SWTOR 7.7 Fury Marauder PvE Guide and Best Builds

SWTOR Fury Marauder PvE Guide (DPS) for beginners and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, Tips!

Introduction to Fury Marauder

Marauders are nimble, dual saber-wielding warriors that become increasingly furious as they channel their rage into their lightsaber and force attacks. They go berserk if their adversary manages to survive more than a few seconds. Fury Marauders become even further enraged as they go berserk, enabling them to enter a state of criticality that allows them to utterly obliterate their enemies with raging bursts of pure force energy.

Fury’s damage output is pretty average across the board. When it comes to single-target sustained DPS, it’s almost dead-center of the pack on Parsely. When it comes to AoE damage, it can offer some short bursts on-demand, though it does have to give up some single-target sustained and quickly loses out to DoT specs against healthier adds and trash. When it comes to single-target burst, it’s better than average, but still can’t compete with the proper burst combat styles.

Marauders in general offer some of the best raid utility in the game thanks to Bloodthirst and Predation. However, Fury has decidedly less utility than Carnage and Annihilation because it offers the AoE DPS debuff instead of the Armor or Internal/Elemental debuffs.

In terms of survivability, Marauders remain strong in PvE despite losing some of their defensive capabilities. They easily have some of the best survivability in the game because they can take AoE RDT basically for free and have access to DCDs that work extremely well at mitigating both burst and sustained damage.

The biggest issue that Fury Marauders will face is caused by their rotational leap ability, Obliterate, which can easily kill players if they leap to a dangerous location, such as a deadly circle or cleave, though its Undying Rage DCD can prevent some of those risky leaps. Despite this limitation, Fury remains perfectly viable in most fights and is pretty fun to play once you get the hang of it.

Major Changes in 7.0

• 2 choices buff a discipline-specific ability (2 abilities, 1 choice each).
• 3 choices which are just old Utility effects. These choices are almost always the same for all disciplines. 
• 2 choices where you’re picking between 1 ability or 1 of 2 passives. One of the ability choices tends to be an offensive cooldown (OCD). The other seems to be related to PvP balance, but there isn’t a clear pattern beyond the choice forcing players to decide which of 3 capabilities they want to keep.
• 1 choice where you’re picking 1 of 3 abilities. One of the abilities is always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun. Another of the abilities is the movement ability with the longest cooldown. The third option is less consistent, it seems to be there as an extra balance lever for BioWare since some abilities that got locked away are more impactful than others. The 3 abilities are almost always the same for each discipline.

This means almost all disciplines had 5 abilities locked away behind choices with the option for players to keep up to 3 of them. In addition, many extremely situational abilities were pruned entirely. Marauders permanently lost access to 3 abilities: 

• Crippling Slash
• Obfuscate
• Intimidating Roar

These changes don’t affect Marauders in PvE very much at all and were clearly aimed at reducing their power in PvP.

In addition, Guarding is now a tank-only ability, which is the logical next step since the nerf to Guard for DPS partway through 6.0 was ineffective at stopping its ubiquity in PvP. 

Battle rezzes in general are now healer-only, but there is no longer a global 5 min lockout on those abilities, so it’s treated just like any other ability, albeit with a much longer cooldown.

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Fury requires 3 other DPS debuffs:

In the introduction, I was planning to say “You might not be bringing anything that truly excels in a given area, but this spec isn’t gonna drag your group down either (besides the occasional risky Obliterate)”, but then I calculated the DPS debuff reliance and decided to delete that sentence.

I am appalled that Engineering Sniper | Saboteur Gunslinger has any competition whatsoever for the title “Least Independent Discipline”. Fury can’t quite take the crown, but anything approaching 10% is horrendous.

To make matters worse, Rage doesn’t have this issue because it provides itself with the essential armor debuff instead of something that is literally worthless in single-target situations. Fury does not have any rotational AoE in its single-target rotation, and yet, the devs had the bright idea to make the spec apply the AoE debuff.

The only reason Fury deals any internal/elemental damage at all is that the devs decided to tack on a couple of minor DoTs to a pair of the spec’s melee attacks. One of the DoTs only exists because the devs decided to invite both Fury and Rage to the same snooze-fest without telling them they were wearing the same lame excuse for a tactical item. How embarrassing!

Thankfully, the armor debuff provides a substantial benefit to most other disciplines, so you’ll already have an incentive to bring it. However, the only way to get the Force and internal/elemental debuff in the same packages is Madness Sorcerer with Death Brand | Balance Sage with Shifted Balance.

Please remember that you don’t need to pair these specs together, it’s just the most efficient way to do it if you want to, and the Force debuff, given by all Sorcerers | Sages and Assassins | Shadows, has a far more significant impact on Fury’s DPS than the internal/elemental debuff.

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5 second duration before I can activate another ability given the constraints of the fight? Which ability do I use right now that will provide me the most DPS? How can I maximize my uptime? If I’m not activating an ability right now, why not? Can I finish this cast before I need to move? What happens if I don’t have time to finish a cast before moving? Can the healers deal with it without too much stress?

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide for more details on how they differ from each other and how to determine which attack does what damage!

Our in-depth analysis and breakdown of the relationship between mechanics and strategy in boss fights in SWTOR may also help you perform better in group content.

Abilities Explained

Please have the game open while reading through the next few sections. I will not be writing out ability descriptions and I will only be transcribing the components of discipline passives that directly relate to the ability and rotation. This forces you to read through what everything does so that you can understand what all of your passives and abilities do as well as locate these abilities in-game. Make sure you place all of these abilities on your bar in an order that makes sense to you. 

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

 Berserk and  Fury

Berserk is a special ability that has a unique effect for each Marauder discipline. It’s closest to an offensive cooldown in terms of functionality, but you’ll be using it rotationally, so this isn’t a perfect comparison. Berserk (and Fury) are one of the main ways that Marauder combat gameplay is distinct from the gameplay of other combat styles.

For Fury, activating Berserk builds 4 Rage and grants 6 stacks of the Berserk proc. These stacks consume themselves over the next 6s and build 8 Rage as they are consumed.

Rather than having a cooldown, Berserk is only usable when you have 30 stacks of a proc called Fury, and activating Berserk consumes those 30 stacks. Fury is generated whenever you activate an attack that spends Rage, though Fury cannot be generated while Berserk is active, except when you deal damage with Ravage as a Fury Marauder. You also generate Fury when you defeat an opponent, but this isn’t always impactful. In addition, you can spend 30 Fury to activate Bloodthirst, but I’ll talk more about that later on.

