SWTOR 7.7 Annihilation Marauder PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Annihilation Marauder

Annihilation Marauders leave their opponents bleeding out on the battlefield by rending them with the Force and assaulting them with deadly saber attacks. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, these Sith predators also use their victims’ blood to protect themselves and reinvigorate their allies.

In my opinion, Annihilation is one of the most challenging specs in the game. It features a relatively complex priority system that is influenced by RNG, a high APM requirement, has very few abilities with more than 4m range, and a DoT with a short duration that must be refreshed.

In exchange for this challenge, Annihilation offers some of the highest sustained damage output in the game, though this doesn’t translate as well to burst situations. Thanks to a new ability tree choice, Anni’s burst is stronger than it’s been in a long time, maybe ever, but it’s still probably one of the worst specs in the game when it comes to burst damage.

AoE damage output is lower compared to what many other DoT specs are capable of, so you won’t be able to let others use purely single-target builds in fights where AoE is required, but you’ll be able to contribute enough to carry your own weight in the most demanding of AoE situations and sometimes slightly increase your single-target damage output.

In terms of survivability, Annihilation remains exceptional in PvE despite losing some small defensive capabilities and I would argue they are one of the strongest specs in this department now because they can take AoE RDT basically for free and have DCDs for both burst and sustained damage.

Marauders in general offer some of the best generic raid utility in the game thanks to Bloodthirst and Predation. Annihilation in particular is also the only Force-wielding discipline that can always apply the Internal/Elemental DPS debuff and offers significant raidwide healing. Annihilation’s groupwide healing can reach as high as 10k EHPS, which is equivalent to 30-50% of a single healer’s output!

BioWare will likely be making balance changes throughout the first few patches, so be sure to check back to this guide after each update. You can check at the top of the guide to see if the guide has been updated for the most recent patch.

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Annihilation requires 2 other DPS debuffs:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Armor	3.2%
Force	2.7%
Total DPS Gain:	5.9%

Annihilation is pretty average when it comes to group composition dependency, though it doesn’t require any specialized debuffs (as in the debuffs will probably also benefit someone else), so it should be fairly easy to fulfill Anni’s needs.

Annihilation Marauder pairs perfectly with Deception Assassins/ Infiltration Shadows because both Combat Styles provide both debuffs that the other needs and they each help to cover for the others’ weaknesses. Please note that this pairing only enables maximum flexibility in what other players can bring when you’re shooting for optimal DPS compositions; it is absolutely not required.

If you have to pick between someone else only providing one of the two debuffs for some reason, definitely go with the armor debuff. It will provide a greater benefit to Anni as well as the rest of the group. Don’t forget to factor in player skill and balance with group composition. If you’re increasing the group’s DPS by 2000 combined but the player will deal 2500 DPS with that spec either because they don’t know it as well or it’s just a weaker spec, it will be worse to have a more optimal debuff composition.

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.

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5 second duration before you 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

Note: Annihilation has a lot of interdependencies and powerful synergies, but I can only explain one thing at a time, so it might be hard to fully appreciate how the spec works until you get to the rotation section and if things are still confusing by that point, I encourage you to re-read these sections. I think when you have an idea of what everything is, it will be easier to understand how they work together.

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 what distinguish Marauders from other combat styles.

For Annihilation, activating Berserk grants 6 stacks of the Berserk proc. While you have at least 1 stack of Berserk, all bleed damage automatically critically hits. Each time one of your bleed effects critically hits, 1 stack of Berserk is consumed. In essence, Berserk makes your next 6 bleed effects autocrit.

Berserk stacks can be consumed very quickly in Annihilation, especially when you have DoTs on multiple targets, so it’s essential that Berserk is only activated right before Force Rend for reasons I’ll explain soon.

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. Fury is also generated when you defeat an opponent, but this isn’t all that relevant. In addition, 30 Fury can be spent to activate Bloodthirst, but I’ll talk more about that later on.

It’s essential to be able to distinguish between abilities that do and don’t generate Fury. I think it’s easiest to just memorize the attacks that don’t cost Rage and thereby don’t generate Fury:

• Battering Assault
• Ravage
• Dual Saber Throw
• Assault

Force Rend used to be on this list as well, but thanks to a new ability tree passive, it can generate 10 Fury. Berserk has 2 combat style passives associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

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 ability tree buffs 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 rest and recharge ability). Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. This used to be a utility, but is now given for free to all Marauders. It allows you to build up Fury outside of combat.

Juyo Form

In the early days of SWTOR, lightsaber stances (and other combat stances) were actual toggleable abilities that you could switch between at will, but this system caused some major problems.

For casual players, it could contribute to them dealing significantly less damage if they had the wrong stance active or didn’t have one active at all. It could also be abused by more skilled players to get excessive mitigation by using a tank stance as a DPS spec, though Marauders couldn’t do this. Stances were phased out as the discipline system replaced the skill tree system and they’re now just discipline passives.

Juyo Form builds stacks whenever you deal melee damage. Each stack increases all damage dealt by 1%. These stacks last up to 30 seconds, so they shouldn’t ever fall off during a boss fight unless there is a super long period of downtime. Part of Annihilation’s poor burst performance comes from the fact that these stacks can fall off and do take a few seconds to rebuild. Juyo Form has 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Juyo Mastery
Each stack of Juyo Form also increases the critical hit chance of your bleed effects by 1%. Since Berserk makes your next 6 DoT ticks (which are bleeds) autocrit, this effect also effectively increases the critical damage dealt by your DoT ticks during Berserk by 1% per stack thanks to the existence of supercrits.

Swift Demise
Juyo Form now stacks up to 6 times. I don’t know why this couldn’t have been built into the base effect or part of Juyo Mastery, but for some reason, the effect is given to some other passive. In total, this means that with 6 stacks of Juyo Form, you’ll deal 6% extra damage and your bleeds have a 6% additional chance to crit all the time which will translate to 6% additional critical damage during Berserk.

Force Rend

(Force/Internal/Direct and Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Force Rend is a powerful bleed attack that has an initial hit followed by a 9s DoT. It’s a whole lot more important than it used to be thanks to new ability tree buffs that make it deal double damage and steal life when used while Berserk is active or always generate 10 stacks of Fury even during Berserk.

