Can you elaborate on that please? Does that mean you disagree with everything posted above, including the Brooding change which doesn't affect actual combat capability? Does your statement extend to Carnage/Annihilation? If anything, FURY Marauders are performing well in PvP right now, and that lies with their CC immunity more than the burst itself. That indicates to me that the baseline needs buffs and Fury needs to be realigned with the other 2 specs. Regardless, I still feel Juggs/Guards are stronger overall because they're more well rounded and have more options, and that's not counting skank tanks, which are a result of outright broken design.

One thing that always gets me when playing my Marauder is how bad its QOL is, particularly due to some key utilities being either mandatory or just odd in design. Other classes tend to have a much better choice in utilities, and when comparing to Guardian/Juggernaut, their flow of combat is just more polished and fluid while Marauder feels more clunky and cobbled together. I'd like to suggest some Utility changes to be considered for 6.0's inevitable big balance changes (or sooner, if possible during the Summer of PvP!) to make some small Utility adjustments that would really improve the fluidity and fun factor of Marauder/Sentinel without breaking balance significantly. I will be using Marauder utility names because I don't really play my Sentinel much, I use Guardian on Pubside. Brooding Reasoning: This utility is my biggest problem with Sent/Mara right now. It is absolutely not fun to sit there and channel for 8 seconds arbitrarily just to have your core rotation functional, and the 30s cooldown makes no sense. The entire class is designed around the Fury mechanic and having it up at the start of the fight is very important. You could say "just start with Frenzy" but then you lock yourself out of using your raidwide buff, Bloodthirst, which is also a significant DPS boost. This utility is mandatory for all 3 specs and should not be a utility, which is supposed to be an optional customisation system. Suggestion: Remove the channeling mechanic from this Utility. Add a baseline passive skill to immediately generate 30 stacks of Fury when entering combat, and rework Brooding to instead have the effect: "Reduces the cooldown of Intimidating Roar. In addition, resets the cooldowns of Dual Saber Throw, Battering Assault and Frenzy upon leaving combat." This change, much like the mirror Guardian/Juggernaut utility, will make combat much more fluid and not have you stop between packs while doing dailies as often, and stop you from needing to channel and respec before every raid boss, and reduce downtime in PvP before you enter a skirmish. Please, Bioware, this is a big one we need and it is not a significant change in terms of balance. Overwhelm Reasoning: With the Ravage changes, this Utility makes little sense. You don't need to immobilise your opponent if you can just run along with them while casting. Instead, this Utility could be a good opportunity to address all the "bring back the old Ravage animation" complaints. We've seen with the Crippling Slash ranged throw utility that the tech is there to make Utilities create an alternate animation for a skill, so it's possible. The main pushback from Bioware would be around balancing "2 rotations" as a result of this Utility, so let's design it in a way that doesn't cause it to significantly INCREASE DPS but increase PvP cc capability like it's meant to. Suggestion: Rework Overwhelm to change Ravage to its old 3s channeled animation. Increase Ravage's damage by 1.4x-1.5x (enough to justify a second GCD but not enough to make it an outright increase in DPS rotations - Bioware would have better data to decide the numbers here). The target is immobilised and hindered for the duration of this channel, and the caster is immune to interrupts, knockbacks and "mesmerise" (interruptable stuns like Intimidating Roar) effects for the duration of the channel. Consumes 1 stack of Ferocity every 1.5s if Ferocity is active. Swap Overwhelm with Interloper so it's now a Legendary tier Utility. This is clearly a PvP focused Utility (as is the original) and will bring back the style of the old animation if people want to use it in PvE despite that, but at the cost of a slight DPS loss. The immob+hinder+immunity effect is quite strong for PvP, and will definitely have a balance impact, particularly for Fury, which is already quite strong in the current meta and could warrant a slight nerf to its existing cc immunity passive, but it would mean Annihilation and Carnage become a little more viable. For classes being hit by this skill, there is still the counterplay of using a hard stun, popping DCDs or just out-DPSing the caster back. I think it wouldn't be too overpowered and plenty of people would prefer the mobility of the current Ravage but I'd love to hear more opinions on this one, as I imagine it could be quite controversial! Blood Ward Reasoning: 6 seconds of cc immunity at a 3 minute cooldown is an uptime of 3.33%. That is bad. I've never felt this Utility was useful and never seen anyone else use it. Marauder has always been the pure DPS melee class with the worst cc immunity availability, particularly for Annihilation/Carnage. Blood Ward is definitely not worthy of being a Legendary Utility in its current state. Suggestion: Improve the uptime by making Blood Ward additionally reduce the cooldown of Saber Ward by 1 minute. This is a straight buff, and again, would be quite strong for Fury, but there is a reason Anni/Carnage are dead in PvP nowadays, and that reason is a lack of cc immunity. This change would also increase the cc uptime of Blood Ward to exactly match Deflection for Assassins, which is also 6s every 2 minutes, instead of 3 minutes. The heal and damage absorbed are stronger than Deflection but Marauder doesn't have the benefit of a true stealth and how powerful it is in SWTOR. Relentless Reasoning: In the same vein as the Brooding change, Fury is a mandatory class mechanic for Marauder and is crucial for reaching its core, baseline DPS. This Utility should be made a baseline passive and instead replaced with something that doesn't affect the outright usability of Predation in every combat situation. Marauders are also the worst class to defend a Warzone objective because of their complete lack of counterplay to stealth classes. Sweeping Slash is only usable out of combat if you spec Fury and use Frenzy (a 2min30s cd) to pop Berserk (a core DPS skill) to use Sweeping Slash 5-6 times at most before you're stuck with no options again. Marauders are not intended to be a defender class, of course, but sometimes you don't get the option when your PUGs in Unranked Warzones all go mid for DPS padding leaving you to get the side objectives. Relentless could be a good way to mitigate that issue. Suggestion: Make Predation cost no Fury and be a 30s cooldown without any Utility and rework Relentless to instead grant a stack of a buff to the caster (let's just call it "Predator's Instinct" for now) every 1.5 seconds that increases Stealth Detection level by 2 per stack. The buff itself lasts 2 seconds unless refreshed by another stack, so you'd effectively get a Stealth Detection level bonus that scales up during Predation from 0 to 12 over its duration, with the final tick lingering over from the 9th second to the 11th second where it fully expires. This makes Predation usable in all scenarios without sacrificing the core DPS rotation and improves counterplay against the, frankly, poorly designed WoW mechanic that is perma-stealth. What do you guys think? If you feel the suggestions are too strong, how would you tweak them to feel more balanced? Are there any other Utilities you'd like changed in 6.0 (or in the Summer of PvP, if a balance pass is happening then)?

