad maul should have a significant easier execute phase and this may add to the dps potential. I can't test this as my raids are over for the week, but kind of interesting to think about.

 

In addition, creeping terror is not as bad as everyone think it is.

 

1. It is a great "distance closer," can throw it on the move and away from targets. In instances, force actually isn't as bad as on dummies because you are moving and regenning and can't spam skills. Thrash is so close ranged that a lot of dps will be lost on mad maul spec when Toth jumps away, tank pushes you away, running around on Kephass, running around in TFB.

 

2. A test you can do yourself: go deathfield a dummy, then drop a creeping terror for 20 force. See how much damage that does in pure madness spec. Then get UK up, and thrash (23 force) a few times (same with both spec so no need to change spec). The creeping terror ticks with deathmarks for 1 GCD will do more damage than thrash will with UK in 1 GCD. Take away deathmarks, creeping terror still edges out. Hardest I have seen thrash dual crit on a raid boss is around 1600x2=3200 damage. Creeping terror does exactly 7 ticks over the 19 second spam and each tick hits for 400-600 and crit between 800-900. Do the math and think about RNG with around 30-40% crit. Internal vs. weapon damage, that is important too.

 

TLDR for huge wall of text:

This is actually an easier build to run for pve dps and is definitely viable for raid, I have recently seen a lot of sins and shadow climbing logs but we still aren't there yet compared to the uber dps classes. Mad maul is going to work out about the same as pure madness if not just a little less, it does make execute phase a lot easier though!

 

As an last add: shocked (force) in log equals to discharge ticks, lightning charge is the saber charge affected by overcharge saber and crushed (force) in log is the crushing darkness ticks. Surprisingly, this is not very well known.

Edited by Dierdrea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would be interested in knowing how much you parse for both MM and full Madness, I do substancially lower dps in MM, and I've played the spec a fairly long time in non-rated WZ., and was very much inclined to believe that it could outdps full madness in PVE.

 

I feel like we are wasting a ton of non-dps skill points only to get +30% crit dmg on maul and out of steath blackout. Sure we are now able to have near 100% UK uptime, but I think it benefits only Maul and Assassinate. We do give up 6% dmg increase on thrash which is 25-30% of our dps, to gain +10% bonus damage, that seem to breakeven for thrash. We gain a global by not having to refresh CT but it's lost to the UK refresh. In term of DPCT I don't think that shock+ increased maul bonus and crit damage outdps CT by a significant margin, if at all. And we lose 3% force crit and 10% crit dmg on DF and dots. Also without CT, more of our Deathmark are being eaten by CD, which ticks REALLY low compared to discharge and CT.

 

Like it has been said before, the only time we gain something is during 30%- phase, where we gain good damage on a 6sec CD huge hitter and longer burst thanks to dark embrace. I can imagine in this case it might pull slightly ahead, and it is not insignificant since execute phase are important. So if you could execute the dummy once you've done X damage, I guess this spec might not be so far from full madness, but would still lag fairly behind in raid environment with movement, non-dps phases, target switching etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would be interested in knowing how much you parse for both MM and full Madness, I do substancially lower dps in MM, and I've played the spec a fairly long time in non-rated WZ., and was very much inclined to believe that it could outdps full madness in PVE.

 

I feel like we are wasting a ton of non-dps skill points only to get +30% crit dmg on maul and out of steath blackout. Sure we are now able to have near 100% UK uptime, but I think it benefits only Maul and Assassinate. We do give up 6% dmg increase on thrash which is 25-30% of our dps, to gain +10% bonus damage, that seem to breakeven for thrash. We gain a global by not having to refresh CT but it's lost to the UK refresh. In term of DPCT I don't think that shock+ increased maul bonus and crit damage outdps CT by a significant margin, if at all. And we lose 3% force crit and 10% crit dmg on DF and dots. Also without CT, more of our Deathmark are being eaten by CD, which ticks REALLY low compared to discharge and CT.

 

Like it has been said before, the only time we gain something is during 30%- phase, where we gain good damage on a 6sec CD huge hitter and longer burst thanks to dark embrace. I can imagine in this case it might pull slightly ahead, and it is not insignificant since execute phase are important. So if you could execute the dummy once you've done X damage, I guess this spec might not be so far from full madness, but would still lag fairly behind in raid environment with movement, non-dps phases, target switching etc.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200bcZfZcMfRrbkrfz.2 That is the pure madness spec I run in TFB, still keep shock and UK, the only difference between it and mad maul is trading more force regen and harder mauls vs. stronger dots and CT. UK (benefit thrash too) should be up for as long as possible in either spec and should not be hard to keep up. Someone told me about TOR assistant and it really helped in keeping track of buffs and dots.

