Let's review the current state of our beloved class:

Two viable top tier DPS specs for PvE - Annihilation/Watchman and Carnage/Combat

Two viable top tier DPS specs for PvP - Carnage/Combat and Rage/Focus

In 2.0 there were some changes to each spec. Still, we remain the top melee DPS class out there, and our defensive CDs are among the best in the game.

We aren't too bad, right?

carnage rotation can get messed up if a slaughter proc happens at an unfortunate time, but overall quite good.

Quite true and overall for newer players the entire carnage rotation is rather complex but honestly one is a RNG issue and the other can be solved by just playing a different spec. I think we as a class are quite well off compared to some others at the moment.

Annihilation is awful for PVP. The annihilate buff doesn't last long enough, and is way too easy to lose in the middle of a battle. The spec's very nice feature which made it so powerful prior to patch 1.5 was very strong self-healing, and powerful dots. Patch 1.5 nerfed annihilation's self-healing, and patch 2.0 nerfed annihilation's bleed damage (-9% damage, +3% crit chance).

As of patch 2.2, rage is the only spec which actually works well for PVP. Carnage is still valuable for huttball, but for all other WZs, rage is easily the best spec. A lot of marauders will disagree with me about this, but I honestly don't care. I use rage for ranked and easily blow carnage spec players out of the water. Carnage is a gimmicky spec that doesn't work in ranked other than for huttball. Skilled players will stun/knockback a person when he/she has the gore buff, and when gore isn't online, rage does more single target DPS than carnage.

Annihilation has been in need of massive buffs for a while, and other than 1 or 2 marauders that post on the forums, most people agree that annihilation is awful for PVP.

The Watchmen has been running with only 1 marauder (me) for the past week, and we've been doing well at ranked. I use rage for all WZs except for huttball, which I spec carnage for (predation speed buff is primary reason).

Annihilation is awful for PVP. The annihilate buff doesn't last long enough, and is way too easy to lose in the middle of a battle. The spec's very nice feature which made it so powerful prior to patch 1.5 was very strong self-healing, and powerful dots. Patch 1.5 nerfed annihilation's self-healing, and patch 2.0 nerfed annihilation's bleed damage (-9% damage, +3% crit chance).

 

Annihilation has been in need of massive buffs for a while, and other than 1 or 2 marauders that post on the forums, most people agree that annihilation is awful for PVP.

I tend to agree with this, but hasn't it always been awful for PvP? Is it necessary for every spec to be viable in every situation? Personally, I feel like we already have more choice that most, if not all, other ACs for PvP or PvE builds.

As of patch 2.2, rage is the only spec which actually works well for PVP. Carnage is still valuable for huttball, but for all other WZs, rage is easily the best spec. A lot of marauders will disagree with me about this, but I honestly don't care. I use rage for ranked and easily blow carnage spec players out of the water. Carnage is a gimmicky spec that doesn't work in ranked other than for huttball. Skilled players will stun/knockback a person when he/she has the gore buff, and when gore isn't online, rage does more single target DPS than carnage.

When you say "best", do you mean most damage? Obviously, Rage/Focus does a great job of massive damage output. From a focused-fire approach, I always felt like Carnage/Combat was the best. Isn't there a need for both tactics - widespread mayhem as well as focused burst?

Honestly dude? You know what the class needs?

Education of its players.

There are a lot of people who just don't know the class. Some who think they know, but really don't. And some that fall in between. The people who don't know/play well/understand carnage/combat in PvE or PvP is not good for new players to the class. Not to mention the people who think "Big Damage = I did awesome" in PvP with Watchman, not realizing they truly didn't affect the field well.

I always want to say "We need more CCs!" but honestly were fine when balanced against other classes The only thing I can say is Obfuscate/Pacify being ranged to make sniper fights a bit more balanced - but thats about all I can honestly think of without it becoming a "me" posting.

I'd say fix the leap issue, but thats been in the bug forum, acknowledged by the CM, and yet still isn't in the list of bugs, so that may be a wasted 1 of 3 slots.

