Annihilation | Watchmen Discussion

[therealrev]

(04-30-2012 12:12 AM)imasent Wrote:  

(04-25-2012 07:38 AM)therealrev Wrote:  I'm getting 1500-1600 on the ops dummy. Raid buffed, no stims or adrenals or activated relics. I have several pieces of augmented gear though.

Str: 1704 (raid buffed)
Power: 561
Damage: 799-952
Secondary Damage: 202-303
Bonus Damage: 493.4
Accuracy: 98.18%
Crit (w/buff): 30.3%
Surge: ~76.53%

I was using 3 +str 2 +pwr augments, switched to 4 +pwr and one +acc, haven't noticed too much of a difference in DPS. Any thoughts?

Hi, i'm new here so excuse me if this sounds a bit stupid.

I am wondering what parser you are using? A friend and myself, both watchman sentinels, in full rakata gear were testing our dps on the Operations Dummy and we were both around 600-700dps, with self buff only and no Inspiration used.

My stats are very similar to yours, except for my power. I don't know how you have 561 power, i only have 260? Where exactly do you get the 561 from? Hover over bonus damage and it's under Power, yes?


My stats for reference;

Str: 1697 (self buffed)
Power: 260
Damage: 725-878
Secondary Damage: 202-303
Bonus Damage: 419.2
Accuracy: 100.58%
Crit (no buff): 30.37%
Surge: 72.31%


I am using 3 +str/end augments and have an orange belt with mods rather than the rakata/BH/campaign belt.

Couple things:
1. Your crit is too high, optimal is around 28-30% w/Gunslinger buff. I have a buff from my scoundrel alt so the numbers I would give without are realistically inaccurate, but if you'd like I can try it out.

2. My top end damage now is over 1000, and my bonus damage is higher than previously listed.

3. My accuracy is at 98% as I have seen a better difference stacking power augments than stacking accuracy augments to get to 100%.

That being said, I think if you're getting 600-700 dps there is something wrong with your rotation. I'll post my exact stats and rotation tomorrow (I'll try to get up a link on AskMrRobot to show you my exact gear), as well as a log from the combat dummy if I can get to it.

In the meantime if you want to check out my stats on a FB/SC HM kill, here's a link:
http://www.fryingtime.com/?filename=comb..._14_387000
Same upload, different parser:
http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/8b...=0,f=7,b=1

That was about a week ago so I had about ~2-3 pieces less gear than I do now. I find it highly improbable that any sentinel/marauder DPS is doing 1600 average on FB/SC HM as some claim to be (at least I have yet to see any parser evidence that this is the case), but we can definitely do >1600 on the dummy or in a SM op.

PS. Yes, I get the power from hovering over bonus damage

[AssimilateThis]

Could someone please comment on what special attacks acc I should be aiming towards for Anni 1.2 PvP?

I've heard mixed views: anywhere from 105-110...

Thank you

[Dreary]

What exactly were the DR changes?

I am curious as to keep stacking power? Or is strength going to be better? This is specifically for augments mind you... I am currently using power augs, but I am thinking about STR.. Using STR augs (increased crit%) would also allow me to change some STR mods/enhancements to power.. I am looking for opinions before I waste millions of credits swapping.

---

600 DPS? Your rotation has to be very very screwed up bud. Hmmm..

---

I had a brain fart..

Power, since it is going to effect my berserk heals as well.

Disregard the above post.

[Dreary]

Wait a sec, the question remains since our heals do 2% of max health to our selves and 1% to party when berserk is up -- Power does not effect our health? At least thats what is suggested when reading the tool tip.. Why have I not noticed this before? Sigh.

Im all sorts of flustered now

[sameria]

I am very curious about this too. At what point should we increase Power instead of Strength?

[Coaltrain]

(05-01-2012 06:45 AM)Spren Wrote:  

(05-01-2012 03:49 AM)defendi Wrote:  What rotation/priority are you using for attacks? I get about 960 on the ops dummy but if I was just toolding around it would be more like 500.

I only parse with the same buffs I'll have in a raid. That's all class buffs and a blue stim. No adrenals, I'm usually using a proc relic and the stat stick relic, no clicky.

I was doing ~1520 DPS over a 6 minute parse. That's without being able to Vicious Throw and no armor debuffs.

