Marauder... Dont make one

[mylefthand]

I gotta be honest, Im getting tired of the marauder defense force coming in and insisting the class is fine while completely ignoring the complaints people are putting forward.

 

I shouldnt need to be annihilation to pve. I shouldnt need to be rage to pvp. And can someone explain to me where carnage comes in? Is anyone defending carnage at all? Im yet to see one single person say you should play carnage

 

Our defensive abilities are not much better than other classes. We get 20% reduction in damage for 6 seconds but it can go on for 30 provided we get hit - which is actually harder than it sounds. Snipers get 20% just by being in cover, no CD, no duration. Troopers just plain get heavy armor. saber ward is pretty nice but the duration is short and if your the only melee on your team (that they can see) in a 4v4+, your still going to be the first to die. Undying rage has saved my life several times, but there have been many more times when i died too quick to use it - even when i had cloak of pain and saber ward going. Obfuscate is single target and 1.5 of the 6 second duration are used by GCD - more than adequate if your dueling, not the solution in team pvp. plus almost every other class has a shield and a knockback, as well as multiple stuns and a snare. They get evades as well, they just dont last as long as ours...but close. Lets say you actually do a theorycraft comparison, I doubt you would see more than a 5% increase in maximum defense benefit, and they get to be at range. Meanwhile you dont need theory craft, look at your WZ and keep track of the marauders: who is dying the most and who is doing the most damage, and who is getting medals?

 

No, we really dont hit like a train - at least not compared to any other dps class. The devs have specifically stated they want all classes to do the same dps, so we do the same damage as other classes, except they do it from range where they are typically a hell of a lot safer. Plus the devs decided it was a good idea to give them a handful of stuns to use in case we did get close. Oh and ignore the fact that operatives knock you down and 3 shot you before you can fight back, that doesnt count as equal dps.

 

if your in melee range and surrounded by bad guys your probably going to die, you just make an easy target for the guys in the back that dont want to move too far forward. This is the fundamental difficulty in balancing a game for pvp. Marauders make the easiest targets for all back row dps - they get into battle right alongside juggs but are a hell of a lot easier to kill, so everyone on their team that hasnt already charged into your back line will immediately target you

 

we are useless in huttball - and if your server is like mine then 80% of the players are empire and all you play is huttball. we cant really stun you in environmental hazards, and we cant push you into them either, nor can we push you off a ledge, but we can have it happen to us. if we get knocked off we dont have an easy time getting back on, but every other class can still shoot at you somehow.

 

If "it takes skill to play a marader" but it doesnt take any skill to play any other class, then if I have skill playing other classes, doesnt that imply that I will beat a marauder? Or am I to believe that there really is no middle ground, you either suck or rampage? And regardless of your answer, am I to believe this is good game design?

 

If you show me a video where your in lvl 50 gear your statements are automatically invalid. I fought a 50 sorc with the ball along with 2 other marauders while we were in our 30s. He killed one of us, scored, killed another, then ran away. Based on this logic, I can conclude sorcerer are immortal killing machines. Yes I have seen the 6k crits, but the base damage on that skill is less than 1000 - i know rage gets bonuses but its still hitting for 600+% of the base damage, most of it is gear. If I hit someone with my sniper for 600% damage on ambush I would litterally one shot most of them, 500% is more than enough to make their eyes water. These big crits do not mean the class is good, you still have to think of how they did it and how it would translate to another class.

[AshPrime]

Idk who you have been trying to raid with, but clearly they are incompetent. Anyone with half a brain can see that Marauders have some of the best raidwide utility in the game, not to mention the crazy damage they do. Any important raid should be done with at least one Marauder imo. 15% damage/heal buff for the ENTIRE raid? who says no to that? Its basically heroism except marauders are the only ones who get it.

 

Not too mention Annihilate gets a raidwide heal. Christ its actually one of the best pve designed specs in the game.

