SWTOR 3.0 Rage Juggernaut DPS Guide by Artorias

SWTOR 3.0 Rage Juggernaut DPS guide by Artorias of Ebon Hawk. Last updated August 2, 2015.

Contents

• 1 Introduction to the Rage Juggernaut
  • 1.1 Utilities
  • 1.2 Rating
  • 1.3 Gearing and Stats Priority
• 2 What you need to know
  • 2.1 Buffs/Passives:
  • 2.2 Abilities
• 3 Opening and Rotation
  • 3.1 Rage Opener
  • 3.2 Cycles
  • 3.3 Execute
  • 3.4 What to Check for?
  • 3.5 Sample Parse Analysis
  • 3.6 Video
• 4 About the Author

Introduction to the Rage Juggernaut

Rage is currently one of the few AOE specs in game, how ever with changes to the spec in update 3.0, the spec is now capable of doing a pure single target rotation to allow for added damage by sacrificing AOE in the rotation. This allows you to swap between a single target burst and an AOE burst depending on the situation. The further change to Rage also has shifted the rotation a bit, making it similar yet also different than the 2.0 iteration you may or may not have played.

Utilities

The below utilities are outlined to make the most of your Raid Utility and PVE environments. Things such as cleanses aren’t necessary and are better served for speed boosts, damage increases and buffs to your allies.

Skillful

Payback: Reduces the cooldown of Unleash by 30 seconds and causes Resolute to heal you for 10% of your maximum health when used. Path Carver: Sweeping Slash deals 25% more damage. Deadly Reprisal: Taking non-periodic area of effect damage generates 1 Rage. This effect cannot occur more than once every second.

Masterful

Sonic Wall: Threatening Scream protects all allies within range, excluding yourself, granting Sonic Wall, which absorbs a moderate amount of damage. Lasts 10 seconds. Emboldening Scream: Chilling Scream increases the movement speed of all allies within 8 meters, excluding yourself by 50% for 8 seconds.
or
Crushing Fist: For the Immortal Discipline, Smash slows the targets it damages by 60% for 10 seconds. For the Vengeance and Rage disciplines, Smash and Vengeful Slam sunder the targets they damage for 45 seconds. Sundered targets have their armor rating decreased by 20%.

Heroic

Through Passion: Reduces the Cooldown of Enraged Defense by 30 seconds. Through Power: Endure Pain increases movement speed by 50% and grants immunity to movement impairing effects while active.

Rating

• Single Target Dps: 6
• AoE Damage: 10
• Rotation Difficulty: 5
• RNG Dependant: No
• Burst: 8
• Sub 30% Talent or Ability Buffs: Yes, execute available every so often.

Gearing and Stats Priority

• Accuracy: 100% Melee (110% Force). 1% from Companion, 755 Accuracy Rating from Gear.
• Surge: Higher Priority than Alacrity.
• Alacrity: Optional, Rotation benefits from surge
• 220-330 Critical Rating (1% from companion)
• All other secondary stats in Power
• Augments: Strength
• Relics: Serendipitous Assault & Focused Retribution
• Set Bonus: 6 Piece Vindicator
• Form: Shii-Cho

What you need to know

Rage revolves around buffing yourself passively in rotation to allow for a massive hit at the end of each ‘cycle’. These cycles remain the same but if you have no idea of your passives then you won’t know how or why the cycles are there in the first place.

Buffs/Passives:

Shockwave: While Shii-Cho Form is Active, activating Enrage/damage dealt by Force Crush grans Shockwave, increasing the damage dealt by your next Raging Burst and Force Smash by 5% and reducing their cost by 34% per stack (Free at 3 stacks). Also lowers the CD of Enrage by 15% and additonally generates 6 Rage over 6 seconds. Dominate: Force Charge and Obliterate make your next Smash or Raging Burst automatically Crit. Overpower: Assault, Sundering Assault, Vicious Slash, Sweeping Slash, Retaliation, Force Scream, Vicious Throw and Furious Strike reduce the active cooldowns of Smash, Raging Burst, and Obliterate by 1 second and Enrage by 2 seconds. Cascading Power: Increases all damage dealt by 5% for 6 seconds after dealing damage with Smash or Raging Burst. Cannot occur more than once every 8 seconds. Dark Resonance: Increases the Critical strike damage of all abilities by 15%. Battle Cry: Reduces the Cooldown of Obliterate by 3 seconds. When Force Charge or Obliterate is used, your next Force Scream deals 5% more damage and generates 1 rage. Furious Power: Furious Strike enables Retaliation and beats down the target for 45% causing them to take 5% more damage from melee attacks.

Abilities

Raging Burst: Deals a massive amount of single target Kinetic damage when buffed fully (this should always be the case.) Procs Cascading Power and consumes Shockwave and Obliterate.Costs: 0 Rage Smash: Deals a massive amount of Kinetic damage when fully buffed, though less than Raging Burst, compensates for this by being AOE. Should never be used on Single Target.Costs: 0 Rage Furious Strike: New ability added in 3.0. Deals high amount of weapon damage and autocrits when utilizing the 6-piece Vindicator Set Bonus making it one of the hardest hitting abilities in game. Also beats down the target, debuffing it for your entire group, making the target take more melee damageCosts: 5 Rage Retaliation: Deals decent weapon damage. Now on the GCD, only useable after Furious Strike and both should be used as a couple, your rotation, if done perfectly will always be capable of doing this.Costs: 2 Rage Force Scream: Deals moderate Kinetic damage. Has a Range of 10m, this ability isn’t used as much as previous rage to make use of the 6 piece set bonus.Generates: 1 Rage Obliterate: 10m gap closer and one of the most used abilities due to granting Decimate.Costs: 2 Rage Saber Throw: Replaces the cost of Retaliation in your Enrage Cycle 2 with a gain of 3 Rage to allow more use of Force Scream in future cycles. Also procs your 6-piece Vindicator set bonus, causing your next Furious Slash to automatically crit.Generates: 3 Rage Ravage: Used in its own respective cycle. Ravage had its damage and CD reduced to 18 seconds in 3.0 allowing you to use it more frequently and within Cascading Power windows, meaning it’s always 5% more powerful. Vicious Throw: Used every few cycles thanks to the profit of Rage gained from Saber Throw, a total of two Vicious Throws can be used in the place of Retaliation before burning yourself out. It it is not ideal to use it on CD or to shift ability priority to use it. Resource costs are very strict and getting over zealous can lead to ruining your rotation. Deals more Damage than Retaliation and is the 2nd highest powerful critting ability behind Furious Slash.  Force Push: Used rarely if ever as a filler, if you’re doing your rotation flawlessly, you’ll never need a filler. Vicious Slash: Never used. You should never find yourself having room in your rotation or CD imbalance requiring you to use it.Costs: 3 Rage Assault: Never used as it does terrible damage and has zero benefit to you entirely.Generates: 2 Rage Force Choke: Never used. Minimal damage and will unsettle your rotation.Generates: 4 Rage Force Charge: Simple gap closer that allows you to transition to your target in opener or if you need to swap and get to your new target ASAP.Generates: 3 Rage

Opening and Rotation

The opener for Rage is rather simple and never deviates regardless of scenario. Enrage frontloads your Shockwave and Force Charge grants Dominate, allowing the following Raging Burst to crit. Saber throw grants Vindicator’s Critical Bonus, giving your first Furious Strike an autocrit.

Rage Opener

As I mentioned above, Rage follows ‘Cycles’. One cycle ends and another begins, each cycle ends with a Raging Burst (or Force Smash depending on if you want AOE). Each Cycle subsequently bleeds Rage or lack there of into the next cycle, thus meaning you have to preemptively manage yourself or you may find you’re running too low on your next Obliterate.

