Update on Sentinel and Marauder

[Kurin]

I went 6/10 on my Carnage Marauder occasionally switching to Fury until my team got stuck on Torque and I switched to my Vengeance Jugg. Now we're working on consistently downing Torque and progressing on Master and Blaster and I'm pretty much only using my Marauder for Underlurker so I can use Predation for the collapse while we 5 dps it because my numbers are much better on the Jugg. The content isn't impossible on HM for Carnage Marauder, it's just a lot of work and the numbers aren't very pretty to look at. Once we have at least 8/10 on farm I'll be bringing the Marauder back to finish gearing it to BiS. For my level of progression I've only found Torque to be very difficult to get past on my Marauder, and now that my team has the strat down I'm sure I could push through it in Carnage discipline.

 

So what you are saying, is your team is willing to carry your underperforming Marauder. That's very generous of them. It also exemplifies that bringing a Marauder is asking your team to carry you.

[ped_i]

So what you are saying, is your team is willing to carry your underperforming Marauder. That's very generous of them. It also exemplifies that bringing a Marauder is asking your team to carry you.

 

actually they said that he switched to merc after being marauder in progression till 3.0. Reading2hard

[Aztian]

So today i wanted to try something fun

 

 

I respect my Jugg tank with NO AUG's into DPS . with Tank gear and do you know what ,,

he doing more DPS in my marauder in full 174 gear and the best Augs and the best mods.

 

My jugg have more dps in my marauder do you know why? Dear Eric? no let me tell you, Maraduers DIE so fast and they downtime inside the warzone is at spwan point thats where they are using they time . not out in the WARZONE but standing waiting in SPWANZoNE.

 

you get target so fast and BAM you are dead. Dear Eric or what u are called.. YOU game is a JOKE! a gosh darn Joke!

and guess WHAT I LOVE MY NEW JUGGGGGGG both in PVP and PVE

 

 

 

MY Time in as Jugg Tank there is always something to do.

 

R.I.P MARAUDERS. PS i have not yet DIE to marauder or Sendt 1v1 as a jugg Tank or jugg DPS in Tank gear!!!!

 

R.I:P Aztian from almost 4 years ago from PRE BETA

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.

Through passion, I gain strength.

Through strength, I gain power.

Through power, I gain victory.

Through victory, my chains are broken.

The Force shall free me.

 

 

NOW i am Free......

Edited April 9, 2015 by Aztian

[Zeldoon]

People should stop thanking Eric for the response, or say it was brave of him to come and say this. It's his job to communicate. Why are you acting like he is doing you a favor ? It's **** like this that makes them lazy and not care. You guys putting them on a high pedestal and treating them like its a privilege that they post something. If you don't realize it, you pay them to do this. THEIR JOB. You have the right to *********** demand answers for their BS. Bunch of noobs here man. Enjoy wasting your money.

Pretty much this. We shouldn't be so grateful to get a response, as though this is a kindness on their part.

 

It's been 4 months since 3.0 hit, about time some feedback is being given.

[KalElc]

People should stop thanking Eric for the response, or say it was brave of him to come and say this. It's his job to communicate. Why are you acting like he is doing you a favor ? It's **** like this that makes them lazy and not care. You guys putting them on a high pedestal and treating them like its a privilege that they post something. If you don't realize it, you pay them to do this. THEIR JOB. You have the right to *********** demand answers for their BS. Bunch of noobs here man. Enjoy wasting your money.

 

Pretty much this. We shouldn't be so grateful to get a response, as though this is a kindness on their part.

 

It's been 4 months since 3.0 hit, about time some feedback is being given.

 

True but, what else are we going to to do to encourage them, even if their job description or not (even if it might be their own fault for this). The community is already Toxic and Devs have ignored most of the stuff for too long. We don't need to be grateful (We can give thumb sup and probably encourage for what it should be standard and hope more of the communication like this happens in the future) and we don't need to make any crazy demands but reasonable once.

Edited April 9, 2015 by KalElc

[Wriwnas]

(...) How about tomorrow for a live stream special event the combat/community team take a couple of sents/marauders combat/carnage spec and run the new ops on HM with parsec and show us their dps for the fights compared to every other dps class and then say its fine.

