SWTOR 7.1 Fury Marauder and Concentration Sentinel Changes Announcement and Analysis

BioWare has announced nerfs for Fury Marauder / Concentration Sentinel. This article will cover their current standing in the meta, BioWare’s announced changes for SWTOR 7.1, an analysis of the changes, and my own additional recommendations for improving the discipline. This article has been updated with information from the PTS.

Fury and Concentration’s Current Standing

Fury Marauder / Concentration Sentinel is currently the strongest DPS discipline in the game, though getting the absolute maximum numbers you see on the top dummy parses requires that you right-click off Berserk / Zen, which isn’t really feasible in actual fights, so the discipline’s practical damage output is closer to that of Rage / Focus than it may appear.

Fury / Concentration does suffer from viability issues in some fights thanks to Obliterate / Zealous Leap’s animation while being one of the most important abilities in the discipline because you need to use it on cooldown in order to get the autocrit for Raging Burst / Focused Burst. It is referred to by some players as a “self-root” because the leap animation prevents you from moving for the entire duration of the GCD.

In phases where precise positioning is important, Obliterate / Zealous Leap can cause your character to move somewhere that you don’t want to, like into a very dangerous red circle. This forces players to choose between losing a significant amount of DPS or not following a mechanic.

It’s particularly strange that BioWare didn’t attempt to properly mitigate this issue with the introduction of ability trees in 7.0 while they opted to introduce similar gap-closing functionality to specific abilities in Carnage / Combat and Vengeance / Vigilance.

I suppose you could view Fury / Concentration’s higher DPS and the Furious Defense / Zealous Defense ability tree buff as efforts to mitigate this issue, but there are many solutions that would work far better that theoretically shouldn’t have taken more work to implement than other changes made in 7.0.

BioWare’s Announced Changes

Reduced critical chance and critical damage dealt provided by the Dark Synergy / Zenith ability tree buff from 20% to 15%.
Gravity Vortex has been redesigned and renamed the level 60 discipline passive to Gravity Defiance / Gravity Manipulation, which has the following effect:
- “Reduces the Rage / Focus cost of Obliterate / Zealous Leap and Force Crush / Force Exhaustion by 1.”
The Gravity Vortex proc has been redesigned and is now a level 51 ability tree buff that replaces Defensive Roll for Fury / Concentration. It has the following effect:
- “Force Crush / Force Exhaustion triggers Gravity Vortex, granting immunity to interrupts and all controlling effects and reducing damage taken from area effects by 15% for 6 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.”

Practical Implications and Analysis

Dark Synergy / Zenith

The nerf to Dark Synergy / Zenith corresponds to a little over 5% reduction in DPS contributed by that ability tree buff, which should correspond to a nerf of almost 1700 DPS for Fury / Concentration, which should be just enough to bring it down into strong, but more acceptable territory.

It also helps to bring down the power level of that specific ability tree buff, making it slightly more reasonable to take one of the other options instead.

CC Immunity

BioWare seems to be moving Gravity Manipulation to the level 51 choice to further lock down Fury / Concentration’s mobility in PvP without impacting the other disciplines. In 7.1, the level 51 choice will cause Fury / Concentration to pick between CC immunity, a reduced cooldown on their CC breaker, and a second charge of Force Charge / Force Leap rather than get one of them right now in addition to CC immunity.

This would put Carnage / Combat on more even footing with Fury / Concentration in terms of mobility if not for the fact that Carnage / Combat has access to Driving Gore / Driving Lance, which gives them access to another gap closer just like Obliterate / Zealous Leap.

AoE Damage Mitigation

The AoE RDT component of Gravity Vortex is beyond insignificant. It works out to effectively 3% AoE RDT all the time. The Bloodthirst / Inspiration buff that Annihilation / Watchman and Carnage / Combat are getting is far more useful (and that’s not saying much). You won’t ever be taking Gravity Vortex for the mitigation.

That said, Marauders and Sentinels were borderline overpowered in terms of defensive capabilities anyway compared to everyone else thanks to Cloak of Pain / Rebuke, so even without it, I think they’ll still do fine.

Recommendations for BioWare

Obliterate / Zealous Leap needs to be less of a viability issue in PvE and it appears that BioWare thinks it offers too much mobility in PvP alongside the current level 51 choice. I see two porgs and I have one stone.

Alternative Changes

I propose that BioWare’s announced nerfs are incorporated, but refined by swapping the place of Obliterate / Zealous Leap and Force Crush / Force Exhaustion in the rotation and replacing Defensive Roll with the CC immunity effect of Gravity Vortex for all Marauders / Sentinels. The list is a bit longer than what BioWare has announced, but these changes are comprehensive such that they could literally be copied directly into the game’s patch notes.