Gear is all rakata except boots. I've swapped some extra Accuracy enhancements out for surge, and those are Columi (56). I had two augmented light sabers and 2 augmented armor pieces (chest and head) when I parsed that.
(because our 4 piece bonus sucks - and now I've got a 5th augment on my legs)
So that's an additional 72 strength (before buffs 5%) from augments.

The priority (at least for me) isn't set in stone but here is a basic guideline:
1) keep rupture up, but don't re-apply it before it finishes
2) don't lose your 3 stacks of the buff from annihlate
3) use deadly saber asap
4) use berserk asap so you can start building stacks again
5) only use Ravage when your main abilities aren't going to be finished for ~3 or more seconds.
I only use Vicious Slash if I have tons of rage and everything is on cool down.

I haven't tested it yet, but I have thought of using force charge whenever it's up to build rage instead of your basic attack, because it should build at least 1 more rage (2 if talented for it). I haven't tested to see what the average damage difference is between the two though. I expect that force charge is higher and I should have been doing this for a while (on bosses where extra charging isn't required).

Anyway, I hope that helps.

Edit: Stats WITHOUT a stim, and without BH buff (but with Warrior, Inq and IA buff)
Strength: 1774
End: 1603
Willpower: 137 (yes I got those datacrons too, but missing +10 one
Crit Multiplier 74.54% (249 Surge)
Melee Crit: 32.93% ( 285 rating)
Force Crit (for bleeds): 40.02%
Accuracy: +9.25% (261 rating)
Force Bonus Damage: 798.6
Melee Bonus Damage: 474 (421 Power)

From my experience, the 3 stacks always drop. I don't think the 3 stacks is able to have a 100% uptime. My rotation is as follows:

1. Charge
2. Battering Assault
3. Assault (to get full rage)
4. Rupture
5. Deadly Saber
6. Annihilate (almost always resets CD of Rupture)
7. Assault/Ravage when Annihilate/Deadly Saber is not up

This rotation has served me well. Personally, I like having full rage before I start my rotation. My bleeds never fall off for too long. Try it out and see what you think.

---

Forgot to include Vicious Slash in case Annihilate doesn't reset CD on Rupture.

[therealrev]

(05-03-2012 10:25 PM)Coaltrain Wrote:  

(05-01-2012 06:45 AM)Spren Wrote:  

(05-01-2012 03:49 AM)defendi Wrote:  What rotation/priority are you using for attacks? I get about 960 on the ops dummy but if I was just toolding around it would be more like 500.

I only parse with the same buffs I'll have in a raid. That's all class buffs and a blue stim. No adrenals, I'm usually using a proc relic and the stat stick relic, no clicky.

I was doing ~1520 DPS over a 6 minute parse. That's without being able to Vicious Throw and no armor debuffs.

Gear is all rakata except boots. I've swapped some extra Accuracy enhancements out for surge, and those are Columi (56). I had two augmented light sabers and 2 augmented armor pieces (chest and head) when I parsed that.
(because our 4 piece bonus sucks - and now I've got a 5th augment on my legs)
So that's an additional 72 strength (before buffs 5%) from augments.

The priority (at least for me) isn't set in stone but here is a basic guideline:
1) keep rupture up, but don't re-apply it before it finishes
2) don't lose your 3 stacks of the buff from annihlate
3) use deadly saber asap
4) use berserk asap so you can start building stacks again
5) only use Ravage when your main abilities aren't going to be finished for ~3 or more seconds.
I only use Vicious Slash if I have tons of rage and everything is on cool down.

I haven't tested it yet, but I have thought of using force charge whenever it's up to build rage instead of your basic attack, because it should build at least 1 more rage (2 if talented for it). I haven't tested to see what the average damage difference is between the two though. I expect that force charge is higher and I should have been doing this for a while (on bosses where extra charging isn't required).

Anyway, I hope that helps.

Edit: Stats WITHOUT a stim, and without BH buff (but with Warrior, Inq and IA buff)
Strength: 1774
End: 1603
Willpower: 137 (yes I got those datacrons too, but missing +10 one
Crit Multiplier 74.54% (249 Surge)
Melee Crit: 32.93% ( 285 rating)
Force Crit (for bleeds): 40.02%
Accuracy: +9.25% (261 rating)
Force Bonus Damage: 798.6
Melee Bonus Damage: 474 (421 Power)

From my experience, the 3 stacks always drop. I don't think the 3 stacks is able to have a 100% uptime. My rotation is as follows:

1. Charge
2. Battering Assault
3. Assault (to get full rage)
4. Rupture
5. Deadly Saber
6. Annihilate (almost always resets CD of Rupture)
7. Assault/Ravage when Annihilate/Deadly Saber is not up

This rotation has served me well. Personally, I like having full rage before I start my rotation. My bleeds never fall off for too long. Try it out and see what you think.