 

 

Anyone who is a pansy ***** about melee in raids is probably too pompous to even play with. We ran into the same issue in wow, and you know what my guild got by just fine and we had 4 melee dps and only 2 ranged. If anyone know the fight Cho'gall, everyone said you Needed 4 ranged to beat it at all. Somehow are guild managed with 4 melee. Pre nef mind you. In fact we have been raiding successfully with 4 melee all through firelands and most of dragon soul.

 

You wanna know what my guild hasn't beat a single thing without? Heroism.

 

 

 

(also if your complaining about an underplayed spec, check out BH advanced prototype, it does less damage in pvp and pve then both the tank tree and the tree designed for pvp)

[Uruare]

Idk who you have been trying to raid with, but clearly they are incompetent. Anyone with half a brain can see that Marauders have some of the best raidwide utility in the game, not to mention the crazy damage they do. Any important raid should be done with at least one Marauder imo. 15% damage/heal buff for the ENTIRE raid? who says no to that? Its basically heroism except marauders are the only ones who get it.

 

Not too mention Annihilate gets a raidwide heal. Christ its actually one of the best pve designed specs in the game.

 

 

Anyone who is a pansy ***** about melee in raids is probably too pompous to even play with. We ran into the same issue in wow, and you know what my guild got by just fine and we had 4 melee dps and only 2 ranged. If anyone know the fight Cho'gall, everyone said you Needed 4 ranged to beat it at all. Somehow are guild managed with 4 melee. Pre nef mind you. In fact we have been raiding successfully with 4 melee all through firelands and most of dragon soul.

 

You wanna know what my guild hasn't beat a single thing without? Heroism.

 

 

 

(also if your complaining about an underplayed spec, check out BH advanced prototype, it does less damage in pvp and pve then both the tank tree and the tree designed for pvp)

 

 

Sure, everything you've pointed out is true. Except you overlooked the current lack of a battle res and the fact that a marauder in melee range of anything that matters is doing to be watching a lot of the fight while being dead on the floor.

 

Or should the tank shield the marauder and leave a healer to hang on adds and wide area AoE bursts? What do you trade for that marauder?

 

We played with this in my guild; you can raid with a marauder. You can raid with juggernaut tanks and half your DPS as marauders. The raids aren't super hard at this time.

 

But, when your healers are saying "FFS, two of us were trying to keep Bob up and we just couldn't do it." after a wipe.

 

Treat the marauder normally? Sure, they'll be ok for a little while with their one CD to pop and, presumably, good reusable medpacks (which they shouldn't need just to function; nobody else does. They're just cake for everyone else except...a juggarnaut tank, who -also- needs trinkets and medpacks or grenades just to function!)

 

So our jugg tanker rolled a powertech tank, leveled it as quickly as he could, and we recruited a swank assassin/dark spec'd for DPS, and...guess what?

 

Guess what happened, bro!

 

Things got a lot smoother. The healers were happy; the fights we were having trouble with were in control for the first time. There wasn't this marauder and this juggernaut they were constantly having to focus on keeping alive whenever anything happened ever.

 

Pursuant to this, everyone else got more healing spread over them, and the new powertech and our new recruit held their own as well as anybody.

 

Aggravation level, diminished. No marauder buff, no...so sad. We traded it for being able to put the gorram raid on farm if we had the time and care to farm it a lot.

 

But then everyone went dancing off onto alts anyway, but THAT's a story for another time!

 

/True Storyime.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Uruare

[orangefishboy]

My problem with Marauders is that all of our good attacks can also be used by Juggernauts, they can use Ravage... oh wait, that's our only good attack.

[nonumbers]

Honestly.. the most op'ed people i have come across at 50 have all been marauders. Granted a majority don't do very well.. but the few that excel.. absolutely dominate. They are not as squishy as people make them out to be, they have good damage mitigation when cooldowns are used right.. when desperate have an ability that makes them practically invincible for 5 seconds, after which you can often cloak to escape death.