Since Berserk already makes your bleed attacks autocrit, the initial hit of Force Rend will deal around 40k damage if Berserk is active. This effect is so strong that the entire rotation is now structured around ensuring that Berserk is available in time for every single Force Rend activation.

Force Rend also has a 10m range and generates 4 Rage upon activation. Both of these factors mean that you should always be able to activate the ability when it becomes available. With the new ability tree passive, Force Rend is your highest priority ability and should be activated immediately after activating Berserk.

You should only delay Force Rend if Berserk is not yet available (so if you don’t have 30 Stacks of Fury), but you have tools at your disposal to ensure that both abilities will be available at roughly the same time. A key part of picking ability tree buffs in Annihilation is ensuring you get Berserk available just in time for when Force Rend comes off cooldown. Force Rend has 2 discipline passives and 1 proc associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Hemorrhage
Your bleed effects have a 20% chance to generate 1 Rage whenever they deal damage. Cannot occur more than once per second. In addition, Force Rend (as well as Rupture and Deadly Saber) heal you for 15% of the damage they deal. The Rage generation component of Hemorrhage is part of what adds RNG to Annihilation and necessitates a priority system because the exact amount of Rage you’ll have at any given time is not guaranteed.

The self-heal aspect isn’t strictly relevant to your rotation, but it does account for a significant portion of your survivability. I also want to note that self-healing meant as a type of damage mitigation no longer generates threat towards enemies, so you shouldn’t get aggro in weird situations anymore.

Blood Guard
Dealing bleed damage increases your damage reduction (DR) by 5% for 3 seconds. Basically, this will be active whenever you are actively attacking something and be off during downtime. You shouldn’t ever think about this proc, but I wanted to bring it up because you will probably notice it ticking down very fast all the time on your buff bar.

Rupture

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Rupture is primarily a DoT and the only one that will have 100% uptime in Annihilation. It does have a small initial hit that deals weapon damage rather than Force, Internal, and Periodic, but this aspect will only be relevant in specific fights with frequent downtime or target swapping.

Spiteful Saber Tactical Item
Rupture deals 10% more damage and Vicious Slash, Vicious Throw, and Dual Saber Throw refresh the duration of Rupture’s bleed effect and tick its damage. This tactical allows you to maintain Rupture indefinitely, and Vicious Slash is the only way to reliably maintain it since Vicious Throw and Dual Saber Throw will mostly be used on cooldown.

In 6.0, it was harder to maintain this DoT because Rage was harder to come by so Vicious Slash wasn’t always available, but this is no longer the case. Annihilation feels much smoother to play compared to 6.0.

When Spiteful Saber is not being used, Rupture should still have 100% uptime from DoT bouncing. If you can’t bounce DoTs, you should reapply Rupture manually.

Vicious Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
As BioWare has refined Annihilation’s rotation over the years, Vicious Slash is now your only filler ability and will make up approximately 45% your GCDs in single-target situations. Vicious Slash does still cost 3 Rage per activation, but Annihilation does have sufficient Rage generation to accommodate this. Vicious Slash has 1 discipline passive and 1 combat style passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Bloodlust
Your direct damage attacks that hit a bleeding target build 1 Rage. Cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds. Since Rupture has 100% uptime thanks to Spiteful Saber, we don’t have to worry about the bleeding target part. In case you didn’t know, direct damage attacks are anything that isn’t periodic damage, so if it’s not a DoT, it’s direct damage.

Enraged Slash
Vicious Slash, Vicious Throw, Annihilate, and Sweeping Slash refund 1 Rage when used Basically, all of your melee attacks that consume Rage refund 1 Rage. Enraged Slash effectively enables you to spam Vicious Slash a whole lot more than you otherwise could.

Deadly Saber

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Deadly Saber is one of the only rotational attacks in the game that is not on the GCD and is a big part of why Annihilation has a higher APM requirement than most other DPS disciplines.

Deadly Saber works by making your next 3 melee attacks apply a stack of a DoT to the first enemy they hit, but each subsequent stack really just increases the damage dealt by the singular DoT tick. Since it’s off the GCD, it can (and should) be activated during other melee attacks, though it doesn’t apply a stack of the DoT to attacks that are mid-animation, even if the attack hasn’t landed yet.

Since Deadly Saber costs 3 Rage but doesn’t start ticking until your next melee attack and isn’t a melee attack itself, it will never grant any additional Rage upon activation, so you can’t do any sort of gambling as you can with all of your other attacks.

Each Deadly Saber stack application also refreshes the duration of the entire DoT, and that’s where all of the shenanigans with this spec begin. You can mess with your ability order to the extent of forcing it into becoming a rotation in order to increase the total number of Deadly Saber ticks you get.

Not only do these extra Deadly Saber ticks result in a surprisingly significant DPS increase on their own, but they are also additional bleed ticks, so your Rage generation will be more consistent and your rotation will become easier if you time your abilities correctly.

The core idea is to activate Deadly Saber 2 GCDs before Force Rend comes off cooldown (and their cooldowns are identical) so that you do 2 melee attacks to apply 2 stacks to the boss, and then use Force Rend, a Force attack, to squeeze out another tick before following it up with another melee attack that applies the third stack.

This approach also guarantees that you’re always using that off-GCD Rage consumption to build Fury because you’ll be activating it outside of Berserk while also guaranteeing that you’ll have the 3 stacks applied while Berserk is active.

You can also activate Deadly Saber during downtime before you can actually deal damage to get what the people call “perma Deadly Saber”, which allows it to have 100% uptime. If you don’t time Deadly Saber with Force Rend and just use it on cooldown, even during downtime, it’s easier to accomplish and helps to reduce the DPS divide between the approaches.

Regardless, don’t worry about perma-Deadly Saber, leveraging it is at the bleeding edge of Annihilation skill. You don’t have to worry about passives or procs either, because Deadly Saber has none associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Annihilate

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is Annihilation’s most damaging weapon attack, though Vicious Throw can match it sub-30% and Force Rend will consistently surpass it as your most damaging overall attack. Since it is a high-priority ability, I want to point out that Annihilate costs 4 Rage instead of 3 or less like most of your other abilities, so make sure you have at least that much before you activate it so you aren’t delaying it. This now basically boils down to determining if you’ll need to use Battering Assault in a prior GCD.

