BioWare Ignores Marauder Problem; High-Member Guilds Not Allowing Marauder Class

[Nightsmoke]

The thing that gets me is overwhelm was working and it helped in pvp to keep people in place while your doing the skill. BW broke it during one of their updates a few weeks back and still have yet to fix it. I know they have a lot on their plates, but geez if a class already needs help in pvp dont break them even more and site back and laugh.

 

Also, with some of the mara skills from pve to pvp needs to be fixed. Skills that say on normal or weak target it stuns them that doesn't work in pvp. If we were to get those work along with our salvage kick and pummal to work i wouldn't have any complaints. Really if an OP can come out of stealth knock you down and do burst damage to kill you in 5 sec why can't we our salvage kick and pummal?

 

Then I guess you would have ppl scream to nerf force scream because of the 4 sec stun. Again as much as we get cc by other classes o well.

[Dharagada]

Also, with some of the mara skills from pve to pvp needs to be fixed. Skills that say on normal or weak target it stuns them that doesn't work in pvp. If we were to get those work along with our salvage kick and pummal to work i wouldn't have any complaints. Really if an OP can come out of stealth knock you down and do burst damage to kill you in 5 sec why can't we our salvage kick and pummal?

 

Those abilities are across the board, all classes have abilities that only stun or do damage to normal and weak enemies, they are not meant to be used on players or gold and above mobs. They are there to make the PVE grinding a bit easier.

[elicious]

Why do people think that rage is this unlimited resource that we get that other classes don't have? Inquisitors regen force constantly, BH reduces heat constantly (Faster when lower), IA regens energy constantly (faster when higher). So ALL classes have resources that replenish themselves. The difference between warrior resource generation and all others? We have to be actively generating our resource while everyone else regenerates automatically, all the time, no matter what you are doing. That means when you are knocked back, stunned, CCed, hiding behind cover (annihilation droid) or basically any boss fight where ToT (Time on target) is less than 100%, every other class will be generating more of their resource compared to a warrior. They may have balanced this by giving warriors better resource generation when 100% ToT is achieved, but I can only think of 1 fight in the current tier of ops where this is the case, and that's the council fight where you solo your own mob. Every other fight is pretty much impossible to achieve 100% ToT and you will not be generating any rage while everyone else will be getting their resource back.

[Tumri]

There is no guild doing nightmare-level operations taking marauders except for the reason they are low on men.

 

Marauder is most useless class - explanation:

yes we have a 15% damage and healing buff. yes we have a group defensive buff. yes we have a supportive group healing. but lets watch this.

 

as you know sithwarrior.com (theorycrafting forum) there are spreadsheets to calculate dps for classes.

 

so we do have marauder at t2 (hardmode flashpoint, normal raid gear)

 

annihilation survival (31/10/0) ~ 1200 dps

annihilation maxdps (31/3/7) ~ 1240 dps

carnage (5/31/5) ~ 860 dps

rage (2/8/31) ~ 640 dps

 

so there is one spec which deals clearly most damage, carnage neither viable for pve or pvp, and rage having no consistent dps, but awesome burst once every 3 minutes with adrenals and trinkets or average burst once every 24 seconds.

 

the problem is - other classes are all calculated by far higher dps, vengeance juggernaut being ahead about 100 dps from annihilation, up to sorcer by 300 dps above.

and all ranges rarely need to stop dishing damage to avoid boss mechanics.

 

in pvp we are unstoppable killermachines, there often enough battleground where i get out 47 : 2 without healer in the back and 350k damage dealt and 80k healing (yes, biochem and berserk by annihilation spec)

 

but pve we are what we are - the worst filler for a damage slot.

 

I've read a bit of SithWarrior theorycraft and while I trust the source to an extent I definitely don't trust those numbers. I've been DPS testing using a stopwatch and these are the numbers I am getting in ~Full Columi gear. I have rakata boots and pants but my sub-tionese belt, 300 power on-use relic, and PvP Champion main hand make up for this and I average out to about Columi level.