 

You seem to think the issue here is skill, that is not the issue, the issue is gear here. These level 50s weren't oped before they hit 50 right!!! think about that. Also a single 5 second ability every 90 seconds is a joke, so we have to stop fighting for a minute while we wait for the ability to come back up? while others can still chain tough and even potentially elite mobs... right. Also force camo won't stop us taking AoE damage in Flash Points or fighting in Ops... some major oversights within the class.

 

Just because a few people figured out how to max up their expertise, strength and surge ratings for PvP doesn't mean the class is OPed at all, it's in fact very underpowered and the prevalence of a few in PvP is due to perks on the tree that is seemingly weakest in PvE... which is Rage. In other words to be effective in both PvE and PvP we need to respec constantly! Rage only does so great damage because of the 100% critical chance on Smash after force charge or obliterate... great... let's also remember this tree is the tree we share with juggernaut...

Edited January 11, 2012 by nonumbers

[Phyrexianist]

 

This is me.

 

I <3 my marauder.

 

Nuff Said.

[Angelfeeties]

 

This is me.

 

I <3 my marauder.

 

Nuff Said.

 

That's a Sorc video >.>

[Kenshinth]

I don't PVP much on my mara due to the warzone fps lag. Now in PVE I have 0 problem's throwing out the dps as Carnage. I do not know how Anni holds up as I don't like that spec at all. But Carnage does take some skill to master so if ur seeing a crappy mara in ur pve group then they don't know *** they doing and need to do some research on their class. I see bad mara's on my server all the time in HM FP, Raids, you name it they just assume mashing buttons will let them top dps.

[Apokalypsis]

I don't PVP much on my mara due to the warzone fps lag. Now in PVE I have 0 problem's throwing out the dps as Carnage. I do not know how Anni holds up as I don't like that spec at all. But Carnage does take some skill to master so if ur seeing a crappy mara in ur pve group then they don't know *** they doing and need to do some research on their class. I see bad mara's on my server all the time in HM FP, Raids, you name it they just assume mashing buttons will let them top dps.

 

Get some gear, Mara are awesome in pvp. Better than Jug for sure. Differents tho but I think they are better.

[Extinction]

We CAN heal. You haven't played Annihilation, have you? Bleeds + Berserk = Restores 18% of maximum health. And don't forget we can CC droids. Marauders can probably dish out the most damage in the game played right.

 

Problems in PvP? Then spec Rage. Problem solved. Anyone with half a brain can use it effectively and it DOMINATES.

 

Ya rage domnates lobbies and lesser geared 50s. Rage juggs and maras are all over my server and I tune them all as annihilation.

[Shilood]

Out of all the classes I have played (and I've played them all) Marauder is bar far my favourite. I think it's because you really have to think about what you're doing and when to do it. Adds a nice complexity to the game but not overly so.

 

I am totally AGAINST button mashers

 

Maruader = brilliant.

[jamesbrunwin]

People post saying the class is crap.

People reply saying you are crap.

People reply telling the people that said you were crap that in fact they are crap.

The fanboy vs obsessive forum poster commences.

 

 

Yet again we will see no clear winner.

 

 

I play Marauder in PvE and PvP and I can tell you know, every single spec does it all just as well as any other class. You simply have to think like a marauder, get in the mind set and you should be dicking on all sorts of classes or bosses.

[jamesbrunwin]

As for nobody wanting Marauders for raids, then the raid leader is a complete tool.

 

Who wouldn't want a 15% increase in healing and damage along with a nice speed boost in PvE? I mean, you pretty much need a marauder.

[darthmorbous]

as anni marauder my dps is on the roof and till this moment i havent lost any 1v1.

loads of **** to press though, but its not a problem for me (razer naga) and kind of suits the

"rp" part of the class. force user= USE the force

[Attaik]

I do fine in pvp. And I don't understand why people feel like they can only use Malavai Quinn to get anything done PVE. I use Jaesa all the time and I do fine.