Just to give you a counter perspective on the role of Leap/Charge, I really liked being able to use it in melee range as part of the rotation because it looked (on Marauder) like an acrobatic forward flip, something which the supposedly most acrobatic class in the game woefully lacks. I also did a lot of PvP with it, even doing ranked matches when I got bored of Fury every game, and it really helps having a gap closer for those people kiting you at 5-10m distance - you don't need to use it for resource generation in PvP anyway due to all the CCs thrown at you giving you 4 rage each, it's more for the gap closing utility. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to do this. As always you're keeping the community informed and active even through our darkest times. I'm interested to see the role critical rating plays now, particularly considering that critical chance for our Berserk bleeds is added to our damage.

Yep. If Brooding/Contemplation and Stoic/Brazen were passive, I would be okay with everything. We would actually have the utility point budget to make meaningful choices rather than get things that should be baseline just to make our class functional. In ops, people are already just getting to 30 stacks then respeccing out of Brooding/Contemplation. It makes no sense to keep that as a utility if people are skirting around it as is.

But since we're not getting any extra utility points with the level cap increase, it's NOT better than nothing. We lose something to gain it, and it's not worth losing that something.

Good point, I was in a bit of a rush since I had to head out but I've amended the main post now.

In isolation, it sounds good on paper, but in the current state of the metagame, taking into account all the other classes and their respective mobility/kiting/escape/cc tools, it's just not enough to keep Marauders/Sentinels on even footing. Obviously, there has to be a top and a bottom class since everything CANNOT be equal while still remaining unique, but the disparity between said top and bottom in this game is too large. This is Bioware's opportunity to address that and it'll only happen with relevant feedback. This isn't about whining that Marauders/Sentinels aren't becoming OP. Keep in mind that every other class is getting equivalent buffs (they just haven't been blogged about yet) and, based on unofficial sources we aren't allowed to discuss on these forums, they may or may not be significantly more powerful.