Reduced critical chance and critical damage dealt provided by the Dark Synergy / Zenith ability tree buff from 20% to 15%.
Reduced the damage dealt by Obliterate / Zealous Leap by ~20%.
Reduced the damage dealt by Force Crush / Force Exhaustion by ~10%.
Reduced the damage dealt by Cauterized Coronary by ~30%.
Obliterate / Zealous Leap now has an 18s cooldown, triggers Destruction / Koan instead of Dominate / Felling Blow, and no longer benefits from Rout / Nimble Slashes.
Force Crush / Force Exhaustion now has a 12s cooldown, triggers Dominate / Felling Blow instead of Destruction / Koan, and now benefits from Rout / Nimble Slashes.
Force Charge now triggers Destruction / Koan instead of Dominate / Felling Blow.
The Furious Rumination / Focused Meditation ability tree buff has been tweaked and now has the following effect:
- Activating Berserk / Zen increases the critical hit chance of your next direct damage attack by 100%. In addition, dealing damage with Force Crush / Force Exhaustion generates 1 Rage / Focus.
The level 60 discipline passive Gravity Vortex has had the proc removed and been renamed to Gravity Defiance / Gravity Manipulation. It now only provides the passive effect:
- Obliterate / Zealous Leap and Force Crush / Force Exhaustion cost 1 less Rage / Focus.
Defensive Roll has been redesigned and now has the following effect:
- “Increases Internal / Elemental damage reduction by 3%. In addition, activating Force Charge / Force Leap grants Defensive Roll, which makes you immune to interrupts and all controlling effects for 6 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.
Activating Bloodthirst / Inspiration now reduces your AoE damage taken by 30% for 20 seconds in addition to its other effects.
The Subjugate / Unstable Focus ability tree buff has been redesigned and now has the following effect:
- “Raging Burst / Focused Burst now deals damage to up to 4 additional enemies within 5m of the primary target.”
The Furious Discovery / Zealous Revalation ability tree buff has been tweaked and now has the following effect:
- “Activating Obliterate / Zealous Leap builds 6 Fury / Centering. In addition, Frenzy / Valorous Call gains a second charge.”
Seething Defense / Zealous Defense now lasts 20 seconds up from 10 and absorbs twice as much damage.

This wouldn’t have happened if she had my version of Defensive Roll!

Rationale

The purpose of these suggested changes is to effectively swap the role of Obliterate / Zealous Leap and Force Crush / Force Exhaustion in the rotation where Obliterate / Zealous Leap is only used every other rotation cycle opposite of Berserk / Zen while Force Crush / Force Exhaustion is used in every single rotation cycle.

The direct damage nerfs to Force Crush / Force Exhaustion, Obliterate / Zealous Leap, and Cauterized Coronary are meant to negate the potential DPS increase that would result from swapping Force Crush / Force Exhaustion and Obliterate / Zealous Leap while preserving the relative power of each attack and making it transferrable to Rage Juggernaut / Focus Guardian. (Force Crush / Force Exhaustion currently deals about 50% more damage than Obliterate / Zealous Leap)

The main tweak to Furious Rumination / Focused Mediation is meant to compensate for the additional Rage / Focus that would be generated by the additional Force Crush / Force Exhaustion activation. It is no longer necessary for Force Flagellation to generate Rage / Focus.

The increased cooldown on Obliterate / Zealous Leap also makes it impossible to get an autocrit on every single Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice activation by leveraging Furious Discovery / Zealous Revalation and manually removing Berserk / Zen early.

The overall PvP impact of swapping Obliterate / Zealous Leap and Force Crush / Force Exhaustion effectively reduces the mobility of Fury / Concentration to match that of Carnage / Combat, allowing for a unified level 51 choice to persist while making Zealous Leap less of a viability issue (the damage nerf also helps with this) while also enabling Annihilation / Watchman to be a bit more viable in PvP by giving them access to the new effect of Defensive Roll.

The Bloodthirst / Inspiration AoE RDT is situational enough it can be rolled into the base ability without disrupting the balance of the combat style. After all, Carnage / Combat was going to receive Gravity Vortex for free and Fury / Concentration just had it taken away.

The change to Subjugation / Unstable Focus give the ability tree buff a use case in solo content without making Smash / Force Sweep completely useless. The change to Furious Discovery / Zealous Revalation allows Frenzy / Valorous Call to be better used offensively rather than exclusively as a recovery ability and non-disruptive way to activate Bloodthirst / Inspiration.

From the PTS

I’m now getting in the low 29k range when I could hit 31k DPS on Live, so it seems that the changes to Dark Synergy / Zenith had the impact I predicted. Fury / Concentration will definitely remain a strong choice, but it isn’t quite as OP as before.

Gravity Vortex has a cool new icon, but it’s unfortunate that other icons remain unfinished. Maybe that will change by the time 7.1 is actually released, but there’s no guarantee that will happen. I’m still flabbergasted that these blue icons were released at all. The animation is the same one as the Seething Defense / Zealous Ward, so it’s pretty unhelpful. Hopefully, that’s just a placeholder.

You can check out the overview and analysis for all other Class Changes coming with SWTOR 7.1:

Fury and Concentration’s Current Standing

BioWare’s Announced Changes