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7.1 PTS "Defensive Roll" Marauder redesign


funfish

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Hello,

 

First of all: I had the chance now to test some of the reworks on pts in raids like r-4 anomaly hm and some other nims and i have to say there is at least one bad rework going on atm.

 

your decision to rework aoe damage reduction on every class in general is not a bad thing. I think if it is good and fair designed along all classes it would be pretty fine.

So: on current live patch all range classes lost their aoe damage reduction compared to 6.0. Now all melee dps just have temporary aoe damage reduction. This is in general ok because range classes are not restricted to ability range so it makes sense to give melee dps temporary aoe damage reduction because they need it when they have to commit to bosses in raids with less range more often.

 

But in detail there is a really big issue and uptime gap for the marauder compared to other melee dps. thats because of the following redesign for annihilation and carnage:

 

The “Defensive Roll” passive mod has been redesigned to do the following:

“Increases internal and elemental damage reduction by 3%. In addition, activating Bloodthirst reduces the damage you take from area effects by 30% for 20 seconds.”

 

Juggernaut gets for 15 sec 60% aoe damage reduction every 45 seconds on threatening scream

Assassin gets for 15 sec 60% aoe damage reduction every 45 seconds on mass mind control

Powertech gets for 15 sec 60% aoe damage reduction every 45 seconds (on pyro even all 35 seconds) on sonic missile

Marauder gets for 20 sec 30% aoe damage reduction every 5 minutes on bloodthirst (raidbuff) and only then if you are the marauder who pulls bloodthirst and not another one in the group that would give you a 5 min debuff for bloodthirst

 

-> although the marauder has like the juggernaut the most 4 meter abilities (most abilities with very short range) those classes have to adjust in raids in a much more difficult way because of that. But you decided to give him only 30% and attach this to a 300s cd raidbuff which does not make sense at all and compared to all other melee dps it's only half the aoe damage reduction for even 7 times less uptime.

 

The solution: give the marauder also 60% aoe damage reduction and attach this to an ability with comparable uptime (for example: during predation (for 10 seconds every 30 seconds) or during cloak of pain duration (for maximum 30 seconds every 60 seconds) to provide the same aoe damage reduction with the same flexibility other melee dps already have (60% aoe dr during predation actually seems perfect because it would be literally the same uptime (10/30 on mara and 15/45 on other melee dps is in both cases exactly the same uptime (1/3)) so that it is not worse and also not better but just fair for all melees. also predation makes more sense because you use it not just in either gap closing or escaping situations but also for specific boss commitment situations that are often combined with incoming aoe damage. -> This would totally compliment the intended experience of the combat style which is an agile very close combat style and it would make it competitive while sustaining this playstyle.

 

There is no way to justify 60% aoe damage reduction every 35 sec on Pyro Powertech which has almost only 10 meter damage abilities when the marauder gets just 30% every 5 minutes with luck which needs more commitment with almost only 4 meter abilities.

 

Thanks for reading!

Edited by funfish
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I would like to also see a consistent solution for the aoe damge reduction situation. If you either remove aoe dr for all melee classes or give them all the same. But an inconsistent solution where marauder has his aoe dr in the raidbuff that can only be used once every five minutes and only gives 30% is not really fair copared to the other melee classes.

 

Especially if you play two marauders in one bossfight, only one can get the aoe dr every five minutes. So a change would be nice and help the game to be more balanced.

Also fights like nahut or apex without an consistant aoe dr will be really awfull or even unplayble in nightmare.

There are other classes that do not even have an aoe dr. If you want to have a big variety in classes that you can bring to the highest difficulty of gameplay in this game you have to make consistent changes. Otherwise you will have classes that are you unplayalbe. If that is the intention which whom you patch than i will be silent.

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The fact that other combat styles have something is irrelevant, and you can see this by applying it to other situations. Why don't all melee specs all have heavy armor as well? How is it fair that Assassins are stuck with light armor while Juggs and PTs get heavy armor?

 

BioWare has said that they don't want every single combat style to have AoE DR and they did take steps towards that with 7.0 by fully taking it away from some combat styles. BioWare seems to be treating AoE DR as the same as a regular DCD for balance purposes through the conversion that Entrench and Jugg AoE Taunt are DCDs that are effectively equivalent to 30% passive AoE DR.

 

With Defensive Roll, you have to compare defensive capabilities more holistically across combat styles. PT and Assassin have to give up fairly substantial DPS boosts to take AoE DR and both of them have more situational DCDs compared to Marauder where every single one of their cooldowns works on all damage and has pretty high uptime. Operative, especially Concealment and Medicine, are in a tricky spot where their survivability is a fair bit worse (if you want to keep with the melee theme). They have no access to AoE DR at all.

 

Snipers still have their AoE DR, but they don't have it as often or have to give up ballistic dampers. They also lost all of their self-healing. Sorcs and Mercs also don't have access to AoE DR. There are only some fights where melee take more damage than ranged, so BioWare has to be careful to avoid making melee too strong compared to ranged where they don't have differences (and they should work to make the DTPS more consistent, if different, like lava should do more damage in Gharj).

 

I do agree with the concern about only 1 Mara being able to benefit from the DR at a time because it's tied to Bloodthirst, but Sorcs and Mercs have to make similar sacrifices with their raid buffs since they're locked in the ability tree, so BioWare may not see a problem with it. If this was unforeseen, BioWare could tweak it by applying it to Frenzy instead.

 

Overall, Marauder will still be very capable, especially Annihilation in PvE content even without AoE DR thanks to their potent DCDs. Juggernaut and Operative will really be the only survivability outliers IMO. Operative could be fixed by giving them AoE DR and Juggernaut is tricky to fix because their survivability performance is so different depending on the content. For example, Juggs were super strong in unranked PvP in 6.0 while they were one of the weakest in ranked. Regardless, I suspect that Jugg will see some survivability nerfs at some point as well because as I understand it, they're still strong in unranked (though not as busted) and they will likely be the best for survivability in PvE as DPS after these changes by a substantial margin.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Comparing classes is fine, but you put things in a vacuum.

Sentinel/Marauders have access to Rebuke/Cloak, passive self healing and a bunch of damage reductions baked in. I don't like much that AoE damage reduction is so valuable and then yeet it from everyone but the changes are understandable.

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