I agree that a Mara shouldn't guard. What I said was, in the eventuality that one does so, one needs to be prepared. So I demonstrated some ways to do that if a marauder has to guard, inevitably. It is difficult, yes and you have to be very careful near the node so that they can't mezz and cap node, but delaying it is doable. Of course, if no one comes to help, the node is gone.

Thanks There is no reason an off node guard should die before help arrives. Unless the team isn't paying attention to chat, one stealther shouldn't be able to steal a node. Double stealth sap/cap however is a different story.

I read in this thread that Maras should not be guarding nodes and I agree. However, sometimes, due to unavoidable circumstances one may be forced to do so and it is best to be prepared for such eventuality. Many times, if the opponent is a decent player, doing 1v1 against an operative or an assassin will end badly for a Marauder. What we can do, is stretch the fight as long as we can, as we don't have to get the node from them. They need to get it from us and we have all the time in the world. For encounters against not so great stealthers, feel free to go all out and wreck them I made a short video with some instances and instructions today. I hope this helps any new Sentinel/Marauders looking for some tips.

I must admit that I have had a bag of mixed experience on both Republic and Imperial side in Harbinger while leveling my Sentinel and Marauder. When I was playing my Marauder, most of my games were against weaker republic opponents and we won most of the matches by huge margins. This was not unlike my experience in my home server, The Red Eclipse. However, after capping level with my Marauder and finishing her gear, I rolled my sentinel and I found that reps were being very competitive. Of course, I tend to invite good players to group when I see them and am open to invitation to other like minded groups, still, I felt that the over all quality of republic pvp was much better than during my run as a marauder. Of course, there are moments of chaos too, when people over commit to one node, or death match away from nodes, or do not rotate fast enough or do not call inc. But overall, the quality is quite good, from my experience in the last couple of weeks. So maybe things are changing with more and more players playing republic toons now, due to DvL event and I hope that this translates to level 65 when this event ends. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another awesome match we had in midbies today against immense odds. Hope you all enjoy! Keep up the teamwork republic players ----------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

I have an idea that "pro heals" people might like without causing much dislike among "anti heals" people and it could be implemented without shifting too much in favour of a marauder. Let's say that on using force camouflage, you will get a buff with 4 stacks that will heal you for 4 seconds for x amount (the x can be a small amount). If camo is broken before 4 seconds, the buff is lost. If not, a small portion of health is returned to the player. This would not scale to 6 seconds as that would make one utility mandatory for a marauder and I would not want that. This would encourage the marauders to use 4 secs of it fully, and will give some breathing space to him as well as his adversaries. What tying these two will do is, a marauder cannot do that in the heat of the battle to gain an advantage while fighting, only a support while retreating, The heal amount should not be too much or it would become OP as the CD on camo is very low. It should be just enough to aid in retreat. The amount can be player tested to see what fits. I am not for self heals, but this seems to me a valid middle ground for both camps. Thoughts? ----------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

All my points assume that one knows the fights like the back of their hand and has quick enough response time for it and can pull it off without losing dps. All you need is a split second response to a mechanic and it comes more naturally to you as you continue to play this class for a long period of time. I do the same most of the time, But yes, sometimes I fail, as it is inevitably so. As for the grenade, camo would prevent the knockdown from it. For uptime, you can ignore knockback from underlurker and get back on him or an straggling add faster. The knockback from the droid in EV is also avoidable most of the times. For fighting HK, his grenades can be negated/dropped off using camo for more uptime. Regarding threat drop, yeah I was wrong. Thanks for pointing it out, made me test it out. I guess I was told that long time ago and never really bothered testing it out. Sorry about the misinformation. Additionally, it works only if your target has another person attacking it. Regardless, it is a decent threat drop. The threat drop, from what I see on dummy with vette dps-ing it also is around 25%. However, if nothing else is attacking the target then there is no threat drop and aggro will not change. Over all threat will go down, as will dps but they would go down at the same rate. There won't be a sudden drop in threat. Essentially it is a very good spike damage reduction ability on a very short cooldown and should be used as such as often as it is possible. EDIT: No one should compare the damage of a madness sorc to a carnage marauder in PvP. Sorcerers do fluff damage and marauders play to kill. There is a big difference. ----------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