There’s not much more to say about Annihilate without going into its discipline integration. Annihilate has 3 procs and 1 debuff associated with it that are relevant to your rotation.

Annihilator
Activating Annihilate reduces the cooldown of Annihilate by 1.5 seconds. Stacks up to 3 (really 4) times and lasts 30 seconds, effectively reducing Annihilate’s cooldown by 6 seconds at 4 stacks. Honestly, I’m shocked that this effect has existed in the game for over a decade and I’m especially amazed that it wasn’t removed with the launch of 7.0. All it does is force you to have a weird opener and gives the spec some weird ramp-up that is almost exclusively relevant at the beginning of boss fights but also incentivizes you to have to rush around so the stacks don’t fall off between trash pulls, which can aggravate other group members.

Annihilation already has poor burst especially next to Fury and Carnage even if you’re able to engage with full stacks of Annihilator and Juyo Form, and that’s before you get to some special PvP effects unique to those two specs like increased armor penetration provided by Ferocity for Carnage and the CC immunity provided by Gravity Vortex for Fury. Both specs offer vastly superior mobility as well.

There’s just no reason for this spec to still have to be burdened by what was always a ridiculous proc. Annihilate is unique enough with its name, other procs, and high damage, but I digress. You got a rant when you barely need to know the proc exists at all.

Swift Demise
Annihilator now stacks up to 4 times. I only point this out to show you where that 4th stack of Annihilator comes from.

Devious Wounds
Annihilate increases the damage dealt by your bleeds by 5% for 6 seconds. The damage boost isn’t big enough to impact its current place in the priority, but it does contribute to Annihilate being one of your highest-priority abilities.

Bloodlust
Dealing damage with Annihilate applies the Internal/Elemental damage debuff, which makes the target take 7% more damage from Internal/Elemental attacks. This is one of the best debuffs in the game. Usually, the armor debuff is better, but there are some compositions where this one would be better.

Battering Assault

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your dedicated Rage-generating ability. It generates 6 Rage alongside any other Rage triggered by one of your passives. In 7.0, it no longer needs to be used on cooldown in Annihilation because passive Rage generation is so high. Since Battering Assault deals relatively little damage and doesn’t generate any Fury, it should be used as little as possible.

Battering Assault should typically only be used if you have 4 Rage or less and will not be able to afford the next ability. If you can afford to activate your next ability even if you have less than 4 Rage, you should continue delaying Battering Assault. It’s especially important to consider when Force Rend will next be available because that ability generates 4 Rage and you’re more likely to get a few extra Rage from the Hemorrhage passive while Berserk and Rend are active.

The only time that Battering Assault should be used proactively or when you have more than 4 Rage is if a bunch of high-priority abilities that cost Rage are about to come off cooldown, particularly Annihilate + Deadly Saber. It can also be a good idea to use Battering Assault a bit earlier than you would normally if you’re about to go into a DPS check or activate your Adrenal so you have maxed out your Rage. Battering Assault has 1 combat style passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Enraged Slash
Battering Assault applies the melee DPS debuff, which makes targets take 5% more damage from melee attacks. This passive is really only valuable to Assassins / Shadows because they are the only combat style that deals melee damage that doesn’t provide the buff themself.

However, if you’re the only one that applies it in the group, check every so often to make sure it hasn’t fallen off or you’ll end up hurting your own DPS.

Dual Saber Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Dual Saber Throw is a one-of-a-kind AoE ability that causes your lightsabers to travel in a straight line toward your target and keep going until they are 30m away and then they come back. Any other enemies they hit along the way will also take damage. Be careful not to pull other groups of nearby trash. Dual Saber Throw seems to just check if the blades collide with the models along the path or use some sort of tall invisible telegraph.

The most reliable way to hit multiple targets with it is to temporarily target the enemy that’s furthest away from you which maximizes the number of enemies in between you and your target. For example, if there’s a big cluster of enemies near you, the best way to ensure you’ll hit all of them is to stand on one edge of the cluster and target an enemy on the opposite edge of the cluster.

The sabers always travel towards the center of the target reticle on the enemy, wherever blaster shots would hit. This is typically the chest, but not always. For taller or gigantic enemies, this can result in the sabers traveling upwards and not hitting anyone else along the way. In these cases, it is better to target a shorter nearby enemy if you want to hit multiple targets.

Please note that it takes a moment for the damage to actually go through and trigger the refresh on Rupture, so don’t rely on Dual Saber Throw to refresh Rupture if there’s less than a second left on its duration.

Pulverize
Dealing damage with one of your bleed effects has a 20% chance to grant Pulverize, which increases the damage dealt by your next Dual Saber Throw by 100% and resets its cooldown. There’s no need to use Dual Saber Throw on cooldown, just use it before the Pulverize proc expires or when Berserk is active.

Ravage

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability doesn’t get a specific buff in Annihilation, but it’s still valuable to use occasionally because it doesn’t cost any Rage and deals a fair bit of damage. Please note that Ravage does not refresh Rupture with the Spiteful Saber tactical, unlike Dual Saber Throw.

Ravage deals more damage than Vicious Slash alone, but when the Spiteful Saber tactical is equipped, the Rupture tick will cause Vicious Slash to deal more damage overall. This DPS difference is much smaller than the difference between either ability and Battering Assault, so it’s still worthwhile to use frequently to reduce the number of Battering Assault activations.

The best time to use Ravage is while Berserk is active because you can’t normally generate Fury at that time and since you won’t refresh and tick Rupture, that’s potentially 1 more tick that could be consumed by Force Rend instead.

I also want to note that Ravage synergizes with the Dispatcher Legendary Implant as well as the Bloodlust and Blood Fury ability tree buffs because it hits more times than all of your other attacks so it will more reliably trigger those effects. That said, these synergies aren’t enough to impact Ravage’s place in the priority.