Your main goal with generating Fury is to ensure that you’ll have Berserk in time to buff every other activation of Raging Burst or Smash, alternating with Force Crush, which gives the same buffs to those abilities. This requires pretty high uptime, but you can compensate for disruptions with the Brazen talent that I’ll talk about in greater detail later on. Berserk and Fury have 2 combat style passives associated with them:

Short Fuse
Increases the Fury generated by each attack that consumes Rage by 2. Basically, each attack that consumes Rage generates 4 Fury, so it will take (at most) 8 attacks to reach 30 Fury. There are 3 other talents in the ability tree that can allow you to generate Fury in other ways, but I’ll cover those later on.

Brooding
You build up 30 Fury of the course of using Channel Hatred (or other regen ability). Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. This used to be a utility, but it is now given for free to all Marauders. It allows you to build up Fury outside of combat and should be used to build 30 Fury before any major fight. Keep in mind that if anything interrupts your channel, you will have to wait before your regen ability will build Fury again.

Rout

(Discipline Passive)
Rout is not an ability but rather a discipline passive that you gain at level 35. It has a massive impact on how the spec plays and feels while being largely responsible for defining Fury Marauder as a hybrid burst/DoT spec.

Rout makes it so that most of your other rotational abilities reduce the active cooldowns of Raging Burst, Smash, and Obliterate by 1s each time they are activated, so their cooldowns are far shorter than they appear. Please note that Ravage and Force Crush do not trigger this cooldown reduction, though both make significant contributions to your DPS.

Fury doesn’t really have much in the way of fillers, though there are still massive disparities between the damage output of your rotational attacks. Rout reinforces the notion that any sort of downtime or other delay in your rotation is roughly equally detrimental to your DPS, rather than being only sometimes more detrimental.

Contrast this with a burst spec where your burst is almost always on cooldown due to its high priority, so you don’t lose nearly as much sustained DPS until the downtime starts delaying your burst.

To be clear, Fury does still have rotational burst. You alternate between 2 rotation cycles where one is significantly more damaging than the other, and you have an autocrit and further concentrated damage into 2 GCDs. This burst allows them to be competitive with, and even slightly superior to, most other specs, though it doesn’t hold a candle to combat styles known for their burst, like Powertechs | Vanguards, Snipers | Gunslingers, and Sorcerers | Sages.

Raging Burst and Smash

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target and AoE/Instant)
It makes sense to talk about two abilities at the same time here because they are nearly identical. Raging Burst and Smash have the same, but still separate, cooldown durations and generate as well as consume the same procs. The only difference is that Raging Burst is single-target while Smash is an AoE. The result is that Smash deals less damage per target than Raging Burst, but can deal more damage overall if you hit multiple targets.

As a result of them interacting with, generating, and consuming the same procs, you should only ever use one in each rotation cycle in the single-target rotation, and which one you use depends on whether or not you need to do AoE. Raging Burst and Smash have 3 procs and 1 debuff associated with them that almost completely define the Fury rotation:

Dominate
Obliterate and Force Charge make your next Smash or Raging Burst an autocrit. Lasts 20 seconds. Since Obliterate has the same cooldown as Smash and Raging Burst, you just have to make sure you use it at some point before your next Smash or Raging Burst.

Since the proc is so strong and (theoretically) easy to get, you shouldn’t ever use Smash or Raging Burst without it, nor should you ever have to delay Raging Burst or Smash in order to generate it. If Force Charge ends up being more appropriate, it’s fine to use that instead.

Destruction
Berserk and Force Crush grant Destruction, making your next Raging Burst or Smash deal 15% more damage and consume no Rage. Both Berserk and Force Crush have “cooldowns” that are twice as long as the effective cooldown duration of Raging Burst and Smash. This means that you can only use one of Berserk and Force Crush per use of Raging Burst or Smash.

In my opinion, this is the most important thing to pay attention to because it takes the longest to fix if you mess it up and can easily throw off your rotation if you aren’t careful. If you do mess up, you’re basically guaranteed to miss out on this proc for 2 Raging Bursts or Smashes, and it isn’t worth delaying Raging Burst or Smash if you don’t have this proc. I’ll explain how to fix this mistake in a later section. 

Cascading Power
Increases all damage dealt by 5% for 6 seconds after dealing damage with Raging Burst or Smash. Cannot occur more than once every 8 seconds. In practice, this means that everything but your autocrit Raging Burst or Smash and a single ability preceding it in each cycle are buffed by 5%. Part of constructing the rotation is about putting the weakest GCD in that unbuffed slot in order to min-max your overall damage output.

Overwhelmed
Dealing damage with Raging Burst or Smash applies the Overwhelmed debuff, which increases the affected target’s AoE damage taken by 10% for 45s. It’s arguably one of the most useless DPS debuffs in the game since there aren’t any proper AoE DPS checks in the game.

Several specs in the game do have rotational AoE damage, so this does benefit them, and it technically benefits you since it can be applied by Smash and buff Sweeping Slash, but overall, it’s a drawback of the discipline because this debuff is so much worse than what Carnage and Annihilation offer.

Obliterate

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Obliterate causes you to leap to your target and deal a bunch of damage, enabling this melee attack to have a 10m range. The rotational leap is the main reason why Fury (and Rage) aren’t considered consistently viable in Operations. It is often referred to as a self-root because the leap animation locks you in place for the full GCD and has the potential to prevent you from getting out of deadly circles or wrecking other mechanics before it’s too late. 

You could just omit it, but it deals a lot of damage and makes Raging Burst or Smash automatically critically hit, so you are sometimes forced to choose between giving up a substantial amount of DPS by skipping it or risking causing other mechanical problems. It’s such a shame too because they could easily fix it by just allowing Dual Saber Throw to also grant the autocrit on a rate limit or rework the Seething Defense talent to eliminate the leap.

In fights where Obliterate’s leap is problematic, you’ll have to make this choice frequently because it has a short cooldown and is used (at least) once per cycle. Obliterate doesn’t have any other procs, debuffs, or discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned.

Furious Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Furious Strike is the most damaging and most expensive melee attack in the game. Despite the fact that it costs a whopping 5 Rage per activation, you can afford to use it on cooldown, even without the Fuming Rage proc that Rage Juggernaut gets. Furious Strike has 2 procs and 1 tactical item associated with it that I want to mention:

Furious Rage
Activating Furious Strike grants Furious Rage, which increases the critical damage dealt by your next Raging Burst or Smash by 15%. Lasts up to 12s. This damage boost enables your buffed Raging Burst or Smash to hit harder than that of Rage Juggernaut’s and makes using both attacks in the same rotation cycle more of a sustained DPS loss.

Furious Defense
Activating Furious Strike grants Furious Defense, which increases your defense chance by 10% for 6s. This mitigation is enough to cause some spec’s rotations to get messed up in PvP, but it’s too unreliable to provide useful survivability in PvE.

