Trouble staying alive solo

[MouseNoFour]

I am having - and have had this for a couple levels now - serious trouble surviving simple enemies my characters own level. No i rarely die - but bare minimum i take 50-75% damage each and every fight. Ive tried a full geared up Vette, Quinn and Jaesa.

 

With Vette and Jaesa the enemies die quicker, but i still take a boat load of damage - which means minimum 5-10 seconds healing after EVERY.SINGLE.FIGHT. Even on a pack of 4-6 weak enemies.

 

Now i am not skimping on gear, i have customs with the best possible mods i can equip for my level - i know this as the only better ones require 1-2 more levels to equip. I even have an artificer and cybertech alt supplying my Marauder with the best possible mods, armourings, hilts, colour crystals and enhancements. Ive even considering augmenting my customs just to help with survival.

 

I have an alt of every single advanced class but i have never felt so fragile on any of them.

 

At the moment, i am a 33 Annihilation Marauder. I just destroyed a pack of 4 weak enemies with a fully kitted out Jaesa whilst wearing the best gear i can buy for my character. No joke, 48% was what i ended up with for health. They were level 34 weak enemies. Its worse for the single strong and a single weak enemy. 38%.

 

I am burning Berserk and Deadly Saber whenever they are available. And lately ive also been burning Obfuscate and Cloak of Pain every second group just to keep the downtime to a minimum.

 

With Quinn, the damage is only partially mitigated - roughly 55% after every fight.

[MouseNoFour]

And i should also add, i am using absolutely every ability that deals damage to try and kill them as quickly as possible to minimise damage dealt.

[MouseNoFour]

I am seriously not joking how damned fragile my Marauder is, despite everything ive done.

 

Just attempted a pair of strong enemies a single level above my own, with Quinn for heals. With Obfuscate, Cloak of Pain, Saber Ward AND Unity burned... i still died with the second strong 90% health.

 

I know i am SERIOUSLY doing something horribly wrong.

[Arunas]

Leveling a marauder can be painful on lower levels. The issue with Quinn is that he gets aggro and starts healing himself instead of you and you cannot really do much about that.

 

I recommend switching to rage to see if it suits you better - you will reduce the damage incoming to you by eliminating trash mobs quickly. Avoid taking two silvers or gold if its not necessary for your quest objective and try to complete x/y bonus quests on trash mobs. With XP buffs you will sail trough levels smoothly.

[Elementlord]

Maybe you need to settle on a more compact, concrete rotation? I know I ended up dropping a lot of abilities because They didn't fit into my rotation(Carnage Mara here).

 

I seem to recall having trouble with survivability at that level too, but after I got past about level 35 everything cleared up nicely. Try turning off Quinn's offensive abilities, and make sure he's in his healing stance. Something that I found effective when soloing was to kill trash first, then focus on the bigger guys.

[Voxx_Voltaare]

I don't recall having any problem leveling my mara, and I was anni the whole way with Quinn. One thing about Quinn...make sure that he is in Med Watch mode under his skills. Also, check some of his other default attack skills and you may want to try turning some of them off so he draws less aggro. Keep the stun one, that's nice.

 

Another tip is to get ahead a level or two for each planet. Do some PvP, FPs, or space missions to gain xp. No reason why you have to be at the same level as the NPCs you're fighting. Especially since you seem to be making all your own gear stuffs, you don't have to worry about being too high for drops/rewards.

 

I imagine that leveling Anni might be a little bit harder than when I did it, before they nerfed the self-heals by 50%. But still, it shouldn't be that bad.

[MouseNoFour]

Something i seem to have figured out - Marauders are fragile when faced with ranged attackers. I am not sure why, but anything that fires a blaster seems to really chew through my health, whereas anything with a blade barely scratches my paint off my armour.

 

I actually finished off a few missions involving lots of ranged guys, and met up with enemies more focused on melee. Oddly enough i stayed above 90% unless there was a strong and even then, above 80%. I am not entirely sure why this is the case.

 

Anyway, i will try your suggestion of turning off Quinn's offensive abilities minus the CC. Ironically i never had this trouble with my Juggernaut. Although his problem was different - he just didnt do nearly as much damage as my Marauder - and rightly so. My Marauder - she TEARS through enemies. But just lacks survival while solo.

[MouseNoFour]

Oh and as for Med Watch - yea he is always in that. At random times though he does seem to drop the mode for some reason. Just have to keep checking it.

[Voxx_Voltaare]

I'd be interested to see where you have put your skill points so far. At 33, I'd probably be something like 17/5/2.