 

On a 130k HP Champion Mob self buffed with SW 5% Buff, Rakata Stim, and Rakata Adrenals... (Note: I rounded out the DPS to the nearest 5 when recording my results and I tested each spec 25 times using the same rotation/priority and similar adrenal/relic usage)

 

Carnage:

 

Low- 1315 DPS

Average- 1420 DPS

High- 1490 DPS

 

Annihilation:

 

Low- 1470 DPS

Average - 1540 DPS

High - 1610 DPS

 

---

 

Note the incredible amount of DPS the annihilation spec can output on a patchwerk style test. Despite this high number in a real raid Carnage ends up putting out similar DPS and is decidedly far better in some cases like the Soa encounter. Annihilation's lack of burst and Soa's (bugged?) charge immunity makes Carnage the spec of choice for that fight.

 

I definitely think we can use some buffs in terms of usability but we're fine in terms of how well we do in operations. The one thing I think needs to change is the short duration of the "Annihilator" buff that Annihilate grants. It is absolutely ridiculous how much we are punished by movement and time off the boss in our best DPS spec. No other class in the game suffers from DPS losses from raid mechanics as much as we do in Annihilation spec. Having the duration of the "Annihilator" buff changed to 30 seconds or even longer would do wonders for our viability. Another issue is the fact that Rupture refreshes itself on use instead of applying a separate DoT. It would be far better to have it apply a separate DoT instead of forcing us to tunnel our bars the entire fight. I have no problem with doing it but the amount of skill and concentration required to play a marauder effectively is simply too much at the moment.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Tumri

[CVSiN]

Well....you all may know me from the "Marauder : The Worst Class Ever" thread. Now I find that a lot of high level guilds are not allowing Marauders AT ALL.

 

I was told "Marauder is one of the most useless classes"

 

BioWare...you said you would make the game "fair" instead all you did was buff Juggernauts even more and ignored the real problem.

 

Thanks a lot. By the end of this, Marauders will be next to EXTINCT.

 

LOL at your so called awesome guilds..

 

you do know that mars have the "heroism/bloodlust" for this game..

 

We are VERY wanted for this utility.. and a WELL PLAYED mar that can not stand in the fire/cleaves puts down sick DPS on a single boss target..

 

party damage and healing by 15% for 15secs is HUGE..

[WarlordThuran]

I have to admit I have not been in raids yet, and fortunately, as I got the job of being designated raid leader, it means there should be room for a marauder, but I would say it's silly to not allow them in at all, especially in 16 man operations, having groupwide buffs is going to make a pretty big difference.

 

However, we do suffer from being a melee class and on several hard modes, bosses move around or have knockback, both of which drastically reduce our dps without affecting ranged dpsers AT ALL, and the same problem presents itself in pvp where sticking to a target and dealing damage to it is a much bigger problem for marauders than for any other dpser with the possible exception of operatives, though they got both stealth and a stun, and im only speaking from low level experience with my IA.

 

We need a small damage buff to compensate for our liabilities as melee, and giving them acces to heavy armour as was originally intended would also instantly solve our issues in terms of looks and having idle melee dps heavy armour drops in flashpoints that nobody uses, and giving us more survivability, simply but pressing a switch that says "allow heavy", its so simple its painfull!

[Avigatorx]

Marauders need a Fungi Tunic !!

 

(If you know what I mean, you and I come from the same school: Old....)

[DizzD]

Marauders need a Fungi Tunic !!

 

(If you know what I mean, you and I come from the same school: Old....)

 

This, oh hell yeah this.

 

I'd even accept a Rubicite Breastplate TBH.

[Kibaken]

Those spreadsheets have many flaws in them. Just sayin.

[Tumri]

The amount of QQ directed toward areas we're fine in is excessive. Our damage is fine. The main thing wrong with our class is the low duration of the annihilator buff and the fact that Soa cannot be charged(this eats into both our rage generation and our uptime and is simply unacceptable). The lack of utility we have is also very troubling. We need a lot more in the way of stuns and CC. We also need the rupture to create an entirely new DoT instead of refreshing your old DoT. Marauders have to tunnel far more than any other class in the game to achieve top DPS. We really shouldn't have to be watching debuffs on top of our fury, rage generation, and our multiple CD abilities. We need usability buffs not straight number buffs. Edited January 18, 2012 by Tumri

[Norumaniac]

I didnt see hate towards Marauders in general chat, but most ppl ask for Ranged DPS (for heroics).

[Temeluchus]

There is no guild doing nightmare-level operations taking marauders except for the reason they are low on men.