If you have a way to generate additional Rage, you can and should forego using Ravage in favor of Vicious Slash. This is pretty much exclusively possible with the Cloak of Retribution ability tree buff that I’ll talk more about later. As I mentioned before, Ravage does not have any additional ability tree buffs or discipline passives associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Vicious Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals almost the same amount of damage as Annihilate with the added bonuses including costing 3 Rage instead of 4 and having 10m range. Unfortunately, it can only be used against targets that have less than 30% of their max HP left. Since Vicious Throw deals so much damage, it should be used pretty much on cooldown. Vicious Throw has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Dispatcher’s Challenge
Activating Dual Saber Throw grants Dispatcher’s Challenge, which makes your next Vicious Throw (or Vicious Slash) automatically critically hit. This proc is provided by the Dispatcher’s Legendary Implant. Since Vicious Throw hits so hard, it’s valuable to try to consume the buff on Vicious Throw instead of Vicious Slash.

It isn’t super hard to accomplish this. You just have to use Vicious Throw on cooldown and Dual Saber Throw should come off cooldown along with the proc for every other Vicious Throw. I wouldn’t delay Vicious Throw for more than a GCD or two to synchronize it with Dual Saber Throw, but it’s okay to delay Dual Saber Throw significantly since you’re limited by the proc anyway.

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 DoT spread. It can only spread Rupture and Force Rend, not Deadly Saber. In fights where you are able to DoT spread for the entirety of the fight, you can leverage Smash’s short cooldown to bounce your DoTs between targets where you spread them to one target, then before they fall off that second target, use Smash to spread them back to the first target.

DoT bouncing can even enable you to have higher uptime on Force Rend than is possible in single-target situations, resulting in a slight single-target DPS increase. With DoT bouncing, the Spiteful Saber tactical is made redundant, but you can use Malmourral Mask instead.

Don’t let DoT bouncing distract you from doing your rotation and following mechanics. If you find it takes up too much of your attention, it’s fine to just use Smash on cooldown and once in a while have to manually reapply Rupture.

Remember when you have DoTs on multiple targets, all of your Berserk stacks are going to evaporate almost instantaneously, so you have to press the buttons for Force Rend and Berserk almost simultaneously.

Sweeping Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Sweeping Slash is your generic spammable AoE. Thanks to the Blood Wave ability tree buff, it is never worthwhile to use Sweeping Slash as an Annihilation Marauder.

Dual Saber Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
I basically already covered everything related to AoE about Dual Saber Throw back in the single-target section. Nothing really changes in terms of priority because you’re still fundamentally limited by the rate limit of the Pulverize proc.

 Mad Dash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Since this ability now has the old Through Victory utility effect built in, its damage as an AoE ability is pretty good, though not quite as strong as your other AoE abilities. If you find yourself with a spare GCD and a bunch of enemies lined up, it’s pretty fun to mow through them with Mad Dash. Only use it when you have a spare GCD, though.

Offensive Cooldowns

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

 Furious Power

This ability is optional and will likely only be taken in fights with burst DPS checks. 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 and definitely the application of Rupture. It’s better to use a charge of Furious Power on Ravage than Vicious Slash because while Vicious Slash deals more damage per GCD since it refreshes and ticks Rupture, Ravage deals a bit more melee damage.

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. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to avoid spending at least 1 charge on Vicious Slash during burst DPS checks.

Outside of burst DPS checks, Annihilate is typically your best choice for individual charges. Vicious Throw will be a better option sub-30% when you can guarantee it will crit thanks to the Dispatcher’s Challenge proc from the Dispatcher’s Legendary Implant. Dual Saber Throw will be your best option whenever you’re able to hit at least 2 targets with it, though I would consider this to be fluff if the enemies aren’t super high priority.

 Adrenal

It’s essential that you have your Adrenal available for DPS checks, especially when burst is required because Annihilation doesn’t have very much burst. 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 a use of the Adrenal, so feel free to delay it as needed.

The best time to activate your Adrenal is at the same time as Berserk (and Bloodthirst) right before Force Rend. You should be able to get 2 activations of Force Rend inside a single Adrenal window with a couple seconds of leeway.

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. The only time you can activate Bloodthirst is when Frenzy is available so you can activate it back-to-back with Berserk. It is essential that both Bloodthirst and Berserk are activated immediately before Force Rend.

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 them when the boss takes increased damage like when Kephess the Undying in TFB is 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 in Annihilation because you already have to activate Berserk at specific times and your discipline already enables you to activate Berserk as often as possible. Don’t get me wrong, Frenzy isn’t 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.

Berserk should be activated first, then Frenzy, then Bloodthirst, then Force Rend. It is essential that you are able to activate Berserk and Bloodthirst before activating Force Rend so that you don’t miss out on the 10 stacks of Fury generated by Force Rend. If you don’t do this, you’ll be forced to use Force Rend once without Berserk to resynchronize both.

You can technically also use Frenzy to increase your damage output in extremely short DPS checks to get yourself 6 more DoT autocrits, but this comes at the cost of future sustained DPS as you’ll have to use your next Force Rend without Berserk to resynchronize them.

If you’re having to do this consistently, you should probably switch to a spec that offers better burst for that fight. That said, it’s not the end of the world when sustained DPS isn’t a concern. It’s essential to remember that this should only be done for very short checks where you aren’t able to activate Force Rend twice.

Outside of Bloodthirst, Frenzy will mostly be used to automatically resynchronize Berserk and Force Rend in case you mess up your rotation or get unlucky with RNG and would need to delay Force Rend at least 3 GCDs to reach 30 Fury.

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 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, but 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.

Cloak of Pain is 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. Just like Deadly Saber, this does not apply to instant attacks that are already in progress even if the damage has not yet gone out, so you’ll always get close to a 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 Juggernaut, 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 most likely on cooldown.

Force Charge also interrupts the cast of whatever target you leap to, though it doesn’t apply a 4s lockout like 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.

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 do Melee/Ranged damage. If you don’t need it for movement, it can be worthwhile to use if the tanks are out of DCDs during a phase where they’re taking a lot of damage because bosses often have a Melee/Ranged basic attack that can make up a sizable portion of tank DTPS.