Edited by Dierdrea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That being said: While it is great to be able to thrash non stop, one thing I noticed while practicing mad maul is that when I am using blackout and force cloak I am storing a lot of force. Sure there is no danger of going into starvation but the GCD limits me from doing anymore.

 

Hi Dierdrea, how is it going? :D

 

I would say without having thought so much about the why, this might very well be the reason you wont come ahead. I tried both: Using the regg stuff instant when its up (ofc no blackout right after vanish) to squeeze as much uses as possible - which pushed me to max force sometimes (i wont get even close when full madness). And trying to use it when i get low on force and would have to SS - which wont give you the most out of the talent.

 

Still not sure how you manage to outperform full madness, but i hope your logs will provide some insight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Dierdrea, how is it going? :D

 

I would say without having thought so much about the why, this might very well be the reason you wont come ahead. I tried both: Using the regg stuff instant when its up (ofc no blackout right after vanish) to squeeze as much uses as possible - which pushed me to max force sometimes (i wont get even close when full madness). And trying to use it when i get low on force and would have to SS - which wont give you the most out of the talent.

 

Still not sure how you manage to outperform full madness, but i hope your logs will provide some insight.

 

I didn't, mad maul came pretty close but I can't manage to pass full madness, I think I said that in my post before. It is still very viable and is much friendlier to play. The only thing I was wondering about is if execute phases will be smoother. I didn't post logs because your logs pretty much summed it up nicely.

Edited by Dierdrea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ Talon, There hasn't been any changes so yes it is very viable for 1.5

 

@ Dierdrea and Nuzzar, I have tried many times to get some descent parse data for you guys. There is nothing I want more than to prove to the community of my claims that Mad Maul is best overall dps. I currently use MoniTOR to parse my data and have not yet figured out how to get the data posted to a third party site. As far as MOX goes I cannot install this program because my computer will no longer update latest versions of .netframwork. Too many por n searches I guess. I have tried everything I could think of to get .netframwork updated but my pc will not even update through "automatic updates". I even tried recording some fraps with my dps overlay on but it did not work.

 

I do not know the exact reasons why I am able to parse higher numbers with Mad Maul than I am with Madness, I guess I am the only one. All I know is that when I tried it initially I was 200dps behind Madness, After a few days of playing the Mad Maul spec I then started parsing 100-150 dps ahead. I do know that during 1.2 and 1.3 many full Madness Assassins where doing more dps when they took Creeping Terror and Shock out of their rotations, because of how Thrash scaled. Maybe for a full BiS Assassin numbers will vary relatively, as I am not close to BiS than maybe abilities are scaling differently, idk. It could just be that Mad Maul is technically an easier rotation to keep because of one less dot and I am just able to run it more efficiently. Maybe with Mad Maul I am refreshing Discharge and Deathmarks with less clipping and down time, maybe I am just able to react to Exploit Weakness and Raze alot faster. IDK.

 

@ Plaga, just stop posting bro, every time you type you just prove to everyone how little you actually understand about this class. You need to download MoniTOR or MoX and start parsing your own data and not just post tooltip data.

Edited by Xethis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Parsing 1650ish in MM vs 1800ish in full Madness for now, it's possible that in raid environment with armor debuff the gap closes a bit, but I'm very skeptical about MM outdps'ing Madness in a 5-10min timeframe. Will continue to try though.

 

I would not say it's easier than Madness however, 1 more dot is not hard to track since both of CT and discharge have the same CD, but MM it involves actual decision-making on how to time your blackouts/vanish given your current force, even to take the best advantage of your incoming offensive CDs (adrenals, relics), which I find interesting whereas Madness you're doing the same 20sec loop all the fight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's no situation where the dark embrace regen out speeds the cost of spamming maul, which is our second biggest hitter (behind assassinate). Basically, if you have a full force bar when embrace is up just use a maul or two or six. with the proc i think it's higher (don't quote me on that I can't remember for sure). A lot of people won't maul without the roc and that's just a waste.

 

In any case though, spamming maul will increase your dps and take care of your "too much force" problems.

Edited by JP_Legatus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ironically, for PVE, of all the Madness-based hybrids that I tried, MM is the weakest. These 3 pts used to get 30% crit damage on maul are just best put somewhere else. Tried 2/11/28 with Thrashing blades and 3/3 Creeping death and it wins by a pretty good margin. Now, Darkswell is just awesome, it costs a lot of skill points to get it tho, since the tier2 deception skills and insulation are just plain useless dps-wise.

