Great guide! Mara/Senti main here, you covered all the basics, so I'd only like to add some minor notes to it, that are mostly relevant to PvE. Cloak of pain is massively useful against dots or frequent small pulses of damage (nefra dot, brontes pulses, tyrans dot, some fire bullshit that doesn't kill you instantly, you get the point). Over 30 seconds, that's about 70k damage, not counting crits, and cloak of retribution increases uptime and generates a ton of rage - so much that you don't need Dispatcher's package and can swap to Fearless Victor, which boosts our damage more (especially annihilates and vicious slash spam) than the occasional autocrit does. Also, don't underestimate mad dash and the power of cheese in pve :D almost anything a sin can shroud, a good mara can mad dash. Otherwise, super on point with everything else! I'm more of a priority system kind of guy, but counting to 8 is a good way to start. What I use is the following: 1. opener, exactly as you've done (jump, deadly saber, battering assault, annihilate, berserk + rend, rupture, ravage, dual saber throw) 2. use annihilate and force rend on CD (even without berserk, you can just delay berserk to the next cycle if you have to unexpectedly use your 30 stacks on a raid buff or missclick or anything 3. deadly saber when Force Rend has 3.5s remaining on CD And the rest is fillers, with rage management :D
2.8s left on rend cooldown for deadly saber activation. any earlier and you'll drive deadly saber into annihilate which will wreck your rage management
I would add to this that in AoE instances (3 or more enemies) you can sweeping slash instead of VS for increased damage as well. The caveat being that you need to make sure that you VS within 6ish GCDs to reapply rupture. Generally I do this by VSing when smash is about to come off CD > smash > (then assuming we're in filler phase) SS your life away. Less relevant when you don't have Path Carver but still...can do some really good AoE damage.
Biggs, you are probably the best swtor condensed guide maker. It's a give a man cooked food vs teaching him to cook situation. You're very much the latter. You set up the guides in a way that are easy to navigate and shows how each ability works together, so that the player can work it out themselves on how to refine the rotation later. As oppose to just giving them the long rotation and not explaining why it works. If only you existed back when I started swtor. I had to learn most of this from other players or from very long, sometimes confusing written guides. Honestly, your guides are a better service to new players than any of the changes made by the devs in 7.0 to "simplify" combat.
Been watching your guides for a while now, you always break things down so nicely. I remember Maras used to give me a tough time with all the micromanaging, but one of your older vids helped me turn it into one of my favorite classes to play!
Dude, this is an amazing guide, it contains so much info and I have learned so much already it's insane. It's also perfectly laid out ... thank you very much for your time.
The best thing i like to learn with Biggs it the way that make things simple, rotation is simple, the explanation is simple and on point and he gets everything, and more important it works and works well. Thanks for the vid mate.
Thank you for this awesome video! Ani marauder has been my marauder of choice since launch and I couldn't understand why I wasn't breaking the 20K mark when all my stats were bang on. Your video showed me where my dps was missing and BAM 4K jump instantly! Very simple explanation and so happy to see more ani marauder love.
I would suggest doing deadly saber first thing if you can, cause when you force charge and then rapture, then you're able to put 2 stacks of bleeding IMMEDIATELY, then once your dots are up, then just spam the melee attacks, and from there yeah do what you said or prefer. But overall, amazing guide!
May the Fourth be with you! I've been waiting for this one since you started dropping 7.0 guides. I've seen a few but your guides always seem to squeeze better numbers and run smoother than all the others. Annihilation/Watchman is my best spec for some reason in pvp probably because it's my most used mara/sent spec(my numbers are best with it even though it isn't an "optimal" mara/sent spec) and have just been starting to get into pvp. This helps a ton. Can't wait to try it. One question though. You covered it a little but where would you put Smash/Force Sweep in your priority system for aoe dot spreads? Sorry if this is a dumb question. In the past I've always led with it right after I get all my dots on target in aoe situations. Is this correct?
I seem to have one problem with this spec. Every time I go through the priority system I only end up with like 20 fury every second rotation when I should use berserk. Any ideas on how to fix this?
mark if can u do a guide on how u reach the threshholds for alacrity, accuracy would be nice thx in advance for example how many accuracy augs and alacritiy u use in pve etc
I know this is late but PvP accuracy cap is apparently 105%, but even that doesn't guarantee that all your abilities will hit. So maybe its 110% in pvp as well?
is this spec better for just a pve solo person than fury because i really am bored with fury and also I'm confused on what is used from juggernaut? I just came back to the game after like a 8 year break!
dots for solo pve are always a little more of a pita, but honestly when you're playing solo you should just play the class that you enjoy the most. All specs are capable of clearing the content, so if you want to give anni a go, I say go for it!
Mark, does it feel like Annihilation is in need of a buff? Checking parsley, Annihilation is currently rated like 7th overall in terms of parsing DPS, that seems way too low for a melee DOT based spec, especially considering the complexity of the spec. Fury and Carnage are currently outperforming Annihilation, thoughts?
Imo it’s in a pretty solid spot since the benefits don’t always show up on parsley. Easy cleave built into the rotation and raid healing is a huge boost to the spec’s viability that doesn’t always show up in the meters.
The way you explain the order of rotation is so confusing I’m tryna figure out witch comes first but you just saying numbers instead of the attack name It might just be me tho
That's because it's a priority system, not a rotation, there's not really a "rotation" to say every time, it's just filling with annihilate, dual saber throw, vicious slash, ravage and slash. 1: Deadly saber 2: Filler 3: Berserk into Rend 4: Filler 5: Filler 6: Filler 7: Filler 8: Filler Repeat.
Why do I feel there are too many buttons to press and somehow I feel even Pyrotech is easier. At least I got the hang of it except for the shoulder cannon. But this one... I am kind of lost. Its not necessarily mega complicated as much as the ability cooldown is very small and it feels I don't have time to use them all on time. I hope I don't sound stupid. But as it is I feel I do more dps on pyro for some reason.
Anni is a very fickle spec that likes to go off the rails, you're not alone in feeling a little lost with it. It's one of the more punishing specs in the game.
Can't uderstand how you guys geting constant 1.4 GCD with just 7.2% alacrity. Even with 9% alarcrity my best result 1.416 average on dummy and never constant 1.4. My ping is 81-95, can't udnderstand what's wrong.
@@K_LeShaeya dispatcher’s rage generation accounts for about ~30% of all of our rage. Without it, we end up rage starved a good chunk of the time, which forces us to use assault way more often than not. While it would be nice to have both FV and BC, one of them must be sacrificed to keep the rage flowing. Otherwise anni plays like a car running out of gas, sputtering along, suffocating for rage.
