marauder spec for KDY leveling

[jkutswings]

I just rolled a marauder, and I plan on almost exclusively going the KDY powerlevel route. (I already have a 55 jugg, so I've seen the story.)

What's the best spec for 15-54 in Kuat? Dotsmash? Carnage? Anni?

It seems like any would be viable, but either dotsmash or carnage would be best for the zergfest-style that KDY often becomes.


Thoughts? I'd particularly appreciate comments from marauders experienced with all the different specs (ideally having done exactly what I'm planning to do for leveling my toon). Thanks!

[Lovestar]

Smash.

Carnage is too ST focused and falls apart when it has to constantly chew through trash. Anni takes too long to get going.

If you can endure the brain damage that 50 levels of Smash will cause your frontal cortex, then it is by far the best for any trash / mob-pack infested farming task. It's also a bit sturdier at low/mid levels, for solo tasks.

It also gets rolling much earlier than the other 2 specs, since the top-tree and high-tree talents for Smash are just nice embellishments. Whereas Carnage/Anni rely very heavily on their deeper talents to function properly.

There is something to be said for Carn/Anni being a lot more interesting, though. They may be less efficient, but your soul may thank you by the end — when I leveled my Mara, I ended up swapping back and forth between Anni and Carn for variety (Field Respec ftw), because after about 20 solid levels of Smash I could not take it any more.

[WarpedAcorn]

I'm not sure I would suggest Smash. You don't get the key talents until higher level. Definitely switch to Smash around 40-45 though.

Low level I would say Annihilation or Carnage though...probably Annihilation (its what I did with my 2nd Marauder).

[Lovestar]

I'm not sure I would suggest Smash. You don't get the key talents until higher level. Definitely switch to Smash around 40-45 though.

Low level I would say Annihilation or Carnage though...probably Annihilation (its what I did with my 2nd Marauder).

The lower tiers of both Anni & Carn add almost zero to your PvE leveling experience, especially vs. trash swarms. Rage conversely is filled with useful talents straight up to about 30, when its rotation is basically 'complete' as far as repetitive leveling spam goes.

That's when the scene starts to shift, really — from about 35+ Anni & Carn begin to 'work' and come into their own, while Smash just sort of stops cold and doesn't develop much more.

The only thing they maybe do better is sustained single-target (bosses) with stuff like better bleeds or Ataru, but even that I'm dubious about since Smash is giving you Obliterate, Slash buffs, and armor pen. Really, the scene for Mara is fairly bleak for the first 30-40 levels no matter what you're doing, Smash just makes the most of what you're given.

Once Smash runs out of steam (mid-30s) and gets overtaken by Carn/Anni (which finally have their rotations coming together), then it gets a lot more into personal preference IMO since they're all about equally good in different ways. Smash still excels at clearing trashy garbage swarms, though.

Smash trades overall performance for superior snap AoE performance in short-duration windows (Carn has superior ST snap, for comparison). That's why I find it useful for zergy or junk-mob-filled content at lower levels, where Anni / Carn either have nothing much to do yet, or everything's already dead by the time they get rolling.

Now if you're happy just letting everyone else handle AoE packs while you tunnel one thing at a time, then yeah I'd go Carn since the boost to accuracy, offhand damage, and Juyo all make you a lot burstier on focus targets. (likewise Anni feels smoother on long boss fights once it gets the Bleed reset)

I just found in my own experience that the most practical solution to most situations was to just Smash the fuck out of everything until I got to the 30s / 40s and the Mara toolkit started coming together better.

[WarpedAcorn]

Downtime wise, I found I could kill groups more efficiently as Annihilation at low levels versus as Rage. As Rage spec I would spend a lot of time healing after packs before hitting the next. However, once you get Dominate/Shockwave things start to shift in Rage's favor, but really its not until you can max out the Tree so that you can get Shockwave stacks more consistently with the help of Force Crush that Rage just blows the other specs out of the water in solo PvE. Plus by that time you've also gotten all the skills the class needs to be effective (no idea why their Execute is at 44), and gear is starting to have more desirable stats on them (power stacking, hooooooooo!).

What really hurts Rage early on, in my opinion at least, is its weakness versus those silver and gold ranked mobs. Those 5 nobodies standing around are, of course, no problem when you just Leap, Battering Assault, Smash, and Sweeping Slash them. But when you've got the Silver guys mixed in, Rage is good at taking out the little guys...but gets a bit of beating from the Silver dude. Annihilation tends to chew up those silver ranked guys with burns fairly quickly though, and does so while having strong enough AoE to take out the little dude efficiently. Rage is the opposite, having slightly weaker single-target abilities.

It may honestly just boil down to a style preference. Like I said, downtime is what is important to me and Rage had more downtime early on as opposed to Annihilation or Carnage. Any spec will do you good though, but definitely keep the gear updated.

