SWTOR 7.7 Carnage Marauder PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Carnage Marauder

Carnage Marauders utilize the acrobatic Ataru Form to gore their victims with the speed and devastation of a frenzied beast.

Thanks to the introduction of the Shard of Mortis tactical with 7.1, Carnage offers competitive single-target sustained DPS. While damage boosts from taking damage (e.g. Lightning Barrier and Reflective Armor) are far less prevalent in 7.0 for most disciplines, Carnage can still gain quite a lot, so you should also be able to surpass Carnage’s dummy numbers in actual fights.

Carnage can deal a decent amount of dedicated AoE damage for a direct damage spec, but you have to sacrifice a massive amount of single-target damage output to maximize your AoE. This means Carnage can perform fairly well in phases with pure AoE like the Trench Cutters you face during the Warlord Kephess fight in EC, but it doesn’t translate to fights and phases where a primary target exists and rotational AoE becomes a necessity like Dread Master Bestia in DP.

In terms of survivability, Marauders remain strong 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 raid utility in the game thanks to Bloodthirst and Predation. Carnage also provides the Armor debuff, and if your group deals a lot of Energy/Kinetic damage, being able to provide this debuff can be enough to fully compensate for Carnage’s lower sustained damage output assuming you know what you’re doing with this discipline.

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.

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, Carnage requires 1 other DPS debuff:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Force	1.0%
Total DPS Gain:	1.0%

Carnage is extremely independent when it comes to DPS debuffs and can easily be a part of any group composition while losing almost no DPS. The Force debuff is provided by Sorcerers / Sages and Assassins / Shadows. It’s certainly nice to have, but definitely not essential. If able, you should focus on optimizing your group composition around disciplines that are more dependent on the presence of particular DPS debuffs.

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

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 Carnage, activating Berserk grants 6 stacks of the Berserk proc. While you have at least 1 stack of Berserk, your alacrity is increased by 30%, enabling the 1.2s GCD. Each time you activate an attack, 1 stack is consumed. In addition, if Ferocity is activated while Berserk is active, it will have 3 stacks rather than 2.

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. 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.

In Carnage, Fury will primarily be generated by Massacre and during Ferocity windows when Berserk is not active. Your main goal with generating Fury is to ensure that you’ll have Berserk in time for every other Battering Assault ▶ Ferocity window. This requires pretty high uptime, but you can compensate for disruptions with the Brazen ability tree buff 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 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.

Ataru 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.

Carnage utilizes Form IV, Ataru, which increases alacrity by 3% (enabling you to have more crit in your gear) and giving each attack a 20% chance to trigger a second attack that deals a small amount of damage. Unlike Lightning Sorcerer’s Forked Lightning and Darkness, these attacks deal flat damage rather than a percentage of the attack that triggered the strike, though they will occur far more frequently. Ataru Form does not have any passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation, though many abilities do interact with Ataru Form strikes.

Ferocity

Ferocity is basically just a completely rotational offensive cooldown, but the whole discipline is designed around its usage. It makes your next 2 (or 3 if Berserk is active) attacks ignore armor, which translates to a 28% damage boost against bosses (factoring in the armor debuff). Your priority for consuming Ferocity stacks is the following:

1. Devastating Blast
2. Vicious Throw
3. Gore
4. Massacre

Typically, each Ferocity window will consist of Devastating Blast and alternating between either Vicious Throw or Massacre. Gore will only be used when Berserk is active to consume the third stack of Ferocity.

There are rotations that use Gore more frequently, but they require you to incorporate Assault, which makes the rotation a lot more difficult. If you have spare Rage, it’s pretty easy to exchange Massacres for Gores when you have a surplus of Berserk stacks.

I also want to clarify that Ferocity does not consume a stack of Berserk, but Berserk must already be active in order for Ferocity to grant that third stack when activated. Ferocity does not have any passives associated with it.

Massacre

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Massacre is your filler ability and definitely one of the best examples of a filler in the whole game because it will be used in over half of your GCDs in single-target situations, at least with the rotation I recommend.

Massacre’s damage output is slightly stronger than your average filler when you factor in the guaranteed Ataru Form strike, but it is rather expensive, costing 3 Rage. This Rage cost is a significant factor when it comes to actually playing the spec as it heavily restricts what else you can do.

Massacre has 1 proc and 1 discipline passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Massacre
Activating Massacre grants Massacre, which increases your chance to trigger Ataru Form strikes by 30% for 6 seconds. This results in each attack having a 50% to trigger an Ataru Form strike rather than 20%. Ideally, the Massacre proc should have 100% uptime, but it will probably be slightly less than that in practice depending on when Dual Saber Throw is activated. Since Ataru Form strikes will benefit from Ferocity, but not consume a stack, it’s essential that this proc is active for the entirety of the Ferocity window.

Efficient Strikes
While Berserk is active, Massacre (and Sweeping Slash) each consume 1 less Rage. Again, because you have so little surplus Rage to work with in Carnage, it’s essential that as many spare Berserk stacks are going towards Massacres and notably not Dual Saber Throw.

Battering Assault

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your dedicated Rage-generating ability, giving you 6 Rage per activation. Since Carnage is already pretty starved for Rage even with Battering Assault being used on cooldown, you can’t afford to delay it. Battering Assault has 1 combat style passive and 1 discipline passive associated with it that are 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.

Enraged Assault
Reduces the cooldown of Battering Assault by 3 seconds. This discipline passive is now hidden, but you can still see that Battering Assault has a shorter cooldown in Carnage compared to the other Marauder Disciplines. This cooldown reduction is significant because it allows Battering Assault to have the same cooldown as Ferocity.

You’ll always want to use both abilities back to back to ensure that their cooldowns remain synchronized as they get reduced by Berserk and also ensure that you’ll always have enough Rage to do your Ferocity window uninterrupted. That said, since Ferocity has been charge-based for a while, you won’t lose any sustained DPS if you have to throw in an Assault to generate Rage while Ferocity is active.

Since Battering Assault doesn’t consume or benefit from a stack of Ferocity, you are also technically free to use Battering Assault after activating Ferocity as well.