---

Forgot to include Vicious Slash in case Annihilate doesn't reset CD on Rupture.

With movement in certain ops fights you may drop your three stacks of Merciless Slash slash, but besides that you should keep it up at all times. I use essentially the same rotation as Spren, although I've made some slight tweaks recently that have made me think there are essentially two paths you can go:

1. Slightly lower burn damage, slightly higher melee attack damage. This involves using Merciless Slash as soon as it is off cooldown, even if the Merciless Slash stacks aren't going to deplete. This can involve breaking Master Strike early, using Force Stasis when everything is on cooldown, reducing use of Slash.

2. Slightly higher burn damage, slightly lower melee attack damage. This involves doing everything possible to keep Cauterize ticking at all times. The best way to do this is to maximize the use of Slash for the proc. Obviously Merciless Slash should be given priority, so this basically involves using Master Strike and Force Stasis slightly less.

That being said from my experience I think the second option does more damage, due to armor/misses from OH/accuracy considerations/etc.

Just a fun warning in case you guys don't have BH or Campaign gear yet: get ready for re-itemization hell + major credit sink again. I've lost a good amount of DPS even though I have almost full Tier 4 because I haven't had a chance to itemize.



One last question, has anyone done the DR for Watchman/Annihilation Marauders/Sents yet? The gunslinger post is awesome, the sage post is awesome, but I haven't seen anything solid for our class yet. I know the tools are out there and I'll try to work on it, but I doubt I have the time.

Basically I'm asking, is crit/surge/power/strength a new priority level for top tier gear until a certain amount of each, and if so what concrete numbers should we hit before moving on?
Eg: Surge until 300, then crit until 200, then power until x, then str, etc.

My thoughts on this so far: I've heard crit doesn't matter, or it does, but new gear brought my crit from 30% to 24% and I've noticed a DPS loss. I did some augment switching and noticed once you are at ~1600+ str and ~600+ pwr the difference between using 5 pwr augs or 5 str augs is negligible (+/- 1-2pts of primary damage), so it's probably better to go str at pwr > 600. My current understanding of optimal right now would be something like:

Crit: 29-32% (w/Smuggler buff)
Surge: 75-77%
Accuracy: 100%
then stack pwr and str, dependent on if you need the slight crit bonus from str.

Thoughts on this? Anyone have any concrete numbers on this?

[Izzo]

(05-03-2012 10:25 PM)Coaltrain Wrote:  

(05-01-2012 06:45 AM)Spren Wrote:  

(05-01-2012 03:49 AM)defendi Wrote:  What rotation/priority are you using for attacks? I get about 960 on the ops dummy but if I was just toolding around it would be more like 500.

I only parse with the same buffs I'll have in a raid. That's all class buffs and a blue stim. No adrenals, I'm usually using a proc relic and the stat stick relic, no clicky.

I was doing ~1520 DPS over a 6 minute parse. That's without being able to Vicious Throw and no armor debuffs.

Gear is all rakata except boots. I've swapped some extra Accuracy enhancements out for surge, and those are Columi (56). I had two augmented light sabers and 2 augmented armor pieces (chest and head) when I parsed that.
(because our 4 piece bonus sucks - and now I've got a 5th augment on my legs)
So that's an additional 72 strength (before buffs 5%) from augments.

The priority (at least for me) isn't set in stone but here is a basic guideline:
1) keep rupture up, but don't re-apply it before it finishes
2) don't lose your 3 stacks of the buff from annihlate
3) use deadly saber asap
4) use berserk asap so you can start building stacks again
5) only use Ravage when your main abilities aren't going to be finished for ~3 or more seconds.
I only use Vicious Slash if I have tons of rage and everything is on cool down.

I haven't tested it yet, but I have thought of using force charge whenever it's up to build rage instead of your basic attack, because it should build at least 1 more rage (2 if talented for it). I haven't tested to see what the average damage difference is between the two though. I expect that force charge is higher and I should have been doing this for a while (on bosses where extra charging isn't required).