This is a valid question and let me see if I can tackle it. If asked personally, would I love to have some self heal? Absolutely, yes. After all, most of the dps sorcerers and sages running around can't be bothered to throw in a 2 GCD worth of heals on a retreating marauder You know what I mean, you have been there! However, would that be a fair class balance change? The answer is no. The classes who have spammable self heals are Sorcerers, Mercenaries and Operatives. Sorcerers need it because they are squishiest target in the game and Mercs need it because they do not have any good escape mechanism except for Electronet and whatever the jumping back talent is called. Hydraulics can't match with my predation. However, Mercs have heavy armor, compared to Sorcs so it stands to reason that Sorcs should generally have higher healing potential (after all they are Sorcereres). Operatives need it because their play style demands kiting, rolling, LOS-ing and healing in the middle of burst. They don't get exceptional defensives other than their roll and evasion. Again, because the skill cap required to play an operative is very high, not unlike a marauder, I don't see a problem with that. Good operatives are hard to come by and yes, they can wreck a marauder. But average ones can be handled pretty well. It is a trade off with risk vs reward and skill vs reward. And I am fine with it. As for Guardians/Juggernaut, their heal to full is simply over powerful for a melee class with some really good defensive cooldowns. I do not to want to spark another debate on this unrelated matter, but it is my personal opinion on this matter. I feel that it needs to be curbed for a bit at least. Fighting a Juggernaut is equal to fighting double health bar opponent. Powertech self heals from shoulder cannon is not great and I don't know if anyone takes that talent, either. Now coming back to Marauder. I think we have established already that Marauders already have excellent defensive cooldowns to help them survive. The burst damage of a carnage marauder is extremely good because the burst happens in a 3s window, very small time for a lot of players to react to it. If we add any significant self heal on top of that, it virtually becomes unstoppable. While I thoroughly enjoy the idea of becoming unstoppable in a warzone, it would not be fare to other classes, nor would it be fun for me to play after a while. And suddenly everyone will start rolling Marauders and there will be a cry for nerf hammer and so on and so forth...the vicious cycle will continue spinning. Some very good points were discussed in this thread by a lot of people and can serve as a compendium for ways of playing a Marauder. Cheers! ----------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

There are three things to look out for when you are fighting a guardian/juggernaut. Saber Reflect - They will shine and sparkle either Red or Blue and reflect massive damage to you if you use clasing blast or dispatch at them. If they have saber reflect up then only use melee attack - Blade Rush spam/master strike, strike Focused Defense/Enraged Defense - They will have a rippling circle animation around them when they activate it. Best to use Awe and switch target to somebody else when they do that and get back when the stacks of defense fall off. Otherwise you will be healing them. Saber ward - Go for stun immediately and use melee attack and white damage. Your melee attacks will go through but clashing blast would be mitigated to some extent. Example, force choke> precision, Masterstrike> Dispatch> Blade rush spam. Snipers are the real hard counter against Sentinels and Marauders and in the hands of a good player they can tear you apart. It is ideal to avoid snipers whenever possible, unless your team is focusing them or they don't come off to be as good at playing it. If a sniper focuses you, it is time to get out and line of sight him. Two ways to buy yourself time against a good sniper is to use Pacification when they channel Ambush, Camo out when they begin series of shots to avoid the knockback at the end. Of course, they also root you, but when you get Fleetfooted talent, you can counter it with predation. But yeah, they are the hardest class to face as a Sentinel/Marauder. ----------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

