Sentinel/Marauder 3.0 Discussion/Wishlist Thread

[Emperor-Norton]

Without some type of knowledge on how BioWare plans to increase the group utility of other ACs, I think it is premature to say Inspiration/Bloodthirst is too good.

The point of the thread is to get feedback for them. They also said they wanted to add some little utility to other specs.

First off, I like that Inspiration/Bloodthirst promotes DPS coordination. In most cases, DPS is a very individualistic. Inspiration/Bloodthirst is one of the few opportunities for the DPS to synergize. Also, I would rather see content such that a single use of Inspiration/Bloodthirst does not necessarily determine a kill vs a wipe.

So long as there is a DPS check, Inspiration will be used. It helps significantly for any shorter burn phase, which based on previous and current content is what they are going toward. And for a lot of Progression kills, Inspiration is definitely what determines a kill and a wipe.

Transcendence/Predation provides very little raid and arena utility. The speed boost is occasionally nice to have, and the increased defense is only slightly better. Still, both of these benefits are not essential to killing bosses or succeeding in PvP. In fact, I would suggest they are more of a crutch that is used when something else goes wrong.

Trans is pretty useful in my experience. Spamming it on Hateful Entity makes that fight laughable. It is nice on Brontes when doing Clock, avoiding lightning Fingers, and when transitioning after popping the first Hand. On Calphayus it allows you to meet the time check on the relics. Raptus it makes it a lot easier to survive dradle phase. I also like to use it whenever chasing a boss around that is hard to keep up with using base run speed. It is interesting that you mention Arena Utility since Trans is pretty nice in PvP when you need to play defensively, kite, or counter kiting.

Right now, 30 stacks of our Fury/Centering allows the use of one of Inspiration/Bloodthirst, Zen/Berserk, or Transcendence. The choice is effectively:

• a lot more DPS for all,
  
• a little more DPS for me, or
  
• oh **** someone screwed up let me try to save them or my group needs extra speed to avoid standing in fire.
  

 

With the removal of Inspiration/Bloodthirst, we are effectively left with only one worthwhile option for 30 stacks.

 

Now, let's examine the utility provided by the other DPS ACs:

• Sage/Sorc: Off healing & Pull
  
• Shadow/Assassin: Stealth Rez & Taunt
  
• Guardian/Jugg: Taunt & Armor Debuff
  
• Gunslinger/Sniper: Armor Debuff & Raid-wide Damage Reduction
  
• Commando/Merc: Off healing & Armor Debuff (if spec'ed)
  
• Scoundrel/Operative: Stealth Rez & Off healing
  
• Vanguard/PT: Taunt
  

I don't see that much here besides oh **** someone screwed up let me try to save them. Well, besides Armor Debuffs. Bioware has also been moving away from putting straight Tanking or Healing type abilities in the hands of DPS as evidenced by their changing of AOE Taunts.

Assuming no changes in the above, I believe we will be significantly less valuable to raids with only Transcendence/Predation, especially as nearly every other AC has a speed boost or high mobility action. And, if BioWare does increase the DPS utility of other classes we become even less desirable.

However their high mobility actions are not nearly as long lasting, powerful, or spammable. They are still in the stage of designing what utility different specs get and balancing them. I think any feedback on what the AC may want would be nice. Especially if the only reason people want Inspiration is fear of losing it in face of possible other utility, not any liking of having it.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Emperor-Norton

[Atlanis]

People believe Sent is fine in PvP? Yeah right, I wonder why there are no new people joining me while I run around in PvP in my "****** hybrid watchman/combat spec" <<<someone called it like that never having tried it. Works against 90% of the players and gets me at the top of the dps board (given there are no competent rDPS, StealthDPS around...), but is just not as brain-afk easy medalfarming as my turretsage;-)

 

Switch the CDs of GBTF and Saberward, than change GBTF a little: grants 4s 99% DMG reduction upon the ending of the effect it restores 25% of the Max HP but not over the 50% Line. GBTF would have a 3min CD so you would see it in a 8 Man PvP Match like 4 times, Saberward would give the Sents the Ability he needs to compete with the recently buffed Turretclasses in PvP.