Force Crush

(Force/Kinetic/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Force Crush is one of your stronger attacks, but it might not feel that way because it has a super long cooldown, and its damage doesn’t go out immediately. The first half of the damage from the ability as a GCD comes from the initial 3 ticks over 3s, while the other half comes from the final detonation.

Force Crush is the best ability to use immediately before Raging Burst or Smash since most of its damage will not get dealt until after Raging Burst or Smash is activated, enabling you to most of another GCD into the 6s damage window that follows Raging Burst and Smash. Force Crush does not have any relevant procs, discipline passives, or debuffs associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Force Scream

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
In Fury, Force Scream is one of your weaker abilities, dealing less damage than Force Crush but more than Vicious Slash. Since Force Scream has a 10m range (and is not affected by Furious Power), giving you a lot more flexibility about where you can place it in the rotation.

It’s ideal to activate Force Scream while Berserk and all of your other damage boosts are active, but it’s the first thing that should go if you need to prioritize something else, like Vicious Throw. Force Scream has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Battle Cry
Force Charge and Obliterate make your next Force Scream deal 5% more damage and generate 1 Rage, rather than consume Rage. This proc enables Force Scream to be used rotationally. 

Ravage

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Ravage doesn’t cost any Rage and deals roughly the same damage upfront as Force Scream, though its range is shorter, doesn’t trigger Rout, or generate any Rage. Despite all this, it’s worth prioritizing while Berserk is active because each time you deal damage, you build 1 Fury.

Since you build Fury with this attack even while Berserk is active, Ravage enables you to reliably get 30 stacks of Fury for every other rotation cycle just in time for Raging Burst. Ravage hits a bunch of times, but some of those hits are not guaranteed because they’re from your offhand, and all damage dealt by offhands has less accuracy than the damage dealt by mainhands.

As a result, the actual Fury generated by each activation of Ravage will vary slightly. Sometimes you’ll reach 30 stacks of Berserk when you activate Force Crush. Sometimes you won’t quite get there until the subsequent Raging Burst or Smash. Pay close attention that you don’t activate Berserk until after Raging Burst, but before Furious Strike.

Fury has a discipline passive that makes Ravage apply a DoT that further influences when you should use the ability during your rotation:

Bloody Slashes
Dealing damage with Ravage applies Bloody Slashes, which deals its Force internal damage from 6 ticks spread across 3 stacks over 9s. A single stack of the DoT ticks upon application and then every 3s after, and each stack is considered a new application. Unlike Ravage’s Fury generation, the stacks from Bloody Slashes are capped at 3, so you’re effectively guaranteed to apply all 3 stacks.

Overall, these DoT ticks add up to about half of the damage dealt by Ravage itself, but since they go out over time and are slightly weighted towards later GCDs, it is ideal to use Ravage as the final GCD during Berserk, after Force Scream or Vicious Throw, though it doesn’t make that much of a difference if you use it before Force Scream instead.

Battering Assault

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is the weakest of your rotational abilities, though it needs to be used often since it’s one of the main ways that you generate Rage. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to use it as the final ability before Raging Burst or Smash because you don’t need more Rage in the cycle where Berserk is used, and Force Crush deals even less damage during the GCD. Battering Assault has 1 debuff associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Beat Down
Dealing damage with Battering Assault applies the Beat Down debuff, which makes the target take 5% more damage from melee attacks for 45s. This is the melee debuff, it’s valuable to you because the Fury discipline deals a lot of melee damage, but you get it for free. Assassins | Shadows are the only combat style that benefits from the discipline that does not provide it, though they do benefit substantially from it.

I want to note that Rage Juggernauts apply Beat Down with Furious Strike instead. 

Vicious Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
I wouldn’t say that the Fury rotation really has a filler ability, at least in the way that other specs do, but Vicious Slash is a filler ability in general and is your weakest rotational attack that’s actually used to deal damage. Its main selling point is that it triggers Rout, unlike Assault, which shortens the overall cycle of the rotation by 1 GCD.

Since it’s your weakest attack, it will be the final ability used in the stronger of your 2 rotation cycles and is rotationally analogous to Retaliation for Rage Juggernauts. Once your target drops below 30%, you’ll move Force Scream to the weak rotation cycle, replacing that Vicious Slash, and use Vicious Throw when you would have previously used Force Scream. Vicious Slash has 1 discipline passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Force Flagellation
Vicious Slash (and Sweeping Slash) deal a tiny amount of additional Force energy damage. This damage helps to slightly shrink the damage gap between it and your attacks that have a cooldown, though its more consequential interaction has to do with the Furious Rumination talent, enabling you to completely omit Battering Assault from your rotation and replace it with Vicious Slash or Sweeping Slash.

Vicious Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Vicious Throw is super strong, only slightly weaker than Furious Strike while being cheaper and having longer range, though it’s functionally more similar to Vicious Slash. The key limitation is that it can only be used if the target has less than 30% HP, and while it doesn’t deal Force Flagellation damage, it does trigger Rout.

Its cooldown is just ever so slightly too long to be usable in every single rotation cycle, so you must instead alternate its use. Since Fury has 1 rotation cycle that gets more of a damage boost than the other, it’s valuable to adjust your rotation sub-30% by moving using Vicious Throw when you would have used Force Scream and move Force Scream out of the Berserk cycle to replace 1 Vicious Slash. Vicious Throw doesn’t have any other discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation.

Other Semi-Rotational Abilities

All of the abilities in this section should only be used if you are unable to use one of your rotational abilities. This will only happen if you are outside of melee range or make a mistake.

Dual Saber Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Dual Saber Throw is your main backup ability. It doesn’t interact with the discipline and deals roughly the identical damage per target as Sweeping Slash, but doesn’t cost any Rage and has 30m range. That last one is the reason you’ll be using it most often.

I do not recommend using Dual Saber Throw as an AoE attack unless you’re out of range or can hit several additional enemies because it doesn’t trigger Rout, so you don’t get as close to being able to use your beefy abilities again. Likewise, Assault is the better option if you need to recover.

Assault

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Assault is your most basic attack, it’s spammable and deals extremely little damage, but it does generate 2 Rage per activation. The only time you’d want to use Assault is if you messed up really badly and can’t afford to do anything else. Some DPS is better than no DPS. If you ever need to use Assault, you will need to use it several times in a row, delaying stronger attacks to build enough Rage and Fury to get yourself back on track.

AoE Abilities

The formula for determining how much damage an AoE ability does per GCD such that it can be compared to single-target abilities is: (Damage Dealt / Number of GCDs) x Number of Enemies. An AoE ability’s place in the priority is as high as it can be until it reaches a single-target ability that deals more damage than the AoE will deal to all enemies in the GCD.

