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RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - pogues - 11-20-2011 01:54 PM
Beta Weekend next weekend so we should get some answers. Anyone in the last beta gets to keep their previously made characters so we should see some higher levels.
It seems unlikely that there is no need to cap offhand, otherwise it does seem like a really wonky mechanic for dual wield. It would almost be just an aesthetic difference instead of a mechanic.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Kaedis - 11-20-2011 04:28 PM
Eh, WoW had a similar mechanic. Since the dual-wield penalty only affected auto-attacks (though both main-hand and off-hand there), capping through the penalty was often not a priority. The only class I recall consistently reaching for the dual-wield cap was fury warriors, and even they weren't 100% about it on every patch. I really wouldn't be surprised if we don't end up aiming for the off-hand cap, though I will be interested to see how the conversion to ArP interacts with that. If ArP scales like it did in WoW, and if we start getting an ArP conversion as soon as we cap mainhand, in addition to boosting off-hand hit chance, I could see accuracy remaining our best stat pretty easily.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Freehugs - 11-24-2011 04:59 PM
This new patch has some interesting changes. Annihilation has lost a lot of Rage savings (although Rupture is now 2 Rage) and generation and unlike the other two builds gets none back from Fury. However what Anni does get is the best Fury generation in any build. I'm not sure what the base amount of Fury generated from using a Rage spending attack is, but assuming the minimum 1, Short Fuse's buff to 3 is very significant.
So that makes Anni very versatile, you have Fury to blow on a speed buff, survival buff, DPS buff, auto-crit DoT's with heal, or switch to Shii-Cho form and get the two-target free Vicious Slashes.
I beta tested on alterswtor reported that using Berserk in Juyo form generates a lot of health from the critical DoT's on top of the health it would otherwise give you, which he found to be very effective for killing tough opponents. Short Fuse and Defensive Forms together give a cycle time on Berserk as short as 10-15 seconds when soloing.
Also, if the amount of Fury generated from using a Rage spending attacks is at least 2 (boosted to 4 by Short Fuse) the two-target free Vicious Slashes may be so good as to create a kind of sub-build for Annihilation: Pop Berserk in Shii-Cho, get 6 free VS's each on two targets, and that's built your Fury back up to 24 already. Extra Fury from killing opponents and getting hit should allow almost continuous use of Berserk and free VS's, which would result in two-target DPS well above standard. Of course that's just specualtion, hopefully we can test these mechanics on the weekend.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Primalthirst - 11-27-2011 02:08 PM
Amazing work guys, very helpful.
Does anyone else feel that chaining Bloodthirst for maximum uptime is going to be a key component of Marauders effectiveness, regardless of spec?
+15% raidwide damage and healing output seems like it will be of paramount importance.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Freehugs - 11-27-2011 02:30 PM
Bloodthirst has a 5 minute cooldown so you can't exactly chain it.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Primalthirst - 11-27-2011 05:13 PM
(11-27-2011 02:30 PM)Freehugs Wrote: Bloodthirst has a 5 minute cooldown so you can't exactly chain it.Thanks for that, no-one on numerous official threads responded to my questions about it.
I was hoping that was the case because otherwise it was going to make 2+ Marauders compulsory for every raid and would be drastically overpowered.
EDIT: Does it have a 5 minute cd or does it place a 5 minute debuff on allies? Because the former limits the ability to use it on brezzed teammates.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Kaedis - 11-27-2011 07:01 PM
As far as I can tell, 5 minute CD, which means stacking Marauders is still beneficial. Problematic.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Primalthirst - 11-27-2011 08:11 PM
They'd have to implement some sort of raid-wide debuff or shared cooldown because otherwise the best tank and spank raid comp is going to be tanks + healers + as many marauders as you can get.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Freehugs - 11-28-2011 12:55 PM
I think you guys are overestimating the power of this ability. The description says "you and your party" so it's probably effecting at most 4 people. 15% damage for 15 seconds every 5 minutes is a 0.75% damage and healing increase for a group of 4, or about a 3% increase in effectiveness for a Marauder if you count all of it as having come from him.
Even if it effected 16 people that's a 12% increase for the Marauder, good but not game breaking.
It's more likely to be a problem if the Marauder already has a lead on everyone else in terms of damage output, and if melee isn't at a disadvantage in the fights....and it's too early to say if that will be the case.
RE: Annihilation Discipline abilities and rotation discussion - Kaedis - 11-28-2011 01:38 PM
Uh, comparing burst abilities by overall dps increase is a pretty terrible way evaluating them. Heroism/Bloodlust is only a 2% dps increase for the raid (30% haste, 30 seconds out of every 600), and that's assuming a 30% increase in haste equates exactly to a 30% increase in raid dps (highly unlikely, given melee dps mechanics), but that didn't stop top and even mid-level guilds from stacking the crap out of shamans before they added the debuff mechanic.
Also, consider that in a 16 person raid, if you assume 3 tanks and 5 healers (approximately the same ratios needed for progression raids in WoW historically), that leaves 8 dps. If it applies to the entire raid, it'd add more damage for the duration than adding a 9th dps to the group would, assuming equal dps. If it only applies to a single group, it's still more than half of an additional dps for the duration, a significant effect during a burst phase on a boss. Consider how many boss fights in previous MMO's have involved at least one burn mechanic, and you start to understand how this is a problem.
Also, if it's group only, that makes it even worse, as you'd need a minimum of 1 marauder per dps group (2 total) for just one use. They'd be stacked like shamans were in Sunwell for their totem buffs. Consider that if you have 2 dps groups of 4 Marauders each, then your uptime goes from 5% to either 20% or 40%, depending on whether it's group only or raid wide. A 20-40% uptime on a 15% damage increase is massive.