 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 and 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

Assault

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals extremely little damage, but it does generate 2 Rage upon activation. Thanks to improvements to improvements in Rage generation in 7.0, you’ll basically never have to use this anymore. It’s still important to have on your bar because there are instances where you can get extremely unlucky with RNG or overspend on Vicious Slash but still don’t have Berserk for Force Rend, but it’s very possible to never use this ability at all over the course of an entire fight.

Force Scream

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals less damage and costs 1 more Rage than Vicious Slash. The key benefit is that it has 10m range. Given that you have more Rage to work with now, it can be worthwhile to use only if you can’t get into melee range.

 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 Sith Warrior, you have the shortest cooldown on your interrupt in the game at 12 seconds, though a few other melee classes can match it. 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 prevented from dealing damage or doing a required mechanic.

Ability Tree Choices

Force Rend Buffs – Level 23 Choice

Juyo Rend

• Effect: Force Rend immediately maxes out your Juyo stacks and builds 10 Fury. 
• Recommendation: Take this option if you don’t plan to main Annihilation. Juyo Rend enables a rotation that’s been available throughout 7.0, though without the damage boost to Force Rend. Since you gain Fury in a consistent and fully predictable manner, your rotation with Juyo Rend is a fair bit easier than with Draining Center, though its DPS potential is lower. You have a bit more flexibility in terms of when you activate Force Rend in relation to Berserk. You won’t start to lose a significant amount of DPS so long as you have fewer than 20 stacks of Fury, though it’s still optimal to activate Berserk shortly before Force Rend since it consistently hits harder than Rupture and Deadly Saber.

Draining Center

• Effect: Force Rend deals double damage and heals you for 50% of the damage it deals whenever it consumes a stack of Berserk.
• Recommendation: Take this if you plan to main Annihilation. Draining Center offers the greatest single-target DPS potential, but the associated rotation is considerably more challenging because it’s less consistent and requires more precise timing, especially in AoE situations. In order to guarantee that Force Rend’s damage will be doubled and that you receive healing, always activate Berserk shortly before Force Rend. In single-target situations, you can and should activate Berserk 1-2 GCDs earlier if it’s available then. If you have DoTs on multiple targets, always use them at the exact same time. Please note that the self-healing provided by Draining Center does not offer a survivability increase in practice over the alternatives at this level because you must take Brazen instead of Thirst for Rage with this ability tree buff.

Critical Bleeds

• Effect: Force Rend increases the critical chance of all your bleeds on that target by 10%.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Critical Bleeds doesn’t provide enough of a DPS increase to ever be worth taking, even in AoE situations.

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

Snaring Slash

• Effect: Vicious Slash and Ravage slow targets they hit by 50% for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. In PvE, slows have very little benefit since most of the things you’d maybe want to slow will be immune anyway.

Overwhelming Slashes

• Effect: Ravage immobilizes the target for 3 seconds and generates 1 Rage.
• Recommendation: Only take this in fights where activating Predation is detrimental. In certain fights, particularly ones that require very precise positioning, like Tyrans, giving a sudden movement speed boost can cause players to move too far. Overwhelming Slashes provides an alternative miniscule benefit when you can’t use Predation at all.

Predation

• Effect: Grants the Predation ability, which applies Predation to you and all Operation group members within 40m. Predation purges movement-impairing effects, increases movement speed by 80%, and increases melee and ranged defense chance by 10%. Lasts 10 seconds. 30 second cooldown.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Predation is the best choice in this tier in PvE by far because raidwide movement speed boosts are frequently useful. Even as just a personal movement speed boost, this would still be way better than the other options.

Rupture Buffs – Level 39 Choice

Blood Wave

• Effect: Dealing damage with the initial hit of Rupture sends out a Blood Wave from your target, ticking every bleed effect that is active on each target within 5m.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. If you’re familiar with Bloodrage / Burning Focus, Blood Wave causes Rupture activations to do basically the same thing. It won’t be useful in pure single-target fights, but you’re not really giving anything up by taking it. Dual Saber Throw w/ Pulverize + Spiteful Saber will deal more damage to potentially more targets while costing fewer Rage than Rupture, though Blood Wave will deal far more damage than Sweeping Slash while costing fewer Rage. In other words, there is basically no reason to use Sweeping Slash if you are taking Blood Wave, and you’ll pretty much always want to take Blood Wave.

Force Fracture

• Effect: Replaces Rupture. Deals a moderate amount of direct energy damage and an additional moderate amount of Internal damage for each of your bleed effects on the target. Costs 2 Rage, 10m range, instant, no cooldown.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Technically, you can make a semi-viable build with Juyo Rend, Force Fracture, and Bleeding Center that utilizes a static rotation, but it’s fairly fragile and crit-reliant, so I don’t recommend using it for any content.

Rupturing Rage

• Effect: Rupture applies Trauma and refunds Rage when used while Berserk is active.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Trauma is rarely useful at all in PvE and tanks can typically apply it when needed. The only benefit offered by Rupturing Rage is to give you a more cost-effective, but less damaging, alternative to Vicious Slash during Berserk when Dual Saber Throw and Ravage are unavailable. I haven’t been able to observe a tangible DPS increase from incorporating Rupture while Blood Wave often provides a substantial boost to AoE damage, so I don’t recommend ever taking Rupturing Rage in PvE.

Furious Power, Bleeding Center, or Blood Fury – Level 43 Choice

Furious Power

• Effect: Grants the ability Furious Power, which consumes all ability charges of Furious Power when activated and applies the same number of stacks to you. Each stack increases your next direct single-target melee attack by 25%. 15s cooldown.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Furious Power is not compatible with Draining Center’s Fury requirements while offering less DPS and being more difficult to use than Blood Fury.

Bleeding Center

• Effect: Activating Berserk immediately builds 4 Rage. In addition, critically hitting with periodic bleed damage builds 2 Fury, even during Berserk. This effect cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this with Draining Center. You need the additional Fury generation from Bleeding Center in order to get 30 stacks of Fury in time for each Force Rend activation. With Juyo Rend, the extra Fury generation doesn’t offer enough of a DPS increase to be worth using and only serves to destabilize the rotation by causing your Berserk availability to move around and become desynchronized with Force Rend.