AoE damage is considered fluff if the adds do not need to die ASAP or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage to adds. It’s pretty easy to tell what is and isn’t fluff, don’t be greedy, and don’t hurt your group’s chances of beating the boss. 

Smash

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your primary AoE attack, though it is a single-target DPS loss over Raging Burst and you can only buff 1 per rotation cycle, so you can fluff by using Smash instead of letting your other group members handle the adds that don’t have to give up single-target DPS.

Force Crush with Enrage Crush

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target and AoE/Instant)
The Enrage Crush tactical makes it so that dealing damage with Raging Burst or Smash to a target affected by Force Crush causes it to detonate immediately, dealing its remaining damage to up to 8 enemies within 5m of the primary target. However, if the target dies before Force Crush is able to deal damage or Force Crush is able to detonate on its own, the effect doesn’t trigger, so you have to be careful about who you apply it to and make sure you can detonate it in the next 3s.

Sweeping Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your somewhat spammable AoE. It doesn’t have a cooldown, but you can easily use it as a replacement for Vicious Slash. You’ll deal more damage overall whenever you can hit 2 targets with Sweeping Slash.

Raging Burst with Subjugate

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target and AoE/Instant)
If you’re taking Subjugate, Raging Burst deals 50% of its damage to nearby targets within 5m of the primary target, effectively allowing you to forgo using Smash at all, though at the cost of reduced single-target DPS because you don’t have Dark Synergy.

Mad Dash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Mad Dash deals a decent chunk of damage as a long-range AoE attack. Since it has a long cooldown, I recommend only using it if you need to cover some distance (as a gap closer) or mitigate damage while dealing AoE damage or don’t have any other options and can finish off multiple enemies.

In other words, only use Mad Dash as an AoE you’re simultaneously benefitting from another component of the ability. Like Dual Saber Throw, it doesn’t interact with the discipline, so you should be able to insert it wherever and just keep going.

Offensive Cooldowns

All offensive cooldowns (OCDs) should be used as frequently as possible under the conditions stated here or if it needs to be saved for a DPS check/burst window, but don’t start delaying it for that until you see that you have to. 

Unfortunately, Fury doesn’t have any unique OCDs that only apply to you besides Berserk, but there are still a few related abilities to cover.

 Adrenal

It’s essential that you have your Adrenal available for DPS checks, especially when burst is required because Fury doesn’t have additional burst capabilities. It is highly unlikely that a fight will last long enough where this delay will be enough to where it will result in missing out on an activation of the Adrenal, so feel free to delay it as needed.

The best time to activate your Adrenal is right after applying Force Crush and right before the subsequent Raging Burst (or Smash). It should fall off right when you’re activating Battering Assault after nearly 2 rotation cycles.

Bloodthirst

Bloodthirst is the most powerful raid buff in the game, but it costs 30 Fury to activate, which restricts when you can use it. Since you need to activate Berserk at specific times to sustain your rotation, the only time you can activate Bloodthirst is when Frenzy is available and you must can activate it back-to-back with Berserk.

If you can, it’s ideal to activate it at the same time as your Adrenal, right in between Force Crush and Raging Burst (or Smash). During your opener, this means you’ll spend Frenzy to activate Berserk after that Raging Burst.

You should not think of Bloodthirst as a personal offensive cooldown, though it can technically be used as one. Typically, your raid lead will tell you when they want it to be activated, but it’s typically best to activate Bloodthirst and other raid buffs during DPS or heal checks, especially burn phases.

It’s also good to activate raid buffs when the boss takes increased damage, such as when Kephess the Undying in TFB gets knocked down by a pillar. If a fight doesn’t have a specific time, it’s usually best to activate raid buffs at the very beginning of the fight during everyone’s openers.

Since raid buffs have such long cooldowns, they can typically only be activated once or twice per fight. This allows you to delay them as needed for specific DPS checks, but if sustained DPS is the priority, like when you need to beat an Enrage timer, remember to factor in how many activations you can get in that fight. For example, with Grob’thok in DF, you can wait to pop Bloodthirst and other raid buffs at the first magnet, but you’ll probably miss out on a second activation if you wait that long.

Frenzy

Frenzy has limited usefulness as an offensive cooldown for Fury Marauders because you already have to activate Berserk at specific times, and your discipline already enables you to activate Berserk as often as possible. This does not mean that Frenzy is useless.

The most important use of Frenzy is to enable you to activate Bloodthirst without disrupting your rotation since that ability also costs 30 Fury to activate. You do need to be very careful about the order in which you activate each of these abilities.

If you have 30 Fury after applying Force Crush, activate Bloodthirst (along with your Adrenal), then Frenzy + Raging Burst, then Berserk. This way, Bloodthirst will buff 2 Raging Bursts.

Besides Bloodthirst, I highly recommend saving Frenzy in order to immediately fix your rotation if you mess up. You’ll lose a lot more DPS from recovering normally than you’d gain from the damage buffs accompanying Berserk.

 Furious Power

Note: This ability is locked away in the ability tree and is not optimal for any discipline against any type of enemy for either Marauder or Juggernaut. I’m still going to cover it in case Broadsword comes to their senses and gives it as a baseline ability, but feel free to skip it for now.

While the tooltip says it boosts the damage dealt by your next direct single-target melee attack, it does not boost the damage of or consume a charge of Furious Power on Battering Assault or regular Assault. I assume this is a quality-of-life thing since those are weak abilities that no spec wants buff. 

When you’re using it as an offensive cooldown, you won’t have much control over which abilities you use it on, though try to avoid consuming charges on Vicious Slash. Furious Strike, Vicious Throw, and (necessarily) Obliterate are the best abilities to buff with Furious Power as a Fury Marauder.

Make sure you have all 4 charges available for the burst DPS check. Your melee attacks that have cooldowns are your best targets for Furious Power when you use them all at once, but don’t let this get in the way of executing your rotation.

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

Defensive cooldowns (DCDs) are not used just to stop you from getting killed, they’re there to minimize overall damage taken. For any Combat Style in any fight, your most effective DCDs should be mapped to the most damaging attacks in the fight while weaker DCDs should be used against weaker attacks. 

Don’t pop all of your DCDs at once or only use them when your health gets low. You should be attempting to mitigate as much damage as possible by using your DCDs against predictable damage.

In fights where you’ll be taking a high amount of sustained damage, it’s important to use your DCDs in the order that maximizes your overall uptime. If you can tweak the order that you use your DCDs where it allows you to get an extra use out of one of them over the course of a long burn phase, you should definitely do that instead of activating your potentially stronger DCDs first.

