[Review] [Mara] Gift of monstrosity

[OldSerpenT]

How does more defense = less offense in regard to dual-wield? Slayer and Choppa both have dual-wield.

I feel like I'm being trolled by moderator.
If you spec slayer to have 700 toughness and 2500 armor (you'll have to avoid using career mechanics for that), use your renown points to reduce incoming damage, you'll sacrifice great amount of strength and weapon skill. Means your slayer will be tanky but will have really hard times killing.
Though, if you'll use 2h, you'll be able to kill easier as 2h compensates a lot of strength.

The complains are about "mara with GoM can't be killed". It comes with the price. It doesn't come with just switching to GoM.
It's same thing with Zealot/RP. You are not turning into full-scale DPS as you switch stance mid-combat. You just allow yourself to use stagger with bit less disrupt chance.

Choppa and slayer are bad example as their high-burst abilities are bound to 2h. Also their career mechanics reduces their survivability.
Better example would be def DoK/WP as DPS.

[ragafury]

WB shenanigans

Spoiler:

for wb gameplay you are not forced to run mdrain, and it only makes sense if you have more than 1 mara.
you can also replace Crushing Blows with Feeding on Fear + Growing Instability to do decent enough bomb dmg and contribute in killing stuff, how ever as mentioned, if you run 2 maras, go drain.
GF M2 adds a lot of desired burst to stop recovery and bury ppl.
one of the main reasons mara is kinda undesired is it's mdps nature which makes him less valuable in certain situations for wb gameplay like: funnels, counter funnels, bridge and chokepoint pushes, range engagements, fighting bigger numbers cause you are forced to push to not fall behind in the morale game or have to retreat and so on.
one of the natural counters in wb gameplay is running IBs and distributing oathbound on keytargets, though I think we don't have to talk about how underused IBs are in general by order warbands comps and what's the average gameplay level for IBs is (Oathfriend is a fire and forget tool by most IB vods I saw when I saw some and buffs don't get distributed in a meaningfull way but rather stacked on one party member) in WBs.

the monstro stance itself, if we discuss now bomb wb v bomb is quite neglectable.
most of orders WB composition consists of AoE BW. other viable OR semi viable classes which act as a supplement and not main dmg are slayer, engie and as the bottom of the foodchain SW. The rest is straight not viable (WL; WH) for bombing purposes, if you build a ST party into your bomb WB things change again, though you still wouldn't start to focus down maras and work on soft targets how it's the intention of such a party.

means majority of classes do some kind of pure magical (BW) or composite dmg (engie).
usually you run 1x or 2x slayer, cause of there more fluffy aoe nature, matched or targeting a marauder they also fall even more off cause of the natural parry a physical DPS has via WS gain and value / overflow points that go towards it.

so overall, the physical DPS and MDPS dilemna goes for both sides and is deeper buried than maras monstro stance imo in wb gameplay.

1vX Shenaningans

Spoiler:

Since 1vX speccs are, as far as I'm aware not something that's really desired in a discussion about balance, it should in theory be excluded. However the "amount" of solo or mara + X running monstro maras is quite high from my observations while solo roaming if you take general population into account, same as ASW + X, same as guardian WL prechange at least.
than again, you could state that every duel build which is made to outlast an opponent is too powerfull..

6 man roaming

Spoiler:

with my limited experience as Mara in roaming parties, I personally don't see monstro stance as issue.
why?
monstro stance somewhat denies to be focussed down. Order has similar tools on other classes.
the counterpart, WL, has similar tools; not to man up like mara does, but in the mobility and kiting / kiting pressure off game.
Same goes for ASW kinda nowadays, at least from my theoretical obeservations (high parry and armor + mobility via whiling pin)

why it's necessary to not explode

Spoiler:

the class than even has by design low initiative, which somewhat got not properly highlighted in the whole discussion and has to make up for it with slotting a passive tactic / using RF set / RR investment or living on with a crucial weakness and ignoring that defensive stat and go balls to the wall.

drawbacks when shifting to monstro:

Spoiler:

though while switching to monstro stance, the obvious drawback is, that you can't do meaningfull ST pressure outside of TB every 10 seconds and you are trapped in that stance for 4 seconds or more spamming flail and TB while than also having to shift back to the desired stance and start to debuff and do meaningfull dmg again.

PvE Shenanigans

Spoiler:

as a quick sidenote: overall I don't see the point of "mara can tank PvE" which was somewhere made in the initial posts.
was in a grp where we tanked TM BL with an AM. is it worth an AM armor or healing output nerf? same goes for other classes which can tank quite ok in PvE but are not orignally designed for it; I hardly believe that a nerf for that is justified.

