[Marauder change] patch notes discussion (28/03/20)

[Acidic]

This changes on marauder are best from long time!!!
Now Old Poor Uncle Idaj is kickin like mule. YIIIIHAA!
Very good job Dear Devs !

Gank patrol rides again

[Toriaz]

This is actually good news overall (especially for those playing small scale fights)
thanks, we will be testing a new marauder build from now on .

[Foofmonger]

My point was that, most solo mara play monstro. U see any sava/brut movie ? So its monstro that should be for wb play ppl use for solo ganking. U see any WL solo ganking in aoe left tree ? U win fights in monstro not from dmg but survi of proc heal.

Witch Elf can use all 3 trees for solo, including some cheesy full defence/regen builds (but of course without aoe tactic)

The reason why monstro is so popular for solo roam is because its proc is ridiculously strong vs any physical damage dealer, and the healing part is very strong too.

The real problem is that two other procs are kinda underwhelming. Im not sure if there were any changes recently though

Sigh, and this is one of the reasons you see so many Mara's do no DPS. This has been happening since live. Basically Marauders go for "balanced damage and defense" or "defensive" builds, try to run around in Monstro, and can't kill anything except lowbies who can't DPS them through the proc, or just sit around fighint S&B tanks forever.

Monstro can be used to solo roam, but you almost never want to stay in it (you swap to it when the proc is needed), and you definitely don't want to be morale/drain/wrecking ball spec. It quite literally has the worst single target DPS of any of the Marauder's stances.

Anywhooo - the other procs aren't bad at all, and the heal over time on Monstro is highly overrated by solo/new players (the actual strength of the monstro proc is the removing of enemy armor pen). Brutality proc never gets any love by people who don't do the math, but it's pretty good. Sav proc just got a scaling buff, again still pretty good. Now I'm not saying that if the devs were to buff these procs I would complain, but they really aren't the source of any of the Mara's issues.

Brtuality proc doesn't get any love, but it's nice. Here's what it does for example (using fake/random numbers). Let's say your mainhand swings for 400 and your offhand for 300. In WAR, your offhand has a 50% chance to proc from a mainhand swing. Let's say we have a 2.4 swing speed. Over the course of 10 attacks, we will hit for 10 mainhand swings and 5 offhand swings, which equates to a total of 5,500 damage. Now with the Brutality proc up, the offhand will swing every single time, and also will do 25% more damage, which pushes the damage from 300 to 375. This is now a total damage of 8,750 over the same duration of damage. That means without Brutality proc up, you do roughly 63% (in this example, I'd have to run some real numbers), of the auto attack damage you do in Brut spec in other specs. That's almost as strong as 50% AA tactic in terms of raw DPS gain, but there's a kicker - this scales with AA haste on gear really well because it's not an AA speed increase, but a raw damage increase. So you'll get the increase in damage applied faster due to the AA haste. It's just good overall. It's not flashy, but that doesn't make it bad. Also doesn't help that a lot of people don't know how the dual wield mechanics work.

[Jastojan]

Dmg of mara was in realy realy bad state compared to the other dps classes (I have 57 SW, 52 SH, 62 2h BO, 66 dps zeal, 66 sorc, 60 dok, 53 dps shamy, 50 magus, 47 BG so I can compare almost every destro class when it comes to posibility to deal dmg). I have to thank you for the changes. It is nice to see that you decide to NOT nerf WL for example and instead of nerfing other class you decide to buff some class. This can have much more positive effect on the players who already play mara (or WL). But, my mara is 61 RR only, so I am not as experienced as someone who has 70+ of course, but I can compare my mara with other destro classes on equal RR and equal equipmnet. I hope some experienced marauders will write more - I saw one topic about brut mara, but I played monstro and sav only, so I cant write about brut mara (just tried it few times). Mara was like ranged SH... but in melee world. Lowest dmg burst but useful in some cases. But you could not expect to deal decent dmg. So today it could be better a bit. Thank you for this.

