Go play a single player game if you don't want multiplayer content to be created in an MMO. Raiders aren't an insignificant part of the population either. Even as of less than 1 year ago, over 60k characters had joined a raid while connected to starparse server per week. People use more than 1 character but also a lot of raiders don't connect to the starparse servers every time they raid. That's a lot of people and to completely ignore them would be a very dumb decision (just look at how much the game suffered from 4.0 onward due to BW almost only focusing on single player until not that long ago). Non-hardcore raiders tend to be very reliable subs since it's required to sub to raid, most of them wouldn't have killed every boss on every difficulty so they'd still have content to progress through, and raids are very repeatable content.

So much salt in this thread, all from people who don’t even bother to read anything past the title, especially

Not worth the loss of gcd reduction, io is the only exception due to how important tiny energy differences can mean.

Excellent write up and very easy to follow formatting. This will be something I share to anyone who wants to learn more about how stats work, especially about tank stats since a lot of people don't fully understand how they work.

There’s nothing that can be said in this thread that hasn’t been said dozens of times in the other Mara threads from not that long ago. The tldr of those threads was that most forum users don’t know how Mara cooldowns or balance works (just because a class or two is better in unbalanced reg matches doesn’t mean that maras aren’t still crazy strong in any balanced scenario as well as far above every other melee class by a large margin).

If it's a choice between certain death and possibly staying alive, the correct choice will almost always be possible staying alive. The amount of scenarios where dying and getting off 1-2 more abilities is more worth than not doing those 1-2 abilities and getting away is very small. Even when those scenarios occur, it is better to be able to make the choice to stay or leave than be forced to stay because camo is on cd.

I never said it broke combat, I said wait for combat to end (kinda hard to misread that). The chance to gain a 2nd life can make or break a match in ranked (I said before it's irrelevant how you use camo in regs because there's no heavy punishment for dying). There's no guarantee that you'll be able to heal up, but if you catch someone by surprise by entering with camo then they have no awareness anyways and using camo for a second life would still be better. The only spec that'll take a long time to break combat would be anni, most of the time it's really easy to leave combat as carnage or fury.

Wait to leave combat? It'll take a few seconds but is well worth an extra life if nobody seeks you out, and even if they do (more likely that nobody will) it'll take one of them away from the fight too.

Using force camo to escape lets you heal up and get time back on cooldowns. Anyone I see who camos at the start I focus and tell my team to focus and then they can't escape to heal up. Force camo in the best case scenario (lots of times) is an extra life, and in the worst case, forces an enemy to have to run to you buying time for your team. In regs it's just a convenience to not have to run back from spawn since death really doesn't have a penalty in most scenarios. In ranked it's absolutely necessary to save camo or you're being a detriment to your team. Anyone who says that using camo at the start is a good thing doesn't know what they're talking about.

You have a parse that's showing on the leader board http://parsely.io/parser/view/350961/0 The reason why that one shows up even though it has lower dps, is that it has a lower time to kill, which is what parsely uses for the leader boards. Your top parse is a bit weird however since its overall damage is quite a bit lower than 2.5 mil than other parses.

Since it's unlikely that bw will do stuff like this (even though more ui customization like this has been asked a ton), starparse has that in some sorts. It can track the bubble debuff (sorcs), kolto probes (ops), and kolto shells (mercs) for each player and display a small icon over each player on the ops frame. It makes for keeping track of those extremely easy and those are the big ones to keep track of. It only keeps track if it is on the target or not (no duration) so it's not perfect but it's pretty good.

TK sages put up enough numbers to complete all MM ops. Is it more difficult to put up those numbers than other dps? Yes, but they are viable, the only people that would refuse to bring a sorc are stuck in the past. Also the dulfy numbers are way out of date.

Teams in HM are brute forcing through some mechanics as well. The orbs in HM knock you back and deal damage (potentially dealing a ton of damage if knocked out of outside circle) and getting hit twice in a short period of time (when they are red). The temp ability, which in SM (and even HM) can be completely ignored, is used to take no damage from atomic scattering. In SM, atomic scattering deals such little damage that it doesn't matter, only mechanic that really matters in SM is extinction protocol (red circles).

250 for last boss.

