A speculation on why the devs are incapable of balancing Sentinel/Marauder

[Skettitangles]

The devs use ranked pvp as their main source of data for class balance which is probably because, of all the endgame content it, has the least number of variables to take into account on face value. The problem with classes like sniper and mara is that with good healer support we can perform very well in ranked pvp. Without it, we are the least sturdy and most succeptable to being controlled and shut down from maximizing our damage output. Mercs have similar issues and even juggernauts can fail when up against many compositions that are weighted heavily by the stealth classes.

 

Dps nerfs to sorcs, sins, pts, and operatives have not been extensive enough to bring the pure dps classes above the threshold that would make sense to players and the defensive tweaks to sent/mara in particular have not been enough to give us a truly non healer dependent class to play in solo ranked pvp.

 

The matching system in solo ranked is incredibly flaky, random, and frustrating to deal with and one of the main reasons why it's difficult to find any sense of balance in the game. Stealth is just too much of an advantage. When you get 10 matches straight against 4 stealth vs mostly melee you start question the validity of allowing such an advantage in the game at all. But then you luck out, get a good healer in the group and feel godly against anything.

 

Given that it's our succeptability to taking high amounts of damage in both PvE and PvP at endgame with very few ways to mitigate it, I would suggest that the devs take another look at the baseline aspects of Sentinel/Marauder and improve our abilities that mitigate damage in a way that can keep us in the fight just that little bit longer without being so reliant on healers

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

Pretty decent theory. But one main problem is, people don't know how to properly play Marauders. I'm not talking rotations or anything like that. I'm talking how you actually approach a fight as a Marauder in PvP. Marauders are not designed to charge head first into a fight. They are a Support DPS. Meaning that you find fights that are going badly, and you turn the tide. You have that capability with abilities such as Predation, Bloodthirst, and Force Camouflage (Yes, that is an ability that can turn the tide of a fight.) Most people play them like a Juggernaut or Powertech, rushing head first into the first fight they can find, and then they promptly waste all their very powerful DCD's and get their *** kicked. And stop playing the class.

[Skettitangles]

Pretty decent theory. But one main problem is, people don't know how to properly play Marauders. I'm not talking rotations or anything like that. I'm talking how you actually approach a fight as a Marauder in PvP. Marauders are not designed to charge head first into a fight. They are a Support DPS. Meaning that you find fights that are going badly, and you turn the tide. You have that capability with abilities such as Predation, Bloodthirst, and Force Camouflage (Yes, that is an ability that can turn the tide of a fight.) Most people play them like a Juggernaut or Powertech, rushing head first into the first fight they can find, and then they promptly waste all their very powerful DCD's and get their *** kicked. And stop playing the class.

 

Absolutely true no argument there. Except that in 4v4 there's very little time or space to sit back, assess the situation, and do this. Let's say you're a single mara with 3 stealth on your team. You get focused, blow some cool downs just to reposition and hope you have something left to assist in a first kill before you're finished off. Or you are up against all stealth who have the initiative. You're forced to react to their attack pattern, again no choice but to blow a cool down early and hope that your teammates have sufficiently dropped the hp of an opponent for you to be able to assist with that kill. These scenarios are common on my server. Additionally, everyone doing pvp seems overly obsessed with total damage as opposed to total kills which leads to unnecessary trolling of maras who might do their fair share of killing blows but significantly less damage overall and are unable to farm healing (unless Anni) or protection points and end up lower on the medals earned. Don't get me wrong, plenty of players appreciate and recognize predation in regs which often leads to some mvps, but it's the exception to the general rule.

[jauvtus]

Absolutely true no argument there. Except that in 4v4 there's very little time or space to sit back, assess the situation, and do this. Let's say you're a single mara with 3 stealth on your team. You get focused, blow some cool downs just to reposition and hope you have something left to assist in a first kill before you're finished off. Or you are up against all stealth who have the initiative. You're forced to react to their attack pattern, again no choice but to blow a cool down early and hope that your teammates have sufficiently dropped the hp of an opponent for you to be able to assist with that kill. These scenarios are common on my server. Additionally, everyone doing pvp seems overly obsessed with total damage as opposed to total kills which leads to unnecessary trolling of maras who might do their fair share of killing blows but significantly less damage overall and are unable to farm healing (unless Anni) or protection points and end up lower on the medals earned. Don't get me wrong, plenty of players appreciate and recognize predation in regs which often leads to some mvps, but it's the exception to the general rule.