Then take combat/carnage to ranked PvP with. As they have an 80%+ chance of winning we should see some easy wins. (...)

Anybody that honestly doesn't think they are being carried needs to get their raid team to use parsec and then check their damage against all the other dps for each hm fight. Cause while you may think with the running and attacking and good use of rotation your more than pulling your weight it turns out your actually the lowest dps and have a much harder time just to contribute the least.

 

^^ What he said... I double dare you combat/community team.

But I guess since you are planning to nerf the rest of the "overperforming" dps classes, RIP poor carried pve marauders. We were a PVE (and pvp) endangered specie, now we will be extinct...

 

Simple, the encounters are not build for Melee / Marauder. U have to consider that as well. don't look only on the class.

^^In no other MMO anyone could fight with a lightsaber, so we are playing SWtor... but.. suprise! You cannot do that here either...Wanted to be a Jedi? Wanted to be a Sith Lord?... Nope! Reroll! Cause when we design encounters, we never consider melee dps! why should we? ....

Edited April 9, 2015 by Wriwnas

[idnewton]

Marauder/Sentinel PvP Viability:

As it presently stands, Carnage/Combat and Annihilation/Watchman are performing well in Solo Ranked and Group Ranked PvP, respectively. We target a 50% win rate for each Discipline in PvP

PvP Data

Our intent behind exposing win rates for Carnage/Combat and Annihilation/Watchman was not to suggest that they are our only data point for decision making. The goal was to express that, by looking at average win rates and overall performance, those Disciplines can be viable. Understanding, however, that in some of those cases it reflects only the best players in that class. Still, it does show that they can play at the top levels.

 

Now, you all brought up a really interesting fact, which is how frequently you see Marauders/Sentinels in the top of all overall ratings. It is true, in looking at that data point, that Marauders/Sentinels are definitely under-represented

We all make fun of Bioware statistics, but in this case for sure, this makes sense. There's no contradiction here between the word of the Devs and the numbers on the leaderboard. I'm not saying that because the Devs acknowledged the lack of Marauder/Sentinel representation at the top of the charts. That requires eyesight, not critical thinking. The important part is where the Devs said that the average win rate for (most of) the Marauder/Sentinel specs is roughly 50%. This statistic is possible even considering the ratings on the leaderboards. Not only do the OP classes most likely have much higher win rates (which the Devs are working to fix), but the lack of Marauder/Sentinel representation has very little to do with the capabilities of the class, when considering the average win rate.

 

When Dotsmash was discovered, PvE Marauder population exploded. The number (and percentage) of highly performing Marauders at the time jumped considerably. However, between the day before the spec was discovered to the day it was found, nothing actually changed. Players' perceptions of the class's capabilities changed, leading them to (correctly) believe that the class had more potential than previously thought. This lead more people to try the class, and thus a greater quantity of highly-performing Marauders (though not necessarily a greater percentage of all Marauders).

 

The same can be said here. Because there are OP classes at the moment, because people operate under the (somewhat justified) belief that Melee classes are underpowered at the moment, less people will be willing to invest time into practicing, competing, and winning with Marauders. This results in the exact situation we're in: an acceptable rating curve and win percentages across the board for the class, but an insufficient number of serious Marauder Ranked PvPers.

 

To recap, I'm not saying the Developers are faultless. However, really take a minute to think about what they're saying. The mistake they made was having a few overpowered classes, rather than many underpowered ones. This led players, in both PvP and PvE, to believe that the Devs nerfed many classes, instead of unintentionally buffing a few. From a Developer perspective, their solution makes perfect sense.

We do want to avoid just buffing other classes up, and instead need to focus on bringing down the over-performing classes. If we concentrated on buffing all other classes to the status of over-performing classes, we would create a power bloat that would make PvE decisively too easy and PvP time-to-kill too short.