 

Marauder is most useless class - explanation:

yes we have a 15% damage and healing buff. yes we have a group defensive buff. yes we have a supportive group healing. but lets watch this.

 

as you know sithwarrior.com (theorycrafting forum) there are spreadsheets to calculate dps for classes.

 

so we do have marauder at t2 (hardmode flashpoint, normal raid gear)

 

annihilation survival (31/10/0) ~ 1200 dps

annihilation maxdps (31/3/7) ~ 1240 dps

carnage (5/31/5) ~ 860 dps

rage (2/8/31) ~ 640 dps

 

so there is one spec which deals clearly most damage, carnage neither viable for pve or pvp, and rage having no consistent dps, but awesome burst once every 3 minutes with adrenals and trinkets or average burst once every 24 seconds.

 

the problem is - other classes are all calculated by far higher dps, vengeance juggernaut being ahead about 100 dps from annihilation, up to sorcer by 300 dps above.

and all ranges rarely need to stop dishing damage to avoid boss mechanics.

 

in pvp we are unstoppable killermachines, there often enough battleground where i get out 47 : 2 without healer in the back and 350k damage dealt and 80k healing (yes, biochem and berserk by annihilation spec)

 

but pve we are what we are - the worst filler for a damage slot.

 

Those spreadsheets are the biggest crapfilled excuse for math you can find on the internet. Errors galore. Even if you don't have the time nor drive to check their math,use a bit of logic;Bioware has metrics and internal combat logs that measure all the data and dps for every class,fight,spec etc.

 

Do you really think they would allow Anni to top out at "1240 dps" and Rage putter about at "640 dps" and think they could get away with it? As soon as we get combat logs(and we are getting them) there would be blood in the streets and the forums would be in flames if those numbers were true. If you do believe that, i suggest taking off the tinfoil hat and trying out the real world.

 

I use Rage in PvP and PvE and can tell you, just by eyeballing my dps with no way to parse I do more than 640, hell, even my baseline MH saber damage is higher than that.

 

You'd literally have to sit there like an a-hole, waiting for Charge,Choke,Obliterate,Smash and Force crush to come off CD and do nothing else in between to achieve dps like that.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Temeluchus

[MaGariShun]

damage is fine, stop crying. marauders and snipers probably are the two highest DPS classes in the game by far and those group buffs (speed, damage or heal) are extremely good (compare that with what a jugg or a operative dd brings in).

Those spreadsheets are used to compare dps WITHIN the class and are not meant to be compared with other classes.

 

It's funny how every class forum has a thread like this

[Torkepl]

BH/Sorc/Sniper always take my spot. And i cant roll tank/healer ;(

I regret picking mara instead of jugger

[Teioh_White]

Heh, in my guild it's the Juggs who complain about being useless, while the Mars get taken into EV. They do some pretty beastly damage, with the added benefit of boosting everyone else damage. And trust me, you do more damage than a Jugg, easily. And so far we've not encountered a need for more than 1 tank, so we've got a lot of Juggs just sitting on the bench in WZ queues while the DPS go raid.

 

Heavy Armor isn't that big a deal, most the things that make you dead in this game don't care one whit about armor/defense/shields, so none of that would help, and Mars do have some decent CD's which let them stay in to do damage during a phase when everyone else needs to break LoS or something, which can be key when trying to beat an enrage timer.

[Tumri]

Just now on a mob with 136155 health I did 1565 DPS in Annihilation spec and that's without any raid buffs. My best attempt was over 1650 DPS. Edited January 18, 2012 by Tumri

[Kibaken]

Those spreadsheets are the biggest crapfilled excuse for math you can find on the internet. Errors galore. Even if you don't have the time nor drive to check their math,use a bit of logic;Bioware has metrics and internal combat logs that measure all the data and dps for every class,fight,spec etc.

 

Do you really think they would allow Anni to top out at "1240 dps" and Rage putter about at "640 dps" and think they could get away with it? As soon as we get combat logs(and we are getting them) there would be blood in the streets and the forums would be in flames if those numbers were true. If you do believe that, i suggest taking off the tinfoil hat and trying out the real world.

 

I use Rage in PvP and PvE and can tell you, just by eyeballing my dps with no way to parse I do more than 640, hell, even my baseline MH saber damage is higher than that.