 

Learn to play the class. The bugs blow, but they don't completely ruin anything. When I'm level 49 going 36-6 doing 150k+ damage in warzones... I don't think it's broken. I'm usually right up there with everyone else for now. And yes, my abilities bug during games like that. It's annoying, but I hardly do terrible because of it.

 

If you're about to die, use undying rage and force camo... how do you not survive if you are doing this? I only die to the most persistent players while doing that... And if a healer is on me, forget it. They're both on fairly short CD's too. And force charge is godly in hutt ball. Please don't tell me you've never jumped up from the pit in front of the opponents spawn to score... or even jumping through fire/over the acid pool/up ledges to force choke the ball carrier over fire, or interrupt some ranged/healer who isn't watching their back. And yes, we have a designated interrupt on a pretty short CD too. Not to mention force charge interrupts too.

 

BH pops their shield, or an inquisitor tries to force sprint? USE FORCE CHOKE. It even builds 3 rage while wasting 3 seconds of their CD they just popped (although this is one of the things that glitches occasionally). Use crippling slash before ravage, they almost never get out of range in time if they've used their snare break already... it's just little things. Always use battering assault.... instant 6 rage every 15 seconds. If somebody pops their cooldown, pop saber ward or cloak of pain. CoP HURTS THEM for attacking you... you can even spec it to grant you 1 rage every time it reciprocates damage. It can last up to 30 seconds. Deadly throw. Inflicts trauma reducing healing the target receives by 20% for 15 seconds... come ON guys.

 

There are MINOR problems with Marauder, none of which make it a bad class unless you don't understand how to play it. I absolutely love playing Marauder and would be pretty upset if they made any huge changes. They just need tweaking like any other class. Oh, and better armor choices. I can't be alone in hating our armor right?

 

PS: I'm Carnage spec. I love me some Gore (100% armor pen for 6 seconds) and Massacre. Until there are DPS meters, I'll never know, but to me it feels like I contribute quite a bit to PVE damage. But that's all I'll say because I don't really know about raids yet.

 

That's just my 2 cents. Some feel it's broken, some don't.

[DarkSideRUs]

I'll be honest Maras are OKAY at the pvp thing imo. The damage part is fair they should all be even. I do have issue with no cc really but w/e we still fair okay, the ravage thing is what really pisses me off the others are just little bonuses that get irritating. But my biggest problem is that raids dont want melee. It has nothing to do with gear or skill its just the fact that they didnt want ANY melee other than tanks.

 

I hate it when people say damage should all be even. It shouldn't, for the purposes of game balance and I'll explain why.

 

All MMO classes offer at their very basics three things: utility, survivability and dps.

 

In order to keep game balance, if one class outshines another in one area then it should make up for it by being somewhat lessened in the other area...hopefully to the same extent.

 

If one class can offer loads of utility and still do the same dps as the one who has zero utility, then what motivation does anyone have to play the one with no utility?

 

Point blank all the classes who can do nothing EXCEPT offer dps should be the best at it. I'm not saying they should completely eclipse all the other classes in dps but it should at least be by a noticeable margin.

[Uruare]

As for nobody wanting Marauders for raids, then the raid leader is a complete tool.

 

Who wouldn't want a 15% increase in healing and damage along with a nice speed boost in PvE? I mean, you pretty much need a marauder.

 

Ok guy, whatever you say. I'm not going to waste too much energy debating it with you.

 

 

Warriors on both sides need some help. Leave them and snipers entirely out of a raid and you're out...nothin'. Nothing they can bring is as important as what the other classes can bring.

 

That's not a personal criticism of you as a person for liking marauders. Separate your self worth from the matter at hand like a grow nup and look at the mechanics.

 

It'll explain itself. Been theorycrafting too long to fight too hard to do battle with an irrational, cherished belief though.

 

So, power to ya, have fun, best of luck in all your endeavors and all that. Cheers.

[DarkenWulf]

Again I'm kinda blown away by the whole *** for tat crap vs class argument.