It’s good to have 1 emergency panic button too, but everything else should be used to prevent your health from getting low in the first place. Part of knowing a fight is understanding how much damage you take and what you can do to mitigate that damage.

 Saber Ward

This DCD is useful against any attack, though it mitigates damage differently depending on the attack type and it’s far more powerful against Melee/Ranged damage than force/tech. 

Against Melee/Ranged damage, Saber Ward increases your defense chance, which is the chance to completely avoid taking the damage. Against frequent ticks of damage, the 50% defense chance increase is not statistically different from giving you 50% DR against those damage types instead. 

Saber Ward also provides 25% damage absorption against force/tech attacks. Since it provides damage absorption, which is considered post-mitigation, it won’t feel quite as strong as something like 25% DR, which will get added to the DR provided by your armor. In other words, Saber Ward only applies to the damage you would take after DR has been applied, so it affects a smaller proportion of the overall damage taken.

I would recommend using something else against force/tech damage unless this is the only thing you have left. It’s better than nothing, but against big hits you’ll probably need to pair it with something else, like Cloak of Pain.

Cloak of Pain

Cloak of Pain is in a weird spot as a DCD. It provides DR, not RDT (post-mitigation) as the tooltip says, so it is stronger than the tooltip would suggest. Even though it is DR, 20% is right on the cusp of not being good enough to mitigate big hits on its own.

Don’t get me wrong, you can survive some big hits with Cloak of Pain alone, but you will often be brought right to the brink of death and may give your healers a heart attack in the process. For the largest hits, I recommend pairing Cloak of Pain with Saber Ward or just using a different DCD altogether.

Cloak of Pain’s true strength comes from mitigating smaller, frequent hits like you’d typically find in burn phases. It’s also one of the best DCDs in the game for fights where damage is going out constantly or in the form of DoTs like Red (Dxun first boss), Underlurker, and Nefra. It’s so great for these situations is because it can last up to 30 seconds and deal upwards of several GCDs worth of damage over the course of that duration depending on how many times you get hit.

Undying Rage

Undying Rage is an insanely powerful DCD but doesn’t quite rise to the level of being a cheese. It provides an extreme amount of mitigation against regular attacks but doesn’t work consistently as a cheese because even 1% of damage taken from attacks that are designed to kill you will still often be enough to chew through a full health bar.

That said, it will still be incredibly effective against any hit you’re meant to take, and you will almost certainly be able to survive for the 6 seconds that it’s active unless you have close to 0 HP already. You shouldn’t ever need to pop anything else alongside this DCD.

 Medpac

Don’t save it for a rainy day because today is that rainy day! Unless you get hit by a one-shot mechanic (which you shouldn’t), you should never let yourself die while your Medpac is still available and you certainly should never try to use one of your heals before using your Medpac.

If everyone’s health is getting low or there’s a heal check in the current phase, do not hesitate to use your Medpac if you can take full benefit of the health provided or need to be above a certain health level to survive an imminent mechanic.

If you think Medpacs are too expensive, it’s time to get Biochem on one of your alts or even better, your raiding toon so that you can make your own or get reusables. Choosing not to use a Medpac for financial reasons and subsequently dying is not a valid excuse.

Force Camouflage

Force Camo is a true Swiss Army Knife ability. If there’s a mechanic that you need to deal with, there’s an astronomically high chance that Force Camouflage will be able to help you in some capacity.

Cleanse
The Expunging Camouflage utility has been rolled into the base ability, so you can always use Force Camouflage to cleanse yourself.

Threat Drop and Stealth
Contrary to popular belief, Force Camouflage does not zero out your threat like an actual stealth out ability. It does cause you to enter stealth so enemies won’t notice you while active, but that’s not the same thing. In terms of threat reduction, Force Camo works just like any other threat drop.

Damage Mitigation
Force Camouflage reduces your damage taken by 50% while active. Since attacking will deactivate Force Camo, this is only useful in PvE to mitigate single, predictable hits. You’ll only deactivate the camouflage if you activate an ability after activating Force Camouflage. You will not lose the buff immediately if instant attack is already in progress even if the damage has not yet gone out. In practice, you’ll always get close to a full GCD of mitigation. The idea is that you want to activate Force Camo at the very last second, right before the damage hits.

Camo is also great to use to mitigate damage during transitional phases where damage might be going out but no enemy is present like when Styrak rains down Force Lightning after you defeat the Kell Dragon.

Mobility
Force Camouflage increases your movement speed by 50% while active. Since the movement boost only applies while Force Camo is active, just like the damage mitigation, you can’t use this all the time. Only use it when you can’t actually deal damage to anything, like when you’re beyond 30m away from a boss or during a phase where there’s nothing to attack.

CC Immunity
While Force Camouflage is active, you are immune to all controlling effects. Just like with damage reduction and mobility, this effect is only active while Force Camo is active, so you have to time it very carefully to avoid losing DPS. One of the best uses for the CC immunity is on the third floor of the Revan fight to ignore the push/pull/machine heartbeat (it doesn’t work on the Unstable Aberrations).

Force Charge

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is your primary gap closer ability. It generates 3 Rage and deals very little damage. Force Charge can often be used while you are still flying through the air from a knockback and you should definitely do that if you’re able to. Unlike with Juggernauts, it’s basically always optimal to just leap in if you’re outside of melee range of your target because you only have 1 attack with 30m range and it’s garbage for this discipline.

Force Charge also interrupts the cast of whatever target you leap to, though it doesn’t apply a 4s lockout as your actual interrupt ability does, so it’s more for just buying you a couple of seconds for your or someone else’s interrupt to come off cooldown than a more proper solution to a mechanic. This does come up fairly often though if your group is leveraging your short interrupt cooldown, so it’s important to be aware that you can do this.

Force Charge also grants the Dominate autocrit proc for Raging Burst and Smash, the same one given by Obliterate. If you end up using Force Charge, I find it’s better to just skip Obliterate and step right into the next ability that’s off cooldown. Typically, Raging Burst (or Smash) and Furious Strike will be available by the time you reach them in the rotation.

Predation

This is the raidwide movement speed buff. All old utility effects have been merged into the base ability, so it no longer costs Fury ever and always boosts everyone’s movement speed by 80% and purges movement-impairing effects (AKA super-pred).

Be mindful of situations when a good portion of the group needs to move even if you don’t have to. In other words, you might be able to get where you need to go with Force Charge or Mad Dash, but the rest of the group might be lagging behind. This most often occurs in fights with raidwide knockbacks like Dash’roode and Gharj, where you’ll be able to leap back immediately while other group members might still be 30m away from the boss.