[Foofmonger]

I think one of the things that's most interesting about this thread so far is that there are clearly two camps here:

1. The Morale-Drain WB focused Marauders who are upset.

2. Basically everyone else.

This makes sense though, and I can explain.

The first camp of "morale drainers", likely either is playing the Marauder on purpose to fill a specific role in their WB comp (morale drain), or has geared/played the Mara in such a way (tanky and debuff focused), that they do not need/want/understand the damage changes. They have a specific role they wanted the class for and to do, and now it's nerfed in that specific role. (I say understand for those who may be sitting around in tanky gear and not appreciating their newly improved damage).

The second camp of "basically everyone else" is probably playing the Marauder for a variety of reasons, but not primarily "to be Morale drainers in their WBs". They look at these damage changes and see "hey there is hope for a well rounded and balanced functional class, even if we aren't there yet", and don't necessarily want to Marauder's identity to be focused on being a "one trick WB pony".

Unfortunately, there's no way to make both camps happy and the Marauder not OP. My opinion is thus: For the Marauder to become a more well-rounded class, it's needs to not be just super strong in one tiny aspect of it's playstyle. I 100% agree with and embrace these changes for the Marauder. If there are other Destro vs Order macro level parity issues in terms of what WBs can do, then those should be balanced overall but that's a red herring overall, both of these things can be balanced. There can be Destro vs Order parity and balance, while also having the Marauder be a fun and well rounded class with multiple specs.

My Advice to any current morale/ap drain Marauders who aren't feeling useful: It's time to try out some damage, and see if you can start playing your DPS class... as a DPS class. Put on offensive gear sets and offensive weapons/jewelry, put STR talismans in if you need to. Don't go glass cannon but do go close to it, focusing on your damage (melee crit, etc..). Put on all damage tactics (try to get enough STR with gear/talis/pots so you don't need to waste a slot on Brute Force). Spec Monstro/Brut or Brut/Monstro for WB play/damage dealing (you want to go at least 9 points in each path, up to you whether you want Wrecking Ball or Wave of Terror), and give it a go. I've been having a lot of fun AoEing down clumps.

[Ekundu01]

I took my mara out for a spin yesterday to test out the changes. Speced him for brutality to pick up wave of terror. The damage on it is very nice and along with the increase in some other brutality abilities it makes for some nice burst.

Having a more controlled Morale drain that you can aim at the targets you want to hit is much better than a random proc that may or may not work. I don't know how many maras actually respeced to test out wave of terror but i think it is a much better version of the old morale drain because you can reach more players now because it reaches 40 feet instead of 25 and it is not a random proc anymore so if you hit everyone in front of you then you know you just morale drained them all and don't have to spam aoe in hopes that you drain them.

This change also makes it so you can still have aoe drain and still have decent single target dps as well. If you are 60+ you can get both drain and morale stop if you like to stance dance for wb play.

Brutality is almost not bad with the new version of wave of terror. The only thing it needs now is a better stance proc and convulsive slashing and unstable convulsions needs to go the way of the dodo or it needs a much bigger boost in damage because in the current state of it i think the BO Tree hit combo hits harder.

[Foofmonger]

I took my mara out for a spin yesterday to test out the changes. Speced him for brutality to pick up wave of terror. The damage on it is very nice and along with the increase in some other brutality abilities it makes for some nice burst.

Having a more controlled Morale drain that you can aim at the targets you want to hit is much better than a random proc that may or may not work. I don't know how many maras actually respeced to test out wave of terror but i think it is a much better version of the old morale drain because you can reach more players now because it reaches 40 feet instead of 25 and it is not a random proc anymore so if you hit everyone in front of you then you know you just morale drained them all and don't have to spam aoe in hopes that you drain them.

This change also makes it so you can still have aoe drain and still have decent single target dps as well. If you are 60+ you can get both drain and morale stop if you like to stance dance for wb play.