Knight/Warrior may be the only truly balanced classes in this game. BW may need to bring the other classes into a similar balance, or nerf the hell out of the OP classes and break Knights/Warriors a bit so they all suck on a level with the other classes.

I am happy this thread was opened and I would like to share some of my experience. The biggest problem with the class is false GCD and the misfiring of abilities. As a watchman progression group player, I face moments where my sentinel fails zealous strike, fails masterstrike, merciless slash and even slash. This is a major issue as it completely messes up the priority list leading to a dps loss of over 200 by missing one timer.

In addition, the accuracy requirements and the amount of misses from the offhand, needs to be changed, in my opinion. It is not nice in a 10 minute fight to see 8-9% overall miss stats because of the offhand. I have 100.36 accuracy on melee so I am not running under 100. Could there be a re-evaluation of the offhand miss and hit ratio?

I am happy this thread was opened and I would like to share some of my experience. The biggest problem with the class is false GCD and the misfiring of abilities. As a watchman progression group player, I face moments where my sentinel fails zealous strike, fails masterstrike, merciless slash and even slash. This is a major issue as it completely messes up the priority list leading to a dps loss of over 200 by missing one timer.

While I agree this is an issue, I don't believe it is specific to our class, right? Although since we have some of the highest click-per-minute, we are hindered more by it than others perhaps.

In addition, the accuracy requirements and the amount of misses from the offhand, needs to be changed, in my opinion. It is not nice in a 10 minute fight to see 8-9% overall miss stats because of the offhand. I have 100.36 accuracy on melee so I am not running under 100. Could there be a re-evaluation of the offhand miss and hit ratio?

Lower effectiveness of OH is a game-wide mechanic. Right now, the only OH classes are Gunslinger, Mercenary and Marauder/Sentinel. Among these classes, we actually get the best boost to OH via Dual Wield Mastery - increased damage by up to 36%. Generally speaking our OH accounts for ~5% of our damage for Annihilation/Watchman and Carnage/Combat and less for Rage/Focus. If our OH accuracy was closer to 100%/110% we could expect an overall increase in damage of 1-2%. This could certainly be a mechanism to adjust.

Personally, if damage output is under-performing I would rather see other changes.

Annihilation is awful for PVP. The annihilate buff doesn't last long enough, and is way too easy to lose in the middle of a battle. The spec's very nice feature which made it so powerful prior to patch 1.5 was very strong self-healing, and powerful dots. Patch 1.5 nerfed annihilation's self-healing, and patch 2.0 nerfed annihilation's bleed damage (-9% damage, +3% crit chance).

 

As of patch 2.2, rage is the only spec which actually works well for PVP. Carnage is still valuable for huttball, but for all other WZs, rage is easily the best spec. A lot of marauders will disagree with me about this, but I honestly don't care. I use rage for ranked and easily blow carnage spec players out of the water. Carnage is a gimmicky spec that doesn't work in ranked other than for huttball. Skilled players will stun/knockback a person when he/she has the gore buff, and when gore isn't online, rage does more single target DPS than carnage.

 

Annihilation has been in need of massive buffs for a while, and other than 1 or 2 marauders that post on the forums, most people agree that annihilation is awful for PVP.

 

The Watchmen has been running with only 1 marauder (me) for the past week, and we've been doing well at ranked. I use rage for all WZs except for huttball, which I spec carnage for (predation speed buff is primary reason).

I agree with you 100%. I really hope they work on annihilation and carnage, I am having a lot of fun with annihilation pvp even though it is not the most effective spec in the world.

I think this is a sentiment that some of my fellow Annihilation/Watchman can agree on. There is a problem with our spec that manifest itself more or less more in PvP than PvE (although still present). Which is the sustainability of our DPS, the stacks of annihilate takes a long time to achieve and are easily lost and shutdown (either by enemy player or by fight mechanics).

Is it necessary for every spec to be viable in every situation?

