Not sure how I want to start this post off, but I guess I can get straight to the point. Fanged god form is a broken tactical, it's currently bugged, and even if you can bypass the bugs I don't believe it functions properly. I've been doing some testing for how the rotation for carnage changes over the past week or so to see how this tactical can be utilized and i've discovered some things.

 

Fanged god form is currently broken. Hyper stacks fall off if you use ANY ability. This makes it essentially non functional for anyone not at a very high end nim level in pve content. You can't use any dcd, a self cleanse, any dps buff (aside from clicky relics, adrenal) pred, rez, or any utility skill OR BERSERK AND THAT SKILL MATTERS without hyper stacks falling off.

 

I believe this to be a bug. There seems to be about a 0.7 or 0.8 delay in hyper stacks being removed once an ability is activated. This essentially means, that even though hyper stacks fall off by any use of any ability, it's 'clippable' (memories of 4.0 carnage and early 5.3 carnage) meaning that if you're quick enough you can land GCD's inside the 'hyper window' to get it to use an ability.

 

Gore seems to be the most consistent. As long as you hit ferocity and gore at the same time, gore will always land in the window. Devastating blast and vicious throw seem to, 80% of the time activate / consume respective slaughter/execute buffs after 1 or more hyper stacks falling off. VT seems more consistent in getting 2 or more, and DB seems pretty consistent in landing with one. A friend and I did some experimenting and we came to the conclusion that to get hyper to consume DB, only the activation matters and not the travel time of the ability. Before I move onto the next part, I want to say, if DB can be clipped inside It's the most optimal to do so because of the critical surge into the auto crit providing an extra 10-30% critical multiplier.

 

What this tactical essentially makes you able to do is remove DST / Assault from your bar completely in operations or pvp. You didn't need those things before much because of the environment of those things and rage having passive build up / existence.

 

The next main issue and I believe this needs to be fixed along with utility skills AND BERSERK consuming hyper stacks: Battering assault needs to no longer consume hyper stacks. I have tried to tear apart the carnage rotation and find some window to fit in hyper stacks, but the consistent issue I have ran into is that by the time ferocity comes off of CD, you still have to wait for battering assault, meaning your hyper stacks will fall off, meaning you have to massacre, and that's a dps loss. What is doable is about 2 hyper stacks inside of the main burst window and 1 hyper stack inside of the smaller ferocity window.

 

While those stacks matter with respect to giving critical chance to gore / DB / VT, I believe the intended use for this tactical is to provide a much higher crit chance to your hardest hitting abilities at 3 stacks and it would seem, that even if you can bypass the bugginess of it, it still can't be utilized fully because of how the cooldown of battering assault is.

 

What needs to happen, is that it needs to consume stacks of hyper on use of certain abilities like ferocity or furious power do. So no DST / Assault / BA consuming the stacks and instead only the important abilities.

 

With those things being said and from the state of how the meta seems to be building itself right now, even without these proposed changes (which btw, put an immense skill ceiling on carnage, much worse than 4.0, 5.3 carnage) Carnage can actually be a viable spec. The dps increase from not having to use massacre, it critting more, ferocity consuming abilities having 10-30% higher crit chance probably makes carnage viable again.

 

Anyway, I will be working in the coming days on more testing for this tactical and I will post my notes to this thread. Enjoy your day.

Edited November 2, 2019 by zorngodofall

agree with all your points and i have also noticed the clipping ability of hyper stacks, i was still disappointed with the dps output of carnage even with tacticals, its still just not anywhere close to fury.

 

Any positive changes to carnage is a step in the right direction imo

I agree with all the above, it is simply dumb for hyperstacks to fall of from using a defensive CD or berserk. It should also not be used by focus building abilities but consumed by VT/Gore/Clashing Blast. Sadly right now Mara is not in a good place pvp wise while Carnage is lagging behind Fury and Anhi in dps.

agree with all your points and i have also noticed the clipping ability of hyper stacks, i was still disappointed with the dps output of carnage even with tacticals, its still just not anywhere close to fury.

 

Any positive changes to carnage is a step in the right direction imo

 

I agree the burst isnt quite there for carnage. I run 50% armor debuff tactic for Sustainable damage. I crit for about 40K to 50k in PvP with 45% crit and 71% multiplier, 1.4 GCD. In a complete 306 build including new augs and Max in weapon amplifiers. Not complaining about the big crits it’s the time between with fluff dps. But still lot of fun. I am topping reg boards as a single dps and no aoe...but that is constantly mashing on targets without many breaks.

 

Imagine a perma berserk tactic gob gob

Edited November 9, 2019 by Josewales