Marauder Changes - Game Update 2.5

[Raansu]

Wow. Just wow. As someone who plays a healer main with an Annihilation Marauder alt, I have to say this change sounds terrible. If this goes live as described here, I will be removing this ability from my Marauder's hotbars and demand when healing that any Marauder in my group do the same.

 

Currently in PvE, Undying Rage is a defensive ability of last resort: when down to very little health (say 20% or less) the Marauder could use Undying Rage to buy the tank a few seconds to regain agro and the healer a few seconds to heal them up. These changes make that scenario completely unworkable. Consider:

 

Why would I, as a healer, bother spending any power healing a Marauder in UR knowing that my heal-per-power ratio during that time is effectively being halved?

Why would I, as a Marauder, use an ability designed to prevent damage knowing that it may well end up accounting for MORE damage than I would have taken otherwise if I get any heal during its duration?

 

The only rationale I can see for this change is to correct a perceived PvP balance issue, and I absolutely detest that kind of decision-making. I am sick and tired of having abilities that work perfectly fine in PvE nerfed because PvPers thin they're unbalanced.

 

There was nothing wrong with it in pvp either. It was just baddies who didn't know how to use stuns/knockbacks during GBTF and whitebarring them too early. This change just comes to to appeasing the terrible players of the game who refuse to learn how to counter a predictable ability.

 

And I agree with you. I said it earlier as well (not sure if it was this thread or not) that raid leaders will demand sentinels to never use GBTF during a raid now. Only time I can even see this being remotely acceptable is if a boss is at 1% and most everyone is dead. Outside of that, using it to save yourself from loss aggro/spike damage and other BS melee have to deal with is simply out the window now. It doesn't help that they also double nerfed the ability with an increased CD as well. It's just a piss poor way to "nerf" the ability, it wasn't thought out at all and it is just lazy. They literally took the concept from endure pain which is a TERRIBLE ability.

 

BioWare is completely clueless.

[Gloomycakes]

Wow. Just wow. As someone who plays a healer main with an Annihilation Marauder alt, I have to say this change sounds terrible. If this goes live as described here, I will be removing this ability from my Marauder's hotbars and demand when healing that any Marauder in my group do the same.

 

Currently in PvE, Undying Rage is a defensive ability of last resort: when down to very little health (say 20% or less) the Marauder could use Undying Rage to buy the tank a few seconds to regain agro and the healer a few seconds to heal them up. These changes make that scenario completely unworkable. Consider:

 

Why would I, as a healer, bother spending any power healing a Marauder in UR knowing that my heal-per-power ratio during that time is effectively being halved?

Why would I, as a Marauder, use an ability designed to prevent damage knowing that it may well end up accounting for MORE damage than I would have taken otherwise if I get any heal during its duration?

 

The only rationale I can see for this change is to correct a perceived PvP balance issue, and I absolutely detest that kind of decision-making. I am sick and tired of having abilities that work perfectly fine in PvE nerfed because PvPers thin they're unbalanced.

 

I still haven't touched Sentinel or Maurauder, but yes, those were my exact worries coming from Tanking and Healing in PvP. On the other hand, luckily there will be a few smart Maurauders that will use the time to get out of a harmful situation (*cough* Force Camouflage) or when they know it will really be worth it. Will have to wait and see how it plays out.

 

Rest of the changes look rather solid, curious to see how it plays out! (Note to self: level those classes already.)

 

Tiny bit off topic: Is this all or will more be released? Sorry if I'm way out of line asking that.

[RatPoison]

I disagree with the change to undying rage. Indeed, it was a great survival tool for a marauder/sentinel in pvp where they have healers, but in all other cases, including PVP, it was/is the last resort, the "oh ****" button to hopefully give a tank or healer the opportunity to recover a faltering situation.

 

It wasn't overpowered in my opinion because it had a tremendous health cost... something many other defensive abilities that other classes have (that negate huge chunks of damage) don't have in cost. I don't see folks complaining about saber reflect and the window it gives a Jug/Guardian to get topped off by a healer. Additionally, if the change is such that it reduces your health by 50% based on your total health... not by 50% of your current health... it'll quite simply become a useless ability.