Are you beginning PvP at level 65 or at lowbies? If you are starting at 65, I would suggest roll another sentinel and start PvP-ing from lowbie. It helps a great deal to learn the ins and outs of the class. I discussed some Sentinel/Marauder techniques/capabilities in http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=889281&page=3 You may find it useful. For utiities, I use - Skillful Tier - Stoic for damage reduction and extra centering, Reining Reach for increasing range of crippling slash and reducing its focus cost and Adamant (if I am playing combat sentinel, to gain free focus for extra DPS due to knockbacks, stuns) or Jedi Enforcer (if I am playing watchman or concentration to get more mileage out of Rebuke as these specs are always overflowing with focus). Masterful Tier - Ardor for getting Transcendence on cooldown and freeing up zen for extra DPS and Defensive Roll to get extra elemental/internal damage reduction or Displacement which increases the range of Pacify by 6m to help against Snipers or peeling for your healer from another sentinel or guardian during their Master Strike. I have never used Force Fade in PvP, just never felt the need for it. Heroic Tier - Fleet footed as it is the single most important group buff that a Sentinel can bring to the table - super speed and root purge for everyone in the group and Just Pursuit to root the target with crippling slash. Some may choose Expunging Camouflage as an extra cleanse - it is just a trade off on which you have to make up your mind. As for which spec you should play, I would suggest starting to learn by playing combat spec in lowbie/midbie pvp. There is not much to the rotation, just blade rush until burst is available. What this does is, it allows you to master the other aspects of playing a Sentinel, since you are not worried about ability usage. Learn how to stay close, when to vanish out, when to use saber ward, when to use pacify, when to kite someone, how to counter kiting. There is a lot of aspects that need to be mastered for playing a Sentinel and it is the mastery of all these things that will set you apart from other Sentinels in game. In PvP, rotation doesn't mean much. Just follow priorities and your damage will be fine. Just remember, that first and foremost you need to learn to survive. You can't do DPS if you are dead As reference (and inspiration) you can watch videos by Skytorrush in YouTube. I learned a lot of techniques by watching his videos in the early days of being a Sentinel/Marauder. Plus there is Hayete's guide at Dulfy.net which teaches the core principles of Combat Spec - but the theories can be applied to other specs in PvP. As for spec viability in PvP, all the specs have equal potential. Let no one tell you any different. I play all three specs and can bring the same impact to a warzone in all of them. That being said, it is best not to use watchman during levelling as one of your main ability - Overload Saber is available at level 58 and also, this spec requires the highest skill cap among all the three specs to play in PvP. I hope you enjoy this class and learn to play it well. It is my most favourite class in the game and it is always fun to indulge in positive Sentinel/Marauder discussions. All the best! Cheers! ----------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

Force Camouflage is invaluable in PvE as well. It not only reduces any incoming damage by 50 %, but also makes you immune to any kind of controlling effect. Let's see some of its usages - 1. Any kind of knockback situation you find yourself in (maybe you were unlucky or maybe you were lazy or maybe as a part of mechanic. Camo out, and no knockbacks or knockdowns. Examples are Dread Palace Raptus, TOS Underlurker, EV first droid, TOS huge grenade explosion at the two walkers, HK grenade on Revan, etc. This allows you to circumvent a mechanic and get more uptime on bosses (kinda important for melee, don't you think?) 2. Suddenly finding yourself in the way of a massive damage telegraph with no way out. Example, Tyrans' thundering blast. Yes tanks should always make him face away but life is not always scripted . Another example is if Underlurker cross fails or you are standing behind it. 3. Threat reset (technically a threat drop but it resets threat to zero, not just lowers it. It is very useful to use it after the second precision as combat and after the first master strike + TST (buffed) as watchman. 4. My most fun usage - Aggro a mob into your group and then vanish out 5. Prior to 4.0 I used it sometimes as mobility for the extra movement speed but now we have blade blitz. Still it is a handy tool to have if and when needed. 6. Can be used to purge effects when specced into utility- useful for Nefra, Dread Council. Nothing else comes to mind but I am sure that there are more ways people can use it in PvE to gain advantage. Would love to hear them if anyone knows. Cheers! ---------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