Let's not take individual specs into account and just think about Advanced Classes in general. They could nerf 3, or buff 5. The logical move is to nerf the 3, especially if their numbers (both for PvP and PvE) assume DPS specs to be performing at the level of the other five. It is simply not logical to buff five advanced classes and re-balance PvE piece by piece and tweak Bolster to adjust TTK (we know how that ends), when they could simply nerf three classes and be done with it. Far less resources, exact same result (assuming the cumbersome roundabout alternative actually succeeds without leaving anything out, and given the history of bolster, along with the various problems with the balancing of the old ops, especially with the interrupt changes).

 

 

 

We would like to take this opportunity to discuss Marauders/Sentinels and their present state in the game. To do so, we wish to start by outlining the rotational design philosophies of the three Marauder/Sentinel rotations.

 

Carnage/Combat: Low Rotation Difficulty, Moderate Burst and Moderate Sustained Damage

Annihilation/Watchman: High Rotation Difficulty, High Sustained and Low Burst Damage

Fury/Concentration: Moderate Rotation Difficulty, High Burst and Low Sustained Damage

Playstyle of Annihilation / Watchman

As many of you know, there were changes made to the playstyle of Annihilation and Watchman in 3.0. This definitely seems to be a contentious change for some Marauder/Sentinel players. The last thing we want to do is to put a Discipline’s playstyle in a place that makes its players unhappy. We will keep an eye on this and look into possible playstyle changes in the future. We don’t want you to think that this is feedback that we are ignoring; it is just not something we will change in the short term.

Look, here's the thing. Up until 3.0, Carnage was the difficult spec, and Annihilation was the easy one. For whatever reason, the decision was made to switch these two difficulties around. This choice resulted in two unrefined and clunky specs. Technically speaking, yes, an arbitrary DoT added into the Annihilation rotation does make the spec "more difficult", but it also makes the rotation awkward and disjointed. Carnage, on the other hand, is just plain boring to play. I've mained a Marauder for the vast majority of my time playing this game. I switched in 3.0, primarily because the rotations are simply not fun.

 

Let's ignore Fury for the time being, it's its own beast, and the Devs already said they're going to tweak it. They wanted two specs, an easy one and a hard one. Annihilation prior to 3.0 had a solid, fluid rotation and was a relatively easy spec to play. Carnage, by contrast, was one of the burstiest specs to play and required significantly more skill, not only because of the more complicated rotation but because of the simple fact that your Berserk speeds up your rotation by 30%.

 

Sustained DPS is great, but most fights (old and new) favor Burst specs (as they should). Most fights should favor the more difficult spec. This not only challenges players more frequently, but also rewards skilled players more often. Leading into the new expansion, Annihilation should have remained the easy spec, and Carnage should have remained the challenging spec. Because this was not the case, it resulted in two awkward disciplines both trying to be what they aren't.

 

So where do you go from here? Honestly, I don't know. I know the decision you should've made, but I don't know how to fix the fact that you didn't make said decision. It's a lost cause to try to make Annihilation more difficult than Carnage. Carnage by nature is a faster, more difficult Discipline. Do what you will, but remember the basic characteristics of the specs. A leopard can't change its spots, and neither can a discipline. You tried using paint to change the colors, but as time goes on, the true colors of the specs are going to bleed through no matter what you do. You only have two options: kill the specs, or let them be what they're designed to be. Option 2, please.

 

 

PS: Bringing Fury back into the picture, why are you trying to make Carnage less bursty than Fury? Fury (or Rage, as it was prior to 3.0) was a moderately bursty spec, whereas Carnage was highly bursty. There is truly no reason to switch the two. Simply put, it's an unnecessary 'challenge' to the class designers, but it's a challenge which was failed, and miserably I might add. Once again, stop trying to make the specs what they aren't. Switching the difficulties of Annihilation with Carnage and the burstiness of Carnage with Fury simply results in.... this mess. Want to know why there's insufficient Marauder/Sentinel representation? Well, do you play one for fun? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

 

 

TL;DR - I underlined the key parts, skim those for the general idea.

Edited April 9, 2015 by idnewton

[mcpark]

Well this is sad not only are the mar/sents gimped they know they're gimped and seeking to gimp others. Yes yes we know it's broken but if everything is broken you wont notice.