[Lovestar]

I think that's the thing with SWTOR, this isn't WoW, it's tuned very gently and just about anything can get through with minimal issues if you press all your buttons and use a modicum of sense choosing what to wear. So it does come down to style.

I found the ST focus of Anni sluggish and tedious; it was great for meaty guys, yeah, but the vast majority of stuff I was slogging through was big packs of annoying garbage and just Smashing through them as much as possible improved my mood significantly.

Rage gets your Smash buffed right away with +20% dmg (that's huge in SWTOR where most talent boosts are in the 3% to 6% range) and then shorter CDs, autocrits, etc. as you go deeper.

Definitely slower on focused ST but especially at low levels I found focused ST to be pointless since nothing was very difficult. More of an endless swarm of garbage mobs. Survival or downtime was never an issue to me, and I'm really picky about that (leveling Operative drove me crazy).

I actually found Smash weakened at high levels because even the garbage started having a lot more relative Health, and fat meaty mobs became a lot more common on later planets. Anni became my go-to spec most of the time because the healing and sustained damage was excellent for places like Voss/Belsavis where you're often chewing through huge nasties, as well as later FPs because the mobs begin to live long enough for bleeds to do their work.

Force Crush felt really underwhelming to me for Smash — by that level I was already drowning in Rage pips as Rage spec (go figure), often finding myself capping while waiting for Smash to charge up or capping stacks of the crit buff unless I held either Crush or Berserk off cooldown (full stacks for Zerk) while I waited for Smash to recharge. It didn't change the game like Massacre and Annihilate do for their trees.


* I know this is about KDY and I stand by my suggestion for that (for the reasons in my OP), but since we drifted a little I figured I'd weight in with questing experiences too.

[Stormcall]

I think that's the thing with SWTOR, this isn't WoW, it's tuned very gently and just about anything can get through with minimal issues if you press all your buttons and use a modicum of sense choosing what to wear. So it does come down to style.

I found the ST focus of Anni sluggish and tedious; it was great for meaty guys, yeah, but the vast majority of stuff I was slogging through was big packs of annoying garbage and just Smashing through them as much as possible improved my mood significantly.

YMMV, but almost all those packs of annoying garbage I fought, on every toon I leveled, beyond the first couple of planets had a silver bordered "strong" mob with them, and Rage pretty much sucked against them.

[Lovestar]

I don't know how you can have trouble with Strongs as Rage; you're in Shii-Cho (damage reduction), you have overflowing Rage pips (Shii-Cho Zerk), and you have Obliterate early on as a strong Rage dump (while Anni/Carn have to wait much longer) plus it gapcloses to ranged mobs.

Being incentivized to keep Smash on CD and constantly stunning / interrupting / screwing up the swarms was a lot more useful to my survival than killing one Strong vaguely faster. I find that in SWTOR (like most MMOs), quantity is much more dangerous than quality.

It's not like Anni or Carn add anything to your survival vs. Strongs in their early trees either — what do you find makes them better?

[WarpedAcorn]

It's not like Anni or Carn add anything to your survival vs. Strongs in their early trees either — what do you find makes them better?

Carnage has more utility stuff in the first 2 tiers...not much really, but Annihilation does had a CD reducer on Cloak of Pain as well as a bit of a healing factor with Hungering. Its not much, but its something. Similarly, the 20% bonus to Smash is just about as miniscule due to how little damage Smash does. Its big bonus early on is its Stun. Its not until you get Shockwave that Smash gets interesting, and even then its the Smash crits that do your big damage. Smashing without insta-crits and bonus crit-damage is like hitting someone with a training saber. Plus, its not like Annihilation or Carnage don't or can't use Smash against those packs of weak enemies. As for Obliterate...its a pretty weak gap closer considering the range, it does do underrated damage as well, but Deadly Saber blows it out of the water.

Now, after saying all that, I have to say that I definitely 100% agree with this:

I think that's the thing with SWTOR, this isn't WoW, it's tuned very gently and just about anything can get through with minimal issues if you press all your buttons and use a modicum of sense choosing what to wear. So it does come down to style.

=)

[Lovestar]

Fascinating. I mean I use Field Respec to constantly change trees the entire time I level a character in SWTOR, so I was bouncing between all 3 Mara trees and experimenting the whole way. I genuinely found Rage far more comfortable and effective until ~30-35, when it lost its 'umph' and I switched to Anni or Carn the rest of the way.

It's really interesting to hear people having the exact opposite experience. o.O

[WarpedAcorn]

Well a lot of it, like you said, boils down to style. And also it has a lot to do with who your companion is. I know I preferred having a DPS companion the majority of the time, so that might be an influence on how I play and spec.