 

In PvE he is, at the moment. fine, while it requires a lot of skill to outdps most ranged DPS in bossfights, its possible though......you healers just are going to kill you for giving them heartattacks....and you need to know how to play at least one tree awesomly and the other two on a acceptable level for nightmare;-)

 

We will see what 3.0 brings, I am a friend of giving the Sentinel some real unique skills. Howabout a "Healbomb" place a debuff for significant short time on a target, that if it gets heals damages the healer.

[TheRudest]

I do not really know the Sentinel names of abilities but as for Marauders they have the most "interrupts" of any class. So many in fact that you never run out as the first one will come off CD while using the last one. You have your Interrupt, your Force Choke, Your Scream that is a Mez, you can use Force Camouflage before a caster is done casting causing their cast to fail and you also have Force Charge that interrupts any ability. That is FIVE interrupt abilities making it very difficult for a caster to get anything useful off on a Marauder.

 

That being said, I would LOVE Vengenace Juggernaut's "Force Charge, next ability uninterruptible ability" on my Marauder ESPECIALLY since the cool down on Ravage is so frickin long on a Mara! Mean while, Vengeance Juggernaut can use Ravage far more often and it HITS HARDER! GRRrrr!!!!

 

WTB Vengeance Marauder Spec! Let's get rid of Smash spec for Vengeance. THANKS!!!

 

Ok, this is simple situation in pvp against sorc/sage. We can interrupt first cast with charge, second cast with kick, but after we will be kicked off on some distance, or stunned. Using force camouflage (in first situation) makes sent invisible and free of any root (combat/carnage perc), and he can charge again. After that sent will be stunned, ok, we still have our free-from-any-control ability, using it makes sent/mara simple target to kite, because all our abilities on the CD. Than you know what will happened: sorc kites sent, and he dies painfully (I believe that sorcs knock back ability have low CD, so he can kite us to death). Maybe I'm mistaken, but its the real situation on WZ. Most of our interrupt abilities can be use in close or medium range, so after using camouflage, or chock/stasis, we are unable to interrupt cast for some period of time, similar to charge CD. I believe that 1 stun or knock back ability (foce push with refreshing CD on force charge, for example) make sent/mara much better than they are now. Of course, returning GBTF to its normal state will be as good as giving us stun/knock back ability...

 

Btw, its only pvp against sorc. We still have sniper, who dont afraid of interrupting, jugg, with tons of armor and OP self-defense, self-healing, and an assassin/shadow with stun, knock back and godlike burst...ah dont forget about operative, who has stun and awesome burst. So the only class sent/mara MAY BE can deal with is powertech, who, like others has stun btw...

Edited September 22, 2014 by TheRudest

[Ardarell_Solo]

. and gets me at the top of the dps board

 

. Howabout a "Healbomb" place a debuff for significant short time on a target, that if it gets heals damages the healer.

 

What I wrote in the other thread.

[Vember]

I do not really know the Sentinel names of abilities but as for Marauders they have the most "interrupts" of any class. So many in fact that you never run out as the first one will come off CD while using the last one. You have your Interrupt, your Force Choke, Your Scream that is a Mez, you can use Force Camouflage before a caster is done casting causing their cast to fail and you also have Force Charge that interrupts any ability. That is FIVE interrupt abilities making it very difficult for a caster to get anything useful off on a Marauder.

 

 

There are so many instant cast abilities that the amount of interrupts available to us isn't worth losing some kind of hard CC for, at least in pvp. Not to mention all the classes that are 'immune to interrupts' half the time.

 

Also, revert Watchman heals back to 2% on dot crit, and Watchman is desperately in need of some form of limited anti CC. This spec is far, far to susceptible to all the roots/slows/snares flying around, in both pve and pvp.