[Wriwnas]

There is a well seasoned Marauder on my Ops progression team. He has played Marauder since launch and made many guides to all specs, mainly Annihilation. He considers the Marauder/Sentinel his main. Even for 3.0 he took the time to make an Annihilation compendium that actually works. Our Guild is 10/10 on Tos/Ravagers HM and he plays Merc... End of story..

 

Please, tell my brother in arms, that I share his frustration and his pain. For 3 years, I never played anything else than a (mostly anni) mara. I currently play a PT tank...

 

P.S. Could we have a link to that guide? or is it in a closed guild forum or something? I would appreciate it. Even if I wont obviously play with my mara anytime soon.. I would still like to read it.

[WheresMyWhisky]

Since they are from the Chandarin I reckon its oofalong's gide which can be found here

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1njmxrlejf3xx-pmqiUPdJBYCaFbvRiEWTAenBgm39k4/edit

[AdmiralTran]

Please, tell my brother in arms, that I share his frustration and his pain. For 3 years, I never played anything else than a (mostly anni) mara. I currently play a PT tank...

 

P.S. Could we have a link to that guide? or is it in a closed guild forum or something? I would appreciate it. Even if I wont obviously play with my mara anytime soon.. I would still like to read it.

 

Yessir. Here it is

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=791466&highlight=compendium

[oofalong]

Please, tell my brother in arms, that I share his frustration and his pain. For 3 years, I never played anything else than a (mostly anni) mara. I currently play a PT tank...

 

P.S. Could we have a link to that guide? or is it in a closed guild forum or something? I would appreciate it. Even if I wont obviously play with my mara anytime soon.. I would still like to read it.

 

Yeah, Ellektra is referring to me. Here is a link to the google doc version of my guide; it is also published on Dulfy's site.

[Wriwnas]

Since they are from the Chandarin I reckon its oofalong's gide which can be found here

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1njmxrlejf3xx-pmqiUPdJBYCaFbvRiEWTAenBgm39k4/edit

Wow! I didnt think of that... didnt make the connection...

Ofc I've already read that guide... and read and read and then read some more...

Even more depressed now after hearing that he s also playing a bounty hunter

PS. thanks for posting, I owe you a bottle of whiskey...

[Wriwnas]

Yeah, Ellektra is referring to me. Here is a link to the google doc version of my guide; it is also published on Dulfy's site.

Thanks mate... for the answer and ofc the guide

[oofalong]

Wow! I didnt think of that... didnt make the connection...

Ofc I've already read that guide... and read and read and then read some more...

Even more depressed now after hearing that he s also playing a bounty hunter

PS. thanks for posting, I owe you a bottle of whiskey...

 

I'd like to still be playing my Mara, but I don't hate my raid group enough to make them suffer along with me

[Xenphon]

Well this is sad not only are the mar/sents gimped they know they're gimped and seeking to gimp others. Yes yes we know it's broken but if everything is broken you wont notice.

 

We are not trying to gimp other classes. We're simply trying to fix our class.

[mcpark]

We are not trying to gimp other classes. We're simply trying to fix our class.

 

Not you was talking about buyerbeware.

[Costello]

I do think that its important for people to appreciate the difference between how hard they are working and what results they think this merits and what they are actually contributing. Now I want to believe Parsec is lying to me, I'm maximizing my rotation and time on target my berserk and gore windows, use of adrenals etc etc. I may still need to learn to play sure but on a dummy I can get fairly good dps from Parsec. Then I get in to a raid and my dps seems to be worse than if I just used basic attacks, Im 6/6 and 192/198 gear using a full rotation working my *** off, Parsec must be lying. I've even put a ticket in asking if my stats aren't working and got told its a known bug and would be fixed. As it was a copy and paste answer I think its actually **** and go away.

 

So if you asked me without Parsec I'd tell you yeah Marauders dps is fine, I'm getting my rotation off maximizing gore/berserk I'm doing good. But I would be wrong. Having seen the numbers in response to all the other A/Cs that raid (no operatives bother) and they all show me up to be a complete burden on the dps check and they do much better when a non marauder takes my place.

