Merciless Slash - cauterize - filler - force melt

MS - filler - filler - filler

MS - cauterize - filler - filler

rinse repeat.

Thats cauterize after every other MS, force melt before every 3rd.

Overload saber on CD. Most of those fillers are going to be force builders, slash/dispatch when you have the extra focus.

So with these changes made i am a bit thrown off with the rotation. Pre 3.0 I was Carnage and i loved it. Now i went with Annihilation just to survive in PVE. So i was wondering what does everyone do for there PVE rotation on there Anni-Mara? :jawa_mad:

Force Charge > Deadly Sabers during GCD > Battering Assault > Rupture > Annihilate > Force Rend > Either Double Saber Throw if your pulverize procs (20% chance for your bleeds to increase its damage by 100%) or Ravage.

That's your opener.

After that, your priority is keeping your Deadly Sabers and Annihilate on CD, and keep your bleeds up, which require a lot of micromanagement. For every 3 Annihilates you do (and keeping it on CD) you reduce the rage cost of your Force Rend. Which is good, because Force Rend isn't worth using if it costs rage.

Don't do anything that will interfere with using Annihilate, and use your force rend when it glows. Fit ravage in where you can, and dual saber throw when it procs.

I've also found with the reduced channel time it's not a bad idea to throw in Force Choke as a filler when you're low on rage.

And again, micromanage your bleeds.

Force Charge > Deadly Sabers during GCD > Battering Assault > Rupture > Annihilate > Force Rend > Either Double Saber Throw if your pulverize procs (20% chance for your bleeds to increase its damage by 100%) or Ravage.

 

That's your opener.

 

After that, your priority is keeping your Deadly Sabers and Annihilate on CD, and keep your bleeds up, which require a lot of micromanagement. For every 3 Annihilates you do (and keeping it on CD) you reduce the rage cost of your Force Rend. Which is good, because Force Rend isn't worth using if it costs rage.

 

Don't do anything that will interfere with using Annihilate, and use your force rend when it glows. Fit ravage in where you can, and dual saber throw when it procs.

 

I've also found with the reduced channel time it's not a bad idea to throw in Force Choke as a filler when you're low on rage.

 

And again, micromanage your bleeds.

There's no reason to put Cauterize before Merciless Slash in 3.0, since there is no longer a CD-reset. The best opener I have found goes Leap - OS - Zealous Strike - Merciless Slash - Force Melt - Cauterize - TST (if proc) - Master Strike.

Merciless Slash has to come before Force Melt to take advantage of the cost reduction. Force Melt is also a force ability, so it won't trigger an OS stack. This means you want to use it 2 GCDs after activating OS, which will give you an extra tick of OS at 2 stacks.

@op, can you not look a few threads over and see that this topic has been covered to death as of late?

How many topics about this absurd spec do we need on the forums?

There's no reason to put Cauterize before Merciless Slash in 3.0, since there is no longer a CD-reset. The best opener I have found goes Leap - OS - Zealous Strike - Merciless Slash - Force Melt - Cauterize - TST (if proc) - Master Strike.

 

Merciless Slash has to come before Force Melt to take advantage of the cost reduction. Force Melt is also a force ability, so it won't trigger an OS stack. This means you want to use it 2 GCDs after activating OS, which will give you an extra tick of OS at 2 stacks.

There's no reason to put your DOT up when you're a DOT class? That seems counter intuitive to me, as you want your bleeds on your targets at all times and as soon as possible. It's still nearly the same rotation as pre-3.0, but it still works, and doesn't need to be changed.

I didn't say anything that implicated anything is wrong with your second paragraph, but I will now: why on earth would you ever wait to apply stacks of Deadly Sabers? If you take the Fury builder utility, and then use my opener, you've got 3 full stacks that are going to crit, because after you hit your first Annihilate, you can blow Berzerk. THEN apply Force Rend, and go into your non-rage adjusting abilities.

There's no reason to put your DOT up when you're a DOT class? That seems counter intuitive to me, as you want your bleeds on your targets at all times and as soon as possible. It's still nearly the same rotation as pre-3.0, but it still works, and doesn't need to be changed.

You're wrong there. There is no reason to put cauterize up before MS, the only reason you did that in the past was the proc which is gone. MS is the main source of damage so getting that attack on rhythm is the most important part of your opener. Also after the opener cauterize is coming after MS so its best to keep that in the opener as well.

You're wrong there. There is no reason to put cauterize up before MS, the only reason you did that in the past was the proc which is gone. MS is the main source of damage so getting that attack on rhythm is the most important part of your opener. Also after the opener cauterize is coming after MS so its best to keep that in the opener as well.

I can give you at least three reasons:

1. It will help you proc Mind Sear (double-damage DST) earlier.
   
2. It allows the first MS to potentially grant focus through Burning Focus.
   
3. Most importantly, it ensures that the Merciless Slash cooldown doesn't clash with dots later on in the rotation.
   

If you have MS > Cauterize > Force Rend in your opener, then the next Force Rend application would occur exactly when MS comes off cooldown, but if you use Caut > MS > FR, then dot applications can't clash with the MS application (until something inevitably gets messed up, of course).

Also, you pointed out that Cauterize should come after MS in the eventual rotation. If you start with Caut > MS > Force Rend, then your second Cauterize is right before your second MS, but your third Cauterize is immediately after the fourth MS, and every Cauterize after that is immediately after MS. However, if you start them the other way around then that won't happen, you either need to do Cauterize right before MS every time or you need to delay either ability at some point.