 

You all should have just increased its cooldown.

 

...

 

As for the changes to bloodthirst and chaining them... a 5 minute debuff is the solution? Really? Why not make it something like 3 minutes. Anyway if the believe is that 2 marauder/sentinels getting off a total of 4 bloodthirsts in an operation boss fight is "broken" (it wasn't), then I'm at a loss of words. I completely don't see the value or point in the change to bloodthirst here.

[Ashuranrx]

What stun are you referring to? Sins/Sorcs, Mercs, and Snipers all have hard stun but the rest have a mez which we also have so...but seriously? You're complaining about survivability on a Mara?

 

What? You serious? All Inquisitor classes got a 4s stun, all Bounty Hunter classes got a 4s stun, and all Agent classes got a 4s stun. Warrior is the only class that does not have a 4s stun, so we sacrifice that for better cool downs. And now we are being discriminated against for them. LOL

 

Undying Rage is fine as it is by itself. What made it too much is the specs and set bonus that made it stronger than original design. But instead of removing and replacing the spec skills and set bonus that buffed it to OP level, they nerf it across the board and kept the its spec and set bonus boost. So now that even the specs that don't get the buff skills suffer for it.

 

The ability should be 1.5 min and last 4s and that is it. No need for it to get buff from set bonus and skills.

[Ashuranrx]

I disagree with the change to undying rage. Indeed, it was a great survival tool for a marauder/sentinel in pvp where they have healers, but in all other cases, including PVP, it was/is the last resort, the "oh ****" button to hopefully give a tank or healer the opportunity to recover a faltering situation.

 

It wasn't overpowered in my opinion because it had a tremendous health cost... something many other defensive abilities that other classes have (that negate huge chunks of damage) don't have in cost. I don't see folks complaining about saber reflect and the window it gives a Jug/Guardian to get topped off by a healer. Additionally, if the change is such that it reduces your health by 50% based on your total health... not by 50% of your current health... it'll quite simply become a useless ability.

 

You all should have just increased its cooldown.

 

Exactly, if the team's healer is being pressured by the opposing team's DPS, then the healer won't have the chance to heal in the first place.

[Raansu]

What? You serious? All Inquisitor classes got a 4s stun, all Bounty Hunter classes got a 4s stun, and all Agent classes got a 4s stun. Warrior is the only class that does not have a 4s stun, so we sacrifice that for better cool downs. And now we are being discriminated against for them. LOL

 

Undying Rage is fine as it is by itself. What made it too much is the specs and set bonus that made it stronger than original design. But instead of removing and replacing the spec skills and set bonus that buffed it to OP level, they nerf it across the board and kept the its spec and set bonus boost. So now that even the specs that don't get the buff skills suffer for it.

 

The ability should be 1.5 min and last 4s and that is it. No need for it to get buff from set bonus and skills.

 

Original design? You do know that before we got the new set bonus that GBTF was originally 5 seconds right? It was nerfed to 4 seconds back in like 1.4 I think? I don't remember but it was nerfed awhile back but it was originally 5 seconds.

 

With that said, I do agree that smash spec making it better was kind of stupid. Outside of that there was nothing wrong with the ability.

[Eshtoma]

Some Operation groups felt like they needed to bring a Gunslinger/Sniper for each party in an Operation group to get the cover buff, so we have made it affect a Gunslinger's/Snipers' entire Operation group. We have also added a five minute long debuff to Cover to prevent Operation groups from feeling the need to bring as many Gunslingers/Snipers as possible to “chain” Cover for as long as possible. Now a single Gunslinger/Sniper will be able provide the full Cover benefit to his or her Operation group.

[CellPerfect]

Undying Rage is fine as it is by itself. What made it too much is the specs and set bonus that made it stronger than original design. But instead of removing and replacing the spec skills and set bonus that buffed it to OP level, they nerf it across the board and kept the its spec and set bonus boost. So now that even the specs that don't get the buff skills suffer for it.

 

The ability should be 1.5 min and last 4s and that is it. No need for it to get buff from set bonus and skills.