When bioware doesn't balance anything for over half a year (they've done this and longer throughout the game's history) and then admits that carnage was never balanced around clipping even though it's been around since launch, it's pretty clear that they don't understand how to balance. Even for all the changes in 5.0, anyone who understood pvp could immediately tell which classes would be op and why after looking that the changes even without playing it and somehow all that slipped their minds.

Umm, he plays marauder, if you actually read what he's saying and not immediately get triggered by the words "nerf mara" you would understand. He's not the only mara who understands that RA needs to be nerfed either, it wasn't needed and put the class over the top with dcd's.

Good point

Which is why in 4.x there were so many buff marauder threads, because they couldn’t survive without RA. Oh wait, that didn’t happen because maras had enough survivability before RA was added. They were given RA not because they needed something extra, but because whoever redid utilities didn’t fully think things through with who got good utilities (why did maras/snipers get such good utilities when they were pretty good before and classes like pt’s got nothing useful defensively) and also didn’t test them correctly in a large environment (merc utilities hilariously op).

Did you read his whole post? He clearly doesn’t understand what RA actually does, he thinks it is a small damage reduction instead of a massive resist chance.

Utility like sniper shield? One of the most sought after abilities in raiding? Maras also bring some utility as well in the form of predation and bloodthirst.

This pretty much sums up everyone who defends op classes and until a certain few people in this thread realize this, they'll be blind to anything that goes against their class. My main is a sniper, I don't pvp with it as often as my sorc or even my mara before the carnage changes, but I can see how strong it is and can come up with ways to make it not as op. Same with maras, it's my second most pvp'd on toon but I can see how strong it is and how it's overtuned compared to every other dps class not named merc or sniper. WTB 2.x ttk instead of buffing everyone to merc/mara/sniper levels.

Do you realize that was the exact same argument people used for merc dcd's? Did you think merc dcd's were balanced before any of the nerfs?

It was in fact never actually under performing, it was just that nobody was gearing correctly. The only change to fury was a 100-150 dps boost which in no way would bring it from under powered to over powered. The series of events that brought fury to its current state was as follows. The small buff happened around the same time that I figured out how alacrity worked and how fury best worked with it which was 1860 alacrity. That change in alacrity alone changed its perceived damage by around 750 dps. After both of those happened, a lot more people started playing fury which has more survivability than carnage due to the cc immunity which was the preferred spec in pvp before. People then start realizing what many have known since 5.0 launched, that maras dcd's are way too strong when compared to anything not named merc or sniper.

No wonder you are always against RA nerfs, you don't even understand how it works. RA preventing 600 out of 4800 damage? I don't even know how you came to that conclusion. RA is a 75% resist chance. If you take 4 force/tech hits of 5000 damage each, 3 of those are resisted completely on average, dealing 0 damage and all other effects from that ability are resisted as well. Only 1 hit goes through for 5000 damage. No damage is getting reduced to anything other than 0. So if a stun is one of those hits being resisted then the stun is resisted too. This is a lot more than reducing just 300-400 damage, it's a high chance of reducing anywhere from 1500 damage (lower damage of lots of dots) to 30k damage (strong autocrits). Having the resist chance being reduced by a lot would be very noticeable and would bring RA into line without making it useless. If it was reduced to say 25% (making it easier on the math, I think 30% would be better), then only 1 of those 4 hits would be resisted instead of 3. It would still be useful but not 100% must take or you're gimping yourself. This would also make stuns much more likely to be able to counter it which is sorely needed.

They could honestly remove RA entirely and maras would still be the 3rd best class defensively. I don't think that's necessary, maybe like a 30% resist chance or something like that but it's dumb strong in its current state. The reason why only ever small buffs and never nerfs is a terrible way to go about balancing is that it eventually gets to where we are now, lots of classes with a ton of survivability and a super high ttk. You keep saying for people to stop asking for nerfs, but when people who actually understand how classes work and the relative strength of classes to one another makes an argument with more than "this class is owning in pvp and is too strong" and actually say why it is, perhaps it's actually good to listen. I've played a ton of mara earlier in this expac and have played plenty of other classes/specs and can see objectively how strong they are. Even when my sentinel was my main I was saying how strong it was, I wasn't going around trying to get it nerfed because nobody likes seeing their main get nerfed but I'd never lie and say it was fine, because it wasn't. That was even when I was playing only carnage which has even less survivability than fury.