Blood Fury

• Effect: All melee damage attacks deal a tiny amount of additional bleed damage while Berserk is active. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Always take this with Juyo Rend. You don’t need additional Fury generation with Juyo Rend, so this option yields more of a DPS increase. Abilities that hit multiple times over the course of the GCD, like Ravage and Battering Assault, can trigger Blood Fury multiple times.

Inexorable, Interloper, or Steel Self – Level 51 Choice

Inexorable

• Effect: You generate 4 Rage when stunned, immobilized, put to sleep, or get knocked around. Additionally, the cooldown of Unleash is reduced by 30 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content only. The additional Rage and CC break can be helpful in specific fights, but this effect isn’t strong enough to compete with Steel Self in group content. In solo content, you do get CC’d quite a lot, so this is a nice effect to have.

Interloper

• Effect: Force Charge gets an additional charge and builds 2 Fury.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content only. Interloper can ensure that Force Charge and Berserk are available more reliably in solo content, but it doesn’t offer enough of a benefit compared to Steel Self in group content. The only exception I can think of where you might want to take this is if you’re in charge of dealing with Graces in Tyth because AoE damage in that fight is avoidable.

Steel Self

• Effect: Increases Internal/Elemental damage reduction by 3%. In addition, activating Bloodthirst, Cloak of Pain, or Predation grants Steel Self, which reduces your AoE damage taken by 30% for 10s.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvE group content. AoE RDT remains one of the strongest effects available and as a Marauder, you get it basically for free on top of slightly better Internal/Elemental DR. In solo content, AoE damage is far less prevalent so Steel Self is less useful.

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

Cloak of Retribution

• Effect: Each use of Assault and Battering Assault reduces the active cooldown of Cloak of Pain by 3 seconds. In addition, while Cloak of Pain is active, you generate 1 Rage whenever you are attacked. Cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this as Annihilation. You can’t really make use of the spare Rage, and you hardly use Battering Assault.

Path Carver

• Effect: Increases the damage dealt by Sweeping Slash by 15%.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Blood Wave will cause Rupture to always deal more damage and cost fewer Rage than Sweeping Slash.

Blood Ward

• Effect: Activating Saber Ward grants Blood Ward, which grants immunity to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitating effects for 6 seconds. In addition, getting attacked while Saber Ward is active heals you for 3% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Always take this as Annihilation. Blood Ward can heal you for up to 36% of your max HP over its duration. That’s a pretty nice boost in burn phases where you’ll typically be taking damage pretty frequently. The partial CC immunity is also beneficial for specific fights like Brontes to ignore her Fire and Forget. Even if you don’t need the extra survivability, the alternatives do nothing, while this at least helps Saber Ward act as a better emergency button.

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

Force Choke

• Effect: Grants the Force Choke ability, which stuns the target, deals a small amount of damage, and builds 3 Rage over the duration of the cast. Can be cast while moving.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Mad Dash and Undying Rage are far more valuable, but you may be assigned to keep a specific enemy interrupted thanks to the short cooldown on your interrupt and this can help against certain adds. If your group is not utilizing your interrupt, I would recommend that another group member that doesn’t have to give something up should handle stuns.

Mad Dash

• Effect: Grants the Mad Dash ability, which makes you dash forward 20m, dealing a moderate amount of damage (includes Through Victory damage) and increasing your defense chance by 100% while dashing. Can be used while immobilized and purges movement-impairing effects when activated.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Mad Dash offers improved mobility, a cheese, and decent AoE damage, so it’s typically the most useful ability out of these options.

Undying Rage

• Effect: Grants the Undying Rage ability, which reduces the damage you take by 99% for 6 seconds. 2 min 30s cooldown. 
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Undying Rage can be more valuable than Mad Dash if you’re more concerned with mitigating damage and can’t really benefit from what only Mad Dash offers. The best example of a fight where you’d want to take Undying Rage over Mad Dash is the TFB.

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

Thirst for Rage

• Effect: You heal for 1% of your max health whenever you activate an ability that consumes Rage. In addition, Bloodthirst generates 12 Rage when activated.
• Recommendation: Take this option if you don’t need extra Fury. Thirst for Rage offers vastly superior survivability compared to Brazen, but not so much that it’s worth delaying Force Rend. I don’t think the 12 Rage from Bloodthirst should ever be part of your decision-making process for whether to take Thirst for Rage.

Interceptor

• Effect: Force Charge and Force Rend snare the target, reducing its movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Slows have very little use in PvE, especially in group content where most things are immune.

Brazen

• Effect: Increases your damage reduction by 2% and you build 2 Fury when attacked. Cannot occur more than once every 1.5s.
• Recommendation: Take this option only if you need extra Fury. You should have barely enough Fury with 100% uptime to not need the extra Fury from Brazen, but as soon as you start losing singular GCDs to mechanics, you might not be able to activate Force Rend on cooldown because Berserk isn’t ready, and Brazen is typically enough to mitigate that. If you don’t want to bother with swapping your ability tree buffs all the time, just always take Brazen in this tier. Thirst for Rage is nice, but typically not essential.

Gearing and Stat Priorities

Tactical Items

Spiteful Saber
Effect: Rupture deals 10% more damage. Vicious Slash, Vicious Throw, and Dual Saber Throw refresh the duration of your Rupture’s bleed effect and tick its damage.
Recommendation: This is your single-target tactical. You’ll primarily be using it in group content where boss fights last long enough that being able to refresh Rupture will actually matter. Thanks to other improvements in 7.0, you don’t usually have to worry about making sure you have enough Rage to use Vicious Slash to refresh Rupture anymore.

Malmourral Mask
Effect: When Annihilate deals damage to an enemy affected by Force Rend, it triggers a burst of damage to up to 8 nearby targets.
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical. It’s great for solo content where most groups of enemies won’t last long enough for you to need to refresh Rupture and it looks cool. In group content, it’s useful when you are able to maintain Rupture and Force Rend (mostly) indefinitely through DoT bouncing. In addition, since it makes Annihilate an AoE, you don’t have to make quick decisions about whether there are enough targets to prioritize your AoEs over Annihilate.