 

The class requires though to play, it's not always awesome no, but then every class has it's flaws. I've been playing Carnage of late huge fun, but every now and then I'll be facemelted by a strong mob. Usually because I screwed up though. but outthreating your lvl 50 tank in boarding party at lvl 34 is magic ^^

 

Anni is amazing for pvp and still my fave spec although I haven't tried rage. Just dotting the crap out of everyone and hitting rage in a scrum is win.

 

Don't make a marauder? I'm making this thing my main.......

[Uruare]

I hate it when people say damage should all be even. It shouldn't, for the purposes of game balance and I'll explain why.

 

All MMO classes offer at their very basics three things: utility, survivability and dps.

 

In order to keep game balance, if one class outshines another in one area then it should make up for it by being somewhat lessened in the other area...hopefully to the same extent.

 

If one class can offer loads of utility and still do the same dps as the one who has zero utility, then what motivation does anyone have to play the one with no utility?

 

Point blank all the classes who can do nothing EXCEPT offer dps should be the best at it. I'm not saying they should completely eclipse all the other classes in dps but it should at least be by a noticeable margin.

 

 

 

This, right here; these are intelligently strung-together words that say smart things.

[Aethyriel]

Well, having cleared eternity vault and karras palace or whatever with a random bunch of people you could see that in raids melees are just at a disadvantage right now, that is not only true for Marauders but every meleeclass. The encounters lack mechanics that has ranged dps paying attention at all, everything is up to melee.

 

Take the boss in Karas palace for example, as a melee you have to move around a lot more, as ranged you can simply stay still if not being followed and you can focus adds much more effetivelky without loosing dps while running back to the boss/to the add.

 

First boss EV with the Los? Again, you have to run a longer path to do that unlike ranged, thus receiving more dmg. Ae attack on the 2nd boss I think? outrange it? Not as a melee, not without losing a lot of dps.

 

Final boss is where it really shows though, mind traps that you need to run, this swirly bomb thingies you have to get awayy from, if unlucky or nobody is taking them off you, you lose dps once again, while ranged may lose dps due to running a bit, but that is nowhere comparable. And third phase is just stupid, you only have a few seconds to dps but you gotta do mindtraps all the time, you gotta run to the boss or stay near him, either way, you lose a ton of effective dmg compared to ranged.

 

It's not the class though, it's the somewhat bad boss design. Back in WoW melee used to always be at an disadvantage all throughout most of BC content starting in vanilla, but they always did more dmg then other classes to compensate, I doubt that's the same thing here... but they need to adress those issues and hopefully tune the encounters, at least on hard/NM (normal is just faceroll really anyway), to challenge both melees and ranged.

[Uruare]

Again I'm kinda blown away by the whole *** for tat crap vs class argument.

 

The class requires though to play, *snip*.......

 

 

I see this said so often. Yeah...no other class requires thought to play effectively. Nope, not a bit. You can just roll anything else and be an easymode failboat loser with an 'I Win' button, or you can be a -real- Thingerjigger and be all 'it requires thought to play!' about a a class...that devs have acknowledged isn't performing to their expectations in terms of survival.

 

H'okay! Try to create a context in which you denote yourself as, apparently, more willing/able to think than others...for playing a class that is demonstrably under par.

 

Guess what; it doesn't make you smarter or more thoughtful to irrationally affix any sense of your own ego to the state of a class in an MMO.

 

Every class in this game benefits tremendously if you think and examine and test and practice with all its tools. Every. Single. One.

 

You can suck and do the same three things over and over again and clear a fair amount of solo content on a fair few of them, sure. Others, not so much; that's not my point of contention, nor, I think, the point of contention many have.

 

To explain the problem to you, o'great thinker, is that in order to get a Marauder to perform merely -adequately- in a comparatively limited scope of circumstances when contrasted against every other DPS class, it is both harder to get it to do that and you can't do nearly as much with one.