 

You'd literally have to sit there like an a-hole, waiting for Charge,Choke,Obliterate,Smash and Force crush to come off CD and do nothing else in between to achieve dps like that.

 

 

The biggest crapfilled excuse for math on the internet is that guy Kiba.

 

owait.

 

BioWare has said that 1) they really don't like theorycrafting and 2) they not only have meters but also the actual calculations behind the damage as well. The developers have said multiple times all specs and all classes will do comparable DPS in order to emphasis the "bring the player, not the class" mentality.

 

Blizzard pushes this as well, and (tries) to balance the classes however it's obvious the DPS aren't that balanced (ie Frost Mages) well or at all because of their immense PvP viabliity.

 

This has mainly to do with the amazingness of certain classes control or utility wise (PvP) versus overall damage output (PvE). In the case of Frost Mages their damage had to be lower because of their reliance on targets being Frozen. The fact that they were able to quickly burst down players didn't make up for the fact their damage on bosses was lax. They eventually made it so all bosses were considered frozen (Deep Freeze does extra damage instead of freezing) so Frost could attempt to be viable but increasing the damage to do so would overpower it in PvP.

 

If you look at Fire or Arcane, they don't have anywhere near the control Frost does but make up for it in pure damage, with the mindset of "killing them before they get to you." With the way resilience works and the lack of effectiveness of pure burst damage in WoW's PvP system neither spec is that effective. Because of their damage, though, they're both prime for PvE. See where I'm coming from?

 

What it came down to is Blizzard's reluctance to include separate ability effects/tooltips against players similar to what they did with Colossal Smash.

 

Smashes a target for 150% weapon damage plus 120 and weakens their defenses, allowing your attacks to entirely bypass 100% of their armor for 6 sec. Bypasses less armor on players.

(I just noticed Marauders have this ability uncensored, so to speak, in ToR. I lol'd)

 

 

Not only are there plenty of abilities that do different/lessened things or nothing at all to players the resolve system works even better to move away from gameplay that relies on certain situations.

 

Most CCs move the resolve bar the same way and, in short, are tighter diminishing returns than are, to continue the example, in WoW. In WoW it was very easy to time sheeps, fears, stuns, etc to lock players down completely. On the contrary, in ToR you have at most (in my experience) two fairly long stuns and you're immune. Pop your trinket when your resolve bar is full and you have a lot of time to roam around [relatively] unhindered.

 

CC, then, is used as an almost last resort to damage and locking players down in stuns and fears is almost detrimental due to the large amount of time they're left immune. While under-powering to the almost complete control that's possible in WoW it opens up a lot more room for all specs to shine.

 

The fact that almost no spec is reliant completely upon a specific effect - that doesn't affect bosses - to be effective in PvP makes it incredibly easy to balance PvE damage around the damage itself and not on random quirky abilities some specs may have.

 

On top of that, all 3 specs of every class have control built into it in order to not have one spec better than the other in all cases. We, for instance, have the Rupture slow, Overwhelm, and Obliterate to name a few.

 

Some classes may be a hell of a lot of burst DPS followed by a lower downtime (Carnage or Rage) and some may have little burst at all and are a lot more steady (Annihilation). I know it's heresy, but I have enough faith in BioWare to where - because they didn't make really odd, gimicky specs for PvP purposes - they have end-game DPS pretty well balanced.

 

Melee will always be hindered because of the time spent off the boss in certain encounters, however like I said in my previous post in this thread: because of the way our Rage generation works we're probably the most up front, consistent DPS in the game because we build and spend while other classes spend and recharge.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Kibaken

[elicious]

Melee will always be hindered because of the time spent off the boss in certain encounters, however like I said in my previous post in this thread: because of the way our Rage generation works we're probably the most up front, consistent DPS in the game because we build and spend while other classes spend and recharge.

 

Like I said in my previous post in this thread, other classes recharge all the time, where we only recharge when we are on the boss, so we are at a disadvantage the further away from 100% ToT that we get.

[Rampagingike]

This is why I worry, we are a niche class we offer 1 truely usefull unique buff and once thats gone what will we have? Having sustained dps means nothing if your constantly not in range to use that.

 

I've played melee DPS classes all my time in MMOs and the trick is to understand movement/positioning to make yourself useful.

