Annihilation deals way more damage than carnage if you think it this way: Annihilation has very powerful strikes (Annihilate) that deals around 9k if you are properly geared. Anni uses Juyo form that stacks up to 6 times (which increases your damage by 12%). It builds rage faster with close quarters Force Charge and Battering Assault / Assault. Rupter damage is incresed (through build) and its Bleed effects deal a lot of damage plus if you have used your Deadly Sabers which stack bleed effects on target 3 times and deal great damage plus the use of Berserk which increases it's critical chance by 100%, combined that you can use powerful strikes such as Annihilate / Vicious Slash and Vicious Throw (with Juyo Form stacked 6 times) it can burn enemies very fast. In addition Rupture has chances of its cooldown being finished with Annihilate, Vicious Slash / Throw which makes your target to take even more damage with your bleed effects. Anni is just the best build in my oppinion, though it's the hardest to use.

This thread is from 2011.., anni isn't anywhere near the hardest carnage requires more effort overall imo and carnage has the biggest burst in the game anni isnt close to the burst of that spec. Annis sustain is nice though and does require concentration to play at max.

Alright, looks like fellow Marauders need some help here! As a player who has played both Carnage and Annihilation for some time, i will share my knowledge of both specs and give PvE exemples.

Disclaimer : i will ONLY be talking about end-game PvE like SM and HM Ops.

So, first of all lets get this out of the way : both specs have the potential to out-dps one another, the only factor that is able to change this is the player behind the keyboard. Both specs are amazing in end-game PvE.

So let's start with Annihilation:

awesome DoT spec. Nice little self-heals and raid-friendly abilities. Annihilation relies heavily on DoTs. It is their bread and butter and it is what allows them to shine in certain boss fights. Some posters here claimed that high movement encounters penalized Annihilation. I will gladly say it is the opposite. Encounters that require a lot of movemement are fights that are " Annihilation-prefered" - if you consider the duration of the DoTs, then you WILL be damaging th boss even when you need to get out and wait for a phase to begin. Concrete exemples of these situations are Gharj Eternity Vault - Dash'Roode Scum and Villainy - Kephess Terror from Beyond. The reduced range/cooldown of Force Charge means that you can always be ready to refresh your DoTs on a boss since they will last long enough for you to run around and jump back in to re-apply them.

Now, while your DoTs are eating the target, your normal Annihilation abilities are quite hard-hitting. Combine Annihilate ,Vicious Slash and your DoTs and you are surely dealing a LOT of damage. On a side-note, please know that your DoTs are classified as Internal FORCE damage.

But for Annihilation to reach its apex, you must be geared properly. Contrary to the eternal Carnage debate of Crit or No Crit, Annihilation DEMANDS crit for it to be effective. As an Annihilation Marauder, you need to have your crit around 23-24% (with Agent buff) and not above 25% otherwise you will see diminishing returns. With a better Crit, your DoTs will be even deadlier and your overall performance, amazing. Annihilation can accept missed rotations as long as DoTs are present on the boss. In Hard Mode Ops, the small heals provided by Annihilation do help. I'm not saying they are saving raids, but when it comes to Hard Modes, every heal counts;)

Annihilation TLDR : Annihilation = heavy sustained constant dps.

Now lets switch to Carnage. Considered by many the cookie-cutter spec for Marauders. Incredible numbers and fast damage, you could say Carnage is THE spec to go for PvE content. Carnage is indeed a pretty powerful spec. Relying on direct weapon damage, Carnage shines in burst boss PvE encounters like Soa Eternity Vault - Kephess Explosive Conflict - Olok the Shadow Scum and Villainy - Golen Fury Toborro's Courtyard.

The thing with Carnage is that it is an easy spec to play but a difficult spec to master. Like many previous posters indicated, the common problem with Carnage is that many players will often find themsleves not knowing which ability to use. This is the Achillies heel of the spec. If you miss your rotation, your overall dps performance will greatly suffer. Unlike Annihilation, you only have a limited time window to go guns blazing on the boss before transition happens.

But fear not, even with the high demands of the the spec, Carnage is still one of the best specs for Maras looking to run end-game content. Now with the eternal Crit or no Crit of Carnage. Some like it high, some like it low. Your best bet is to see where you would like to see higher numbers. Carnage has the luxury of having an auto-crit Force Screem, which is Force damage. Most of your abilites are melee based like Massacre, Deadly Throw and Ravage, and having high numbers on these abilities might improve your overall perfomance. For this reason, Carnage marauders who have a crit chance around 20% would probably profit from it. Even then, Marauders who completely forsake Crit are not fataly penalized by this. It all comes down to the user's personnal preference.

