[Review] [Mara] Gift of monstrosity

[OldSerpenT]

Probably not by much, BW would remain dominant because of number of other factors.
During a brief few months of SW/SH bombing meta we had here, marauder damage reduction+healing from monstro proc was noticeable and was a well seen to pretty much everyone who encountered a half SH-half marauder warband setup. Still generally the more marauders you add, the undoubtedly worse Slayers and SWs perform.
This is a step in the right direction, might push for a bit more relaxed order wb setups, that could be enjoyed by more people, who want to be "competitive" and not be at a constant disadvantage.

Yeah, right. These half SH-half marauder warbands... That is what I see all the time. I'd say I'm tired of seeing that many freaks and squigs around me. They usually counter these glorious half engi-half melee SW warbands.

Most of this game issues stem from being designed around WB scale yet not quite balanced around it. Your so called counters work only in narrow situations of the smallscale minigames you play and are irrelevant in the real fights of RvR.
And even there the way to take down decent and guarded marauder who popped monstro is a nearly impossible task, given that the window of actually taking damage - when armor debuff+demolishing strike are applied, with guard punted, is pretty small and can be played around, unless outplayed/outgeared heavily.

The bottom line is that monstro mara doesn't kill. I know that 4 BWs or 4 slayers (mix and match) have enough firepower to kill guarded target with AoE. First ones with 2nd morale, second ones with blunt damage. Would your mythical 2 parties that have 4 guarded marauders wipe 2 bomb-squads? If your answer is "yes" then I would recommend you to call your warband of witch hunters to deal with these chaos freaks.

Quoting the rest would be a waste of time as it makes me feel more and more proud of our legions of marauders.

[dansari]

Again, the proposal isn't about if monstro mara can "kill" targets. If you'd like to make a proposal about the damage Mara can deal while in monstro, do that. This proposal is about the ability for monstro mara "to be killed," specifically regarding its armor pen reduction proc.

[Aurandilaz]

I have no strong feelings either way because I am a filthy xrealmer who plays both sides, but somewhat leaning in favour that 100% armor pen reduction is quite potent.
Especially considering how WE and Choppa are suffering still from being the weak links of a Destro melee train, either those 2 should rise upwards, or maybe Mara tuned downwards a bit.
And when Order has, Slayer, WH, WL, Engi, SW all doing physical dmg and only 1/6 dps classes, BW, is skipping doing physical dmg.

But reduction to 10% seems like a way too brutal nerf.

Suggestion;
Baseline of 25% reduction.
Each point into Montro tree gives 5% more. With 5 points into it, you have 50%. With say 10 pts,, you have 75%. Going max 15 pts, 100%.

So that instead of getting max reward for min investment, now you can still get decent gain from decent investment, or go as much into Monstro tree as you want, but not so that you get full benefits with 0 pts there.

However I would be careful with implementing this right now, considering how much meleetrains are "Order biased" with current ASW meta of debuffing enemy Init to oblivion and allowing Order ezmode domination in smaller scale fights with ASW present.
So despite having all that ignore against armor pen, Maras will keep exploding left and right when Order chooses to get proper dmg pressure together.

[dansari]

I am leaning towards keeping it a constant variable, rather than scaling with mastery tree, given that SW doesn't need to spec into a mastery to get the buffs from the stance either. I would also agree that 100->10% is too much. Ultimately that decision is up to torque, though.. whether he wants to change it at all and by how much.

[theoddone]

Spoiler:

1. Would the nerf of GoM actually change order setups? I am actually curious about this, becuase I highly doubt it.

2. Luckily for us the game is not balanced based on WB scale. Other parts have to be considered as well. If you took the time to read the thread you would notice that there are actually tons of counters against GoM. Kiting, CC, magic dmg, armour ignore abilities, armour debuffs. Somehow though, anything that is not part of WB meta does not count for you people.

3. People seem to have misunderstood the whole class mechanic of marauder. Becuase abilities are linked to stances there are trade-offs between swaping stances. You lose certain abilities by changing stances unlike other classes. Therefore there should be benefits and downsides to a stance. Actually using the class mechanic should be rewarded, not punished. The whole class mechanic becomes completely useless and restricting if there are no benefits to changing stances. It will simply be bad design if monstro stance is only supposed to be used in RvR and AoE settings. All the stances should bring something to every type of situation. That is why the loss of dmg and utility when going monstro actually matters. If the class mechanic is going to be linked to mastery then SW will have to be changed as well.

4. It is funny you mention bias. Becuase you are the most order biased person on this whole forum. Your posting history says a lot more than what your self-analysis does I am certain without a doubt that if I made a balanced proposal about for example Coordinated Strike on the WL you would post in that thread:)

Spoiler:

Probably not by much, BW would remain dominant because of number of other factors.
During a brief few months of SW/SH bombing meta we had here, marauder damage reduction+healing from monstro proc was noticeable and was a well seen to pretty much everyone who encountered a half SH-half marauder warband setup. Still generally the more marauders you add, the undoubtedly worse Slayers and SWs perform.
This is a step in the right direction, might push for a bit more relaxed order wb setups, that could be enjoyed by more people, who want to be "competitive" and not be at a constant disadvantage.

Most of this game issues stem from being designed around WB scale yet not quite balanced around it. Your so called counters work only in narrow situations of the smallscale minigames you play and are irrelevant in the real fights of RvR.
And even there the way to take down decent and guarded marauder who popped monstro is a nearly impossible task, given that the window of actually taking damage - when armor debuff+demolishing strike are applied, with guard punted, is pretty small and can be played around, unless outplayed/outgeared heavily.