6v6 Isha me bruh

Spoiler:

a detailed 6v6 discussion has to be done by other ppl. if it's even an issue in the 6v6 scene.

[dansari]

Spoiler:

How does more defense = less offense in regard to dual-wield? Slayer and Choppa both have dual-wield.

I feel like I'm being trolled by moderator.
If you spec slayer to have 700 toughness and 2500 armor (you'll have to avoid using career mechanics for that), use your renown points to reduce incoming damage, you'll sacrifice great amount of strength and weapon skill. Means your slayer will be tanky but will have really hard times killing.
Though, if you'll use 2h, you'll be able to kill easier as 2h compensates a lot of strength.

The complains are about "mara with GoM can't be killed". It comes with the price. It doesn't come with just switching to GoM.
It's same thing with Zealot/RP. You are not turning into full-scale DPS as you switch stance mid-combat. You just allow yourself to use stagger with bit less disrupt chance.

Choppa and slayer are bad example as their high-burst abilities are bound to 2h. Also their career mechanics reduces their survivability.
Better example would be def DoK/WP as DPS.

I'm not trolling you. I'm legitimately trying to understand your perspective when you said "dual-wield helps with the tankyness of Mara, which means more defense and less offense." Yes, dual-wield gives you +10% parry, but that doesn't mean that you will innately have less offense because you have +10% parry.

Besides that, I'm still not following your analogy. You say GoM comes with a price. What price? Not being able to deal damage until you switch back to Sav? Same can be said for SL/CH dropping rage, ASW self punting, etc. The argument is then: does the "price" (AKA the trade-off between enemy focus and dealing damage) become too great with a 100% armor pen reduction proc compared to other career mechanics? How does GoM compare to a CH dropping rage, for example, when getting focused by enemy (armor debuff + m1, as is the example being floated)? Is it better, or worse? If it's better, by how much is it better? Does it make sense for it to be that way? etc etc etc

[OldSerpenT]

I'm not trolling you. I'm legitimately trying to understand your perspective when you said "dual-wield helps with the tankyness of Mara, which means more defense and less offense." Yes, dual-wield gives you +10% parry, but that doesn't mean that you will innately have less offense because you have +10% parry.

Though, if you'll use 2h, you'll be able to kill easier as 2h compensates a lot of strength.

Besides that, I'm still not following your analogy. You say GoM comes with a price. What price? Not being able to deal damage until you switch back to Sav? Same can be said for SL/CH dropping rage, ASW self punting, etc. The argument is then: does the "price" (AKA the trade-off between enemy focus and dealing damage) become too great with a 100% armor pen reduction proc compared to other career mechanics? How does GoM compare to a CH dropping rage, for example, when getting focused by enemy (armor debuff + m1, as is the example being floated)? Is it better, or worse? If it's better, by how much is it better? Does it make sense for it to be that way? etc etc etc

Please, don't do that.
I didn't say "GoM comes with a price". I said that high survivability comes with a price. You are not becoming immortal by just switching to GoM when you don't have particular set of items, RR perks, tactics and talismans on you, but you're losing a lot of pressure. Mara with GoM is not dangerous. He doesn't deal damage, he puts himself in a shell to not get smashed. Almost same as using detaunt. 100% armor penetration reduction, yeah, sounds awful on a paper, but how much armor penetration you actually have? Any close to at least 50% to actually feel the difference? I admit, WH would suffer to plant a good backstab on mara under GoM, though I would question that WH why he doesn't look for softer targets, like some non-melee classes.
I'm confused now... Why do we discuss other classes mechanics here?

Great post from ragafury btw.

[dansari]

I didn't say "GoM comes with a price".

The complains are about "mara with GoM can't be killed". It comes with the price.

Again, your argument centers around "monstro Mara deals no damage" but the point is the damage being dealt to Monstro Mara with GoM proc active. To answer your question, yes, my ASW can easily sit at >50% armor pen. So can Slayer. Is it fair that GoM negates 950 weaponskill, which normally comes at the cost of at least one tactic (standard one that gives +stats but -toughness)? If that's not a reasonable comparison in your eyes, what is? I'm just trying to foster discussion.

Other class mechanics are brought up as a baseline comparison to what currently exists as it relates to the proposal. Conversely, "this class has X so I should have Y" isn't part of the discussion, nor is "if this class gets X, this class should get Y to compensate."