Your raid lead may call for Predation to be used at specific points in the fight in order to help cheese mechanics like the Reaches phase in Brontes or running into the room during the third boss (second encounter) in Dxun.

Predation can occasionally be used as a raidwide DoT cleanse as well if the DoT has a movement-impairing component. The poster child for this is Captain Horic’s grenade in the Cartel Warlords fight in S&V NiM where you can cleanse every other grenade application for the group. Your healers will thank you for this.

The melee/ranged defense boost can also be handy as a way to mitigate damage, particularly in fights or phases with a lot of adds since those almost always deal melee/ranged damage.

If you don’t need it for movement, it can be worthwhile to use if the tanks are out of DCDs or have just popped Deflection, Saber Ward, or Explosive Fuel | Battle Focus during a phase where they’re taking a lot of damage. Bosses often have a melee/ranged basic attack that can make up a sizable portion of tank DTPS, and those DCDs don’t quite boost defense chance to 100%, so Predation improves the reliability of tank DCDs.

 Mad Dash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This ability is both a defensive cooldown and movement ability. As a defensive cooldown, it’s your cheese ability. It gives you 100% defense/resist chance for the duration of the dash, meaning you’re completely immune to taking damage during your dash, provided that it’s damage that is mitigatable, so it won’t work against things like 0 damage kills and typeless damage. 

Since the mitigation is so short, it can be fairly difficult to time, so you may need to practice it a little bit. Don’t be afraid to completely stop DPSing for a moment if there’s something that will kill you if you don’t do the cheese correctly. 

As a movement ability, Mad Dash does help you cover a fair bit of distance, but it does cost a GCD to use, so it is best used when you’re out of range of the boss so you couldn’t deal damage anyway or after your other movement abilities have been used.

It’s not the end of the world to use this ability for movement though, especially now that the damage increase effect of the old Through Victory ability tree option is built in. Bottom line: try to hit something with Mad Dash if you can or use it when you’re out of range of everything.

I also want to add that if you’re using this ability against one of the Energy Spheres from Brontes, or some similar mechanic where something detonates on contact with you, make sure that you hit the orb at the end of the animation rather than the beginning or middle. If you don’t do this, the mitigation might not work because of position lag. The server may not update your position until the end of the animation after the mitigation has ended.

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

There are only a handful of instances in Operations where CC is required, so I will briefly go over what the Marauder has at their disposal, along with any other abilities I have not yet covered in this guide.

 Force Choke

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Channeled)
This is your hard stun, meaning it does not break on damage. In PvE, this will generally only be used for specific mechanics since most things you’d care about stunning are immune, though the more recent operations do have lots of opportunities to stun things. In general, be sure to pay attention when something is stunnable because that often means you’re intended to stun it. 

 Disruption

This is your interrupt. As a Marauder, your interrupt’s cooldown is among the shortest in the game, with your only peers being Juggernauts | Guardians and Powertechs | Vanguards. This short cooldown means you can handle some interrupt mechanics entirely on your own or with less help than is normally required, and your raid group may want to take advantage of this. If you really want to be a clicker, I highly recommend you at least keybind this ability, or you will have trouble with some of the shorter casts that need to be interrupted. 

 Unleash

This is your CC break. Use it when you get CC’d and are unable to deal damage, complete a mechanic, or avoid taking damage as a result of being CC’d. It doesn’t matter if it’s a root or a slow or a full stun. Your objectives are to deal damage, follow mechanics, and survive.

Ability Tree Choices

Make a habit of reading through all of your ability tree choices each time you log in. They are intended to be changed on the fly and having a clearer idea of what all of them do will help you to recognize situations where individual choices will be useful in-game.

Level 23 Choice – Raging Burst Buffs

Level 27 Choice – Snaring Slash, Overwhelming Slashes, or Predation

Level 39 Choice – Obliterate Buffs

Level 43 Choice – Furious Power, Criticality, or Furious Rumination

Level 51 Choice – Inexorable, Interloper, or Gravity Vortex

Level 64 Choice – Cloak of Retribution, Path Carver, or Blood Ward

Level 68 Choice – Force Choke, Mad Dash, or Undying Rage

Thirst for Rage, Interceptor, or Brazen – Level 73 Choice

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Cauterized Coronary
Effect: Furious Strike causes its target to bleed, dealing damage 3 times over 9s.
Recommendation: This snooze-fest of a tactical item is sadly what you’ll be using by default in sustained DPS situations. Despite being a Fury Marauder tactical, Cauterized Coronary is also optimal for Rage Juggernaut. It is the default because it provides the greatest single-target DPS increase compared to the alternatives.

Enrage Crush
Effect: Dealing damage with Raging Burst or Smash detonates Force Crush, dealing Force Crush’s remaining damage to up to 8 enemies within 5m of the primary target.
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical item. Enrage Crush is pretty strong in solo content and it’s pretty average compared to other AoE tacticals that other burst DPS specs have. It does not offer I don’t recommend using it outside of solo content. If you need to AoE in group content, you should switch to Vengeance or be content with the AoE damage you can deal rotationally. Like Cauterized Coronary, it is also optimal in the same situations for Rage Juggernaut.

In our Catalog of all Tacticals in SWTOR you will find information about all other Tacticals that we didn’t list in this guide. You may find something adequate that is also cheaper and easier to obtain for your needs while you work on getting the recommended one for your combat style and build.

Legendary Implants

BioWare has removed set bonuses from the game and replaced them with Legendary Implants, which are just implants with old 4 or 6-piece set bonus effects on them, so rather than needing to collect 4 pieces of a gear set to get the 4-piece set bonus, or 6 pieces for the 6-piece, you’ll get either a 4 or 6-piece set bonus effect on an implant. 

This was done to improve customization (now you can mix and match set bonus effects), make them easier to obtain, and consume less inventory space. Here are the Legendary Implants you should use for this discipline:

Fearless Victor – Whenever you use an attack that spends Rage, your melee damage is increased by 10% for 10 seconds.

Berserker’s Call – Reduces the cooldown of Frenzy by 15 seconds. Additionally, activating Berserk increases all damage dealt by 5% for 10 seconds.

Fearless Victor is also useful for Juggernauts | Guardians and offers a greater DPS increase, so I recommend getting that one first.

If you want to know more about Legendary Implants, check out my guide Legendary Items in SWTOR 7.0. It explains how to unlock Legendary Implants and contains a list of all Legendary Implants in the game.

Stat Priority

As a DPS, you’ll need to care about 3 different stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, and Critical Rating. There are thresholds associated with Accuracy and Alacrity, so you need to prioritize reaching those thresholds to get the full benefit from each stat point.