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 towards 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 that 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. Dual Saber Throw has 1 (hidden) discipline passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Force Vigor
Damage reduction is increased by 2% and activating Dual Saber Throw builds 2 Rage. The fact that Dual Saber Throw builds 2 Rage is pretty essential since Carnage already has barely enough Rage to go around. Even without the Dispatcher Legendary Implant, you’d still want to use this ability on cooldown for the Rage generation. It also deals more damage than Assault despite generating the same amount of Rage.

The passive itself appears to be completely hidden now, and I only mentioned the DR part to point out that it’s still a thing too. You can see for yourself by watching your DR drop by 2% when you switch away from Carnage.

Vicious Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Vicious Throw is one of your most damaging abilities in Carnage; it also conveniently has a 10m range. Typically, it can only be used against targets that have less than 30% max HP remaining. Vicious Throw has 2 procs associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Slaughter
Dealing damage with an Ataru Form strike grants Slaughter, which finishes the cooldown on Vicious Throw and makes it usable against any target regardless of health level. In addition, Slaughter makes your next Vicious Throw cost no Rage. Cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds.

The Slaughter proc effectively enables Vicious Throw to be part of every other Ferocity window, and technically every single Ferocity window against targets below 30%, though you only have 1-2 GCDs of leeway, so it’s difficult to pull off in actual combat.

Since Slaughter makes Vicious Throw free, you will actually generate 1 Rage when the proc is consumed thanks to the Enraged Slash combat style passive I mentioned earlier. Without the Slaughter proc, this makes Vicious Throw cost 2 Rage rather than

Dispatcher’s Challenge
Activating Dual Saber Throw grants Dispatcher’s Challenge, which makes your next Vicious Throw automatically critically hit. This proc is provided by the Dispatcher’s Legendary Implant. Dispatcher’s Challenge also applies to Vicious Slash, but that ability gets replaced by Massacre, so you don’t ever have to worry about wasting the proc on the weaker ability in Carnage.

Since Vicious Throw is usable above 30% thanks to the Slaughter proc, Vicious Throw is effectively now always an autocrit with this proc and this will cause it to hit harder than Devastating Blast, making it your most damaging ability.

Please note that since Dual Saber Throw has such a long cooldown, you will only be able to benefit from Dispatcher’s Challenge as often as the Slaughter proc is available. In other words, if you use Vicious Throw without the Slaughter proc, you won’t be able to get more autocrits.

It’s still worth using Vicious Throw without either proc during Ferocity, but if you don’t have spare Rage, your DPS gain will be mostly negated because you’ll have to use Assault.

Devastating Blast

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Devastating Blast is one of your most damaging abilities and thanks to its short cooldown, you’re able (and want) to use it with every single Ferocity window. Technically, it has a shorter cooldown than Ferocity, but if you try to use it on cooldown (outside of Ferocity windows), you’ll end up dealing less DPS than if you just delay it.

I also want to point out that Devastating Blast deals Force damage, so it cannot trigger Ataru Form or benefit from Furious Power. Devastating Blast has 2 discipline passives and 1 proc associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Execute and Towering Rage
Dealing damage with a Ataru Form strike grants Execute, which increases the damage dealt by your next Devastating Blast by 5%. In addition, thanks to the Towering Rage passive, the Execute proc also makes your next Devastating Blast an autocrit.

Blood Frenzy
Consuming the Execute proc generates 1 Rage. This makes Devastating Blast effectively cost 2 Rage instead of 3. Not sure why they couldn’t just make Devastating Blast cost 2 Rage in the first place and deal 5% more damage baseline, would have been a lot simpler than the current implementation of Execute, but whatever. Even with Blood Frenzy, you should always have enough Rage to activate Devastating Blast.

Gore

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Gore is another of your high damage abilities. It doesn’t deal quite as much direct damage as Devastating Blast or Vicious Throw because it doesn’t autocrit, but it’s still a whole lot more damaging than anything else you could possibly use in single-target situations. Gore has 2 debuffs and 1 tactical item associated with it that I want to mention.

Sunder
Dealing damage with Gore applies the armor debuff, which reduces the target’s armor rating by 20%. Since bosses have 35% DR from armor, this reduces it to 28%, resulting in a 7% effective damage increase to everyone’s Energy/Kinetic attacks. The armor debuff is considered the best DPS debuff in the game because Energy/Kinetic attacks usually represent the majority of damage output, though the Internal/Elemental debuff can match or surpass it in effectiveness in groups with a lot of DoT specs.

Hinder
Dealing damage with Gore Hinders the target for 1.5s. Hindered targets cannot use high mobility actions and escapes. This is the exact same debuff applied by Electro Net. I think the idea is that you aren’t going anywhere while you’re currently impaled by 2 lightsabers. You might think in PvP that 1.5s isn’t long enough for it to matter, but let me tell you that it does come up and skilled Carnage Marauders are definitely able to ruin your day with it. Being Hindered isn’t relevant in PvE, but I still wanted to address it since it is a feature of the ability itself.

Andeddu’s Malevolence Tactical Item
The Andeddu’s Malevolence tactical now has a new effect that just makes it so Gore applies a 12s DoT that deals enough Internal damage (so it already ignores armor) such that Gore deals as much damage per GCD as Devastating Blast and Vicious Throw. 12 seconds is a fairly long time, and even though it will be more like 9s with Berserk, you’ll still need to factor this in it comes to burst DPS checks, but I’ll talk more about that later on.

Ravage

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Ravage deals almost identical damage to Massacre, and while it technically isn’t guaranteed to trigger an Ataru Form Strike, it’s highly unlikely that it won’t because it hits 4 times.

The biggest distinction between Ravage and Massacre is that Ravage is free while Massacre costs Rage. The most significant situation where this matters is with Berserk since the Efficient Strikes discipline passive makes Massacre cost 1 less Rage while Berserk is active. Since Rage is the limiting factor of Carnage’s damage output, not using Ravage while Berserk is active can increase your DPS.