Let's not kid ourselves about the whole misunderstanding of how stances and classes work. We aren't 16yo kids here and it doesn't take a degree in rocket science to understand that a baseline, complete and almost passive negation, on a scale of unlike anything other in the game, of an important to many classes stat given to the marauder monstro proc is far beyond normal in a bad way.
Reduced to 20% anti-armor penetration seems rewarding enough, given that you maxed out the Monstro tree that is.
This puts it in line with pretty much every other anti-penetration high uptime buff or stance in the game, bar probably melee SW/SH stances, who need those amounts of stats to actually work.
Thankfully monstro complete bs negation of WS is none of those things, can and should be tuned.

Sadly, its easy to see that you are just here to defend the broken state of monstro proc and nothing else, with arguments like I can still die to BWs, that people are just too stupid to understand the complexity of marauder and should resort to wasting tons of effort and resources to even get a chance at taking down a guarded lol-monstro-procced marauder in some kind of largely irrelevant minigame.
As far as the real deal, monstro proc matters, largely contributing to order aoe physical dps being irrelevant in the grand scale of things, but not solely the cause of it.
For the rest of pros of this broken proc or how it neatly interacts with things like AP/Moral drains, I suggest re-reading Tesq, who writes it plainly and clearly.

I don't mind coming of as bias to the likes of you. Heck, this might be indicating to me that I'm doing the right thing.
But you talking of biases tho? Might be really nervous about the state of your precious tools, that you happily and blissfully abuse to make those hilarious 1vX videos. Shame for them to go away, isn't it?

I think your observational skills are quite selective. The quality of my videos are decent, so that should not be a problem. Becuase if you actually took the time to watch my videos you would notice that I rarely swap to monstro. I run full offensive sav when solo and do not rely on the monstro proc very often. For my own playstyle, I don't have not much to lose from monstro getting nerfed. I defend it out of principle.

1. Don't nerf for the sake of nerfing.

2. Don't nerf something that is not broken. Especially, without any ingame proof. No proof has been provided yet. Currently this is just good old forum theory crafting.

3. Don't nerf an ability in a vacuum. Consider the whole class. Nerfing GoM will discourage people from stance dancing, aka using the class mechanic. It will reduce skillfull play and dumb down the class mechanic. As pointed out before you have to gear defensively to really benefit from it, a trade-off. The healing part really does not matter in group play. If you link the gift to mastery points you would have to do it with the other stances as well. Becuase why should one stance be linked and not the others? And a whole bunch of issues emerges.

I think a crucial issue to this whole proposal is the narrow-mindedness of many people in regards to different settings and play styles. Balance should not be made only in consideration of WB meta. Having some insight, and understanding that the game is not meant to be played in a single type of play style would do a lot of people good. I personally try to play solo, small scale, 6vs6, 6vsX rvr, and even WB sometimes. I recommend the same to you Scrilian, it might give you some much-needed perspective.

[OldSerpenT]

Spoiler:

Again, the proposal isn't about if monstro mara can "kill" targets. If you'd like to make a proposal about the damage Mara can deal while in monstro, do that. This proposal is about the ability for monstro mara "to be killed," specifically regarding its armor pen reduction proc.

Well, the whole thing of this topic is about "allmighty mara can't be killed". Yes, when you sacrifice everything for defense, and tank guards you, and healers make sure you don't die. You can spec any medium armor class to be like that. The problem of maras is that unlike some other class they can't kill when they sacrifice strength for toughness and wounds. And unlike some other class mara has to choose - either being tanky or being capable to kill. Also, unlike some other class, mara is dual-wield, which means more parry, that contributes to defense, but less damage from abilities, therefore reducing strength affects mara more than some other class that has 2h weapon and pet, who's damage output (oh paradox) is proportional to how hard it is to kill the master.

Guardian WL has nothing to do with GoM - Dan

[dansari]

You say "spec" but are you referring to actually putting armor and toughness talis in gear or is the "spec" the core monstro stance? Yes, you can spec any medium armor class to be tanky, but the core stance proc is not a spec

[GodlessCrom]

The spec is 100% gear and talis in addition to Monstro (if not also tactics.) Use monstro stance while in full offensive glass cannon spec and youre only slightly more survivable than any other melee dps.

If you go full deftard monstro, youre much tankier but deal less ST damage than a good 2h tank.

[adamthelc]

Again, the proposal isn't about if monstro mara can "kill" targets. If you'd like to make a proposal about the damage Mara can deal while in monstro, do that. This proposal is about the ability for monstro mara "to be killed," specifically regarding its armor pen reduction proc.

I can appreciate what you are doing. The problem is this ability can't really be considered in a vacuum. If it is, then it's not innately over powered.

If it was on a tank or a class that had no real value, it wouldn't be too strong. If it was on a healer it would be insanely overpowered.

Everyone is considering what marauders are capable of as a whole, you are just keeping them from actually making arguments to that effect.

The reality is that it's too strong considering what marauders can do. The problem is that fixing that issue could also be solved by changing something else about a marauder. Which is why you are trying to keep the topic focused on the ability in and of itself. I get it, but it is Folly in this situation.

Survivability has to be balanced on what else a class brings. That's why defensive tanks are able to have more survivability. As their value decreases in other areas, their survivability can increase. Because having more uptime on a lower value can be equal to a lower uptime on a higher value.

Continue restricting arguments based on a strict adherence to the rules if you must, but its counter productive in this case.

[peterthepan3]

Can anyone start to bring empirical facts into their rebuttals now, or are we to rely wholly on arguments akin to 'well it feels strong and I think it is too strong'.

I would love to see proof of it overperforming in 6v6-24v24. In solo encounters, anything can be considered OP; no place in balance discussions.

Perhaps some screenshots/footage of a ws slayer vs monstorousity marauder in group+ play to ascertain how overperforming it is (purportedly).