 

Another thing to keep in mind, and not saying that this is happening to you at all, but sometimes in the fog of war... make sure that you don't get out of range of Quinn's healing abilities. Sometimes it is possible to do that without realizing and he doesn't always do a good job of getting back within range on his own.

 

Honestly though, I think the one thing above all others that will make running planet missions easier is to be at least a level or two above the mob level. It's pretty easy to do with all the ways you can get general xp in this MMO.

[Scathe]

Something i seem to have figured out - Marauders are fragile when faced with ranged attackers. I am not sure why, but anything that fires a blaster seems to really chew through my health, whereas anything with a blade barely scratches my paint off my armour.

 

I actually finished off a few missions involving lots of ranged guys, and met up with enemies more focused on melee. Oddly enough i stayed above 90% unless there was a strong and even then, above 80%. I am not entirely sure why this is the case.

 

Anyway, i will try your suggestion of turning off Quinn's offensive abilities minus the CC. Ironically i never had this trouble with my Juggernaut. Although his problem was different - he just didnt do nearly as much damage as my Marauder - and rightly so. My Marauder - she TEARS through enemies. But just lacks survival while solo.

 

The reason ranged enemies will chew through your health more then melee enemies is because if they don't start out with a blade as their focus, they won't use any of their abilities, just an auto-attack. The best way to counteract ranged enemies is to charge in, hit them a few times to get agro, and see if they pull out a vibroblade. If they do that, you will be golden. They'll stop using any of their abilities on you and just auto-attack you, which does little to no damage at all.

 

As for your Juggernaut, I honestly think the big difference is in armor. Mara's wear medium armor where Jugg's wear heavy armor, so the damage reduction is a bit higher. I'm currently leveling a Jugg right now, I go Vengeance when questing and Immortal when I'm running a dungeon, just DPS in tank gear and I tear through enemies like my Mara did.

 

But to suggest something helpful for your Mara, what I did was level to 50 with Jaesa, only not using her at the last two bosses of the story quest (I switched her for Quinn because I needed the healing). My strategy with her was to let Jaesa charge the silver/gold enemies and build up some agro and deal some damage while I took out the weak/standard enemies and then switched to the one my companion was attacking. You'll end up doing more DPS then your companion, so it's not too hard to pull the mob off of them. When you're killing the standard enemies, your Fury should already build up to full, or at least be close, so getting it up to 30 won't be too difficult and you pop berserk right away to heal your companion and yourself. Cloak of Pain when you're at about 50% health, if you reach it, and just keep beating them down. Saber Ward when your Cloak of Pain is on CD, then Obfuscate. Use your Heroic Moment to refresh your Saber Ward, and Berserk while your Heroic Moment ticks. And if you have to, Saber Ward again.

[Aaoogaa]

Two issues with the healer. One turn off the cc since it is a channel and he will not heal you while channeling it. Two leaping in...if you do a full 30 meter leap and go behind the mob so your at 32 meters and your healing companion is still 30 meters from the mob the companion WILL NOT MOVE CLOSER TO HEAL YOU...instead he will stand there and dps. You either need to move back within 30 meters or passive him so he pops next to you and unpassive him. Took a few deaths leveling up to figure out why I was not getting heals but he was still fighting the mob.

 

Make sure you use your CCs. Fight the weakest mob to the strongest...i.e. cc the toughest mob(s). Don't waste abilities if a dot is going to kill a weak mob then move on to the next without wasting another swing on it. Use your defensives more often and earlier in the fights. Kill ranged mobs first this will allow you to kite the remaining melee mobs while your healer heals you in tough spots. Lastly know which mobs your built in cc abilities work on and use them on those targets to mitigate some of the damage you take. Lastly turn off your pets AE abilities so he does not end awe early.

 

Make sure you gear is of level and not 5 levels behind.

[MouseNoFour]

I'd be interested to see where you have put your skill points so far. At 33, I'd probably be something like 17/5/2.

 

Another thing to keep in mind, and not saying that this is happening to you at all, but sometimes in the fog of war... make sure that you don't get out of range of Quinn's healing abilities. Sometimes it is possible to do that without realizing and he doesn't always do a good job of getting back within range on his own.

 

Honestly though, I think the one thing above all others that will make running planet missions easier is to be at least a level or two above the mob level. It's pretty easy to do with all the ways you can get general xp in this MMO.

 

Because im only leveling, all of them are invested in damage increases of some form.

 

I am rarely out of Quinns healing range to begin with, as i almost never force charge from max range.

 

The only reason im having trouble is because of all my other alts - and i have one of every advanced class in the game - this is the only one with severe survival troubles.

