Teir 2 SC advice

[toshigama]

Hey everyone,

So my buddy is having a rough go in scenarios and I'm looking for advice. Hes a lvl 22 savagery marauder and he isn't pumping out the damage we thought a melee dps class should be capable off. In addition, hes super squishy. He dies really quickly even with me as a lvl 24 shammy pocket healing him. What suggestions do you guys have? What stats should he focus on? What about build and traits? Are marauders weak? Would he be better off rolling a different class that pairs better with shammy?

[Cyrylius]

Level a white lion.
More seriously, no destro melee dps class gets a decent burst damage and without any assist you will have trouble killing anything. Choppa/slayer do best sustained damage out of the bunch, but both require experience to play due to squishiness. And I mean they are much more fragile than a mara is. Unfortunately, melee classes require the most support, providing the biggest damage potential in return. On the other hand, many heal/tank classes get their full kit as early as at rank 20, and are often less reliant on high end mastery skills to do their basic jobs. Which makes sense, but also means dps classes are a pain to grind until late t3.
Your options are as follows:
1. Level mara, despite the gameplay being often unrewarding it's very much a magikarp power with AoE mara being later amazing in orvr. That being said, ST marauder is not the easiest class to play (arguably the hardest ST class on destro, in fact) due to grind type damage dependant on rend stacks and clunky mechanics. At late 20s you will be able to spec into second skill in mastery tree, which gives you two viable choices: either a fantastic finisher in guillotine (with an added benefit of getting crucial crit amplifier tactic) which will improve your damage substantially if you go the middle (brutality) tree, or actual healdebuff and extra lifetap sustain from left tree. You can spec either at about 27 rank. They won't make you a destroyer of worlds, but they will make you either compete in damage with other classes (I'm assuming you run correct tactics, which is at your level some variant of feeding on fury, brute force, subvert strength and jagged edge) or give you a bit of bulk and utility with 50% HD and ap/armor debuff. Then, at about 33, you unlock enough points to potentially get all the right tree skills and try AoE, which is sometimes a good option- and makes you MUCH tougher. Ultimately, however, it's a pretty unfun class to level, even amongst melee ones, so my second recommendation is;
2. Roll a White Lion.
WL/mara is the most different mirror in ror. As a white lion you lost a lot of nifty marauder utility you can't really appreciate currently for extra damage, while also changing damage profile from grind to burst. White lions are absolutely amazing class to level in mid tier thanks to getting the main burst skill, coordinated strike, really fast and pets being a powerful mechanics in AoE deprived t3. It requires you to change realms and roll two new classes, however, so while I would expect you to enjoy the class (I'm assuming the op's friend will read it himself, hence I don't talk about him in third person) I can understand why this option might be off the table. Still, might be an interesting idea to consider. But assuming you want to stay on the better realm:
3. Try ranged dps. Healers pair much better with ranged dps than with melee dps (even though both need healers). Destro has access to squig herders, class which can perform well both in ranged and melee, and tends to be very fun to play in scenarios. Ranged dps take obviously much less damage, therefore they don't need the same amount of babysitting melee ones do, and are notoriously good at ST sniping, at least the destro variants. While damage might be potentially even lower after you learn the timestamps and class mechanics all 3 destro ranged dps classes are very strong in midtier, getting their core kits early and giving options of playing around all the charms of t3 SC. And I don't know how to segway that into the fourth idea i can give you, but it is:
4. Get yourself a tank.
While yes, you die without heals, getting pocket guard is oftentimes more valuable. Being guarded makes your hp effectively Double of what you have, in addition to the added value of extra damage and utility the tank provides. If you can find a third person to play with- it's actually the best idea, but very few can actually just find someone to play with. Playing dps/tank is a bit random, as you will still suffer without any heals (which can happen pretty often, depending on your luck) but with a pocket guard you can be pretty sure that if you do get any heals wasted on you you will generally perform great in SCs. I would recommend either blackguard or chosen, as black ork lacks punt that you might want to have for various reasons.
To finish this long textwall, with two characters you can get two crafting professions, possibly even salvager/talismans and cultivator/butcher (if you can get the loot required to level salv). That will provide you with talismans and potions, both of which have huge effect on you bolstered statistics. It's not a lot, but if you want to, extra statistics for marauder might be the difference you are looking for.

Edit: marauder focuses on strenght first and crit zero, which means you want as much crit as humanly possible to get the most out of various crit related tactics. That being said softcaps are weird in t3, and you likely won't be able to get growing instability (and you don't need to worry about armour/ toughness reduction from using bloodlord weapon or piercing bite reducing WS returns) so it's more or less anything you want, with strength wounds and crit being probably the best choices.

[Sulorie]

Find a tank and make a trio, when he wants to play offensive with mdps.

[fuzzbunny]

Thank you for the replys!