 

This would be the perfect fix in my opinion. It would make undying rage a powerful cool down but not grossly overpowered like how it is currently for the rage spec. They would have to replace the PvP set bonus then, but I would be fine with that. Perhaps make it something that is based on our stance? (I believe mercs were asking for something like this as well).

[paowee]

Other than Juyo Form this seems to be a lot of nerfs......

 

Costello from Nerf Dialogue? (Swtor -> GW2 -> Back to swtor?)

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

Hmm, i cant really figure out how to feel about the Anni Changes... I like that we are getting a longer Duration on Annihlation and Juyo form's buffs, but can we also get a duration and CD change to Deadly Saber? That way, if we say, accedentially got to the Deadly Saber part of our rotation, but the boss did some sort of invun phase, we didnt exactly waste the Deadly Saber?

 

Bloodthirst changes, somewhat anger me... I like the 40 meter range, but some boss arena's are larger than 40 meters, why not just affect all party members regardless of Range (of course they would have to be in the same instance and location) same goes for Predation. Bloodthirst's debuff thing, that's what angers me. WHY was this put in place? so far, my guild cant get past Op IX in TFB SM without Bloodthirst Chaining. Why did that get changed? Was it a trade-off for the 40 meter range? If so, i would rather take 30 meter range and no debuff over longer range but high downtime. Just my 0.02$ there.

 

Undying Rage changes, meh. Didnt care to ever use it but in some odd situations either way. dont really care about it now.

[Raansu]

No offense man, but while I and everyone else agree the bloodthirst debuff is terrible, your example is uh...bad. You have other issues to worry about if you can't get past OP IX in SM.

[CaulderBenson]

Bloodthirst's debuff thing, that's what angers me. Why did that get changed? Was it a trade-off for the 40 meter range? If so, i would rather take 30 meter range and no debuff over longer range but high downtime. Just my 0.02$ there.

 

Partly because if you're literally bringing a player to a raid for one ability, you're not doing it right.

Blood thirst is good, but it's not that great. My guild has cleared HM Scum and HM TFB without marauders. In fact we only ever had ONE marauder for our 8 man progression group until recently, and his attendance was spotty at times.], so we ran without a marauder.

 

so far, my guild cant get past Op IX in TFB SM without Bloodthirst Chaining.

 

Do you mean HM? Either way, if you can't clear it without Bloodthirst chaining (which implies your stacking marauders solely for the buff), your raid group has much deeper problems than the upcoming bloodthirst changes. I'd suggest your group needs better gear, or you need to start parsing dps on their rotations. That fight in no way requires multiple bloodthirsts on SM or HM. It doesn't even require a marauder.

 

No offense intended, I'm not being mean or elitist here, just offering some friendly advice.

 

My guild recently picked up a second marauder, and we have no second thoughts about bringing both of them to our progression group, regardless of the upcoming nerf.

 

The reason being? They're both skilled players who can avoid damage, use cooldowns, and know their rotations in and out.

 

Marauders still have more interrupts than a sniper or merc for bosses with multiple adds, and they have one of the best single target dps specs in the game.

 

Lastly, it's not bloodthirst that has the best raid utility on a marauder in my opinion, it's PREDATION .

 

I honestly feel our raid group gets better benefit from that, than Bloodthirst when we do have a marauder in our group.

 

When we don't have have a marauder, we run all ranged DPS (mercs and snipers), which is usually easier for the healers, but when we do have one or both of our marauders in our group, the boss fights are noticeably faster because they do a ton of damage and know their rotations.

 

Just my two cents.

 

I'm also happy with the annihilation buffs. I have an anni marauder, and that will certainly make her more fun to use.

Edited October 18, 2013 by CaulderBenson

[DocWookieChris]

I can understand the changes to BT and not wanting it to be abused in pvp, but it does not help with the "stacking issue." now it just makes it pointless to have more than one marauder in a raid group and instead of stacking 2 marauders and 2 snipers, it is just going to end up being 3 snipers and 1 marauder for maximum effictiveness.

[TFSJaBooty]

I am also the 2nd mara in a raid group trying our hand at progression. While I understand the need to throttle the amount of bloodthirsts in PVP and 16m raiding but 5 minutes is a long time to wait for a 2nd boost. I think if it gets brought in line with the timers of an adrenal it would work out best in the long run. Adrenals don't reset on your death or if the boss resets and no one claims that is an issue. I understand they aren't party wide but most serious raiders use them with bloodthirst for maximum gains.