Technically, it’s fine to use Ravage during your Ferocity window instead of Massacre when Berserk isn’t active, but I’ve had slightly better results when I use Massacre instead. Ravage doesn’t have any procs or passives associated with it.

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.

Ferocity

I want to address Ferocity in general first because Smash and Sweeping Slash can each consume a stack of it just like your single-target abilities can. Ferocity is still an offensive cooldown and like any OCD, your goal is to maximize the amount of damage you deal while it’s active, which requires that you use your most damaging attacks while it’s active.

When enough targets are present, your AoE abilities can surpass the damage dealt by your single-target attacks, and when this happens, it can be better to spend your Ferocity stacks on those AoE abilities rather than single-target ones. For example, Sweeping Slash deals more damage than Devastating Blast when 4 targets are present, so it can also be better to use Sweeping Slash during Ferocity rather than Devastating Blast if you can hit at least 5 targets.

That said, Sweeping Slash and Smash are fairly weak as far as AoE goes. Often, there is an additional target that has higher priority than adds (like the boss), so just because are technically enough adds present does not mean it is optimal to use your AoE attacks during the Ferocity window.

If you find this to be too complicated, it’s 100% okay to just continue using your single target abilities during the Ferocity window and only replace Massacre activations with Sweeping Slash. Carnage doesn’t do a whole lot of AoE damage in the first place and it comes at significant cost to single-target damage output.

Sweeping Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Sweeping Slash is your spammable AoE. Carnage has a unique passive called Ataru Savvy, which makes Sweeping Slash triggers an Ataru Form strike on each target it damages. This passive is given to Carnage instead of the +15% critical chance, +30% critical damage to spammable AoE that almost all other direct damage specs get.

Ataru Savvy also helps to make you not have to worry about maintaining the Massacre buff while you can AoE. In addition, it’s a lot easier to transition between single-target and AoE since your procs trigger off Ataru Form strikes as well. Sweeping Slash deals more damage than the following abilities if you manage to hit at least the following number of targets:

• 2 Targets: Massacre, Ravage
• 4 Targets: Devastating Blast, Vicious Throw, Gore
• Never: Dual Saber Throw, Battering Assault, Ferocity

Please note, it is difficult to do testing, especially with Ferocity, but I’d say these numbers are fairly conservative.

Smash

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Never use Smash in Carnage. Thanks to the guaranteed Ataru Form strike on Sweeping Slash thanks to Ataru Savvy, Sweeping Slash will always deal more damage than Smash in Carnage (and Smash can’t trigger Ataru Form at all). With the Path Carver ability tree buff, the initial hit is enough to surpass the damage dealt by Smash. Furthermore, Smash effectively costs way more Rage because you can’t get the refund from Enraged Slash or Dispatcher.

The only advantage of Smash is that the AoE is centered beneath you instead of in front of you, but in my book, that’s just not enough of a reason to make it worth using. That said, it’s not the end of the world if you want to use it in solo content, I guess. The difference in damage output is not likely to make a difference and it does stun standard and weak enemies for 2 seconds too, but definitely do not use it in group content.

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, though you might want to be slightly more opportunistic about when you use it depending on when the enemies are grouped up and you can delay it during the filler section of the rotation if needed.

 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. Like Ravage, the key advantage of Mad Dash in Carnage is that it’s free, and your Rage management doesn’t really change when you’re doing AoE. Mad Dash does not benefit or consume stacks of Ferocity, but can trigger Ataru Form strikes.

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.

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 should activate Bloodthirst is when Frenzy is available so you can activate it back to back with Berserk.

You should not think of Bloodthirst as a personal offensive cooldown, though it can technically be used as one and will result in a greater DPS increase than a single use of Berserk. 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 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

Thanks to new ability tree buffs, Frenzy is a lot more useful in Carnage as an actual offensive cooldown because you can reliably use Gore to consume the third stack of Ferocity whenever it is present. In the past, it wasn’t really possible to get much benefit out of additional activations of Berserk and could even mess up your rotation if used incorrectly.

I’ll talk more about how Gore interacts with Berserk later on, but the key thing now is that Frenzy should be used mostly on-cooldown because it does result in a noticeable DPS increase.

Frenzy can and should be used whenever you have 0 stacks of Fury, including while Berserk is active. Be careful not to activate Berserk the second time until you can guarantee that you’ll have 3 stacks available for your Ferocity window. This corresponds to when there are less than 3 seconds left on Battering Assault’s cooldown.

Make sure you have Frenzy available when it’s time to activate Bloodthirst. Your raid buff provides a much greater DPS increase than Berserk, so it’s okay to give up a Berserk activation to do this. The activation timing doesn’t change, you still want to activate Frenzy and Bloodthirst as soon as you activate Berserk.

If you don’t have Frenzy available when it’s time to activate Bloodthirst, you’ll have to choose between activating Bloodthirst and Berserk. You’ll have to use your judgment or ask your raid lead about which you should pick. Typically, it’s better to wait until Frenzy comes off cooldown to activate Bloodthirst unless doing so would cause you to miss out on a second activation of Bloodthirst during the fight or make you miss out on popping it at a specific time.

 Adrenal

It’s essential that you have your Adrenal available for DPS checks, especially when burst is required. It is highly unlikely that a fight will last long enough where delaying your Adrenal for a check will be enough to where it will reduce the total number of activations over the entire fight (thereby reducing sustained DPS), so feel free to delay it as needed.

The ideal time to activate the Adrenal is when you activate Ferocity while Berserk is active, though you do have some flexibility. Even if you activate it at the same time as Berserk, you should have enough time to get through 2 Ferocity windows while the Adrenal is active.

For longer checks, like burn phases and burst checks that last 15+ seconds, make sure you have Frenzy available as well so that you can get an additional stack of Ferocity in that second window. The increased alacrity from the additional Berserk should also enable you to squeeze more abilities into the Adrenal window.

 Furious Power

This ability is optional and should never be taken in Carnage, so I’m not going to explain it here beyond saying that the best abilities to spend charges on are Vicious Throw, Gore, and Ravage in that order. Devastating Blast does not benefit from Furious Power unless you take a garbage tactical because it is a Force attack.