Carnage TLDR : Super high burst damage.

In my guild, we are 2 marauders that specilize in each spec and our mastery level of our individual spec is pretty much the same. We often find ourselves juggling with boss aggro in encounters.

With all if this being said, Carnage and Annihilation are both amazing specs to play. Both have their pros and cons ,but the ultimate factor will not come from the spec you chose, it will come from you.

You want 0 crit for both specs, some of the top parsing guys take a small amount to get a higher chance of RNG luck in a parse but for most consistent dmg you want 0 crit. Annihilation does not DEMAND crit. Dots are autocrit with berserk and are like 60% of your dmg...

My highest watchman/anni parse was 3.5k on my sent (nowhere near bis 72 mh hilt, chest is 72s, implants orcanian, uw earpiece with armor debuff and 1,000,000 hp on dummy) and I have 0 crit rating.

You want 0 crit for both specs, some of the top parsing guys take a small amount to get a higher chance of RNG luck in a parse but for most consistent dmg you want 0 crit. Annihilation does not DEMAND crit. Dots are autocrit with berserk and are like 60% of your dmg...

Actually 2 of the big Theorycrafters for Watchman (Gorband, Ino) agreed that a little bit of crit was better than Power. That was before 78 gear. The one who disagrees is Oofalong, who hasn't been able to properly model Burning Focus, and even he says the difference is miniscule. Although Oofalong has probably put the most leg work into it out of all of them.

Also Dots are 40% of your Damage and only 20-25% of them will autocrit. For the rest crit is useful and gives an extra 30% Surge.

You want 0 crit for both specs, some of the top parsing guys take a small amount to get a higher chance of RNG luck in a parse but for most consistent dmg you want 0 crit. Annihilation does not DEMAND crit. Dots are autocrit with berserk and are like 60% of your dmg...

 

My highest watchman/anni parse was 3.5k on my sent (nowhere near bis 72 mh hilt, chest is 72s, implants orcanian, uw earpiece with armor debuff and 1,000,000 hp on dummy) and I have 0 crit rating.

Actually, Annihilation/Watchman does demand crit, but with the DR on crit as of 2.0, it is far too expensive in terms of stats to put points into crit. With the introduction of 72s and then 78s, some models allowed for a little crit because at that point the DR on power becomes less rewarding, however as Emperor-Norton mentioned, the difference is not too significant.

That said, the only reason for investing in power over crit is that you currently get more damage per point invested in power. If the devs decide to scale power and crit rating the same way it was done pre-2.0, you'd once again have Marauders/Sentinels investing in high crit Annihilation/Watchman builds.

Yes but for now having lots of it is not so good cause of that dr

1 or 2 mods or whatever is fine as said..

and ye late night percentage exaggeration ftw..

One can only hope they change crit rating around again like they said.. would make the spec even better.. then again in doing so it would give carnage more crits too

The Critical Rating stat is currently adjusted to a level that grants a critical chance with which we are not completely satisfied, and this means that some specializations lacking a built-in auto-crit are at a disadvantage, while specializations like Balance and Seer that gain utilities and advantages when they critically hit are at an even bigger disadvantage. We will be working to rectify this issue with the Critical Rating stat in the future, and that should alleviate some issues for Balance, Seer, and many other specializations within the game.

Back when we were getting those Top 3 Questions and their corresponding answers, Courtney put this up on the Sage/Sorc thread. Of course, we can't expect a fix on crit anytime soon ... it's probably way down in their list of things to do.

That said, even with higher crit rates, the trade-off between Carnage/Combat and Annihilation/Watchman was always that they stacked power while we maintained a higher crit and surge (5-10%, as I recall). It worked out well, because while their burst was even more spectacular compared to us, we were critting a lot more and dealing a lot more pain with it. That did a lot to close the gap in longer fights, and we had the advantage of 4-man group heals. It helped

Actually 2 of the big Theorycrafters for Watchman (Gorband, Ino) agreed that a little bit of crit was better than Power. That was before 78 gear.

I am not sure I would call Gorband a theorycrafter. He is obviously a phenomenal player, and used to be the standard for this spec. He was very thorough in his testing and used this to arrive at his recommendations. In other words, he dabbled in reality not theory. I only wish I could play the spec as well and, more importantly, as consistently as him. (Incidentally, Macedonicus is now the standard for the spec so it is worth listening to him/her.)