Edited September 22, 2014 by Vember

[justinplainview]

I agree with Mace, and have said many times before, get rid of Inspiration/Bloodthirst. I truly don't care for it, I think it's overvalued in a raid, and I'd rather use my 30 stacks on another berserk or a predation than active bloodthirst. I'm not trying to be one of those eltist dbags, but bloodthirst is a raid crutch, I don't care for it, I'd rather have a different ability, or make bloodthirst a personal cooldown that doesn't buff the raid. My two cents. Honestly, Marauders/Sentinels are in SUCH a good place right now as a class that I truly don't believe we need much for a 3.0 wishlist. I mean, sure, give me a cleanse and it's all ogre, but seriously. I'm interested to see what they will do for 3.0 with our class.

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

For 3.0 here's my wishlist

 

Combat/Carnage:

 

1. Give back our Double Gore/P-slash... That was what made the spec fun and bursty, i dont like the new 10.5s CD as it makes my rotation all wonky even using the new rotations i feel it doesnt flow like it used to...

 

2. give us 1.5s of CC immunity when Gore/P-Slash is activated, this would let us use at minimum Blade Storm/Force Scream in our P-slash/Gore section.

 

3. Give us more acrobatic skills... Ataru Form says it's an Acrobatic Stance, yet we have like no actual acrobatic skills... Take watchman's Leap skills, and give them our reduced CD Battering Assault/Zealous Strike and i would be happy, our Focus Generation would also be much better.

 

Watch/Anni:

 

I cant think of anything except maybe better focus gen?

 

Focus/Rage:

 

1. more Single Target damage, boost the damage on Force Lash to actually impact something... boost the damage on Force Crush/Exhaust and Vicious Slash/Slash.

 

2. Revert the Auto Crit nerf for PvP, that was pointless... Smash deals less damage than one Flamethrower with 3 Stacks of PFT in PvP now, and that has a huge slow on it...

 

3. Revert the Target Needed to Smash nerf for ALL Warriors/Knights, that nerf is crippling in early levels and especially crippling in PvP... Either, this or reduce the focus cost of Sweeping Slash to 0 and reduce it's damage by like 30%.

[Fazaani]

I must say that as long as there aren't pure dps classes on spot 1 and 2 on leaderboard's i feel smth is wrong.

[K_osss]

I'd like to see a bit more complexity put back into the Combat specilization. I'm not advocating the RNG that it had previously. Waterboy and KBN put up a solution on the PTS that I liked. It involved allowing ataru strikes to build stacks that would reset precision slash. This allowed for more dynamic timing of Precision Slash depending on the situation. I'd liked the flexibility that the pre-2.10 allowed but I didn't like the chance of it not working. I like the current spec not being reliant an essentially any kind of odds but it's more inflexible that what we had previously.

[Leafy_Bug]

All I want for X-Mas is more Merciless Slash stacks!

[Adovir]

All I want for X-Mas is more Merciless Slash stacks!

 

Reduce cost of MS to 0 and max stacks of 8

[Emperor-Norton]

All I want for X-Mas is more Merciless Slash stacks!

With a 6 second Cauterize, that makes about no sense.

[justinplainview]

most of these suggestions read as things people who don't understand the class might say. We don't need more Merciless stacks, double gore isn't necessary for Carnage, the flat cooldown gives you more DPS sustained and you are STILL bursty. It does not take more skill to handle old Carnage. It just doesn't. I admit to being initially frustrated that the QoL changes ultimately altered the general feel of Carnage as a spec, but the people who are longing for old Carnage most likely didn't have a mastery of the old way the spec worked to begin with, so I just don't understand why everybody is crying for double gore. Double gore was awesome, I'm not against seeing absurd numbers in burst windows, but double gore had a side effect of doing basically no damage after your double gore for a whiiiiile. It was a burst that was unacceptable in that you could go from having double gore to having solo gores with no procs to save your life.

 

TLDR I will never understand 99% of the people in Marauder forums, it's like I'm playing a different class somehow (and I don't mean better).

 

Actual QoL changes? If you want to give Focus/Rage their Smash crap back/revert the nerf, fine, but take their single target DPS down a bit. It doesn't outparse Carnage, but it's only a 100-200 behind, and it's ahead of just about every other AOE spec in the game by a dumb amount (Rage Jugg it's ahead of by about 400, it's ahead of AP by 300+, etc)

 

Maras are in a great place in PVE and PVP. All I want is a fun ability to be added so that I have to make more decisions in my rotation. Make me decide between using Vicious Throw and insert-new-ability-here. IDK, something.