 

So i agree with one of your statement Xethis, CT is kind of a weak dot and Darkswell is damn useful, but I don't think Induction is worth getting in PVE. Darskwell + UK must be insanely good for burn/execute phase, so I'm willing to try it out in raids, but the only fight I would consider getting Induction is Kephess the Undying because you only have 3GCD to burst.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Parsing 1650ish in MM vs 1800ish in full Madness for now,

 

Considering Razz is only off by 60 dps when he parse and you parse significantly lower, maybe you need to practice mm a bit before saying it is just bad compared to everything else you tried...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Considering Razz is only off by 60 dps when he parse and you parse significantly lower, maybe you need to practice mm a bit before saying it is just bad compared to everything else you tried...

 

Considering I'm nowhere near BiS I think Razz should have parsed even higher compared to me in full madness. I was using EWH MH LOL. It is true I am not as fluent with MM as I am in Madness, but I think Razz's madness parse is not the best hé could've pulled off with his gear. So the gap between the 2 specs is higher, really, with is a shame because I would have welcome something new to try.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Personally speaking, I ONLY pvp. I have tried most of the cookie cutter specs out there, 23/1/17, 0/31/10,10/0/31, and variations thereof. I've tried to mad maul and I have to say from a pvp perspective, i love it. Creeping terror is not a bad dot by any means, however in the heat of the moment, I find that casting 3 dots plus death field, plus shock, plus thrash is tiresome. While mad maul may not be as good on paper, or in a PVE environment, I find that cutting on a dout for a hard-hitting maul is quite fantastic. Death field, discharge, shock, thrash to proc, Crushing Darkness, and a stun to maul is great for killing just about anyone that's not in full WH.

 

My point is that as far as "the best spec" should be changed "this is the best spec...for ME." If some ****** wants to split points between all 3 trees, and LIKES it...let him. If someone wants to be a dot caster with a double bladed light saber and stealth...let him. If someone wants to tank and be nuisance to the enemy team...let him. Lets stop arguing which is best, and come up with constructive comments about how we can maximize each spec.

 

Also, learn to read, OS does not affect discharge, but if you are full deception its worth the cast time...as full deception in current gear, each saber proc of surge crits for ~550 damage, with OS that's 1k from a proc. I'm okay with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Considering I'm nowhere near BiS I think Razz should have parsed even higher compared to me in full madness. I was using EWH MH LOL. It is true I am not as fluent with MM as I am in Madness, but I think Razz's madness parse is not the best hé could've pulled off with his gear. So the gap between the 2 specs is higher, really, with is a shame because I would have welcome something new to try.

 

enlighten me with your parse m8

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am not trying to start a dick fight here, I just pointed out that the gap between our two madness parse was not so significant given our different gear, whereas I did way less dps than you in MM. I am absolutely inclined to admit that I am not good in MM but what you parsed in full madness was also not the best possible parse. I am pretty sure that if you'd parse against the gap between the two spec (and between or respective parses :) ) would be higher.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I genuinely want to see your parse, if you can pull off 1800 in much worse gear than mine, because then you are doing something better than me and I always want to improve. Until then i consider your statement as an exaggeration, to show how bad you think MM is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mad maul has been around a long time, and has made it into a large number of raid dps parses and dummy parses and such.

The results were then listed on a thread here somewhere on our assassin forums and madness was ahead of the next highest dps spec by about 200. Madness was in the 1800s and the next highest which I do believe was full deception was 1600s.

Mad maul was fairly low on the list and the maul buff affected deception as well, so even if that thread were pre-1.5 deception would still be higher than mad maul and I can't see the gap changing.

 

I'll have some free time next week so ill just do a full dummy parse of all the specs and see what comes up, but I'm certain full madness and full deception are the current 1 and 2 specs in term of current dps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am not trying to start a dick fight here, I just pointed out that the gap between our two madness parse was not so significant given our different gear, whereas I did way less dps than you in MM. I am absolutely inclined to admit that I am not good in MM but what you parsed in full madness was also not the best possible parse. I am pretty sure that if you'd parse against the gap between the two spec (and between or respective parses :) ) would be higher.

 

 

Mad maul has been around a long time, and has made it into a large number of raid dps parses and dummy parses and such.

The results were then listed on a thread here somewhere on our assassin forums and madness was ahead of the next highest dps spec by about 200. Madness was in the 1800s and the next highest which I do believe was full deception was 1600s.

Mad maul was fairly low on the list and the maul buff affected deception as well, so even if that thread were pre-1.5 deception would still be higher than mad maul and I can't see the gap changing.