For those who haven't seen the dev blog yet, it's up. Let's keep this to critical but civilised discussion, please. I suggest you reread your post in Yoda's voice after you've written it. If it sounds like something he would never be able to say, don't say it. Things to take away from this: 20m dash on a 45s cooldown 3 new utilities to choose from NO new utility points Passive DPS increases for each spec resulting in no rotational change Zero QoL tweaks As far as I can see, these changes are very minimal and will barely affect Sentinels/Marauders in either PvP or PvE. Let's split these changes into a separate PvP and PvE analysis: PvE Passive DPS increase for all trees. Great, but not game changing. It's just there to help us achieve the required DPS checks for new content. Mad Dash/Blade Blitz Very situational, but depends on the damage values. Can be useful for dodging out of some red circles and dealing damage while getting into position but I don't expect the damage on this to be high enough to be significant. New Tier 1 utility - Unflinching Determination/Unwavering Resolve 6s cc immunity on Saber Ward. Useless and will never be picked up. In a PvE situation where you really need to avoid a cc, Force Camouflage will achieve the same thing on a shorter cooldown, with higher damage reduction. New Tier 2 utility - Thirst For Rage/Inspired Focus Grants 12 rage/focus on Bloodthirst/Inspiration. Useful once every 5 minutes? Not always worth the utility point, which we already have a shortage of, but can have significant implications for opening rotations. Carnage/Combat will especially benefit from it, but Fury/Concentration already starts with a decent amount of resource and Annihilation/Watchman still needs to ramp up its Annihilate stacks early on. One question here is if this affects ALL Sentinels/Marauders in the group who have this utility, or just the one who casts Inspiration/Bloodthirst. If the latter, then this IS completely useless for you if you're not the guy casting it in a group with multiple Maras/Sents. New Tier 3 utility - Through Victory/Cut Loose Movement impairing effect break on Mad Dash/Blade Blitz. Useless in PvE. That's literally all the changes we're getting. 5. I can count them on one hand (2 if I'm doing my Yoda re-read). PvP Passive DPS increase for all trees. Great, but not game changing. New gear will mean higher HP on players and stronger heals. This will probably not be able to offset that significantly, so you can consider it to just be there to keep the status quo as it currently stands. Mad Dash/Blade Blitz No in-built root break, and a 45s cooldown. 20m distance and 100% defense chance while in the animation. This skill could have been so useful... If it wasn't on this pointless 45s cooldown. Sure, it'll still be useful but it won't solve the problems of Marauders being kited, out-cc'd and outmaneuvered. The comment about 100% defense is interesting. People have been assuming this skill would be like Agent roll, but why would it have 100% defense for its duration then? I can see it being literally a sprint, where your character runs 20m in about 2-3 seconds, which would further diminish its usefulness (not an instant gap closer/escape). New Tier 1 utility - Unflinching Determination/Unwavering Resolve 6s cc immunity on Saber Ward. Again, great potential but suffers from the most AWFUL cooldown in the game. 6s every 3 minutes is not worth this utility point - that's a 3.3% uptime! I would still rather keep them in Stoic (ex-Defensive Forms), Root-Ravage and Unyielding (4 rage per cc taken, reduced cooldown on cc break). If this lasted the whole 12s duration of Saber Ward, I'd consider it. It would only be on par with exactly what Assassins/Shadows already have now, on a shorter cooldown (120s), and on a class that needs it far less. New Tier 2 utility - Thirst For Rage/Inspired Focus Useless in PvP, especially since you can't even use Bloodthirst/Inspiration in ranked. New Tier 3 utility - Through Victory/Cut Loose Movement impairing effect break on Mad Dash/Blade Blitz. Again, only every 45s? This is not worth the point and is completely overridden by the movement impairing break on Predation. All in all, I'm thankful that Bioware has given us time to discuss these changes, because they really do need further examination. So far, this isn't going to change anything. Marauders and Sentinels will continue to be the most frustrating and lowest quality of life class in the game. What are your thoughts, guys? Again, please remember to stay civil. This is about improving the game, not expressing your negative emotions. Thanks.

