WL sadly has none of the self healing and only retains the interrupt utility. Their tankiness is on level closer to MSH, with fast pounce being their survival trick. A class on Order with total armor pen ignore like Maras would be also pretty much OP, given that it would negate the dmg pressure from Mara/Chop/MSH/WE/2htanks.Foofmonger wrote: ↑Tue Aug 04, 2020 12:46 pm Don't think that's a good way to balance the Marauder. The White Lion can do "the exact same thing", and it's not considered an issue. They also ignore 50% armor on Slashing Blade (Demolition mirror). This would indicate that this isn't the correct way to balance the class.
Mara issues are not Demolition. Have a long post about this in the city siege thread but there are 4 major issues:
1. Monstro proc is too strong (and also bugged).
2. AoE damage scaling is probably overtuned in general (specifically Demolition and Wreckingball, they should probably have the same PSM scaling as WL abilities).
3. AoE Interrupt is far better range than Orders (WL), and AoE interrupts are too strong with 10 sec cds in general.
4. AoE KD has a lack of parity in the realms (minor issue).
That being said, I'm not being critical because your proposal would "overnerf" Mara's or anything, I just don't think it solves the core issue at hand.
WL HackNSlash is exactly on two abilities, Slash + Whirl. Whereas various Mara tactics cover majority of their AoE abilities and most of their ST abilities as well. Limiting some of the "best"/"most spammed" AoE of theirs to not benefit from their juiciest tactics would be one way to balance things - majority of WL abilities do not benefit from their "main AoE tactic".
So either the dmg has to be lowered (lesser Demo + hard hitting other Monstro spec abilities with their various utility) - or their tankiness would have to lowered down to Choppa levels considering their dmg output is equal, if not better due to access to higher mcrit and crit modifier, while having higher base dmg on Demo + WB then the usual AoE spammers of Choppa Lotsa/GTDC.
Demo nerf is one idea, scaling back dmg to pre-march buffs is another option.
The AoE interrupt is nonissue considering its mysterious 5ft cone width, unless you have 8 healers standing in a pile/row on enemy team.
AoE KD is strong, but again not the main balance issue. It's been there for years, and is the cornerstone of Destro warband CC potential.
I wouldn't touch all the utility, but would rather hope that Monstro becomes the old AoE utility/debuff spec and their other 2 spec trees then becomes the actual damage specs. There needs to be a clear tradeoff between choosing Monstro spec for utility and tankyness versus using some other spec for higher dmg and lesser tankyness. Having it all available in one spec isn't fair for other Destro classes nor good from Order POV, when it comes to general idea of trying to keep game balanced.