There are 2 types of cycles. I like to call them the “Enrage Cycle” and “Ravage Cycle.” These cycles follow one another, when an Enrage Cycle ends, the Ravage Cycle begins, so you can keep track of which cycle you’re supposed to be doing on the CD of Force Crush as it’s the first ability used in the Ravage Cycle.

Cycles

The reason as to why there are 2 Enrage Cycles is that the over use of Enrage Cycle 1, the one with Retaliation will eventually drain your resource due to its cost, meaning an eventual Obliterate will fail. To stop this from happening, substituting a 2-Rage cost for 3 Rage gain with the use of Saber Throw means you can proceed with 3 more Enrage Cycle 1’s until an Enrage Cycle 2 is required. The loss of DPS by subsituting in Saber Throw for Retlation, is more than made up for by the use of Force Scream being used more frequently.

To know when to use Enrage Cycle 2 is easy. Once your Ravage Cycle finishes and your Rage Bar is entirely empty after your Raging Burst, that’s when to use Enrage Cycle 2.

 

Execute

With the large amount of Rage from your Enrage Cycle 2 bleeding into your next cycles, this opens up room to allow Vicious Throw. Rather than subtracting 2 Rage from your current budget, you’re adding 3, this will allow you to add an extra 1 cost to your next 2 Retaliation areas in the coming cycles to use Vicious Throw, so 2/3 Retaliations become Vicious Thows, the 2nd Dispatch of course is present to due to the CD on Vicious Throw now allowing it be used frequently. This helps not burn you out and will allow you to increase damage due to how powerful Vicious Throw is in comparison to Retaliation. This how ever means that you will need to use Enrage Cycle 2 more often to compensate for the growing cost of your rotation.

What to Check for?

What was the minimum hit of your Raging Burst/Force Smash? You’ll see a rough deviation of 4000 max due to Relic and Adrenal windows. If you land a 12,500 Raging burst, your minimum should be the low 8000’s. If you have hit far lower than this 4k deviation, you’ve messed up a Shockwave window at some point or another.

The Number of Obliterates+Force Charge activations = Number of Raging Bursts+Force Smashes.

APM (Actions Per Minute) of at least 39.4

Are you clipping Ravage effectively at the 0.3 second mark? Clipping Ravage with Furious Strike secures it inside the Cascading Power window.

Is your Raging Burst/Force Smash average output higher than 10secs? If so, you’re delaying it or your rotation is too slow.

Sample Parse Analysis

So looking at the parse, let’s note some things. some are obvious, others are not.

Raging burst makes up the most of your damage, about 20% to 22% and of course has a 100% crit chance due to the rotation being successful, you’ll also notice that the number (24) matches up to the (23) Obliterates in rotation and (1) Force Charge in opener, the dummy died before the 25th Raging Burst, hence why there isn’t a 25th listed.

Looking at the parse, you can see the APM is 40.2, well over the required 39.4. What increases your APM is mostly the use of Adrenal and Combat Focus, both of which do not respect the GCD as such should be pressed at the same time as your following ability, regardless of what it is.

You’ll also notice a lack of Smash in this parse because it deals weaker damage and its buffs are consumed by Raging Burst, hence there is no reason to use it in single target.

The number of Saber Throws will be roughly half that of Force Scream, so every 2 Scream Cycles will result in one Saber Throw cycle.

The number of Furious Strikes is equal to that of Retaliation, each activation in succession of the other, used as a pair, the 7 Rage is always present when this duo is needed rotationally

Video

About the Author

My in game name is Artorias/Sinais, depending on which faction you’re on of course. You may have seen me on the forums or /r/SWTOR as Luckygunslinger. I raid with Aisthesis on the Ebon Hawk and have been playing Juggernaut since 1.3 and DPS spec since 1.5 all the way until 3.0. I mained Rage pre-Vengeance Buffs in 2.6 and have decided to return to it since a lot of the minor issues have been fixed. This guide was written through the testing days of SoR when the spec was changing and it was helping to keep track of the changes while in turn helping others get an idea of this slightly versatile spec.