Anyway, I hope that helps.

Edit: Stats WITHOUT a stim, and without BH buff (but with Warrior, Inq and IA buff)
Strength: 1774
End: 1603
Willpower: 137 (yes I got those datacrons too, but missing +10 one
Crit Multiplier 74.54% (249 Surge)
Melee Crit: 32.93% ( 285 rating)
Force Crit (for bleeds): 40.02%
Accuracy: +9.25% (261 rating)
Force Bonus Damage: 798.6
Melee Bonus Damage: 474 (421 Power)

From my experience, the 3 stacks always drop. I don't think the 3 stacks is able to have a 100% uptime. My rotation is as follows:

1. Charge
2. Battering Assault
3. Assault (to get full rage)
4. Rupture
5. Deadly Saber
6. Annihilate (almost always resets CD of Rupture)
7. Assault/Ravage when Annihilate/Deadly Saber is not up

This rotation has served me well. Personally, I like having full rage before I start my rotation. My bleeds never fall off for too long. Try it out and see what you think.

---

Forgot to include Vicious Slash in case Annihilate doesn't reset CD on Rupture.

Do you never use Vicious Throw? I prioritize that over pretty much everything except keeping annihilator up if the boss is at 30% or less.

My opening is:

1) FC/DS
2) BA
3) Rupture
4)Annihilate
5)Ravage (If rupture did not come off CD)
5)Rupture (If it came off CD) (After some filler so I don't clip the DoT)

Then i stick to pretty much the following priority:
Beserk ->
Keep Annihilator At 3 Stacks ->
Vicious Throw ->
Rupture ->
Annihilate ->
FC & DS (Unless its the kind of fight where FC needs to be saved as an interrupt) ->
Battering Assault ->
Ravage ->
Vicious Slash ->
Assault


I really don't think you should ever use Assault to fill up your rage bar, and ideally I don't think you should ever fill up your rage bar at all. That means the rage gained from Empowerment could be lost, and makes the FC/DS combo less effective, since you dont get the full benefit from FC if your have more than 8 rage. I tend to hover around 6-8 rage Ideally, which leaves enough to do pretty much anything, but doesn't waste a rage generating ability when a damaging one can be substituted.

In addition, as a general question, how do you guys use Frenzy? I generally save it so I can go Beserk -> Frenzy -> Bloodthirst, so i get the damage buff while I have the increased bleed crit, but it is probably more optimal to just use it off cooldown and get one more potential frenzy in over the course of the fight?

[Coaltrain]

Of course I use Vicious Throw

---

For Spren's post, I misread something. 3 stacks of Annihilator... I thought he meant 3 stacks of the Deadly Saber stacks. Woops. My bad. And yes, I keep the 3 stacks of Annihilator up as much as possible. And I try to keep as close to 100% uptime on my bleeds, try to get reset on Rupture using Annihilate or Vicious Slash. Then Vicious Throw when boss < %30 HP.

I use Frenzy basically right before we need to pop Bloodthirst. I do Berserk > hit Frenzy right after > then Bloodthirst.

[therealrev]

At beginning of fight: Valorous Call --> Inspiration (good time for adrenal / relic pop here). As soon as Valorous Call is off CD (can wait a few secs if your DPS isn't barely making enrage and you have 20+ Centering to build it to 30 and pop Zen first) --> Zen, as soon as Valorous Call is off CD again Valorous Call --> Inspiration. The reason to hit it at the beginning is some of these bosses in the new OP have rage timers that don't allow you to take the time to build 30 stacks and pop Zen initially before using your first VC. Granted, this ordering is very situational and dependent on your raid comp and DPS.

Note, I'm assuming you are using augmented gear so you do not have the set bonus and Valorous Call is on a 2min 30sec CD. If you aren't using augmented gear solely to keep the set bonus, you should probably change that

Izzo: Assault does more damage than FC, and builds focus faster. It is a better focus builder. If you're not needing to use Assault to build focus you are not spending enough focus and thus not maximizing DPS. I would recommend trying out working in Vicious Slash more. Also, in the EC HM reserving FC as an interrupt is not a smart play, as the cast times are often much faster than 1 GCD. Best practice is to use 6s Disruption and have an alt interruptor for when you are on CD, and use FC as a focus builder when necessary.