Brutality is almost not bad with the new version of wave of terror. The only thing it needs now is a better stance proc and convulsive slashing and unstable convulsions needs to go the way of the dodo or it needs a much bigger boost in damage because in the current state of it i think the BO Tree hit combo hits harder.

Good post overall, I just really don't want the Brut proc to change unless its a straight buff, it's good and I don't want to lose it.

Convulsing Slashing and (more importantly) Unstable Convulsions I can agree with. CS itself actually isn't bad, it's a solid amount of raw damage but you need to make sure you never let it run for longer then 1 GCD (3 damage ticks). However, if you can do that it's actually a ton of damage, equating to some of the highest sustained/burst damage a Mara can do. It's absolutely terrible if you let it channel full duration, so make sure you interrupt it ASAP.

Unstable Convulsions is awful and worthless and could be made part of the baseline Convulsing Slashing and then this ability would probably be good to go.

Honestly I think the #1 QOL change Brutality needs is a cooldown decrease (or duration increase) of Mutated Aggressor, an uptime of 10 seconds every 60 on the damage buff is awful and not something many other Order classes have to deal with (such as the SW).

[Grock]

lowbies who can't DPS them through the proc

Dude im top geared with invader, bloodlord, overcap str, maxed crit, all the ****, and my RoA on monstro proc hits for about 200-300 per second - same as monstro's proc heal per second

Its really not about gear, its about having armor debuff or doing magic damage

you need to make sure you never let it run for longer then 1 GCD (3 damage ticks). However, if you can do that it's actually a ton of damage, equating to some of the highest sustained/burst damage a Mara can do. It's absolutely terrible if you let it channel full duration, so make sure you interrupt it ASAP.

btw there's an addon ("Swinger" by Sullemunk) that shows your AA timer, you can use it to sync up channeled casts with AA rest for the max performance

[Foofmonger]

lowbies who can't DPS them through the proc

Dude im top geared with invader, bloodlord, overcap str, maxed crit, all the ****, and my RoA on monstro proc hits for about 200-300 per second - same as monstro's proc heal per second

Its really not about gear, its about having armor debuff or doing magic damage

As I said before though, it's not the heal proc giving the survivability here though really, it's the ignore armor pen which in the example above, is what's screwing your damage. Slayer 1v1 is one of those key fights where being in Monstro makes a lot of sense, since they can't heal themselves well, are squishy, don't have good ways to get through armor, etc... So that's actually more of an outlier than the norm, as the fast majority of other classes can either do magic damage (much of the dps), somehow get through armor (some classes) or have enough survivability to wear monstro down (tanks and dps heals).

I'll check the swinger add-on out though, sounds great, thanks for the recom.

[VkdswWH]

I think one of the things that's most interesting about this thread so far is that there are clearly two camps here:

1. The Morale-Drain WB focused Marauders who are upset.

2. Basically everyone else.

This makes sense though, and I can explain.

Nope) its 2 camps: 1 - peolples who play Marauder and 2 - peoples who dont play marauder but kwon all about marauder better than others.

and I can explain it
That dmg buff give you around +30-50 dmg (some guys didn’t even notice “damage increase” lol) and that nerf killed your utility.
Switch to Wave of terror and wait 5 sec to switch to aoe skill tree- terrble and uncomfort. Wave of terror have good damage only in maniken and lowbies.
people who play monstro actualy allways use brutality skill tree and stance for guilotine and buffs.
Some guys use off sov set + inv/sentinel and have a soft cap str or use 3 off sov + 5 deff sov for more defence and have ~999 str maybe we dont play for dps class... like dps. i dont know.

Sava/brut - was nerfed long time ago and now its only for ranked SC (because you dont have a choice). U can try to play it but only with guardboy close to you, because you dont have good cc and mobility you die for a knock. People dont like it.
brutality/monstro (for knock) - mem spec for kiling new players ans steal frags in sc.

Montsto/brut with full armore tali - trolling spec fo kill some stupid order meleDps who try to kill 4500-5000+ armor guy with - armore pen + self heal and cant run out from marauder.