 

This. In arenas you don't have the time to sit back, neither does the enemy allow it, because if you have a sent/mara on team, you will be focused down first. It's so obvious for me, when I play alone after the CDs I get globalled and die in seconds, but when I play with a healing friend, I can be "invincible"(=can survive long enough to help kill the last enemy too). Seriously, what is the use of a dps who in most cases can only help in the first kill? Ofc ppl want to team up with anybody else who can survive the whole fight. What we need is self-healing (dotspec healing is laughable, 2%hp on dotcrits is needed very much, other 2 classes have nonexistent self-heals) or real stealth or much better mitigation (the old defensive forms and stack building without utility is needed too, but devs simply dont care whats needed).

[wstevenson]

After much trail and error playing a mara I can safely say I know what the problem with them is. In nearly all other games with a glass cannon melee class your pay off for having so little hp/damage reduction would be a very high defensive rating, meaning you'd just bypass a lot of incoming damage by dodging it. And since there aren't really any high end mods that have both defense, and say power, you can't really build that in the game without gaining a lot of unneeded end, absorb and sheilding.

 

I don't know how Bioware could even splice a high natural defense rating into the mara/sents without unbalancing pvp to the point where if you don't play them you might as well not bother, so what we have now might be the best we're ever going to get.

[Stanimir]

While we're going l33t stealth commando DPS looking for the weak point, a sorc is lawlercoptering around casting 9k hits with interrupt immunity and spreading better dots than annihilation with an essentially free 30m attack. Edited July 10, 2015 by Stanimir

[Aluvi]

Marauders and snipers suck in solo ranked because they offer mediocre dps output and none of the utiltiies of the other classes. We do damage, period, and our damage is not the highest in the game right now. PTs, Sins, and Sorcs all do much better dps and have tons of utility in the form of heals, taunts, better stuns, and overal better class balance.

 

If I were to compare SWTOR to WoW, the sorc is like some ungodly combination of Priest, Warlock, AND mage. It takes the best ideas from all 3 of those classes and rolls them into one, while having some unique abilities that none of them get in wow, like godmode during Barrier.

 

Compare that to a Marauder, which is basically a watered down Fury warrior, and we wonder why they can't compete?

 

BioWare made tons of unwarranted changes to the Marauder in 3.0. TONS. They lowered our offhand damage. Why? The offhand damage was so minimal anyway, and it has such a high miss rate that it's honestly inconsequential, so why did you need to lower off hand damage? Ravage got a huge nerf. It's no longer worthy of having a long cooldown. Undying Rage nerfed. Carnage - huge nerfs. Gore window shortened, does no damage. Retaliate, the only off the GCD ability that we can use during a Gore window, removed from the game due to "ability bloat". Deadly throw now requires multiple utilites that we simply can't afford to take just to get it back to baseline of where it was pre 3.0.

 

There have been positive changes, but I just don't understand how BioWare could look at this class 3.0, after having completely cut the balls off of Rage spec in 2.8, and say "oh you know, I think this class needs to be nerfed while we simultaneously buff every other class in the game, including the ones that were already overperforming in Solo Ranked. That sounds like a great idea guys! Let's make Marauder abilities hit for about the same that they did pre 3.0, while we make other burst specs capable of doing 50% more damage. Yeah I'd like to see PTs critting people for 16K, with lots of 8-10Ks thrown in for good measure.

 

We told them and told them, dot spread is OP. Sorcs too strong. PTs too strong. This was told to them again and again on the PTS. They. Don't. Listen. Their team does not play pvp, and when it does, it's an amazing **** show. Have you seen Musco stream pvp? He stopped, and frankly I don't blame him, because he was getting dunked on so hard it wasn't even funny.

 

The best thing BioWare could possibly do is to offer some of it's best pvpers jobs trying to balance the classes. I really think that if they took some of the top players and sat them down over a weekend, those players could come up with a balanced game in one weekend.

 

I think the other thing is, BioWare is just scared to death of creating another smash monster. People HATED Rage spec, even though it was a super high risk / high reward class, and it wasn't THAT overpowered. It did not deserve to have it's nuts cut off like it did. Small adjustment? Ok. But in todays game of the overpowered holy trinity (PT SORC SIN), I feel like old school smash would feel just fine and dandy for power level.