Of course not, but "fixing" annihilation doesn't have to be a part of a huge re-balancing, nor must be complex. A simple increase in the duration of the stacks of annihilation by 2~3 GCD will solve this. This will help to elevate a lot of the concerns the spec have both in PvP mainly and in PvE (but as I hinted this is not a major issue for PvE). This will not impact balance, nothing will change, as our DPS will not be increased but we will just be better in maintaining it.

I have seen a lot of people suggesting dot protection for the spec as a solution for PvP, the problem with that road is that it changes a lot of things about 1v1 mechanics (and I don't want to go there).

The issue I see with the proposed solution of increasing the duration of annihilator is that given that, as far as I have seen and experienced, in a perfect fight with no movement or target switching necessary Annihilation will out perform Carnage. I apologize if this is something others disagree with this sentiment. Also keep in mind I am referring to PvE and not PvP. This could be solves however by tying this increased duration to an otherwise PvP-only talent like Cloak of Annihilation or Seeping wound. This way it prevents Annihilation from becoming increasingly better than Carnage for PvE while giving some buffs to PvP Annihilation. Thoughts?

Personally I would say if they want to fix the annihilator buff they should make you only lose one stack (instead of every stack) when the buff's duration runs out. This means that if you have 4 stacks you would go back down to 3 when the 15 seconds is over. from 3 stacks you would go to 2, 2 to 1, and 1 to 0. This way it would not be such a massive damage loss if you can't use annihilate due to a boss mechanic (or some other reason). In PvP I don't see this change making a huge difference. It would certainly help to keep stacks up so that you do not lose them so much.

As of patch 2.2, rage is the only spec which actually works well for PVP. Carnage is still valuable for huttball, but for all other WZs, rage is easily the best spec. A lot of marauders will disagree with me about this, but I honestly don't care. I use rage for ranked and easily blow carnage spec players out of the water. Carnage is a gimmicky spec that doesn't work in ranked other than for huttball. Skilled players will stun/knockback a person when he/she has the gore buff, and when gore isn't online, rage does more single target DPS than carnage.

I know that you don't care (seeing as you said that ) but I disagree. The speed buff is great in every warzone (obviously huttball more so than the others) but it still is quite useful for every warzone. It also has much better single target burst which is better for killing people. Now yes it is quite difficult to play due to harder resource management but personally I have never had any problems with it (takes a while to get used to but once you do it's fine.) It is quite easy to shut down, but I personally never see myself getting shut down every time (in fact more often than not I'm getting everything off within a gore). If they blow ccs on you then they can't use it on anyone else which puts your team at a nice advantage.

To each his own I suppose, but I wouldn't count out carnage by any means. The spec just take a lot of skill to play which is probably why it gets so much hate. Rage is much easier so more people play it.

I know that you don't care (seeing as you said that ) but I disagree. The speed buff is great in every warzone (obviously huttball more so than the others) but it still is quite useful for every warzone. It also has much better single target burst which is better for killing people. Now yes it is quite difficult to play due to harder resource management but personally I have never had any problems with it (takes a while to get used to but once you do it's fine.) It is quite easy to shut down, but I personally never see myself getting shut down every time (in fact more often than not I'm getting everything off within a gore). If they blow ccs on you then they can't use it on anyone else which puts your team at a nice advantage.

 

To each his own I suppose, but I wouldn't count out carnage by any means. The spec just take a lot of skill to play which is probably why it gets so much hate. Rage is much easier so more people play it.

Play ranked on Pot5 for a warzone or two, and you will probably see what I was talking about regarding carnage. A strong player can negate a lot of carnages damage by watching for gore.

Play ranked on Pot5 for a warzone or two, and you will probably see what I was talking about regarding carnage. A strong player can negate a lot of carnages damage by watching for gore.

This is very true. I can usually tell how good the player I'm trying to burn is based on how long into gore-ravage I can get before they do something to try and stop me. A good player will see the gore animation and stun me or knock me back, a decent player will let me get a few ticks in while trying to find a good way to stop me and a baddie will let me get the whole gore-ravage-scream in and subsequently die. Still, I prefer carnage over Rage simply beacuse Mara rage compared to Jugg Rage just feels slow. On my Jugg I can usually always have 3 stacks of Shockwave up by the time my Smash comes up but on my Mara after the first two or three (Frenzy-Beserk, Force Crush, and sometimes I can Beserk for the 3rd one) I'm stuck waiting on a CD so that I can smash. Maybe its just me, I don't claim to be an amazing smasher but I prefer Carnage since you still have legitimate damage in between gore windows.