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 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 4 second 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.

When it comes to target swapping, it’s ideal to use Force Charge during the filler portion of your rotation, but it’s not the end of the world to use it at any point since it doesn’t consume stacks of Ferocity. You’ll mainly just want to continue on in the rotation for whatever you were doing before leaping.

The only real concerns with Force Charge and target swapping come from Fury generation and Berserk stacks. Since Force Charge doesn’t generate Fury normally, if you’re having to use the ability frequently, you might not have 30 Fury by the time you need to activate Berserk. In these cases, make sure to use the Brazen ability tree buff (more on that later).

With Berserk consumption, the concern comes from running out of Berserk stacks before you have a chance to activate Gore since that ability gets buffed by the Berserk Gore ability tree buff. When you’re using Force Charge frequently, make sure to not activate Berserk early, like use it right before Battering Assault. Alternatively, you can adjust the rotation to use Gore earlier in the Ferocity window (more on that later, too).

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. With the rotation I recommend, you shouldn’t have to use this very much at all, like maybe once per fight if you get unlucky or mess up.

 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 does mean you are capable of handling an interrupt mechanic 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

Gore Buffs – Level 23 Choice

Piercing Gore

• Effect: Gore deals damage to up to 8 enemies in a straight line behind the target.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in solo content only. Gore is quite strong, so it’s great that this lets you hit multiple targets. The DoT from Andeddu’s Malevolence also applies to any additional targets you hit thanks to Piercing Gore. Please note that it’s hard to hit all enemies in a given group thanks to the narrow area of effect, especially without a tank (companion) where they can gather around someone other than you, so you might not find it worthwhile in solo content.

Driving Gore

• Effect: Replaces Gore. Driving Gore has a 10m range and causes you to lunge at your target. In addition, activating Driving Gore increases your movement speed by 10% for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in PvP or solo content only. Driving Gore will typically only be detrimental in group PvE content because you can end up self-rooted in the middle of a deadly circle. It does synergize with the Rush Down ability tree buff, but doesn’t result in enough of a damage increase to be worth the risk. That said, Driving Gore is fine for solo content because circles are less common and deal far less damage, allowing this to be a nifty gap closer. I do want to point out that the 10% movement speed boost will only be beneficial as a damage increase for Rush Down because only the most powerful movement speed boost is active at any given time and you have 100% uptime on a 15% movement speed boost thanks to the combat style passive called Drive.

Berserk Gore

• Effect: Gore’s critical hit chance is increased by 10% while Berserk is active and whenever Gore consumes a charge of Berserk, its cooldown is reset.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Berserk Gore offers the greatest single-target DPS increase out of these options by enabling you to always have something strong available for each Ferocity window. The sustained DPS boost is noticeable and relies on you activating Frenzy on cooldown, but the actual damage boost comes from making your Berserked Ferocities more potent by ensuring that you’ll always have a Gore for them. Berserk Gore also enables you to capitalize on excess Rage gained by Cloak of Retribution by turning some of your Berserk stacks that aren’t needed for the Ferocity window on additional Gores. You can’t do this without excess Rage because Massacre ends up being a fair bit cheaper than Gore.

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

Snaring Slash

• Effect: Massacre and Ravage slow targets they hit by 50% for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Predation is just sooooooooo much better.

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 and for practice on the dummy. In certain fights, particularly ones that require very precise positioning, like Dread Master Tyrans, giving a sudden movement speed boost can cause players to move too far. Overwhelming Slashes provides an alternative benefit when you can’t use Predation at all. It’s also nice when you’re practicing on the dummy to give you a tiny bit more flexibility with Rage management. You won’t need this in actual fights because you have other extra sources of Rage generation.

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 is still way better than the other options.

Massacre Buffs – Level 39 Choice

Defensive Stance

• Effect: Dealing damage with Massacre grants Defensive stance, increasing your damage reduction by 2% per stack. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Only take this in PvP. You don’t need extra DR in PvE, but it’s valuable to have all the survivability you can get in PvP.

Rush Down

• Effect: Massacre deals 10% additional damage per movement-enhancing effect active on you.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in solo content only. If you want to be a little speed demon like Yoda (or rather EVIL Yoda), this option offers almost identical damage output compared to Frenzied Blade, but it’s less consistent in terms of Rage generation, so you may have to use Assault occasionally. Rush Down also relies on using Predation on cooldown to truly match Frenzied Blade in terms of damage output, and you typically don’t want to use Predation on cooldown in group content.

Frenzied Blade

• Effect: Massacre’s critical chance is increased by 20%. Activating Massacre reduces the cooldown of Frenzy by 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvE. Frenzied Blade offers superior consistency with Rage management. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever have to use Assault with this option. It also improves the frequency of your burst with the cooldown reduction on Frenzy, though you should avoid delaying Frenzy when you can or you will lose DPS. These effects are less valuable in solo content where Rage generation is less of an issue.

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. The damage boost is too small even in burst situations to ever compete with the other options.

Swiftness

• Effect: Dealing critical damage grants Swiftness, which increases your movement speed by 5% and your critical chance by 5% per stack. Stacks up to 5 times and lasts 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this. Swiftness is an incredible boost, effectively increasing your critical chance by a whopping 25%. The increased critical chance also synergizes with the Dispatcher Legendary Implant to more reliably generate Rage and deal additional supercritical damage with Vicious Throw (and also Devastating Blast). At 3 stacks of Hyper from the Shard of Mortis tactical, Swiftness is excessive except for boosting supercritical damage from autocrits, though you won’t ever have more than 3 stacks for more than a single GCD anyway.

Quickness

• Effect: Dealing damage with an Ataru Form strike reduces the active cooldown of Rage-spending offensive abilities by 1 second. Can only occur once per second. In addition, your Ataru Form strikes deal 3% more damage.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in PvP only. Quickness is not competitive with Swiftness in terms of sustained damage output, and your spike damage will be weaker but more frequent in PvP.

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: Never take this. The effect is nice to have, but it’s never more valuable than AoE RDT in group content and Rage isn’t as much of an issue anywhere thanks to Cloak of Retribution, so there really isn’t a situation where this is the best option.