1. Accuracy to 110.00% – Before investing in any other stats, make sure you hit 110% Accuracy because attacks that miss deal 0 damage, and no other stats matter if the attack doesn’t land. Furthermore, many procs require you to actually deal damage, not just activate the ability, so you can mess up your rotation if an attack misses. You need 110% Accuracy in PvE and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks, and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. Anything over 110% is not helpful in PvE, so you do want to go over 110%, but with as little excess as possible.
2. Alacrity to ~7.5% – Once your Accuracy is above 110.00%, it’s time to think about Alacrity. It has the second-highest priority because you do not get the full benefit of the stat unless you surpass one of the GCD thresholds. It’s less important than Accuracy because your attacks still need to hit. You need 7.15% Alacrity to get from the 1.5s GCD to the 1.4s GCDs. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCD, resulting in an experience that feels clunky and inconsistent. You need roughly 0.4-0.5% more Alacrity past the exact threshold to effectively eliminate those 1.5s GCDs.
3. Critical gets the rest – After you’ve got your thresholded stats sorted out, you can start investing in crit. To be clear, Critical Rating is still valuable; it just has the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it that you need to meet to get the most out of each point of stat as the other tertiary stats you care about do. Critical Rating increases both your Critical Chance and Critical Damage. If you have a single effect that increases your Critical Chance by 100% all on its own (it can’t be from multiple effects combined), all of the Critical Chance percentage for that attack gets added to your Critical Damage percentage, causing the attack to deal supercritical damage.

Find out which mods to purchase from Hyde and Zeek in SWTOR on the Fleet to minimize spending and optimize your build. The dedicated guide contains tips for all roles in both PvE and PvP.

Augments

Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since the stats come in much smaller amounts, augments allow you to fine-tune your gear to provide almost as much of each total stat as you want.

To equip an augment, you must first use an Augmentation Kit that matches the crafting grade of the augment (ex. Grade 11 augments require MK-11 Kits).

The 296, 302, 310, and 318 iRating augments released with 7.6 and 7.7 are BiS. The higher the iRating, the more stats they offer and the more expensive they are to make or buy, though most of the benefit is provided by having augments at all, and the base-rarity blue 296 augments are the cheapest.

Almost everyone should buy the blue 296 augments because they provide the greatest bang for the buck, but you do have multiple options:

• Gold 318 augments (Superior [Type] Augment 86). These are overall best-in-slot (BiS) and offer ~25% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 4 additional gold augments. They’re extremely expensive and completely unnecessary for all content in the game, so I only recommend them to the wealthiest individuals. 
• Purple 310 augments (Advanced [Type] Augment 86). They offer ~13% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 2 additional gold 300 augments worth of stat. They are cheaper than the gold 318s, but they’re in the same price bracket in terms of affordability, so there’s no reason for anyone to use them at this point.
• Blue 302 augments ([Type] Augment 76) are the mid-tier augments. For all intents and purposes, these are equivalent to the gold 300 augments from 6.0. I only recommend them if you’re close to a stat threshold or don’t already have gold 300 augments and want something a bit better than the blue 296s.
• Blue 296 augments ([Type] Augment 83) are the most basic tier of augments for level 80 players. They are pretty cheap as only the schematic comes from the associated lair boss, Propagator Core XR-53. You don’t need any Corrupted Bioprocessors to craft these augments.

Check out our 7.7 Augments Guide for everything you need to know about augmenting gear!

Earpiece

Which Earpiece you use will depend on what specific tertiary stats the rest of your gear and augments provide. Typically, you’ll need to use either an Accuracy (Initiative, yellow icon) or Alacrity (Quick Savant / Nimble, green icon) Earpiece.

Crystals

Advanced Eviscerating Crystals are the best. They are the only type of crystal that increases one of your tertiary stats. Since the stat pool for tertiary stats is much smaller than that of primary or secondary stats, adding 41 is a more significant upgrade than it would be if you were to add 41 to one of the primary or secondary stats (mastery, power, or endurance).

Relics

I recommend the Relic of Focused Retribution (FR) and Relic of Serendipitous Assault (SA) for all PvE content. Each relic offers a proc; FR’s proc boosts your Mastery, whereas SA’s proc increases your Power stats. If you have the choice, purchase the Relic of Focused Retribution first because in equal amounts, and only in equal amounts, Mastery offers more of a DPS gain than Power.

Biochem Items

I recommend the Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, Advanced Kyrprax Medpac, and Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal for all PvE content. Grade 11 Biochem items from the crafting tier released with 6.0 remain BiS. Since they haven’t been updated to level 80, their effects are weaker than they should be, though they can still have an impact.

You should use the Proficient Stim as a DPS because it provides 2 tertiary stats that you need, Accuracy and Critical Rating, and tertiary stats are harder to come by and what you build your gear around. You should use the Attack Adrenal because it provides Power, which typically provides the greatest DPS increase, though it’s also more consistent, which is what you need for DPS checks.

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

If your guild uses the Zeal (cyan) guild perk set bonus, which gives a passive +5% Alacrity boost, you won’t need nearly as much Alacrity stat to reach your desired Alacrity threshold. My recommendations do not factor in these boosts, so if you have one, you’ll need to pay attention to percentage thresholds rather than the stat amounts. Just keep adding one augment at a time until you reach the desired percentage.

Guild leaders, I recommend using the Fortune (yellow) guild perk set bonus instead. It grants +5% Critical Chance and also boosts the Critical Rate and Time Efficiency of all Crew Skills by 2%. The reason for this is that you don’t have to change the way you gear in order to benefit from the effect.

Neither effect works in MM raids or PvP, so if you or your guild members do either of those activities, you’ll need to tweak your gear to reach the desired threshold depending on the activity, which I find super tedious. Even if your guild doesn’t do those activities, leaders still need to actively maintain the set bonus because your gear will become suboptimal on top of losing the bonus, whereas it’s not a big deal if your crit is a little lower for a bit.

The Alacrity boost is much stronger than the Critical Chance boost. Still, PvE content isn’t balanced around these guild perk set bonuses anyway, so I find it better to have a smaller boost I don’t have to worry about than a larger boost I have to manage.

Best Fury Marauder Builds in 7.0

These are the builds that I recommend for different types of content and situations. The Build Essentials are what I consider to be the core components that make the build viable. Without them, the build no longer accomplishes its primary function. Build Essentials can include important ability tree buffs, a tactical item, and even Legendary Implants occasionally.

The ability tree buffs that aren’t listed as Build Essentials can be changed as needed without compromising the integrity of the build, though I have included a full set of default choices that will be most consistently helpful in accomplishing what the build sets out to do.