 

No utility worth mentioning; no CC; can't heal anybody. Think about this very carefully before you respond since you're statedly a thinker.

 

Think also about the distinction between us saying 'You suck because you play marauder' and 'Marauder sucks because it's twice as hard to get it to do the same thing as many others, and it can't do what many others can at all"

 

Because it seems to me that you've failed to make that terribly important distinction wherein which the latter is, in fact, the gist of it, and many responses seem to be assuming the former.

 

Good day.

[Shadinaxx]

You're def right about pve and raiding, especially hard modes.

 

Its like being melee your a liability that no one wants.

 

Think I made a mistake choosing a melee class that can only dps. Nearly every other class has more utility and comparable dps so what's the point?

 

These issues were raised in beta. The only thing that's changed is adding undying rage and the rage generating shield, maybe also vicious throw. Not the overhaul that was required.

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/Shadinaxx?feature=mhee

 

My videos (ignore anythigng not swtor related, I've been on youtube for many years, lol), I'm not that well geared for these, and the hard mode eternity vault videos have yet to come, altho I have been on the progression for them.

 

My guild LOVES having at least one marauder in the raid, due to the bloodthirst, bursty dps on low hp mobs and well, Obfuscate does work on bosses that do manage to enrage.

 

Now, I agree that marauders do need a slight tweak in their base dmg, especially with carnage, due that everything in carnage is based off weapon dmg, which is lower than other weapons in the game of the same item rating. That being said, if you think a marauder is useless in end game, or raids, you've not seen one played properly. I build 30 stacks of fury in about 2 rotations (roughly 15-20 seconds), which if I wanted to, could give me a predation uptime of almost 80% that would limit raid dmg taken by 10%.

 

Ask members of my raid group, at one point on hard mode puzzle boss, I ended up switching to the north puzzle, due to a dps going down, and before I got there (took me 7 seconds), the whole group died, an I soloed it for 3 complete icon matches, before the encounter bugged out. Granted, I am a biochem with all 3 rakata goodies (might stim, medpack and surge adrenal), but the amount of defensive cooldowns I can cycle through, gives me a constant damage reduction, and a speed boost for when I need to stretch that time out for a cooldown to refresh.

 

When you try to imagine a good marauder (in carnage at least), think of an assasin rogue mixed with a fury warrior, you have the BEST mobility, but you have to know how to use EVERY skill in your arsenal.

 

Our dps is average, I'll agree with you on that, as a PURE dps class, we should be higher, but right now, it's such a complex class to play, I dont think I have mastered it to bring out it's fullest potential, so I cant say we need a buff or not.

[Drathmar]

You want to know the real reason why raids don't want to bring a marauder?

 

Tanks cannot hold threat vs a good marauder running annihilation which is probably our best pvp/pve spec.

 

Because you are self healing + doing a crapton of fully sustained damage, you tend to pull threat quite a bit. I am pretty sure that annihilation does more damage than our other 2 specs in a pve environment, though no real way to tell without meters.

[Aethyriel]

You want to know the real reason why raids don't want to bring a marauder?

 

Tanks cannot hold threat vs a good marauder running annihilation which is probably our best pvp/pve spec.

 

Because you are self healing + doing a crapton of fully sustained damage, you tend to pull threat quite a bit. I am pretty sure that annihilation does more damage than our other 2 specs in a pve environment, though no real way to tell without meters.

 

You know that you have force camo for threatdumping right?

[Shadinaxx]

Tanks have threat issues to begin with, an that's a whole differant monster, lol. Dmg weters will come, in time, for now, I use videos and use the timestamps to moniter the parses myself. Carnage seems to edge out annihilation and rage at long fights.

 

Annihaltion is STEADY dps, which is slightly higher than carnage once you get spooled up with the bleeds, but does not increase in dmg at 20%.

 

Rage is bursty dmg when your cd's are available, very high front end dmg, low interval dmg.

 

Carnage is mediocre through the entire fight until the last 20% where it really takes off.