Ino on the other hand I would characterize as a theorycrafter. Unfortunately, I have concerns about his Annihilation/Watchman models.

The one who disagrees is Oofalong...and even he says the difference is miniscule. Although Oofalong has probably put the most leg work into it out of all of them.

I wouldn't say I disagree, I would say my model disagrees

On the eve of 2.0, I still argued that critical chance was very important to this spec due to the free Surge on our DoTs. For instance, I suspected 3 points in Malice/Insight would be superior to 3 points in Dual Wield Mastery, but I was wrong here.

I did a bit of analysis on Gorband's top parse. It did not conclusively show that any crit rating was superior, nor did it show crit rating was inferior. It showed great variability across parses with varying crit rating amounts and was inconclusive.

In any event, assuming my model is correct the difference between 0 crit rating and 200 crit rating is 0.2% so since the downside of 200 crit rating is at most ~6 DPS there is little reason not to have some crit rating and trust in good RNG. I personally run 200 crit rating now based on a surplus of Battle 34 enhancements.

(In case you are wondering, my recommendation is still 0 crit rating because that is what I can mathematically prove. I just don't follow my own advice )

Incidentally, if someone thinks they have a parse that proves that X crit rating is superior to Y crit rating post the parses and I will refute it. There are simply too many variables in a parse to isolate X vs. Y crit rating hence the value of spreadsheet math.

...Oofalong, who hasn't been able to properly model Burning Focus...

I have modeled Bloodlust/Burning Focus (and done a good job of it I think). I have not modeled Pulverize/Mind Seer, which potentially means more uses of Rupture/Cauterize. To estimate this, I looked at Gorband's parses to see how many times he used Rupture and just plugged in that number.

@ Macedonicus - based on your rotation, modeling this proc is unnecessary as you only use Annihilate/Merciless Slash to proc Rupture/Cauterize. Thus, you always have a 66% chance so we can assume you'll get 2/3 the # of Annihilate/Merciless Slash uses.

...some models allowed for a little crit because at that point the DR on power becomes less rewarding...

The relationship between Power and Bonus Damage and thus DPS is linear. In other words, there is no diminishing marginal rate of return (DR) on Power.

I am not sure I would call Gorband a theorycrafter. He is obviously a phenomenal player, and used to be the standard for this spec. He was very thorough in his testing and used this to arrive at his recommendations. In other words, he dabbled in reality not theory. I only wish I could play the spec as well and, more importantly, as consistently as him. (Incidentally, Macedonicus is now the standard for the spec so it is worth listening to him/her.)

 

Ino on the other hand I would characterize as a theorycrafter. Unfortunately, I have concerns about his Annihilation/Watchman models.

I saw an respectable amount of Math behind Gorband's conclusions with Crit v Power. And I was doing more of a general" these are the typical voices people listen to for Watchman".

Someone in Elementary School called me an "It" instead of Boy or Girl. He seemed pretty smart so I go with that. (it is Him btw)

Never said Ino was right. I just said he was one of the names.

I wouldn't say I disagree, I would say my model disagrees

We all know theorycrafters aren't people. You are machines created to tell us how to Tank, DPS, or Heal.

I have modeled Bloodlust/Burning Focus (and done a good job of it I think). I have not modeled Pulverize/Mind Seer, which potentially means more uses of Rupture/Cauterize. To estimate this, I looked at Gorband's parses to see how many times he used Rupture and just plugged in that number.

 

@ Macedonicus - based on your rotation, modeling this proc is unnecessary as you only use Annihilate/Merciless Slash to proc Rupture/Cauterize. Thus, you always have a 66% chance so we can assume you'll get 2/3 the # of Annihilate/Merciless Slash uses.

Ah, I was operating on incorrect or outdated information. My apologies.

I definitely wouldn't say that. Two consecutive Mind Seer failures has Cauterize naturally come off CD, which grants an extra use of Rupture outside of the Pulverize proc system. There is also the factor of Mind Seer proccing from Slash after a failed proc from Merciless. If this happened two or 3 GCD's after, I don't delay Annihilate and use procced Rupture after it (Annihilate can't proc due to the lockout but that is irrelevant since I already have a Cauterize for its spot). If it happened right after a Merciless I would just use Cauterize and save Merciless for a GCD. For me to have a parse when I use Cauterize 2/3 as much as Merciless would be a extraordinarily unlucky parse.