[Muatarm]

I'm just going to list some notes from my experience as I just finished leveling to 50 as annihilation all the way a couple weeks ago.

 

-You do a lot of a damage

-You take a lot of damage

-Quinn is an amazing healer, and as people have said, you should turn off anything that isn't healing related.

-You have like 6 defensive cds. USE THEM RELIGIOUSLY. This is a core mechanic of playing melee. You are agreeing to take damage to be able to get in there and tear **** apart, so you should be liberal with any button that says "Hey, hit me and you won't hurt so much."

a)Cloak of Pain should be popped as soon as you enter combat and have something hitting you.

b)Saber ward was mostly saved for gold mobs for me, but is still a great cd for any fight.

c)Undying rage is godly if used correctly which is when you're just about to die(4 more seconds of not dying ftw)

d)Force camouflage is 50% dmg reduction for 4 seconds as long as you deal no direct dmg and drops your threat so they switch to Quinn, which is an obvious perk since you stop taking dmg altogether for a few seconds.

e)Heroic Moment is obviously in case of emergency, but is ridiculously good when you do need to use it.

f)Sacrifice/Unity are cool but Mara was my first character and I didn't get to use either of these.

-Cloak of Annihilation is really good while leveling (allows cloak of pain to be up forever if you don't stop taking dmg and are using retaliation(no reason to not use this, may cost rage, but its off gcd, hits fairly hard, and takes 6 seconds off the cd of Cloak of Pain with the Cloak of Annihilation talent))

-Spec dmg: anni is sustainable single target, carnage is burst single target, rage is huge aoe dmg.

-Obfuscate/Disruption can both be viewed as a defensive cd while leveling as Obfuscate increases miss chance by 90% for 6 seconds meaning that basically no physical dmg will hit you most likely for 6 seconds. This spell is off the gcd as well. Disruption interrupts a spell and makes it so they can't use that ability for 4 seconds. Obviously these two spells only affect one target at a time, but that's when you will use them most anyway, on scary mobs.

-Force Choke can also be used for many things- it gives quinn 3 seconds to get a heal off and interrupts/locks them from any action for the duration

-Intimidating Roar once you get it is great on big packs, you charge, smash for some dmg, then roar to fear them all and single target them down.

- Force Charge can be used as an interrupt, especially if you reduce its range to 0 via the talent.

 

Im sure I missed a few things, but here are some of the things I learned during my experience on a Mara.

Edited December 25, 2012 by Muatarm

[Thundergulch]

Something i seem to have figured out - Marauders are fragile when faced with ranged attackers.

 

Yes, ranged mobs will tend to rip you apart pretty quickly.

Still though, at level 32-33 you should be EASILY able to kill an Elite 4 levels above you and a Champion at most 2 levels above you.

In order for us to help you out more, we need to see where your points are spent in your skill tree, what types of mods/enhamcements do you have, and your stats.

It also comes down to player skill (not saying your'e not skilled).

The Marauder is a total blast to level, especially with Quinn since you SHOULD be never in danger of dying, unless you pull way too many strongs or Quinn starts taking too much damage... if he's taking damage, he won't heal you.

 

One other thing... .you can have Quinn initiate the aggro if there are 4 or more mobs while you pick them off 1 by 1, this will help with your health.

[DrillThrall]

The problem I have with Vette is that I Force Charge into a cluster of enemies, start doing some damage, and Vette, blazing away, grabs aggro, the enemies rush to her, and I have to (slowly) run back to her because Force Charge hasn't finished its cool-down yet. It's kind of like she's a ranged tank instead of ranged DPS. I don't think she as an overt Taunt ability, but it sure seems like it.

[Voxx_Voltaare]

The simple solution is to have Vette initiate combat by using the general attack or a specific ability from her cast bar. Edited December 30, 2012 by Voxx_Voltaare

[Cody-licious]

The simple solution is to have Vette initiate combat by using the general attack or a specific ability from her cast bar.

 

This is good.

I'm spec'd full Rage (level 35 just now, clearing up Taris), so I let Quinn pull aggro with an attack -- all mobs run to him -- I force charge one of them, and Smash the crap out of the whole group.

 

With a mixed standard/strong group, I force charge in -- choak the strong mob to build up Shockwave -- and drop a massive Smash bomb on their heads.

 

There has only been one 'oh-sh*t' moment, when I was fighting in among the Vulture mobs in the bonus questline when I got knocked back into another group with an Elite. Only this time did I actually have to use cooldowns/medpacs AND even switch Quinn to Med-watch stance. Usually I have him running on his 'really useful' damage stance...