No Time For Fools
Effect: Annihilate automatically kills standard and weak enemies with less than 30% health. Killing an enemy this way resets the cooldown of Annihilate.
Recommendation: While this tactical may seem strong in solo content at first glance, I have found it to be pretty useless in practice. The cooldown reset only applies if the target had less than 30% HP and was a standard or weak enemy. Annihilate doesn’t need to autokill against targets with that little health where a couple of DoT ticks will be enough to finish them off. Annihilate crits are usually enough to take out standard and weak enemies that have below 50% HP. To make matters worse, the tactical is absolutely useless in heroics and most Flashpoints where most enemies are strong and elite. If BioWare were to make it so the cooldown reset triggered whenever a target was killed by Annihilate and perhaps made it autocrit enemies that had less than 50% HP, it might be more useful, but in its current state, it’s just a waste of Tech Fragments.

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 as an Annihilation Marauder:

• Dispatcher – Activating Dual Saber Throw grants Dispatcher’s Challenge, making your next Vicious Throw or Vicious Slash critically hit. Critically hitting with a weapon attack generates 1 Rage. Cannot occur more than once every 3 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 – Whenever you use an attack that spends Rage, your melee damage is increased by 10% for 10 seconds.

Dispatcher is the most essential Legendary Implant to Annihilation (and Carnage); it really helps to smooth out the rotation by ensuring that you’ll basically always have enough Rage to spam Vicious Slash and also yields the most DPS.

Berserker’s Call technically offers higher DPS than Fearless Victor, but not by much, and Fearless Victor is better for Carnage and BiS for all other Warrior / Guardian DPS specs, so if you don’t have the Tech Frags to spare, you’ll still do fine with Fearless Victor.

You can get away with pairing Berserker’s Call and Fearless Victor as well, but the rotation is far less luxurious without Dispatcher. You might want to do this if you primarily play Fury.

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 Annihilation 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.

For Boss Fights: Draining and Bleeding Center

This build offers the highest overall single-target sustained damage output. You rely on Bleeding Center and Brazen to consistently generate 30 stacks of Fury in time for each Force Rend activation. In actual boss fights where you’re taking damage, you shouldn’t have to delay Force Rend at all, but you will occasionally need to do that on the dummy. 

In general, the rotation will be a little more challenging since you aren’t in control of all of your Fury generation, so you’ll need to make more adjustments on the fly. I don’t recommend using this build unless you plan to be an Annihilation (or Watchman) main.

Brazen helps with consistency, but it isn’t required and is inconsistent in the benefit it provides whereas Thirst for Rage provides more survivability at the cost of a more challenging rotation.

Cloak of Retribution will also help to improve reliability by letting you not have to worry about Rage generation as much. If you know you’ll be generating Rage consistently as a result of Cloak of Pain, you can skip using Ravage altogether as Vicious Slash + Spiteful Saber deals more damage.

For Boss Fights: Juyo Rend and Blood Fury

This build offers slightly less single-target sustained damage output, but it’s a fair bit easier to execute the rotation because you are completely in control of all Fury generation, though you will have to give up some survivability and control by taking Brazen in fights where you have lower uptime and aren’t able to keep Force Rend synchronized with Berserk.

I recommend using this build when sustained DPS is required you don’t plan to main Annihilation (or Watchman) because the DPS loss is quite small and you’d probably have trouble getting the better numbers with Draining and Bleeding Center anyway if you’re at all rusty with the discipline. 

I want to be clear that you shouldn’t usually need to take Brazen with this build and even though you don’t get any survivability from Juyo Rend, Thirst for Rage offers enough HPS to surpass what Draining Center provides.

Solo Content and Flashpoints

This build is quite similar to the Draining and Bleeding Center build but is optimized for trash mobs instead of boss fights. Your objective is to apply and spread your DoTs and then whack the group with AoE Annihilate and Dual Saber Throw. 

I recommend using Draining Center over Juyo Rend because you get another big hit in your arsenal along with additional survivability. The added survivability is valuable because you’ll want to take Brazen for the Fury generation. Usually, you’ll want to apply Force Rend to the strongest enemy in the group, or at least a different one from what you applied Rupture to so that the target doesn’t die before you have a chance to spread.

You can and should switch to using Spiteful Saber instead of Malmourral Mask against bosses since the latter does little to improve single-target sustained DPS.

Openers, Rotations, 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
3. Battering Assault
4. Deadly Saber
5. Rupture
6. Adrenal
7. Bloodthirst ▶ Frenzy (if applicable)
8. Annihilate
9. Berserk
10. Force Rend
11. Vicious Slash (rotation only)
12. Dual Saber Throw (only with Pulverize) or Ravage
13. Priority or Rotation

This opener is a bit different from what you’ll see topping the charts on Parsely. Players there will use the Hidden Power tactical to build Rage before the pull and pre-cast Deadly Saber to achieve higher uptime. It will yield slightly higher DPS, but I do not support this approach.

It’s too much tedious work for too little benefit and requires purchasing another tactical. More importantly, you’re gonna screw over your team and probably cause a wipe if you forget to unequip Hidden Power or you got Leeroy Jenkins in your group.

Battering Assault and Annihilate are activated before Force Rend so that you can apply both of your debuffs as early as possible. In addition, Battering Assault’s debuff boosts Annihilate’s damage and Annihilate’s debuff and proc boost Force Rend’s damage.

Structurally, you’re also setting yourself up to apply 2 stacks of Deadly Saber and then use Force Rend followed by a melee attack to build the third stack. Frenzy should typically only be used if Bloodthirst is activated or if someone pulled and you didn’t have time to build stacks.

Technically, you can use it to get a few extra ticks out of Berserk and then clip it when you use Force Rend, but I strongly recommend using it to resynchronize Force Rend with Berserk in the event you make a mistake.

Dual Approaches: Priority System or Rotation

As Annihilation, you can use either a priority system or a static rotation. The rotation is more reliable but requires higher uptime. The priority system requires you to react a bit more and manage your Rage, but you are less beholden to the whims of the boss.

With both approaches, you’ll feel like you’re stepping onto an escalator or a moving walkway, or running on a hamster wheel with regards to Rage generation and ability synchronization. While you’re in the flow, everything is really smooth, but you come to a screeching halt if ever you decide to stop.