Interloper

• Effect: Force Charge gets an additional charge and builds 2 Fury.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and PvP only. Interloper can ensure that Force Charge and Berserk are available more reliably in solo content and PvP, but it doesn’t offer enough of a benefit compared to Steel Self in PvE group content.

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: Almost always take this. The extra Rage is extremely valuable to Carnage. Even just 1-2 extra Rage generated by this buff is enough to add a ton of stability to the rotation and anything beyond that can be converted into extra Gore uses with Berserk Gore. You’re also able to benefit more significantly from the cooldown reduction component because of Battering Assault’s reduced cooldown, which can result in much higher uptime on Cloak of Pain, increasing your DPS while decreasing your DTPS.

Path Carver

• Effect: Increases the damage dealt by Sweeping Slash by 15%.
• Recommendation: Take this whenever you find yourself using Sweeping Slash a lot. Cloak of Retribution is extremely valuable in Carnage, so it’s really hard to justify giving it up. In fights where you’d want to use Path Carver, you’ll be fighting adds so downtime is more frequent and Force Charge tends to be used more often, so Rage is less of an issue, but the benefit of Path Carver is small and doesn’t change your AoE priority, so it really depends on how valuable Cloak of Retribution is in that specific fight. Path Carver should only be taken if Cloak of Pain has low uptime AND you are using Sweeping Slash a lot.

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: Consider taking this in PvP or specific boss fights only. You’d want to use Blood Ward primarily in burn phases or other situations where you’ll be taking damage for the entire duration of Saber Ward to maximize the defensive boost from Blood Ward, but in these sorts of phases, you’ll almost always also be able to fully benefit from Cloak of Pain’s increased uptime thanks to Cloak of Retribution, which provides both an offensive and defensive boost that is potentially greater than Blood Ward in longer checks, so I don’t think it’s ever worthwhile to to take this unless you can maybe also benefit from the CC immunity. Even then, an extra GCD or two from being CC’d can easily also come from Cloak of Retribution, so even then I don’t think Blood Ward is worthwhile.

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 boss fights and PvP 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. None of these options are essential in solo content, so if you must have Force Choke for RP reasons, don’t feel bad.

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 so you don’t have to leave the platform up top for a Slam.

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 losing DPS over. 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. The effect just happens too frequently and really doesn’t ever offer that much of a benefit because Force Charge + Battering Assault give you 9 Rage.

Interceptor

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

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 enough Fury with 100% uptime to not need Brazen, but as soon as you start losing singular GCDs to mechanics where Berserk isn’t available by the time Battering Assault comes off cooldown, you’ll need to start taking this buff. In fights where you’re taking frequent damage, you will build excessive stacks of Fury. Make sure that you don’t activate Berserk until 1-2 GCDs before activating Battering Assault.

Gearing and Stat Priorities

Tactical Items

Shard of Mortis
Effect: Dealing damage with Massacre grants a stack of Hyper. Each stack of Hyper increases both your critical chance by 15% and the Rage cost of Massacre by 1. Dealing damage with an ability that isn’t Massacre consumes all stacks of Hyper and generates 1 Rage per stack consumed. Hyper lasts 6 seconds and can stack up to 3 times.
Recommendation: This is your single-target tactical. It is similar to the Fanged God Form tactical that had to be removed and reworked with the launch of 7.0 because it enabled players to do considerable DPS by basically exclusively spamming Massacre. Now, Shard of Mortis enables proper rotations that are quite similar to what was possible in 6.0 with Fanged God Form without the Massacre spam and offers considerably more single-target DPS than Andeddu’s Malevolence.

Andeddu’s Malevolence
Effect: Dealing damage with Gore applies a DoT called Bloody Focus; it lasts 12 seconds and deals Internal damage.
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical. The DoT itself deals about 20k damage, enough to the point where Gore matches the damage per GCD of Devastating Blast and Vicious Slash. Andeddu’s Malevolence only acts as an AoE tactical when paired with the Piercing Gore ability tree buff, which enables Gore to also deal damage to enemies behind your target, which will apply the DoT from this tactical to them. Prior to 7.1, this was also used in single-target situations because there was nothing better, but now Shard of Mortis outperforms it by a considerable amount. Andeddu’s Malevolence only offers a sustained DPS increase if you can manage to consistently hit at least 3 enemies with each Gore. This is a really high bar, so it likely won’t see much use.

Hidden Power
Effect: Force Camouflage generates 2 Rage per second.
Recommendation: I don’t like the term tryhard, but it applies here. If you want to be a tryhard, you can equip Hidden Power and activate Force Camo to build yourself 12 Rage before the fight/dummy parse starts and omit the initial Zealous Strike and Force Charge from your opener. DO NOT forget to switch back to Shard of Mortis. I don’t bother with Hidden Power because the DPS gain is ultra-negligible and negated a thousand times over if you ever forget to switch it back. We all have more important things to think about.

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 Carnage 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.
• 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.

Dispatcher and Fearless Victor are the BiS Legendary Implants for Carnage Marauder.

Dispatcher is the most essential Legendary Implant to Carnage (and Annihilation), it really helps to smooth out the rotation by ensuring that you have enough Rage to spam Massacre and get an autocrit on Vicious Throw. Fearless Victor offers slightly higher DPS than Berserker’s Call, but not by much, so if you don’t have spare Tech Frags, you’ll still do fine with Berserker’s Call.

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 GCD. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCDs, 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. Please note that this discipline gets +3% Alacrity from their stance, so you don’t need as much to reach the desired threshold, and it is more practical to go for the 1.3s GCD if you decide to use the Zeal (Cyan) Alacrity Guild Perk Set Bonus.
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 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 Carnage 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.

Carnage Boss Fights Build

In boss fights, your top, coequal priorities are executing mechanics and dealing maximum, typically single-target, sustained DPS. The talents in this build enable maximum sustained DPS, though sometimes you will need to adjust to account for specific mechanics or provide utility to your group. 

You’ll also be taking talents that increase your survivability and active mobility because you can’t deal damage or do mechanics if you aren’t alive or in range.