There's no reason to put your DOT up when you're a DOT class? That seems counter intuitive to me, as you want your bleeds on your targets at all times and as soon as possible. It's still nearly the same rotation as pre-3.0, but it still works, and doesn't need to be changed.

 

I didn't say anything that implicated anything is wrong with your second paragraph, but I will now: why on earth would you ever wait to apply stacks of Deadly Sabers? If you take the Fury builder utility, and then use my opener, you've got 3 full stacks that are going to crit, because after you hit your first Annihilate, you can blow Berzerk. THEN apply Force Rend, and go into your non-rage adjusting abilities.

Watchman has never been a pure DOT class, it's always been more of a hybrid. Merciless Slash is just as important to our dps as our DOTs are. When it comes to deciding between Cauterize and Merciless Slash, both are vital to maximizing dps; for Cauterize that means maximizing its uptime, while for Merciless Slash that means using it on CD. You want to get your DOTs up as soon as possible, but you also want to reach 4 stacks of Merciless as quickly as possible. Of course, one of those abilities has to come first. Prior to 3.0, you had to use Cauterize first so you could take advantage of the proc from Merciless Slash to maximize Cauterize's uptime. But now that proc doesn't exist, so it doesn't really matter which of the two comes first when you look at the dps generated from those two abilities alone.

That said, there are two reasons you want to put Cauterize first - resource generation and the Twin Saber Throw proc. The sooner you get Cauterize up, the sooner it can start generating Focus, and the more likely you get the Twin Saber Throw proc by the time you get to it in your rotation.

But the reason to delay Cauterize in the opener I posted is all about getting an extra tick of Overload Saber at two stacks, which is several thousand extra damage for free. OS ticks once every three seconds for six seconds, so you get three ticks in the base duration, with the first tick occurring the instant it is applied, but the duration gets refreshed every time a stack is applied, which causes it to tick again immediately. Your opener, like the pre-3.0 opener, will get 1 tick @ one stack, 1 tick @ two stacks, and 3 ticks @ three stacks, for basically 12 ticks of the one-stack damage. The opener I posted, however, will get 1 tick @ one stack, 2 ticks @ two stacks, and 3 ticks @ three stacks, for two extra ticks of the one-stack damage.

And I don't think Zen works quite the way you think it does. You'll pretty much never get all three ticks of three-stack OS to be affected by Zen. First, OS ticks as soon as it is applied, so in your opener, if you activate Zen right after Merciless Slash, you have already missed the first tick @ three stacks. The only way to get the first tick under Zen is to pop Zen just *before* Merciless Slash. But you still run into the problem of only having six stacks of Zen. If you want all three ticks of OS to benefit from it, that means only three stacks can be consumed by your other DOTs. Cauterize ticks every two seconds, so it would look something like this (starting from when the third stack of OS is applied):

t = 0s: OS + Cauterize both tick

t = 1s: nothing

t = 2s: Cauterize tick

t = 3s: OS tick

t = 4s: Cauterize tick

t = 5s: nothing

t = 6s: OS + Cauterize both tick

And that's not even counting Force Melt, since I'm not sure how often it ticks (think it's every 2 seconds, but not sure). But even one or two ticks from Force Melt in that six second period would make it impossible for Zen to last long enough for all three ticks of OS @ three stacks.

Oh, and here is a relevant link. This was done using the old dotsmash hybrid, which also leveraged the fact that force abilities such as Sweep and Blade Storm don't apply OS stacks to get extra ticks of OS. In that hybrid, they were actually able to get two ticks at 1 stack *and* two ticks at two stacks, before the three ticks @ three stacks.

edit: @ Ailaria:

1) True, but if the TST proc hasn't occurred by the time you get to that point, you can just flip it with Master Strike, and those three seconds with all three dots ticking all but guarantees the proc. And TST and Master Strike are both filler abilities with 18 second CDs, so I don't think flipping them will make a big difference

2) You already have applied OS with Zealous Strike by the time you use Merciless Slash, so you can already benefit from that proc. Adding a second dot doesn't affect it.

3) I haven't done much dummy parsing yet, since the ability lag I've had since 3.0 has made it difficult. And it seems like every fight has down time due to CC (what is this obsession with CC, Bioware?), so I haven't been able to tell if it is an issue or not.

A lot of good points made in this thread but keep in mind that it's all in a idealized environment.

In a real PVE setting you have to improvise and know what to use on the fly then adjust it a half second later when something goes wrong.

Delta, you make some valid points for my consideration, and you're right, I wasn't really thinking through the actual "tickage," if you will, when it comes to my 'Zerk. All I know is that, while Mara/Sents may be a form of "hybrid" class, in the sense that we have a lot of hard hitting attacks along with our bleeds, it's still fundamental for Annihilation/Watchman to keep their DoTs a-rollin'. Rupture/Cauterize may no longer be NEEDed before Annihilate/MS, but I'm more comfortable knowing that it's ticking away after I hit annihilate and swing into my Ravage.

And I like to think I'm doing something right, when I'm out DPSing my fellow guildy experienced mercs and sorcs, and am confident enough to throw down the gauntlet to other Sent/Maras.

A lot of good points made in this thread but keep in mind that it's all in a idealized environment.

In a real PVE setting you have to improvise and know what to use on the fly then adjust it a half second later when something goes wrong.

That's also an incredibly fair point, but knowing the basics before hand make choosing those crunch-time decisions easier.