The biggest issue that I have with Carnage/Combat is that you are severely limited by RNG. In PVP you just don't have that on-tap burst that was available pre 2.0. If you get a nice Slaughter proc then things are good, otherwise at best you will get a Ravage + Force Scream under Gore and then a lot of chasing people as you wait for the Slaughter proc. However, I really like the complexity of the new Carnage rotation, it really makes you feel involved and whenever you feel like everything is smooth sailing RNG is there to destroy your hopes and dreams. So I'm not entirely sure on how to fix the lack of on-demand burst, maybe attach a higher chance of proccing Slaughter when Beserk is up?

Beserk at the moment is a bit underwhelming, the alacrity is nice but I would like to see it become a semi pre 2.0 Beserk where it gave you some rage back, because Carnage is quite rage starved at the moment.

As of patch 2.2, rage is the only spec which actually works well for PVP. Carnage is still valuable for huttball, but for all other WZs, rage is easily the best spec. A lot of marauders will disagree with me about this, but I honestly don't care. I use rage for ranked and easily blow carnage spec players out of the water. Carnage is a gimmicky spec that doesn't work in ranked other than for huttball. Skilled players will stun/knockback a person when he/she has the gore buff, and when gore isn't online, rage does more single target DPS than carnage.

No. Just...no.

Rage will top damage charts, sure. After all, how hard is it to master the easiest rotation in the game that also happens to have the largest non-channeled AoE? A 10 year old could master Rage. The damage is substantial, don't get me wrong. But a lot of that is fluff damage that doesn't mean anything unless you're running side by side with another Rage player.

The biggest problem with Carnage is that most people play it completely wrong. It's not a front lines face tank spec. You need to pick your targets when they're occupied with someone else, leap in, destroy, then get out. Rage is a one trick pony, always has been. It's easy to spot a mile away and even easier to counter. Carnage is the highest single target DPS in the game, so I'm not sure where you're pulling your numbers from. Out of your *** most likely.

The biggest issue that I have with Carnage/Combat is that you are severely limited by RNG. In PVP you just don't have that on-tap burst that was available pre 2.0. If you get a nice Slaughter proc then things are good, otherwise at best you will get a Ravage + Force Scream under Gore and then a lot of chasing people as you wait for the Slaughter proc. However, I really like the complexity of the new Carnage rotation, it really makes you feel involved and whenever you feel like everything is smooth sailing RNG is there to destroy your hopes and dreams. So I'm not entirely sure on how to fix the lack of on-demand burst, maybe attach a higher chance of proccing Slaughter when Beserk is up?

 

Beserk at the moment is a bit underwhelming, the alacrity is nice but I would like to see it become a semi pre 2.0 Beserk where it gave you some rage back, because Carnage is quite rage starved at the moment.

Well, if I am in a pre-made I typically do get assistance usually either form a ranged or a warrior who can chain choke with me. Back on topic though:

Talking about Rage Vs Carnage has gotten me thinking about how much I dislike Rage on my Mara yet love it on my Jugg. The difference is only the way in which you generate Shockwave outside of Force Crush and its interesting. Through talents a Rage Juggs Enrage gets down to 27 second CD. Since Smash is for both a base CD of 12 seconds Force Crush is an 18 second CD, and we obviously want to Smash in conjunction with Shockwave as often as possible the only other factor is Enrage/Berserk. Sadly, I don't have an on-dummy Rage parse handy but I did do an Annihilation one this morning. Over a 436 second encounter I hit beserk on average every 27.3 seconds which matches up nicely in theory with the base 27 second cooldown on Enrage for Juggs, except...it doesn't. Thats in Annihilation (which has fairly good rage generation) hitting a dummy constantly for 436 seconds. In a Warzone you'll never get that kind of Fury-generation which means we're stuck waiting on either building enough Fury (and hoping we don't die since it doesn't carry through) or waiting on Frenzy which is a base 3 minute CD. That's an insane difference and it means that as a Marauder your only real way of generating Shockwave is via Force Crush which doesn't seem so bad since it is a 18 second CD...except unlike Berserk or Enrage you actually build a stack of Shockwave per tick so its actually closer to 21 seconds between 3x Shockwave Smashes as a Marauder vs a Jugg who can have 3x Shockwave for nearly every Smash. That seems like it could be a balance issue. It could just be me though...thoughts?