The boss build is inferior against regular enemies because your AoE is weaker and less immediate in exchange for being more efficient and sustainable. You’re relying on your target to be alive for an extended period of time to deal damage, and enemy health typically doesn’t line up with a full-fledged boss rotation.

This build is not as performant in PvP because your CC is primarily limited to whatever you get for free, and your instantaneous burst will be weaker or outright non-existent.

Carnage’s boss fight build offers extremely little flexibility thanks to the significant number of build essentials. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you don’t like messing around with changing your choices too much, but the only options you should ever be changing are Brazen to Thirst for Rage and Mad Dash to Undying Rage.

With this build, you’ll leverage an extremely high critical chance to deal more damage and reliably trigger the Dispatcher Legendary Implant’s effect to generate Rage. This build doesn’t offer as much DPS, but in my opinion, it’s more intuitive, so it’s easier to recover if you make a mistake and incorporate AoE when you need to.

In fights and phases where you take frequent damage, Cloak of Pain with Cloak of Retribution allows you to convert excess Rage into additional Gores during Berserk, even outside of the Ferocity window because the Berserk Gore ability tree buff makes prevents Gore from going on cooldown if it consumes a stack of Berserk.

In order to properly leverage the benefit of Berserk Gore, you shouldn’t be using Gore if Berserk is not active unless you’re doing a burst DPS check, or its cooldown doesn’t matter, like at the end of a fight or before downtime. With these extra Gores, you won’t be able to benefit from the Andeddu’s Malevolence tactical item DoT, but it’s still much stronger per GCD than Massacre.

You can’t take full advantage of Berserk Gore without excess Rage from Cloak of Retribution (and Force Charge) because Gore costs 1-2 more Rage than Massacre thanks to the Efficient Strikes and Enraged Slash passives.

Carnage Solo Content Build

In story content, on planets, and in flashpoints, you’ll almost exclusively encounter regular enemies AKA trash mobs. While you can technically use DPS to measure performance against trash, it is far more appropriate to think in terms of how many GCDs it takes to defeat each enemy and a whole group, and which talents get you over the threshold and actually reduce the number of hits to kill.

As of 7.0, SWTOR now offers dedicated talents and tactical items that are designed and balanced for use specifically against trash mobs.  

These talents almost always have effects that trigger when you specifically defeat an enemy or when you enter or exit combat. They expand single-target attacks into powerful AoEs or reset cooldowns on specific abilities, often with a massive yet short-lived, damage boost attached to it. 

These factors come together to create a truncated rotation that incentivizes a high APM and deals enough damage to defeat an entire group of trash in a flashy way in a matter of seconds.

Yes, trash mobs pose no threat to someone more invested in the game like you, dear reader. The advantage of making such a build is that they genuinely deal more DPS. My testing with Assassin showed a ~25% reduction in TTK, and the combat experience was a lot more fun. 

These effects aren’t suitable in boss fights because their effects last such a short time and can only trigger reliably when you are in a small group and are fighting enemies that have a small amount of HP.

These same deliberate limitations also prevent them from being effective in PvP because it’s so difficult to predict exactly when your opponent will die, and such buffs aren’t useful after the fact anyway. Furthermore, you often have to give up effects that are more useful in PvP to take these talents.

The Carnage solo content build is nearly identical to the single-target sustained build. The biggest difference comes from how Gore is used. You’ll be leveraging Berserk Gore and Andeddu’s Malevolence which will allow you to hit every enemy in the group and make each of them bleed.

You could use Piercing Gore instead, but you’ll basically never be able to hit as many targets and it’s far more inconsistent. You can also use Rush Down instead of Frenzied Blade, it doesn’t really matter all that much since you won’t be using Massacre all that often against trash mobs and Frenzied Blade offers higher single-target sustained DPS along with greater utility and burst.

Carnage PvP Build: Survivability Emphasis

This build is best suited for fighting against enemy players, where survival and control are the name of the game and fight duration is completely variable. You will be trading a huge chunk of sustained damage output in order to stack as much damage into a single instant as possible, making it harder for your opponent to mitigate it at all.

Survivability is king because you secure objectives or win outright when you outlast your opponents, though it also means there is more time for help to arrive. Controlling effects help immensely with securing objective and improving the reliability of your spike damage landing, but they also improve your own survivability. 

Time where the enemy can’t hit you is time where you aren’t taking damage, and CC is especially helpful to use against enemies that have some sort of OCD or DCD active because you don’t want to be taking more damage than your opponent or not hitting as hard against them.

The PvP build is far less effective in boss fights because most bosses are immune to CC and the ability order you use to set up your massive damage spikes requires you to break what would be a sustained rotation by delaying important abilities. 

This often results in higher resource costs, but the downtime from CC helps to mitigate the inefficiency. Fillers often play a role in survivability as well, so it is as much of a waste to use them either. 

The CC will be useful in solo content, but your burst is focused onto a single enemy and is often super duper overkill. It is better to spread that damage out a bit. 

Undying Cloak is a crafted tactical item. You can get the schematic from S3T-BNS or purchase it from someone else on the GTN. It is superior to Grit Teeth for Marauders, especially for Carnage, because you can get pretty high uptime on Cloak of Pain and significantly reduce the cooldown of Undying Rage.

You will feel weaker than if you were to emphasize damage with Shard of Mortis, but you do get to be aggressive with using Undying Rage. It’s pretty satisfying to dive into the enemy team head-first with Undying Rage and watch them flush all their opening spike damage down the toilet. Unfortunately, in this example, you are the toilet.

Yes, you can do this even without Undying Cloak, but this way, by the time you’ve used up all your other DCDs, Undying Rage will be back off cooldown and you’ll be able to flush again!

I recommend Berserk Gore and Swiftness by default, but it’s totally fine to go for Driving Gore and Quickness instead.

Shard of Mortis doesn’t work as well with Swiftness, but that’s not a problem with this build, and it’s nice to throw in other burst before your opponent is ready for it.