[leeroyclarkson]

I came back to this game after nearly 6 months of inactivity. I re-subbed and LOVED the changed to ops and group finder, I am no longer playing pvp everyday to get gear anymore, I exclusively do ops now.

 

I understand your need to fix undying rage for its abuse in pvp, however, as someone who parses his damage, switches mods and enhancements out, and collects every datacron to provide the absolute most dps I can to my ops group, this is going to get me killed. I don’t run with vent or teamspeak and am glad I don’t have to. (I loathed how WoW added a voice chat within the game and suddenly I can’t just play, I have to talk to be able to come along for ops.) So without being able to tell my healers to get ready for me to die, I can’t confidently do as much damage as possible in Nightmare Mode Ops. This is going to make this skill useless for me. I have a long track record of pulling aggro of some less than geared tanks, even my ops tanks sometimes. But I always have undying rage + a medpack to make my healers not have to crap their pants when I tankuder. I ALSO cannot count the amount of times I have been 1 of 3 people left alive and that skill has allowed me to tank the boss as the last 1% of his health goes down.

 

Can’t you make it that it only prevents 50% in pvp and 99% in pve? There are a lot of skills that change effect within pvp. Or make it with a 5 min cooldown and no health penalty? I don’t care, I don’t use it often, but when I do, its life or death of the raid.

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

No offense man, but while I and everyone else agree the bloodthirst debuff is terrible, your example is uh...bad. You have other issues to worry about if you can't get past OP IX in SM.

 

Most of our raid group is in 66/69 and the rare 72. So, it's not gear, and everyone knows the fight, SM Op IX just loves to rubber-band with the stupid adds... Like one time we got the first 2 cores down, then it spawned like 30 adds. and the adds burnt us to a crisp. I dont know why, but the game just loves to rubber-band on that fight. We had 3 Marauders, 1 Sniper, 1 Operative (all DPS) 1 operative and 1 merc (Healers) 1 PT and 1 Sin (Tanks) For 8m Op IX SM. We got the first 2 down with 1 Bloodthirst and then the adds burnt us to a crisp. that's the scenario.

[Raansu]

Most of our raid group is in 66/69 and the rare 72. So, it's not gear, and everyone knows the fight, SM Op IX just loves to rubber-band with the stupid adds... Like one time we got the first 2 cores down, then it spawned like 30 adds. and the adds burnt us to a crisp. I dont know why, but the game just loves to rubber-band on that fight. We had 3 Marauders, 1 Sniper, 1 Operative (all DPS) 1 operative and 1 merc (Healers) 1 PT and 1 Sin (Tanks) For 8m Op IX SM. We got the first 2 down with 1 Bloodthirst and then the adds burnt us to a crisp. that's the scenario.

 

It's not a rubber banding with adds....whatever the hell that means. Simply put you're failing a dps check. You're taking too long to drop the cores which is why you are getting so many adds.

[Twickers]

Most of our raid group is in 66/69 and the rare 72. So, it's not gear, and everyone knows the fight, SM Op IX just loves to rubber-band with the stupid adds... Like one time we got the first 2 cores down, then it spawned like 30 adds. and the adds burnt us to a crisp. I dont know why, but the game just loves to rubber-band on that fight. We had 3 Marauders, 1 Sniper, 1 Operative (all DPS) 1 operative and 1 merc (Healers) 1 PT and 1 Sin (Tanks) For 8m Op IX SM. We got the first 2 down with 1 Bloodthirst and then the adds burnt us to a crisp. that's the scenario.

 

You're issue is DPS, you need people to get some better gear/learn their rotations better, Op 9 is more of a gear check and clearly your failing that check.

 

On the subject of this change, well I'm glad I only play my sentinel/marauder for fun and not seriously, this is gonna hurt PVE alot (gee PVE abilities getting ruined for PVP reasons nothing new here) undying rage/guarded by the force is a major oh **** button and this is just gonna make healers have to work even harder now, first topping them up after a massive nasty hit, then again after the health cost goes off, a more reasonable idea would have been to give that ability a 5 minute cooldown or something, I dunno.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Twickers

[Raansu]

You're issue is DPS, you need people to get some better gear/learn their rotations better, Op 9 is more of a gear check and clearly your failing that check.