EDIT:

I did some (very basic) math to see if I could find some sort of value on the difference between Jugg Rage and Mara Rage. I apologize for not being a theory-crafting god who can quote and use super complex equations, instead I used some assumptions and numbers I remember from my Mara and Jugg:

Assumptions:

1) A WZ is 20 minutes long, however on average you are only engaged in combat for 75% of that (for a total of 900 seconds)

2) For a Mara, the number of times a Berserk will contribute Shockwave stacks is negligible.

3) For a Jugg, it is possible to rotate Enrage and Force Crush to ensure that Smash is used in conjunction with a 3 stack of Shockwave 100% of the time.

4) The average Shockwave Buffed Smash hits for 8,000 damage on a single target.

5) The average non-Buffed Smash hits for 3,500 damage on a single target.

6) Smash is used on its base cooldown (12 seconds) during the 900 seconds of combat.

7) Smash is used only on a single target.

So in a 900 second fight both a Jugg and Marauder would use Smash 72 times. That means a Jugg will have a total Smash damage output of 576,000 (or 640 DPS from Smash) whereas the Mara will have 42 Buffed Smashes for a total of 336,000 damage and 33 unbuffed Smashes for a total of 113500 damage. The Maras total Smash output then would be 449,500 (or 499.4 DPS from Smash). Thats a difference of 126,500 damage from Smash (or 140.6 DPS from Smash) lost over the course of the WZ.

Well, if I am in a pre-made I typically do get assistance usually either form a ranged or a warrior who can chain choke with me. Back on topic though:

 

Talking about Rage Vs Carnage has gotten me thinking about how much I dislike Rage on my Mara yet love it on my Jugg. The difference is only the way in which you generate Shockwave outside of Force Crush and its interesting. Through talents a Rage Juggs Enrage gets down to 27 second CD. Since Smash is for both a base CD of 12 seconds Force Crush is an 18 second CD, and we obviously want to Smash in conjunction with Shockwave as often as possible the only other factor is Enrage/Berserk. Sadly, I don't have an on-dummy Rage parse handy but I did do an Annihilation one this morning. Over a 436 second encounter I hit beserk on average every 27.3 seconds which matches up nicely in theory with the base 27 second cooldown on Enrage for Juggs, except...it doesn't. Thats in Annihilation (which has fairly good rage generation) hitting a dummy constantly for 436 seconds. In a Warzone you'll never get that kind of Fury-generation which means we're stuck waiting on either building enough Fury (and hoping we don't die since it doesn't carry through) or waiting on Frenzy which is a base 3 minute CD. That's an insane difference and it means that as a Marauder your only real way of generating Shockwave is via Force Crush which doesn't seem so bad since it is a 18 second CD...except unlike Berserk or Enrage you actually build a stack of Shockwave per tick so its actually closer to 21 seconds between 3x Shockwave Smashes as a Marauder vs a Jugg who can have 3x Shockwave for nearly every Smash. That seems like it could be a balance issue. It could just be me though...thoughts?

 

EDIT:

I did some (very basic) math to see if I could find some sort of value on the difference between Jugg Rage and Mara Rage. I apologize for not being a theory-crafting god who can quote and use super complex equations, instead I used some assumptions and numbers I remember from my Mara and Jugg:

 

Assumptions:

1) A WZ is 20 minutes long, however on average you are only engaged in combat for 75% of that (for a total of 900 seconds)

2) For a Mara, the number of times a Berserk will contribute Shockwave stacks is negligible.