[Raansu]

lol @ the carnage people. Carnage is perfect now. No more rng, gore lines up perfectly with all cd's.

 

@the bloodthirst suggestion.

 

You are literally asking to simply remove marauders from all forms of end game pve. There would be zero incentive to bring a marauder along if bloodthirst was removed. Why bring a melee when you can bring a range that does equal to or more damage while taking less damage on most fights? Bloodthirst is the incentive to bring a melee in and to deal with the major drawbacks of being a melee in a raid.

 

So ya, that is singlehandedly the worst suggestion ever.

[K_osss]

I agree that the current combat is better sustained than previously. I also don't suggest the previous incarnation took more "skill" to play. What I would like is simply this. The ability to control a proc that resets gore cooldown.

 

 

Whether the player wants to proc it every 10.5 seconds apart or 4.5 seconds apart is up to the player. If I proc it every 10.5 sec it would be identical to how things operate currently. If I proc it at 4.5 seconds I'll have a long wait with lower dps and from a sustained dps standpoint it would be lower overall but due to fight mechanics or in pvp scenarios this may be the right move.

[Emperor-Norton]

@the bloodthirst suggestion.

 

You are literally asking to simply remove marauders from all forms of end game pve. There would be zero incentive to bring a marauder along if bloodthirst was removed. Why bring a melee when you can bring a range that does equal to or more damage while taking less damage on most fights? Bloodthirst is the incentive to bring a melee in and to deal with the major drawbacks of being a melee in a raid.

 

So ya, that is singlehandedly the worst suggestion ever.

You don't bring a Ranged since the Melee does better DPS. This is no longer 2.2. Many groups have gotten to the point where their raid consists of 3 Melee and 1 Ranged, where in some cases 2 of these Melee are Sentinels (hence BT is a moot point to bring them). The fact is that out of the high parsing Melee (Assault, Watchman, Scrapper, and Balance) Watchman probably has the best tools for DPSing and is the most survivable. People are also taking Madness/Balance Shadows simply because of how much raw DPS they can do. BT is not a needed mechanic for Marauders, all it does is add damage potential beyond the strong DPS the class already does. I would prefer to just get rid of it and work the damage lost back into the class itself.

[Ardarell_Solo]

@the bloodthirst suggestion.

 

You are literally asking to simply remove marauders from all forms of end game pve. There would be zero incentive to bring a marauder along if bloodthirst was removed. Why bring a melee when you can bring a range that does equal to or more damage while taking less damage on most fights?

 

I'd say one challenge of playing melee is getting best DPS uptime possible. This is doable in current content to an extent that a well played Watchman Sent will not be outperformed by any range class on single targets.

 

ATM if you talk to progression raid leaders Inspiration is the reason they won't bring any MELEE class ELSE than a Sentinel.

 

You're talking about two different things here: Content beind designed in a way that it disadvantages melee classes. That may be the case.

 

The other problem is imbalance among the Melee classes themselves. And here Inspiration is the worst offender. I'd vow for taking away Inspiration to have better balance WITHIN the MELEE classes. Because everything you said about disadvanteges applies to all of them. Only classes other than Sent even don't have Inspiration.

 

So to balance things you'd have to get melee classes to one level and then make content more melee friendly and/or increase melee DPS for all classes in comparison to ranged DPS.

 

BTW: If you have more survivability issues as Watchman than say a Telekinetics Sage then you may be doing something wrong with your Def abilities...

[Raansu]

I agree that the current combat is better sustained than previously. I also don't suggest the previous incarnation took more "skill" to play. What I would like is simply this. The ability to control a proc that resets gore cooldown.

 

 

Whether the player wants to proc it every 10.5 seconds apart or 4.5 seconds apart is up to the player. If I proc it every 10.5 sec it would be identical to how things operate currently. If I proc it at 4.5 seconds I'll have a long wait with lower dps and from a sustained dps standpoint it would be lower overall but due to fight mechanics or in pvp scenarios this may be the right move.