 

I'll have some free time next week so ill just do a full dummy parse of all the specs and see what comes up, but I'm certain full madness and full deception are the current 1 and 2 specs in term of current dps.

 

In case you guys can't bother to read the whole thread to see Razz's parse. Here is my parse on Mad Maul spec using the exact build posted by Xethis over 9 min. http://www.torparse.com/a/72413/time/1355304706/1355305290

The dps overall is very evenly distributed. This is a pretty neat build. Can be bursty and can sustain dps.

 

Parsed ~1750 dps with buffs and stim. I am artifice and thus no adrenals, like Razz. Not BIS and I parse LOWER than Razz on Mad Maul. Where do you guys pull this 1600 dps from, this build is so easy to run....sure it is lower than pure madness and I made that clear in my post before, but it is definitely better than any deception spec you can run without specifically gearing for deception dps....you can be camp/black hole geared on this and pull great dps...I wouldn't mind running this in actual raid because the dps output for burst in raids are awesome. In fact, wait for my raid parse next week when I ran HM TFB 16 with this. We just downed it tonight >.<...

Edited by Dierdrea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In case you guys can't bother to read the whole thread to see Razz's parse. Here is my parse on Mad Maul spec using the exact build posted by Xethis over 9 min. http://www.torparse.com/a/72413/time/1355304706/1355305290

The dps overall is very evenly distributed. This is a pretty neat build. Can be bursty and can sustain dps.

 

Parsed ~1750 dps with buffs and stim. I am artifice and thus no adrenals, like Razz. Not BIS and I parse LOWER than Razz on Mad Maul. Where do you guys pull this 1600 dps from, this build is so easy to run....sure it is lower than pure madness and I made that clear in my post before, but it is definitely better than any deception spec you can run without specifically gearing for deception dps....you can be camp/black hole geared on this and pull great dps...I wouldn't mind running this in actual raid because the dps output for burst in raids are awesome. In fact, wait for my raid parse next week when I ran HM TFB 16 with this. We just downed it tonight >.<...

I can't speak for everyone else but this particular players 1600 was based on his gear which was not optimal. The gaps would be the statistical equivalents in your gear, ie somewhere around 9% dps gap lower than pure deception. I'll be able to link it tomorrow

Edited by JP_Legatus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good news Dierdra, you were right and I was wrong:P Mad maul parsed just over regular deception:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=515757

 

"According to simulationcraft the theoretical dps ranking with my current gear (full BH) is this:

 

1841 dps 5/5/31 Madness (+shock)

1830 dps 5/5/31 Madness (-shock)

1730 dps 5/13/23 Mad Maul Deception/Madness hybrid

1658 dps 8/31/2 Deception

1631 dps 0/13/28 Arika Deception/Madness hybrid

1366 dps 23/1/17 Darkness/Madness "pvp" hybrid

1282 dps 23/15/3 Dark Maul Darkness/Deception hybrid"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Been working quite a bit last few days so my game time has been limited. I am still parsing Mad Maul spec ahead of full madness by 50-100dps. I have no clue why the rest of the community is still pulling ahead with Madness. Last night I tried again to get some data for you guys and was having latency issues, I was barely pulling 1400 dps with either spec. Sometimes my Death Field would take so long to activate that the dummy would turn yellow and I would leave combat lol.

 

Anyways one thing that I noticed is that my crit is 33%, and with near 100% up time on Exploitive Strikes my melee crit should be at 42%. Well through many 3min parses my Thrashes and Saber Strikes were criting 44-45% of the time. And my Mauls were consistently criting 48-49% of the time. That is way above what it should be. There might be an RNG factor that I am benefiting from that I should not be IDK. Since Mad Mauls "Mauls" crit way harder than Madness Mauls, a 7% increase in crit frequency can be a very huge factor.

 

If this is the case, and the only reason I am doing better with Mad Maul is because of an unknown RNG exploit then I do apologize for claiming that this is the best spec for dps. Please know that I did not just make a wild claim about Mad Maul because I thought it sounded good, I thought the info I was basing my findings on was accurate. I spent many hours, tens of millions of credits on respecs (pre 1.5) parsing many versions of each spec, and adjusting rotations with in each spec. I battled ability vrs ability, talent vrs talent to try and find the best possible spec and rotation. Even to this day I cannot find a spec and rotation that can beat Mad Maul.

 

I still hope that this guide has helped some of you Assassins find a fun build to play that does better dps than Deception with a slightly simpler rotation than Madness.

Edited by Xethis
Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...