Fury/Concentration specialises in PvP and solo PvE content like levelling and dailies. I NEVER EVER use it during ops since it brings nothing useful as a tradeoff for the lower DPS but in PvP this is the only spec I would consider 1v1ing an Assassin/Powertech with (and even then you'd have to show more skill than them to stand a chance). I play all 3 in regs and do well with them but this is my go-to spec when I really want to crush in PvP. In ranked, no question, the CC immunity is too good to pass up. Going back to PvE, if you're finding you're parsing the same in Annihilation and Carnage as you are in Fury, it probably means you need to practice the other 2 more rather than this being a viable Ops-worthy DPS spec. Frankly, there are no fights in the current tier where I would consider Fury over Carnage or Annihilation. With an Ataru Strike on Sweeping Slash in Carnage, and the heavy Smash nerf, Fury isn't even the niche AoE spec anymore outside of trash that dies in 1 Smash.

Just a few things here: 1. Saber Reflect only reflects Ranged and Force/Tech attacks, so your melee white damage is fine. Don't cancel your Ravage, but make sure you don't do a Gore+Vicious Throw+Dev. Blast because that will HURT. 2. Enraged Defense now has a 15 duration with 12 stacks. Switching targets is the ideal solution but if that's not possible and you're stuck 1v1ing the Jugg/Guard, and you've already tried using your Intimidating Road/it's on cooldown, don't be afraid to just DPS through it. ED heals a set amount per charge so it will definitely mitigate a fair bit of damage but you can still push through it if you're confident in your DPS. Not attacking and letting them continue to attack you is far worse. 3. Yep, keep going, this is a stall skill at best. Just beware that they may or may not have it specced to give them immunity to movement impairing effects. 4. Again, if you can't switch targets, don't be afraid to just pummel them. You're hurting yourself more if you're trying to run and they're just chasing you down with Saber Throw, Charge and root specced Ravage and you're doing nothing back. Doing some damage is much better than doing no damage, and in 12 seconds your main hitters will have cooled down anyway. I wouldn't waste your mez for this, that's better used on Reflect/ED.

It's actually bugged for mobs who use the same animation too, which makes me laugh and then shed a tear because it's still not fixed.

The spec only parses high in PvE because, as a sustained spec, it flourishes under long fights with little movement. It takes time to build up its damage. You need to get your Juyo and Annihilate stacks at max before you actually start doing decent damage and by that time the PvP skirmish is long over. The only time it can be considered viable is in LONG fights where you have pocket heals, and even then, every other class brings similar numbers to the table with MUCH MUCH MORE utility.

I'll be honest, I've always been a Carnage player. I dabbled in Annihilation pre-3.0 but since then I almost never touched it because the playstyle was just that horrible. I tried it after 3.2.1 and expected to hate it because of all the backlash but found myself surprisingly enjoying it and parsing about 200 higher than Carnage without even trying to learn a rotation. I was THIS close to shelving my Marauder and playing Vig/Veng but this patch has, against all odds, saved the class for me. Combined with the Predation changes, I'm having tons more fun. That said! The job is still incomplete. The rage generation IS too tight and no other class struggles this much. We shouldn't have to rely on eating AoEs or CCs in endgame PvE just to make our rotations comfortable enough to use correctly. We still need another look at QoL on Brooding/Contemplation. That rate limit should not exist, the stacks should channel twice as fast and the skill should be baseline. It is REQUIRED to have Berserk in our openers for at least Fury to even HAVE a viable rotation, and for the other specs to have viable DPS. We still need SOMETHING to account for stealth classes. We cannot use an AoE out of combat to reveal them and are uniquely bad in this aspect. This should be made up for by either (a) increasing Marauder's stealth detection level, (b) making Smash free to cast out of combat, or, my preferred option, © outright nerfing stealth - permanent stealth is too strong in this game, especially with node capture based warzones making up the majority of unranked. Making stealth fade into view for 1s every 5s would still give it a significant advantage (can still land backstabs etc) but give other classes a fighting chance against the plague that is Assassins. Crippling Slash also still needs to be consolidated into 1 Utility, Slash/Massacre's animation STILL needs to be fixed, Gore still needs some love and CC immunity needs to be on all 3 specs, not just Fury. So well done, devs, you managed to make the best of a very bad situation and I am honestly impressed, but your work here is not yet done, not by a longshot.

Any word on if the Sent/Mara animation for Slash/Massacre is going to be fixed this patch, Tait/Eric? As far as I'm concerned, this bug makes any spec that uses either of the two abilities unplayable for me. Balance arguments aside, this is a pretty irritating bug that really detracts from the fun factor of playing the classes.