 

Ranged DPS always has a nice ring to it because quite often it requires next to no awareness and a 1 2 3 rotation to achieve efficient results with.

 

Melee DPS gets put under the microscope quite often because they have more to do while still having to maintain a level of performance in order to be valuable. I want you to tell me a balanced game where ranged DPS beat melee DPS in a straight up fight.

 

Try this out...Cap your main hand then build Power and Alacrity tell me what happens. See your DPS fall short heh.

[Swarna]

Marauders are completely fine. There's an atrocious learning curve for casual players. That's the only problem. Bioware has already stated that they are addressing this specific problem. Edited January 18, 2012 by Swarna

[REiiGN]

Ranged doesn't feel Star Wars enough for me. I like melee DPS. I know there are a billion shooting scenes in SW but everyone loves the lightsaber duels more and that's what I get out of this game. I'm not a WoW or EQ or general MMO fan. I try to fit in but I'm going to play the damn class I want. It's BW job to not make us feel gimped.

 

I play this advanced class well because I've given 110% to it, learning it from others and experimenting. Now that PvP is fixed for a bracket for just 50s, its time to gear up or reroll.

 

I think we are OP and other classes just don't want to feel weak next to our power.

 

I'm from Buenos Aires and I say Kill Them All (ok, I'm from Texas but its still a cool line).

[Noobinator]

Don't know if this post is just old or what. Marauders are actually great to have in both pvp and raids. Especially with fury-induced buffs like Bloodthirst...

 

We can hold our own in terms of dps, easily.

 

The class is not easy to play, though, so I understand why some of the top guilds would be worried about bad Marauders.

[Kibaken]

Like I said in my previous post in this thread, other classes recharge all the time, where we only recharge when we are on the boss, so we are at a disadvantage the further away from 100% ToT that we get.

 

We don't recharge, we build. There's a very large difference. When we drop low in Rage we have abilities that directly give us Rage back: Battering Assault, Charge, Assault, etc; as well as talents that give us Rage over time (our "recharge") Blood Frenzy and Empowerment.

 

When we get low we Battering Assault to half our bar again. We can weave Assault in and build Rage as we go. Aside from, for example, Snipers' 50% energy regen over 3 seconds ability (the name escapes me atm) if they hit their lowest regen they have to sit and only use their basic attack until they have enough Energy. They can't Battering Assault, they can't Assault, they can't Charge. Sure, their energy is regenerating all the time but ours is much more efficient, as in more than half our bar in 2 GCDs.

[elicious]

We don't recharge, we build. There's a very large difference. When we drop low in Rage we have abilities that directly give us Rage back: Battering Assault, Charge, Assault, etc; as well as talents that give us Rage over time (our "recharge") Blood Frenzy and Empowerment.

 

When we get low we Battering Assault to half our bar again. We can weave Assault in and build Rage as we go. Aside from, for example, Snipers' 50% energy regen over 3 seconds ability (the name escapes me atm) if they hit their lowest regen they have to sit and only use their basic attack until they have enough Energy. They can't Battering Assault, they can't Assault, they can't Charge. Sure, their energy is regenerating all the time but ours is much more efficient, as in more than half our bar in 2 GCDs.

 

Pretty sure IA/BH keep in the top tier of regen during sustained DPS. I know at least OP does. Why? More energy = more DPS. The only time they would want to get into the lower tiers of regen is if they know there's going be a lull in DPS for a while (annihilation droid missile barrage) where they can get back to full during the downtime. This is great for them because they can dump their resource and get a nice boost in dmg and then regen it all. Like I said the more that ToT is reduced from 100%, the better other DPS classes will do compared to us since we need to be attacking to gain our resource and they get it all the time.

 

Also, you can't say warriors are more efficient because we can generate half our resource bar with 1 skill because our resource bar is smaller in comparison. Pretty sure if you compare 12 rage worth of damage skills vs. 100 energy of a sniper or OP they will have done way more damage and used way more skills.

Edited January 18, 2012 by elicious

[Rampagingike]

People share their feedback on this side topic about Rage in SWTOR.

 

IMHO I feel they have to working better than rage in WoW. I rarely find myself Rage capped/starved and still maintain all my DPS CDs efficiently. Speaking from an Annihilation POV. I have not tried carnage PVE yet.