 

On the subject of this change, well I'm glad I only play my sentinel/marauder for fun and not seriously, this is gonna hurt PVE alot (gee PVE abilities getting ruined for PVP reasons nothing new here) undying rage/guarded by the force is a major oh **** button and this is just gonna make healers have to work even harder now, first topping them up after a massive nasty hit, then again after the health cost goes off, a more reasonable idea would have been to give that ability a 5 minute cooldown or something, I dunno.

 

5 minutes is WAY to long. No DCD in the game is that long and there is nothing reasonable about that. Making it 2 minutes is plenty long enough. The additional change to how the health drop works is completely unnecessary and just kills the abilities purpose.

[Twickers]

5 minutes is WAY to long. No DCD in the game is that long and there is nothing reasonable about that. Making it 2 minutes is plenty long enough. The additional change to how the health drop works is completely unnecessary and just kills the abilities purpose.

 

I spose 5 minutes may be a tad overkill, I'm just not liking this change at all, I'm ESPECIALLY not liking it since I heal mostly and we run with at least two-three sentinels so this means even more damn work on my part.

[Sappharan]

If what someone wrote previously comes true (that GBTF simply takes 50% of total life), then it will be categorically useless. It will probably not be like that (I hope) because with as much as people deride and excoriate the developers, they're balance is pretty good. THIS was a silly idea, but we'll see how it plays out.

 

Some of the buffs are nice--but I would have far preferred that we not be nerfed at all than to receive these buffs.

 

Incidentally, EVEN WITH those cooldowns (as they are now), against a skilled player I am going to use virtually all or all of them in a 1v1 combat. This GBTF nerf will make the timing and skill required to play a Sentinel effectively a lot more precise. I guess I will have to see if I can survive this.

[Raansu]

I spose 5 minutes may be a tad overkill, I'm just not liking this change at all, I'm ESPECIALLY not liking it since I heal mostly and we run with at least two-three sentinels so this means even more damn work on my part.

 

No, what it means is sentinels will no longer be allowed to use GBTF unless the boss as near dead itself. The ability is pretty much destroyed.

[Sideblaze]

Very good quality of life changes for carnage/Anni. I like it.

[BrotherJohn]

Undying rage - honestly its not as significant an issue as people make it out to be. it just changes the mechanics of when you can use it. which for me makes sense. its a oh **** i am about to die and need to take out the last couple hundred health of an NPC or PC. nothing more nothing less. which is exactly what i think the skill was intended to be used asl.

 

Blood thirst changes. - while the debuff does prevent people from stacking one after another BT it really does not decrease the dps or desire to have one or more mara's on a raid. we are very and i mean very solid dps when the guy behind the mara has geared themselves correctly and knows his skills. any raid leader that does not understand the dps of a mara just should not be a raid leader simple as that.

 

rest of the changes are slight tweeks and buffs to skills and are welcome.

 

what honest they need to do is increase the range of all our skills melee by 5m range and saber toss/ scream by 20m period. there is no reasone why we are limited to such a short range when it comes to our toss skills and scream.

[Elyx]

Seems to me that they intend this ability to be a "save your butt" ability, and not a pro-active way to reduce damage. If you think about it...the lower your health is, the more effective this tool is. if your at full health, losing half is huge. if your at 10 health, losing 5 isn't anything compared to living for 4 seconds longer.

 

But I do agree with a previous poster, and I've said this about the jugg/guard ability as well...temporary health hurts more then it helps. in this case, it's the reverse, but essentially the same

 

but it's not completely worthless...it's just not a regular rotation tool anymore. it's a save your hide ability, much like the merc's ability they recently changed. it gives your 4 seconds to pop a medpack or have a healer get you past the danger line.

 

the health cost could be adjusted now though. perhaps 40 or 35% instead of 50. that way you are taking a hit for using it, but not so much that it nullifies the healers ability to heal you past that one-shot zone.