3) For a Jugg, it is possible to rotate Enrage and Force Crush to ensure that Smash is used in conjunction with a 3 stack of Shockwave 100% of the time.

4) The average Shockwave Buffed Smash hits for 8,000 damage on a single target.

5) The average non-Buffed Smash hits for 3,500 damage on a single target.

6) Smash is used on its base cooldown (12 seconds) during the 900 seconds of combat.

7) Smash is used only on a single target.

 

So in a 900 second fight both a Jugg and Marauder would use Smash 72 times. That means a Jugg will have a total Smash damage output of 576,000 (or 640 DPS from Smash) whereas the Mara will have 42 Buffed Smashes for a total of 336,000 damage and 33 unbuffed Smashes for a total of 113500 damage. The Maras total Smash output then would be 449,500 (or 499.4 DPS from Smash). Thats a difference of 126,500 damage from Smash (or 140.6 DPS from Smash) lost over the course of the WZ.

This sounds like a bit of an l2p issue to me. I main a marauder / sentinel, and I never have any problems getting a full powered smash off every 9 - 10 seconds. This is the build I run with for rage, and the defensive forms is quite a big help when it comes to building up the amount of fury you need to use berserk. When testing rotations on a dummy, this talent does not help you because you are taking no damage. While in a big fight in pvp, you will probably be taking a little bit of damage almost all the time so you should be generating about 6 fury every gcd (obviously a little less because you won't be taking damage every time and sometimes you will use abilities that do not generate fury such as ravage, force charge, etc. but quite often you can get 6 fury per gcd). Which means about 5 gcds and you will have 30 stacks of fury. I have had it happen before where I got in 2 berserks before force crush came off cd.

The big difference that I see between marauder and juggernaut smash specs is that a marauder will have more survivability (they get 30% aoe damage reduction, cloak of pain, force camo, etc.) but a juggernaut will have a harder hitting smash (they get plus 6% main stat and 6% force bonus damage). Juggs also get the ability to go tank and use taunts which is quite good.

The biggest issue that I have with Carnage/Combat is that you are severely limited by RNG. In PVP you just don't have that on-tap burst that was available pre 2.0. If you get a nice Slaughter proc then things are good, otherwise at best you will get a Ravage + Force Scream under Gore and then a lot of chasing people as you wait for the Slaughter proc. However, I really like the complexity of the new Carnage rotation, it really makes you feel involved and whenever you feel like everything is smooth sailing RNG is there to destroy your hopes and dreams. So I'm not entirely sure on how to fix the lack of on-demand burst, maybe attach a higher chance of proccing Slaughter when Beserk is up?

 

Beserk at the moment is a bit underwhelming, the alacrity is nice but I would like to see it become a semi pre 2.0 Beserk where it gave you some rage back, because Carnage is quite rage starved at the moment.

Don't forget that slaughter only procs every 20 seconds. Personally, I think the chance for it to proc is fine (nearly a 50% chance per massacre and a 25% chance if you have the buff from massacre on). Only once in a blue moon will I ever have any problems getting it to proc. Execute could maybe use a slight buff in its proc chance (30% per massacre and 15% per attack attack with the massacre buff on is kinda low) but I don't think its too hard to get that buff up.

Personally I think a big problem currently is that slaughter can proc while gore is off cd. Having gore reset when it isn't on cd can be quite a bit loss of damage for carnage. If they changed it so that slaugher can only proc when gore is on cd, I think it would be a nice buff. A lot of people think that managing rage is hard with this spec (which I agree, it is, but I don't find it to be a problem any more) so giving us back the 1 rage per 6 seconds would be nice, or having us gain one rage every time we use a stack of berserk would be nice as well.