If you want to deal the most damage, you really need to flow between them depending on the current happenings in the fight. Sometimes, the rotation doesn’t work, and sometimes, you can make use of the extra stability.

Priority System Approach

A priority system is a list where you use whichever ability is highest on that list that’s available. It’s a way of ensuring your most important abilities are used as often as possible.

1. Deadly Saber
2. Berserk ▶ Force Rend
3. Annihilate
4. Rupture (only if not on your target)
5. Smash (only if you can hit multiple targets)
6. Dual Saber Throw (conditional)
7. Vicious Throw
8. Rupture (only if you can trigger Blood Wave)
9. Ravage (only during Berserk)
10. Battering Assault (Rage-dependent)
11. Vicious Slash
12. Rupture
13. Assault

It’s important to practice this on a dummy at least until you can execute it without having to constantly look at your bar. 

Berserk and Force Rend should be activated within 1 (or conditionally 2) GCD(s) of each other with Berserk ALWAYS being activated before Force Rend so that you don’t waste the benefit from the Force Rend ability tree talent.

Since both abilities are so essential to your rotation, they have the highest priority. In AoE situations, always delay Berserk and use it immediately before activating Force Rend; if you don’t do this, you risk all Berserk stacks getting consumed before you can activate Rend. 

Even within this priority system, I recommend trying to adhere to activating Deadly Saber 2 GCDs before Force Rend, as it is a genuine DPS increase and makes the rotation easier, so long as you can maintain it. Don’t delay either ability for more than 1-2 GCDs or you’ll end up losing more DPS than you’ll gain.

The rest of the priority system is less complicated than it may initially appear because there are many abilities you’ll only want to use in specific contexts. Generally, you want to use abilities that don’t cost Rage during Berserk so that you can spend as many GCDs as possible outside of Berserk on abilities that don’t spend Rage. By doing this, you maximize your Fury generation.

That said, it’s not worth using an attack that doesn’t cost Rage just because Berserk is active and you shouldn’t delay attacks that do cost Rage just because Berserk is active. In practice, you really just want to try to use Dual Saber Throw and Ravage over Vicious Slash while Berserk is active and delay using them in favor of Vicious Slash or Vicious Throw until your next Berserk window. 

For the same reason, it is ideal to use Battering Assault while Berserk is active, but the vast majority of the time, you’ll have too much Rage for it to be worthwhile. Furthermore, there will be times when you need Rage outside of Berserk windows and will be forced to use it anyway. Try your best to only use Battering Assault if you can fully benefit from the Rage it generates and won’t be able to last until Force Rend.

In AoE situations, your first priority is to make sure Force Rend and Rupture are applied, then you’ll want to spread them with Smash. Use Dual Saber Throw whenever it’s available. You’ll deal more damage with it than Rupture because Spiteful Saber makes Dual Saber Throw tick Rupture on each target it damages. Thanks to Blood Wave, you’ll use Rupture as your filler instead of Vicious Slash, Ravage, and Sweeping Slash when you can hit multiple targets.

The vast majority of the time, your filler will be Vicious Slash. You’ll only want to use Rupture if you have 2 Rage and need a bit more Fury going into Berserk or use Assault if you can’t afford anything else. During Berserk, Dual Saber Throw and Ravage take priority.

Sub-30%, you need to time your Dual Saber Throws such that Vicious Throw will be off cooldown by the time you hit that spot in the priority while still using Vicious Throw on cooldown and Dual Saber Throw mostly only during Berserk in single-target situations. Ideally, you want to use them back-to-back, but it’s fine to use anything but Vicious Slash, Rupture, or Assault in between the two if you can think that far ahead.

Single-Target Rotation Approach

Rotations are used when you can use all of your relevant attacks on cooldown without those cooldowns interfering with each other. They’re more rigid, but some find them easier to memorize and they’re definitely easier to lay down on your quickbar.

1. Deadly Saber
2. Melee Attack Priority
3. Melee Attack Priority
4. Berserk ▶ Force Rend
5. Melee Attack Priority (omit for AoE or sub-30% HP)
6. Dual Saber Throw (only with Pulverize) or Ravage
7. ( Berserk falls off during prior GCD)
8. Melee Attack Priority
9. Melee Attack Priority
10. Melee Attack Priority
11. Melee Attack Priority (only if you omitted the one after Force Rend)
12. Repeat

Now, I know I said this was a rotation, and some of you are probably yelling about all of those priority slots, but I promise it’s really straightforward. The vast majority of those slots will be Vicious Slashes, and then Annihilate floats around to a few of them.

1. Annihilate
2. Rupture (only if not on your target)
3. Vicious Throw
4. Smash (only if you can hit multiple targets)
5. Rupture (only if you can trigger Blood Wave)
6. Vicious Slash
7. Battering Assault (Rage-dependent)

Again, this structure is the most stable form and guarantees that you are generating Rage from Bloodlust as often as possible. The only limitation is that you have to give up some stability as soon as multiple enemies are involved or your target drops below 30%.

If you DoT spread, those Berserk stacks are gonna get gobbled up faster than the pies at the Dantooine Spring Abundance Festival, and you still need to use those freebies inside Berserk for optimal Fury generation.

Once your target drops below 30%, you need to start incorporating Vicious Throw and using it on cooldown while also synchronizing it with Dual Saber Throw so that it autocrits. Technically, you don’t have to change it, but it’s really annoying how the cooldowns line up. I recommend rereading both sections so that you can see how they fit together.

The key to being a great DPS is to always be DPSing. Using any damaging ability is better than just standing there not doing anything. Some DPS is better than zero DPS. Even if you mess up, keep doing the rotation! Unless there’s a mechanic that prevents you from dealing damage or forces you to stop DPSing, you should not stop DPSing. 

If a tank is telling you to stop DPS or hold off for a few seconds because they can’t keep aggro, don’t listen to them, they’re the one that doesn’t know the proper way to keep aggro. Tell them to git gud and read a tank guide!

I will be updating all of my class guides as balance changes are released and new discoveries are made, though this will take time as I am just one person with many different class guides to maintain. If you come across something you believe I haven’t considered, like a build, rotation, or opener, that performs equal to or better than what I recommend, please tell me about it in the comments!