Driving Gore is just super messed up in part because it doesn’t root, so you can do crazy stuff like teleport across the map with them if your opponent activates Phase Walk or otherwise gets yeeted at the same time.

Carnage PvP Build: Damage Emphasis

While I don’t advise emphasizing sustained damage output in PvP, Shard of Mortis is quite powerful and can improve your spike damage potential, so using what is basically just the PvE build in PvP is not as bad as it is for other disciplines.

I recommend using Brazen and Frenzied Blade by default, but you may want to consider using Defensive Stance and Thirst for Rage instead, as they are less integral to Carnage’s effectiveness in PvP. It’s also easier to justify taking Blood Ward instead of Cloak of Retribution if you prefer.

Despite not feeling like it, the level 68 ability choice is perfectly balanced. I personally prefer Undying Rage, but the cooldown durations, damage mitigation potential, and other benefits are equivalent for Force Choke and Mad Dash.

I recommend sticking with Berserk Gore with this build because it increases damage output. There’s more value in spamming Gore while Berserk is active in PvP because of the hindering effect. Your opponent can’t escape so long as you spam it.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

There are 2 rotations that you can use with the Swiftness ability tree buff. Each has their own opener. I personally prefer what I refer to as the Main Swiftness Opener and Rotation because I find it to be more intuitive, allowing you to recover from disruptions and mistakes more easily.

However, the alternate rotation offers higher sustained DPS and is completely static, so you might find that easier. I highly recommend you try both out and sticking with the one you like best.

Priority-Based Opener

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks when using the Swiftness ability tree buff. 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 stacks of Fury)
2. Dual Saber Throw
3. Force Charge
4. Berserk
5. Frenzy
6. Battering Assault
7. Massacre
8. Ferocity
9. Adrenal
10. Bloodthirst (if applicable)
11. Devastating Blast
12. Vicious Throw
13. Gore
14. Massacre
15. Ravage
16. Massacre
17. Berserk (if applicable)
18. Battering Assault
19. Massacre
20. Ferocity
21. Devastating Blast
22. Gore
23. Gore (skip if Berserk is not active)
24. Rotation

Dual Saber Throw is used at the beginning so that you can have sufficient Rage for the opener and obtain the Dispatcher’s Challenge proc for your first activation of Vicious Throw. You’ll need to use Berserk before the first Massacre so you can afford the very first Massacre.

It’s important to wait to use Bloodthirst until right before your first GCD in the Ferocity window (Gore) so that the first GCD of your next Ferocity window (Devastating Blast) will also benefit from Bloodthirst. In terms of sustained DPS, this doesn’t matter all that much, but it can definitely make a huge difference in burst DPS checks. I don’t think this timing is quite as important for the Adrenal since it lasts 15 seconds instead of 10.

If the armor debuff is not on the target, you can use Gore as your first ability in the opening Ferocity window to apply it, but I don’t bother because I don’t do that anywhere else in the rotation.

If someone else is providing Bloodthirst, you can use Frenzy to give yourself a second Berserk instead of activating Bloodthirst yourself. In this case, you’ll use Gore during the second Ferocity window.

Massacre is used before Ravage so that you spend the final stack of Berserk on Massacre (saving 1 Rage) and refresh the Massacre buff. Ravage shouldn’t ever consume stacks of Berserk. Since Ravage doesn’t generate Fury, it’s best to activate the second Berserk from Frenzy after Ravage.

Priority-Based Rotation

You can technically write out a super long static rotation for Carnage for an entire fight, but that approach doesn’t put you in the right mindset for actual fights where your rotation will be disrupted. I think it’s best to think about the Swiftness rotation as alternating between 2 components: Ferocity Window and Filler.

Ferocity Window

Your goal during the Ferocity window is to use your most damaging attacks and should always look something like this:

1. Berserk (if applicable)
2. Battering Assault
3. Massacre
4. Ferocity
5. Devastating Blast ( Ferocity stack 1)
6. Vicious Throw or Massacre ( Ferocity stack 2)
7. Gore ( Ferocity stack 3) or Massacre (no Ferocity)
8. Filler

Your Ferocity window should always start with Battering Assault ▶ Massacre ▶ Ferocity. Massacre is done after Battering Assault so that Devastating Blast can deal additional supercritical damage from 1 stack of Hyper from the Shard of Mortis tactical. It’s also important to do Massacre before Ferocity because Ataru Form strikes benefit from the increased armor penetration, but do not consume stacks of Ferocity, so you also want the increased chance to trigger them from the Massacre proc for the entire Ferocity window.

It’s most important to use Battering Assault + Ferocity followed by your actual powerful attacks. The boosts from Massacre are secondary. You’ll quickly start to lose more DPS than you gain if you delay your Ferocity window because you need to Massacre. You may find it easier or even superior to always do Massacre ▶ Battering Assault ▶ Ferocity ▶ Devastating Blast (basically just swap the order of Massacre and Battering Assault), so it’s fine to do that instead if you prefer.

I think Battering Assault should always be used at roughly the same time as Ferocity because they share the same cooldown (1 GCD later because of Shard of Mortis). This ensures that you will have enough Rage to get through the entire Ferocity window and makes it so you don’t have to worry quite so much about timing Berserk and those two abilities getting desynced.

Berserk should be activated no sooner than 1 GCD before Battering Assault because you’ll need 5 GCDs for Battering Assault ▶ Massacre ▶ Ferocity attacks. I’ve found the easiest way to track this is to delay Berserk if it becomes available early until there are less than 3 seconds left on Battering Assault’s cooldown. This aspect of the rotation is a lot more challenging in actual combat than it will be on the dummy thanks to the Brazen ability tree buff which will cause Berserk to become available at inconsistent times.

The easiest way to mitigate Berserk being available early is to just wait to activate it until right before you use Battering Assault. It’s preferred that your excess Berserk stacks are after the rotation anyway so that you can spend them on excess Gores when applicable.

I prefer to typically use Devastating Blast as the first GCD after Ferocity is active because it’s the only ability you’ll be using with every single activation of Ferocity. By starting with what you activate during Ferocity most often, it’s a lot easier to narrow down your choices when deciding on which ability to activate next.