Sustained Group Content

This build is intended for use in group content for fighting bosses. It features a greater emphasis on sustained DPS, survivability, with an emphasis on minimizing the potential risks associated with using Obliterate. For this reason, I strongly recommend against switching away from Undying Rage and using it as your last line of defense.

You may want to switch to Obliteration and Sweeping Slash in fights with a lot of adds, but make sure you’re actually benefitting from them. You can also switch to Thirst for Rage if you need additional survivability.

Solo Content and Flashpoints

This build is intended for fighting trash mobs and emphasizes maximizing your AoE potential and mobility. You should be overflowing with Rage to the extent that you can focus on figuring out what combo to land instead of whether or not you can afford something.

The biggest combos you have are Force Crush ▶ Obliterate ▶ Smash and Berserk ▶ Obliterate ▶ Raging Burst. Use Furious Strike and Sweeping Slash to finish off the stragglers.

Remember to use Force Crush against the enemy with the most HP because if it dies from Smash, the AoE Force Crush won’t go out. Don’t forget that you want to use Obliterate or Force Charge and Force Crush or Berserk before using Smash or Raging Burst for the big damage boosts. Furious Strike is also ideal but may be impractical at the beginning of the encounter.

Openers, Rotations, and Priorities

Opener

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks. It can be a little different than the standard rotation because everything is off cooldown, including your OCDs and relic procs. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact.

1. Channel Hatred (pre-cast for 30 Fury)
2. Force Charge (mandatory)
3. Battering Assault
4. Force Crush
5. Adrenal + Bloodthirst (if applicable)
6. Raging Burst
7. Frenzy ▶ Berserk
8. Furious Strike
9. Obliterate
10. Force Scream
11. Ravage
12. Vicious Slash
13. Raging Burst
14. Furious Strike
15. Obliterate
16. Vicious Slash
17. Battering Assault
18. Force Crush
19. Bicycle Rotation

Your opener for Fury is just the Bicycle Rotation starting from Battering Assault for Rage into Force Crush for Destruction into the Berserk Burst cycle. Since you’re getting your first Destruction proc from Force Crush, it’s essential that you wait until after Raging Burst to activate Berserk.

However, that first Raging Burst still hits hard and is absolutely worth buffing with applicable OCDs, namely your Adrenal and Bloodthirst, if applicable. If you are using Bloodthirst, you will actually end up spending the 30 stacks of Fury from Frenzy on the regular Berserk, not Bloodthirst.

If you aren’t using Bloodthirst, just hold onto Frenzy in case you need it to recover, but make sure it’s up for Bloodthirst later in the fight.

Bicycle Rotation

Fury uses a static rotation because it is (mostly) possible to use all of your abilities on cooldown and maximize their damage dealt by using them in a specific order. The objective is to use the strongest attacks available while Dark Synergy and Cascading Power are active and use the weakest attacks in the final GCD before they are reapplied by Raging Burst (or Smash).

This rotation is quite static and alternates between 2 rotation cycles (the bicycle) defined by singular activations of Raging Burst or Smash, Furious Strike, Obliterate, and Force Crush or Berserk. It ensures that your most powerful abilities are being used as often as possible given the constraints of the discipline.

1. Raging Burst or Smash
2. Berserk (if Force Crush will not be available)
3. ( Dark Synergy, Cascading Power, and Criticality begin)
4. Furious Strike
5. Obliterate
6. Variable GCD 1
7. Variable GCD 2
8. ( Dark Synergy, Cascading Power, and Criticality end)
9. Force Crush or Vicious Slash (unbuffed)

Using Furious Strike followed by Obliterate as your first abilities after Raging Burst or Smash isn’t strictly necessary with this rotation, but it helps to concentrate damage into a single instant as Force Crush will detonate at almost the exact same time as Furious Strike lands. This position also synchronizes your Furious Defense proc with all of your damage boosts, making gameplay easier to conceptualize. In PvE, these are minor reasons, and it really has more to do with convention because it is more important for Rage now and has been more important for Fury in the past.

It’s a lot more important to make sure that you use Force Crush immediately before Raging Burst or Smash in order to maximize the amount of damage being dealt while Dark Synergy and Cascading Power are active. You also need to maximize the damage going out while your buffs are active, so the remainder of your Berserk window will feature your other heaviest hitters, Furious Strike, Obliterate, Ravage, and Vicious Throw.

You won’t be able to use Vicious Throw until the boss’ health drops below 30%. Up until then, you will use Force Scream in the Berserk window after Obliterate and before Ravage. Once your target’s health does drop below 30%, you must use Vicious Throw during the Burst cycle and move Force Scream out of the Burst cycle Vicious Slash’s spot in the Force Crush Wind-Up cycle.

It’s better to use Force Scream in the other cycle because it still benefits from Dark Synergy and Cascading Power where it wouldn’t if you just delayed it to the final slot of the Berserk Burst cycle.

The Recipe for Raging Burst and Recovering from Mistakes

Recovering as a Fury Marauder after making a mistake is difficult. Unless you really know what you’re doing, making a mistake can be as punishing as messing up your resource management on a Tech class. It’s easiest to recover by just popping Frenzy so you have Berserk when you need to, but you can only do that once every few mins.

The path to recovery is dependent on exactly where you made the mistake since your Rage and Fury generation must be consistent. If you’re super low on Rage, I think it’s best to just spam Assault several times until you can afford to do your rotation up until it’s time to use Berserk or Battering Assault. Yes, it feels HORRIBLE, but you’re gonna end up interlacing that many Assaults anyway.

If your Rage got messed up, your procs or Fury more than likely did as well, and that’s why it’s important to completely understand what ingredients go into making the gourmet dish that is your bicyclic activation of Raging Burst or Smash.

This Proc,	Generated By	Makes Your Next Raging Burst or Smash
Dominate	Obliterate Force Charge	Automatically critically hit
Destruction	Force Crush Berserk	Deal 15% more damage and cost no Rage
Furious Rage	Furious Strike	Deal 15% more critical damage

Each of these procs is generated in every single cycle because you’re using 1 of the abilities each cycle. The other attacks do not directly contribute to buffing Raging Burst but do deal their own chunk of damage and generate Rage, rather than consume it.

If you’re having trouble keeping things straight, just remember that Force Crush should always be used immediately before Raging Burst or Smash, and Berserk should always be used immediately after you dealt damage with Raging Burst or Smash.

I highly recommend doing a bunch of dailies as a Fury Marauder with the Solo Build so that you can get a better sense of how these abilities and their cooldowns interact with each other. The nature of trash pulls means you’re forced to repeatedly build into fully procced Raging Bursts, and thanks to Furious Rumination, you won’t have to worry about Rage at the same time.