 

How about no? In terms of balance the gore window as it is right now is perfectly balanced. Your obsession with a double gore window is ridiculous. It is not necessary and only originally existed as a poor implementation to set up for the vicious throw proc.

[Raansu]

I'd say one challenge of playing melee is getting best DPS uptime possible. This is doable in current content to an extent that a well played Watchman Sent will not be outperformed by any range class on single targets.

 

ATM if you talk to progression raid leaders Inspiration is the reason they won't bring any MELEE class ELSE than a Sentinel.

 

You're talking about two different things here: Content beind designed in a way that it disadvantages melee classes. That may be the case.

 

The other problem is imbalance among the Melee classes themselves. And here Inspiration is the worst offender. I'd vow for taking away Inspiration to have better balance WITHIN the MELEE classes. Because everything you said about disadvanteges applies to all of them. Only classes other than Sent even don't have Inspiration.

 

So to balance things you'd have to get melee classes to one level and then make content more melee friendly and/or increase melee DPS for all classes in comparison to ranged DPS.

 

BTW: If you have more survivability issues as Watchman than say a Telekinetics Sage then you may be doing something wrong with your Def abilities...

 

So you want to kill marauders raid viability because BW can't figure out how to improve the other melees? That's a rather vindictive logic.

[Ardarell_Solo]

So you want to kill marauders raid viability because BW can't figure out how to improve the other melees? That's a rather vindictive logic.

 

Whereas this is pure polemics - what you are writing on the forums clearly shows that you're too intelligent for that kind of dumbing down of issues :-)

[Raansu]

Whereas this is pure polemics - what you are writing on the forums clearly shows that you're too intelligent for that kind of dumbing down of issues :-)

 

What you're suggesting is literally what it boils down to though. If you remove bloodthirst then literally raid groups will have little reason to bring any melee along. Focus more on bringing different utility for each class for specific strategies over just straight up gimping one of the main tools to bring a class in raids for.

[K_osss]

How about no? In terms of balance the gore window as it is right now is perfectly balanced. Your obsession with a double gore window is ridiculous. It is not necessary and only originally existed as a poor implementation to set up for the vicious throw proc.

 

How about it was that way for a year with no balance problems. I don't care if you think double gore is overpowered. It was not. I'm not suggesting making it overpowered.

[Raansu]

How about it was that way for a year with no balance problems. I don't care if you think double gore is overpowered. It was not. I'm not suggesting making it overpowered.

 

It was also pure rng.

 

Having two gore windows and full control of your procs? Ya no, I'd rather not deal with that nightmare nerf that would follow immediately after. Carnage is literally perfect where it is at right now, lets leave it alone shall we? The changes that happened in 2.0 should have never happened, double gore should have never been a thing. The changes in 2.10 and bringing gore down to 10.5s is already incredibly strong and consistent. As it stands right now double gore is unnecessary and potentially game breaking which is why logically they removed it.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Raansu

[K_osss]

It wasn't overpowered before because it resulted in reduced DPS following the double gore dps window not because it was subject to RNG. Same thing would apply for it to be balanced in the future.

 

It's not a matter of it being overpowered or not. It's a matter of you not liking it and preferring the current system.

Edited September 24, 2014 by K_osss

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

How about no? In terms of balance the gore window as it is right now is perfectly balanced. Your obsession with a double gore window is ridiculous. It is not necessary and only originally existed as a poor implementation to set up for the vicious throw proc.

 

but, without it our burst DPS is hardly there... and you cant tell me that Combat is supposed to be the hybrid sustained/burst tree... if you are, i'm going to assume you are a complete moron. Combat is meant for burst, and without Double Gore/P-slash we have NO burst except for our first window. the second Gore window was there so we could have a mini-rotation of this.

 

[G > FS > M > G > VT > R]

 

that was our big burst section, especially if it had a Berserk/Zen inside it! now, we cant easily fit both VT and FS within 1 Gore, and forget about even TRYING to put Ravage in a gore! Double Gore/P-slash needs to return, or i'm done with my sentinel, i'll level a more fun class like Engi Sniper, or continue working on my AP PT.