Typically, Vicious Throw and Massacre alternate being used in the second Ferocity slot, but you have 2 Berserks back to back thanks to Frenzy, you’ll revert to the opener and do Gore 2x for one of the Ferocity windows. Vicious Throw always takes priority whenever it’s available because it will always deal more damage than Massacre (and Gore) even without the Slaughter proc, though that’s only applicable sub-30%.

Thanks to Frenzied Blade and Berserk Gore, you can now activate Frenzy more frequently and fully benefit from additional Ferocity stacks by using additional Gores. I think it makes the most sense now to only use Gore while Berserk is active and use it in the third slot of Ferocity that is only available with Berserk to make it harder for you to accidentally put Gore on cooldown by using it when Berserk isn’t active.

It’s also much easier to just spam Gore back to back when you want to expend excess Rage from Cloak of Retribution or Force Charge and allows you to practice something that’s a lot more transferrable to PvP by greatly extending the active time on the Hindered debuff.

This approach to Ferocity windows does come with a very minor DPS loss. If you were to use Gore in the first Ferocity slot, you could get an extra tick out of the Andeddu’s Malevolence DoT before spamming it at the end when you have excess Rage. It’s also better to use Gore first against new targets since it applies the armor debuff. That said, I think it’s a worthwhile sacrifice in order to have a more consistent Ferocity window that’s far easier to think through in the moment when you’re trying to activate abilities on the 1.2s GCD.

As you can see, there’s a ton of nuance with the Ferocity window, though it doesn’t have a very significant impact on your DPS. If you just adhere to the list I showed you before this essay on Ferocity, you’ll do fine.

Filler Priority

The Filler section of the rotation will consist of Massacre, Dual Saber Throw, Ravage, and hopefully not Assault.

1. Gore (during Berserk, if you have spare Rage)
2. Massacre (refresh Massacre buff)
3. Dual Saber Throw
4. Ravage (if you have enough Fury and didn’t use Dual Saber Throw)
5. Massacre (spam)
6. Assault

The typical rhythm of rotation will look something like Ferocity window ▶ Massacre until you’re out of Berserk stacks ▶ Dual Saber Throw OR Ravage ▶ Massacre spam until next the Ferocity window. Remember that Sweeping Slash can be swapped out for Massacre and Ravage in AoE situations.

You’ll usually have issues with generating enough Fury in time if you try to use both Dual Saber Throw and Ravage in the same filler section, so only use 1 per filler segment. Since Dual Saber Throw gives you the Dispatcher’s Challenge proc and generates 2 Rage, it takes priority whenever you have to pick.

If Battering Assault has come off cooldown and you have 26-28 Fury, it’s much better to delay the Ferocity window by a GCD to reach 30 Fury because the alternative is giving up a stack of Ferocity completely, so it will always be far less of a DPS loss compared to just giving up on that stack of Ferocity completely and delaying Berserk for a whole cycle. Remember that if this happens, it means you probably made a mistake and need more practice or need to use Brazen if you aren’t already.

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!

Static Rotation

There is an alternate rotation that also uses the Swiftness ability tree buff but leans more heavily into maximizing the critical chance provided by the Hyper stacks from Shard of Mortis. In my opinion, this rotation is less intuitive and harder to recover from if you make a mistake or get interrupted, but it is completely static. Since the opener is just the rotation + OCDs and a few extra abilities to set things up at the beginning, I think it makes more sense to explain the rotation first.

1. Berserk
2. Massacre
3. Ferocity
4. Massacre
5. Vicious Throw
6. Devastating Blast
7. Massacre
8. Battering Assault
9. Massacre
10. Massacre
11. Massacre
12. Ferocity
13. Gore
14. Devastating Blast
15. Ravage
16. Battering Assault
17. Massacre
18. Dual Saber Throw
19. Massacre
20. Repeat

With the completely static rotation, you’ll do Battering Assault shortly after each Ferocity window and it must always consume the final stack of Berserk so that it benefits from the alacrity and remains synchronized with the rest of the rotation.

The ability order within the Ferocity window is structured to maximize the crit chance (and subsequent supercritical damage) provided by the Hyper stacks from Shard of Mortis. The goal is to have 3 stacks of Hyper for that first ability.

Vicious Throw and Gore seem to offer the greatest DPS because Vicious Throw is your most damaging attack and has an autocrit while Gore will be a guaranteed crit thanks to 3 stacks of Hyper. That said, the damage difference isn’t huge, so don’t freak out if you end up buffing Devastating Blast instead of either of those abilities.

Unfortunately, this rotation doesn’t allow you to make full use of Frenzy or Berserk Gore (and subsequently Frenzied Sabers), but it does seem to offer higher DPS anyway.

Static Rotation Opener

This is the opener you use with the completely static rotation. It is just the rotation except for the first 4 attacks and the addition of OCDs.

1. Channel Hatred (pre-cast for 30 stacks of Fury)
2. Force Charge
3. Battering Assault (skip if you don’t need Rage)
4. Ravage (skip if you don’t need Rage)
5. Dual Saber Throw
6. Berserk
7. Adrenal
8. Frenzy ▶ Bloodthirst (if applicable)
9. Massacre
10. Ferocity
11. Massacre
12. Vicious Throw
13. Devastating Blast
14. Gore
15. Massacre
16. Battering Assault
17. Massacre
18. Massacre
19. Massacre
20. Ferocity
21. Gore
22. Devastating blast
23. Ravage
24. Battering Assault
25. Massacre
26. Dual Saber Throw
27. Massacre
28. Rotation

The purpose of the 4 abilities at the beginning is to generate Rage and put Battering Assault’s cooldown in the right spot so it will be available again when it’s needed. This has the unfortunate side-effect of delaying your high damage for longer than is preferred at the beginning of the fight, but will enable you to do higher sustained DPS.

If you bother with Hidden Power, or take Thirst for Rage and use Bloodthirst at the beginning of the fight, you can technically forego using Battering Assault, Ravage, and even Force Charge at the very beginning since you’ll have sufficient Rage to last until the first rotational activation of Battering Assault.