 

Talk of defensive cool downs is equally misunderstood, on my rdps and I can get most melee trash mobs to half health before they even get close enough to attack me. Where as every mob my mdps attacks can attack him all the time. That DcD isn't a wonderful extra its necessary to maintain a similar suitability. While in a ops situation they are no where near as useful as being able to position yourself while still being able to dps. See how long you last with all your cool downs when the floor is on fire with Torque were as rdps can move away from the flames and even if torque is in the mild of it and still attack him.

[WheresMyWhisky]

I'd like to still be playing my Mara, but I don't hate my raid group enough to make them suffer along with me

 

I do

 

Hmm maybe that's why I have had to tank the last few weeks maybe the other tank isn't unavailable he is just secretly levelling a ranged

[Ardarell_Solo]

I'd like to still be playing my Mara, but I don't hate my raid group enough to make them suffer along with me

 

Eric! Much more than me losing my temper you should realize you can't delay the changes to Anni/WM when the guy who has written the best and relevant guides on the spec, has answered every simple and complex question with great diligence, basically vivisected the spec and every detail for years, the guy whose forum posts every relevant Mara/Anni player on my server has been following despite the language barrier, reveals he has rerolled. Man!!!!

[dvmcm]

This all makes me so sad. Mar was my first class to 50 at release. I took about 2 years off, my husband and I started playing again 3 months ago only to find out the Mars are pretty worthless.

 

No one wants them in Ops and in HM FPs it's so obvious that my lesser geared Sorc does more damage with much less effort. I simply can't stay on bosses for very long. I look at ranged casting away probably browsing the Internet at the same time while I'm working my *** off hoping we can beat enrage timer. PVP? I don't like being heckled by other players for even trying nor would I want to be the reason we lost.

 

It's with GREAT sadness that I'll be putting my favorite class on the back burner until Bio can really address the issues.

Edited April 9, 2015 by dvmcm

[mastervalkar]

As long as I play my Sent or Mara in Concentration/Fury, I am able to somewhat enjoy playing them. Even leveled up a Mara for the last two weeks (he hit 55 last night). I never PvP, nor have I ever been a big fan of Annihilation or Watchman, so these issues do not hit me as bad. Wish Combat was a bit more complex, but for now I'm okay.

[davidp_newton]

Eric! Much more than me losing my temper you should realize you can't delay the changes to Anni/WM when the guy who has written the best and relevant guides on the spec, has answered every simple and complex question with great diligence, basically vivisected the spec and every detail for years, the guy whose forum posts every relevant Mara/Anni player on my server has been following despite the language barrier, reveals he has rerolled. Man!!!!

 

Yep. When the guy who writes by far the best guide for the discipline doesn't play it any more due to the things the community has been complaining about then that really shows how much the cat has been put among the pigeons concerning this discipline. FIX IT!

[AnisaBadgett]

I'd like to still be playing my Mara, but I don't hate my raid group enough to make them suffer along with me

 

This.

 

My #1 mara is my favorite character in the game. When I've had a rough day, I want to come home and jump on things and beat the snot out of them. I love Fury. Or Rage, or whatever it's called now. I put my #2 mara on the PTS and enjoyed that a lot, but it's really short. So it's either Yavin til you puke, or something else I've done ad nauseum. [ I don't PvP.]

 

But I feel bad even thinking about wanting to take her on ops. And I still have an operative healer, so ...

Edited April 9, 2015 by AnisaBadgett

[Bugattiboy]

We don’t want you to think that this is feedback that we are ignoring; it is just not something we will change in the short term.

Translation: We have no intention of ever changing the playstyle. Deal with it. Here's some yellow text to hopefully distract and calm you down so that you'll forget about it.

 

They clearly have no idea what they are doing.

The sad truth is that they don't even need to. The Star Wars license prints money.

 

Please, tell my brother in arms, that I share his frustration and his pain. For 3 years, I never played anything else than a (mostly anni) mara. I currently play a PT tank...

Ditto for me as well. Watchman Sentinel since launch. The sole reason I made other classes for the legacy buffs. I barely play anymore.

 

I'd like to still be playing my Mara, but I don't hate my raid group enough to make them suffer along with me

That's how I feel as well.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Bugattiboy