They only said that they were GOING to try it. We haven't heard anything since, though, obviously, some transparency here would be nice.

I'm all for having more AoE options as Annihilation but DoT spread is something that melee does very poorly. The only reason it works (better than Mara, anyway) on Vig/Veng is because the damage is frontloaded on the main hit of Vigilant Thrust/Vengeful Slam, doing a solid 8-9k crit, and the skill is completely *free* of resource cost. Anni Smash hits like a wet noodle, making it have nothing that stands out compared to its superior DoT spread counterparts. So yes, while they have a spec for more direct damage, I could also say the same to you if you want to play DoT spread: there's a class for that.

If I wanted to play a melee version of Madness, I'd play Hatred. I picked a dual saber class to hit things twice as much, not to be homogenised into a DoT caster class.

This affects NPCs using the same animation too. This does NOT affect the single saber variant of Slash. What I don't understand is how they even broke an animation they weren't touching in 3.2.

This revision of changes looks very on-par with the other classes in terms of utility and QoL without being overpowered or breaking away from the current concepts. I support this 100%.

Yeah, it was on PTS too. Reported it but it was left unfixed for this build, evidently. I'm just playing Fury until 3.2.1.

Yes but you would have performed much better with another class.

But this isn't really indicative of anything. Unranked warzones have too many variables that have nothing to do with an individual player like overall team compositions, *VARYING LEVELS OF GEAR*, general PUG inexperience vs premade experience etc. I appreciate that you're trying to bring back some morale and motivation into a currently very depressed community but the underlying problems with Sentinels/Marauders are still there when you look at a more fair playing field and you can't really say "it's not THAT bad" because it kind of is THAT bad. That said, well done and keep on bringing the pain to those FotM rollers.

One QoL change I find most people don't mention and that I would really like to see is a rework of Brooding (I play Marauder so I'll use Imperial names. I don't know Sent's names well enough to translate, sorry!). Currently, we have to stop all combat from the whole raid group to be able to charge our opener. That opening Berserk is pretty important for our rotation and it's always frustrating when your group starts aggro when you're still at 25 stacks of Fury. So the issues with Brooding I'd like to see addressed are: - No downtime. It ruins the pace of combat if you have to sit there for 10s between encounter. It should be instant like Juggs. It always sucks watching a battle go on at a capture point in a Warzone but you're sitting there channeling before you can head in to help your team. - No rate limit frustration. I hate having to Channel Hatred at the start of an arena match only for the gates to open and my channel be interrupted by the match itself. Then I'm stuck with <30 stacks and have to hope the fight doesn't start until the stupid rate limit is finished. - Baseline. Would be nice, but Juggs don't have it baseline, so fair is fair, this is not necessary. - Force Charge and Dual Saber Throw cooldowns reset after combat. This helps with the fluidity of engaging groups of mobs quickly and will greatly help when levelling or doing dailies. Juggs have it already so there's no reason not to. So what could we do about this? - Just make it automatically push you to 30 stacks after each encounter and remove the rate limit. If the buff is nearly over, THEN we can channel again to refresh it. Add DST/Force Charge cooldown changes. I love Marauder but this is one thing that REALLY frustrates me about their mechanics. It's a QoL change that Juggs all have since 3.0 and I'd really like to see it make it over to Marauder too, and it is NOT gamebreaking or overpowering in any way. I know it's unlikely Bioware will care about this post, but the idea is to get the COMMUNITY to care and make it something we really do agree on unanimously (like Predation immunity etc.) so that we can make it better known to the devs outside this post alone.

I agree, Fury is TONS of fun to play. HOWEVER, Juggs/Guards just do it better, just like everything else, making it still depressing to play. More than just PvP changes, we really need some QoL changes (e.g. Brooding having such a long wind up and breaking the pace by having you sit on your *** for 10 seconds) to improve how playing a Marauder/Sentinel just feels overall. However, Bioware have shown very questionable design sense since 3.0 and I'm almost at a point where I'm giving up all hope.

If you're looking for a fluid, fun, easy AC, you want Guardian/Knight. Marauders/Sentinels are in a bad place right now, and the utility for Guardians/Juggs that resets their leap/throw/enrage cooldowns generally mitigates the need for careful resource management in standard levelling situations, allowing them to jump between groups of enemies with no downtime.