This sounds like a bit of an l2p issue to me. I main a marauder / sentinel, and I never have any problems getting a full powered smash off every 9 - 10 seconds. This is the build I run with for rage, and the defensive forms is quite a big help when it comes to building up the amount of fury you need to use berserk. When testing rotations on a dummy, this talent does not help you because you are taking no damage. While in a big fight in pvp, you will probably be taking a little bit of damage almost all the time so you should be generating about 6 fury every gcd (obviously a little less because you won't be taking damage every time and sometimes you will use abilities that do not generate fury such as ravage, force charge, etc. but quite often you can get 6 fury per gcd). Which means about 5 gcds and you will have 30 stacks of fury. I have had it happen before where I got in 2 berserks before force crush came off cd.

 

The big difference that I see between marauder and juggernaut smash specs is that a marauder will have more survivability (they get 30% aoe damage reduction, cloak of pain, force camo, etc.) but a juggernaut will have a harder hitting smash (they get plus 6% main stat and 6% force bonus damage). Juggs also get the ability to go tank and use taunts which is quite good.

You made several good points including that I do not play Rage very often at all so there is a big chance I was simply playing it wrong. I'll have to give your build a try.

The only spec that needs any adjustment so far is Annihilation, at least pertaining to PvP. Carnage is easily disrupted and disgruntled. Annihilation has an awful ramp up time that just doesn't work well in this game's style of warzones and co-ordinated stun fests. But even aside the ramp up time, classes like: Snipers, Powertechs, Mercenaries, Operatives and Sorcerer Healers all received a giant mobility buff with 2.0 which hurt Annihilation Marauder. And lastly: Rage Spec. Rage is simplistic, effective and fine where it's at.

TL;DR: I believe that Annihilation just needs to scrap the idea of Annihilator stacks altogether and give Annihilate a static CD of 9 seconds. That's roughly the CD of a properly set-up Smash in Rage spec as well as a Force Scream in Carnage.

TL;DR: I believe that Annihilation just needs to scrap the idea of Annihilator stacks altogether and give Annihilate a static CD of 9 seconds.

That in turn would be a nerf for PvE (at least for a majority of the fights), where if anything Annihilation needs a buff compared to Carnage.

I almost exclusively pvp so I can only comment from that perspective but I feel like Annihilation is underperforming due to the ease of cleansing it's dots and the difficulty of ever getting any stacks of annihilator. Otherwise it would be a great PVP spec with it's Internal / elemental resistance, minor self heals and short cooldown interrupt ability.

Carnage is my favorite spec due to the cool animations, predation, and the feeling of speed that it conveys but it is very easy to shut down by pretty much any form of cc or ballistics during the gore window. The spec also feels rage starved, the alacrity boost from berserk ( while fun ) was much more useful when it reduced the cost of massacre instead of speeding it up. There are some unreliability issues...the RNG nature of the slaughter and execute procs will occasionally screw you. I dislike the proc mechanics because it sucks to have to watch for the execute / slaughter icon when I would rather be watching the action. The game gives a nice visual indication of when 30 stacks of fury have been built, perhaps something like this would make the spec more enjoyable. In general I feel like the spec is balanced, if a little clunky for the reasons above.

Rage is the go-to spec for pvp..it is reliable and very effective at dumping massive amounts of damage on the other team about every nine to twelve seconds, it's just not very fun for me to play. I also can't help but be jealous of the numbers it puts up on the scoreboard and frustrated that it out performs the other (vastly more enjoyable) specs. Key to the effectiveness of this spec is a great deal of it's damage comes from just one ability which is instant cast, doesn't wait for an animation, untargeted, AOE and on a very short cooldown. A one trick pony to a degree, but since they buffed the other abilities in the spec it is hard to completely shut down, even vicious slash hits for pretty decent damage in this spec. If you get knocked back on your smash (hard to do now) you can still force scream for free as a consolation prize and follow up with obliterate (even while rooted) even against an enemy in cover.

TLDR

Annihilation and carnage are too easy to shut down in pvp.

Annihilation's bleeds are easily cleansed and building annihilator stacks is nearly impossible.

CC during carnage's gore window neuters the spec, also rage management can be difficult, procs are not easily seen from visual cues, and RNG is unpredictable.