As a person who only plays sentinel and marauder in pvp, here's my two cents. In the early days of being a marauder, a year back, I too had a lot of struggle about survivability, some of which has been mentioned in this thread. When I talked about it with a friend, he said that he knew marauders who didn't have that problem and that I should learn to play it better. And so I did. Mara/Sents are extremely powerful in close range and sometimes medium range, when you need to. Example, a sniper drops the debuff cloud on himself, you can still pump your burst by staying away. Dispatch, precision, clashing blast, TST. This can also be used while kiting a melee class, like a marauder and guardian. Also, true if you want to avoid one AOE or sorc/sage bubble stun or general knock backs. Who says kiting is only for ranged? Trust me, it is very tempting to jump into a crowd with a marauder and I do so too often, but it can become suicidal without either saberward or camouflage available or a full time healer behind you. I do get reckless when I get healers in my team In this thread camouflage has been getting a lot of hate but let me give some of it's uses with example. 1. To sneak from one LOS to another, buffed by super predation. 2. To cloak out after interrupting a cap by a stealther in melee range to avoid flashbang or insta whirwind.. 3. To position yourself between a wall and a knock back king like snipers. 4. Obviously, get out of being focused. We are not face tanks and therefore can't play as one. 5. Waiting for precision to come off cool-down while being low on health and against one or multiple opponents. 6. To mitigate said knock backs when you are expecting one. Example, Sorcs standing at mid entrance in hyper-gate during explosion or bridge in void star. 7. Vanish to grab a med unit in proving grounds and jump back in before losing the node. 8. Resetting the ball in huttball in case of imminent death and no time to throw. 9. To vanish out before a cast finishes to avoid damage - ambush, force leech, turbulence, etc. There are many other uses it can be put to, but I don't want this to be a novel and also, I can't remember them all. They come back to me in the form of muscle memory. Camo is one of the many reasons that I love playing a marauder. All usage depends upon the priority of using it in the situation you are currently in. You cannot just think of it as a DCD or an escape tool. It has much wider usage to it than that. As for Saberward, it can let you soak up the opening burst of a PT and come out smiling. Rebuke is a very good defensive on a very short CD that you should use right from the start of the fight to get the most out of it. Believe me, something or other is hitting you already. Pacify can nullify a scary Ambush or a railshot. I wish it worked on force powers as well, but you can't have everything I guess. Then comes my favourite utility - super predation (I jokingly call it speed hack, some serious people don't get that joke). It is my most favourite utility in the entire game because it not only buffs you to super speed and cleanses roots, but also does the same for everyone else. Plus the 10% defense is an icing on the cake. Many a times people have whispered me to say thanks for using predation at the exact right time. Not a lot of people thank dps for doing their job. The only class that can be a hard counter for marauders is a sniper in the hands of a good player. The rest is managable. To play a marauder/sentinel you have to stop thinking like other classes. You are not a jugg or a sorc or a PT or a sniper. So you can't try to imitate their play style. Marauders have their unique play style much like snipers. You can recognize the good ones from the bad ones just by watching them play. Only change I would very much recommend for this class is to roll up the crippling slash utilities into one. Make one utility for range and root and I can take another mobility/purge utility to better counter kiters. The only department marauders are kinda behind other classes is duelling but Zherio has proved it that even in duelling Marauders can shine. All in all, Marauders are in a very good place and may do with certain tinkerings but not much. We mostly have what we need to stay alive and fight. Apologies for the long post, but I this is a class that I love for its play style and felt the need to defend it as best I could. Enjoy your time in the game. ----------------------------- aka Faith (Mara/Sent)

While it is only natural to want to win all the time, we do have to admit that face rolling one side again and again is a boring way to spend time. Don't we all say we want balanced games, all the time? Why restrict ourselves to balancing classes only? Why not try to balance the factions ourselves? The devs can't balance the factions for us, it is the players who can. Let's pose this question to ourselves, wouldn't it be more fun to have a 6-5 huttball that lasts the full length and a last second goal instead of a 6-0 huttball that ends in two minutes? Isn't that getting more worth out of our buck? Now the question is, how as a player we can do that. Simple answer, relog to the other side when our side is stomping the other faction regularly and take a few friends with us. The power is with us, pvp players, to make this game fun and challenging, even out the playing field. Even half a team worth of competent players can tip the scale of balance. I played Guild Wars 2 briefly, and what struck me as remarkable there was people taking up the responsibility to lead other players through world quests. I think they were called commanders or something. As a new player, who did not have any idea about the nature of such quests, I would follow the commander to whatever end, and so would many others. Perhaps we need more examples of such leadership from the republic veterans, and imperial defectors, if republic pvp is to shine again. Complaining that "reps suck" and switching to imp side isn't the solution to the problem and no one can help us achieve faction balance, if we all take the easier way out. I know that this post will probably not make much difference to a lot of players/readers of forums and perhaps many will dismiss this idea lightly, but hopefully, it will change the minds of a few people. It may not be much, but at least it will be a step towards a healthier pvp future. ----------------------------- aka Faith (mara/sent)

Sure, midbies and lowbies are plenty fun to play, even though they are a bit painful at times, especially in lowbies. There is little escape when you get focussed, but hey it works in your favour too. I recently joined the Harbinger server with a fresh marauder and it was fun levelling it to 65. It was funny when I would mash my DST/TST button to stop a node cap only to realize I do not have the ability yet Levelling my sentinel now and getting to know the repside better on Harbinger. Encountered some really good players and had a lot of great games and wins. Not sure why reps got stomped a lot earlier. Need more good pvp-ers to return to the repside, let's turn the tide. #makerepsgreatagain ----------------------------------- aka Faith (mara/sent)

Not in the traditional sense of premade. We met that day in last warzone and decided to stick together. No VC or such, though. Just some decent players hanging out

Here is a lowbie match I played yesterday where Reps really shined and won against a huge odd. Keep working together and there can be more matches like this, even at endgame. Enjoy ************************************************************************************************ My referral link - http://www.swtor.com/r/z82hGV ************************************************************************************************