Edit: I know anyone can spec to have defensive renown. Anyone competently playing the game probably has at least a little bit of defenses through renown. It's clear that speccing defensive renown means you lose out on offensive renown. But that is not what we're discussing -- it's a wash between classes.

[OldSerpenT]

I didn't say "GoM comes with a price".

The complains are about "mara with GoM can't be killed". It comes with the price.

Again, your argument centers around "monstro Mara deals no damage" but the point is the damage being dealt to Monstro Mara with GoM proc active. To answer your question, yes, my ASW can easily sit at >50% armor pen. So can Slayer. Is it fair that GoM negates 950 weaponskill, which normally comes at the cost of at least one tactic (standard one that gives +stats but -toughness)? If that's not a reasonable comparison in your eyes, what is? I'm just trying to foster discussion.

Other class mechanics are brought up as a baseline comparison to what currently exists as it relates to the proposal. Conversely, "this class has X so I should have Y" isn't part of the discussion, nor is "if this class gets X, this class should get Y to compensate."

Could you please include next sentence in quotes? You're the moderator after all. Please, follow the rules. Stop cherry-picking.
Again, the price for high survivability consists of two parts: losing damage output for at least 4 seconds, and spec.
You not gonna suffer killing marauder if that marauder doesn't have a lots of toughness and armor.
Though it's great to hear that not all slayers are going str/melee crit, ignoring weapon skill. I wander if it's ever possible to convince choppas to do so.

[dansari]

Could you please include next sentence in quotes? You're the moderator after all. Please, follow the rules. Stop cherry-picking.

I saw your "high survivability comes with a price" comment. Let's explore it, if you'd like.

- Set of items. Any class can spec with defensive gear or offensive gear. That's clear, and a wash across all classes given the choice of gear sets available.

- RR perks. Again, a wash across all classes.

- Tactics. This is interesting. Would you argue that GoM is less/more useful with specific tactics slotted? Genuinely curious.

- Talismans. Again a wash.

So, exploring your perspective, my understanding of your argument is that high survivability is a choice made by most classes before the fight begins (with tactics less so, but pretty much). Would you agree? The only difference across classes is how they deal with pressure. Which brings me back to my point: is GoM too strong of a defensive capability for the class? Compare it to SW, who gets 2x armor from Assault, or to SL/CH, who drop rage when being focused. My opinion is that it is.

[OldSerpenT]

My point is that GoM doesn't save low RR maras for the reason of lack of RR perks, stats and equipment.

If you don't have armor, it doesn't matter how much armor penetration GoM reduces, right?
Means, if you actually plan to utilize GoM to its' full potential, you combine sets and put talismans to increase armor and sometimes sacrifice attacking stats. Also you stack up toughness, because besides physical attacks you're suffering from casters. You're making your mara really tanky so he would be useful in warband as a morale drainer, but he deals insignificant damage, because you sacrificed his attacking stats in favor of survivability so he could fulfill his purpose, because he will go into the fry and expose himself as melee does.
Why do I mention casters? Because that's the main component of a bomb-squad and a bomb-squad is a most popular group setup for RvR.
For this type of marauders GoM is overperforming on defense side for the price of significantly lower damage output. Same as tanks have shields and stack up defensive stats, and sacrifice their damage output for survivability and utility.

If mara doesn't (or can't because of low level) stack armor and toughness, then this mara is Savage/Brutality, which means when he switches to GoM he deals insignificant damage as most abilities require certain mutation and are not available with GoM.
For this type of marauders GoM moderately increases survivability and moderately reduces damage output.

[dansari]

Totally agree. More toughness/armor in gear = less str/weaponskill or whatever, which is the obvious trade-off. I question whether it matters if GoM will save low RR Maras or not, since we're talking about competent play I'd say at least 40/40 should be the basis for discussion. But anyway, I wager we can't add much more to the discussion until someone wants to provide test data for us to compare.

[Aurandilaz]

Idea, if someone deems 100% armor pen reduction too strong (I'm still not convinced by page 11 -but I'm mostly a WB player so can't comment too much on smallscale scene), what if it were to be 75% armor pen reduction and 25% reduction in incoming magical dmg (all types)? It would not be totally nerfed, but rather allow considerable durability vs the enemy physical dmg dealers, and also make the Chaos blessed Marauding warrior survive a bit more against the Winds of Magic.

This would even help Maras against classes like SM (ever seen a SM who doesn't use BS?), dps WPs, WHs (bullets) and Engis, BWs, dpsAM/RP and whatelse - while only making it slightly less defensive against normal physical dmg spammers.

(numbers can vary, just initial thought)