Your thoughts about Mara

[larsulu]

I made a proposal and I wanna hear/listen others maras players about it.
Here’s my post.

mara tooltip damage is the lowest among all melee dps ( i never played live but i was told they nerfed it post lotd )
here's are my suggestion:
THUNDEROUS BLOW : his nerf was pretty good when conqueror set was top tier but now is pretty weak. as 13 pts on savagery ( it used to be placed at 6 pts) it needs to works with piercing byte ( usable only on sava ) and bring back the old debuff wounds value.
DRAINING SWIPE : pretty weak and useless debuff ( mastery ability with low dmg with 10 secs cd and last only 5 secs ). also it could be moved into mosntro tree to make monstro mara less then a 2 buttons morale bot.
rework SCYTING TALON-CORRUPTED EDGE- HULKING BRUTE tactics : those tactics are locked to their owns tree and they doesnt works with mara mechanic ( stance dancing ), you can remove those tactics and apply/rework em into theirs propers procs arms.
for example add the same stats ( righlty reduced ) of scyting talon on savagery arm/proc or add armor penetration.
same thing for brutality with corrupted edge ( add stats or melee power ) and monstro aswell.
CONVULSIVE SLASHING : a core weak channeling ( it doesnt works with AA ). my suggestion is put convulsive slashing at 13 points brutality ( since brut has no purpose after 9 points ) incresing the damage or turn it as knock down ( since mara has no any gap closer like theirs mirrors wl/sw) also you can make a good choise for sava/brut maras which where can pick a good wound debuff or a kd.( in a few words make more viable spots for mara in small scales ) and move wave of terror as core in monstro.
FEROCIOUS ASSAULT : make it usable only on mosntro stance and rework with toughness/willpower bonus stats.
crushing blow : let it proc on crit chance only.
TERRIBLE EMBRACE: right now mara pull have like 1/10 hits because in like 90% of time target usally runs outside the pull range and you lose the cd ( also it doesnt works if the target is just on low ramp or jump). reducing the cast to 1 second or 1 and half would be good.

[wachlarz]

Scythe talons&hulking brute&corrupted edge work only in one tree. I think it was make this way too dont stack stats for both or 3 tac a time. So make tac work all the time, but make them like msh-y reworked tac. Only one tac can be sloted/work. Now when i take scythe talons tac work only in sava when i switch too brut dont work. Same with corrupted edge when switch from brut too sava. So tac work only 50%

[larsulu]

Scythe talons&hulking brute&corrupted edge work only in one tree. I tkink it was make this way too dont stack stats for both or 3 tac a time. So make tac work all the time, but make them like msh-y reworked tac. Only one tac can be sloted/work. Now when i take scythe talons tac work only in sava when i switch too brut. Same with corrupted edge when switch from but too sava. So tac work only 50%

Those tactics works only on their proper stance.
So if you run with scyting talon ( savagery ones ) if you switch into brut you lose the bonus from the tactic

[wildwindblows]

Mara had potential. I hope he will get what he deserve. Thanks for the proposal

[Dreadsteel]

I noticed the other day that the procs from the stances are removed when you change stance. My recollection is that this is different than live. It seems that not being able to stance dance and maintain the procs removes the incentive to actually play the maras mechanic. This combined with it seeming like monstro doesn't proc at its tooltip value of 25% make the mara feel stuck with one mutation and access to only half their abilities.

If the buffs were considered overpowered, which I don't remember them being, maybe they should be reduced but stay up through switches, so a mara is at its most effective while often switching stances and keeping track of procs and playing into the mechanic.

Disclaimer: tying to be constructive about my experience playing the mara and not feeling terribly effective, and considering re-rolling.

[teiloh]

ID, which is a supposedly uber ability, is hiting you for 231 every 2 seconds up 4 ticks.

Lileath's, which takes 2 seconds to cast, is hitting you for 257.

[Dreadsteel]

ID, which is a supposedly uber ability, is hiting you for 231 every 2 seconds up 4 ticks.

Lileath's, which takes 2 seconds to cast, is hitting you for 257.

The reason I posted the screenshot was because as often happens, I didn't get a monstro proc despite hitting a large group with lots of hits. You can see the main fight was around ten seconds without a proc. The tooltip says it's a 25% chance but it feels less.

I had guard, so the low damage taken is likely because of that.

[teiloh]

ID, which is a supposedly uber ability, is hiting you for 231 every 2 seconds up 4 ticks.

Lileath's, which takes 2 seconds to cast, is hitting you for 257.

The reason I posted the screenshot was because as often happens, I didn't get a monstro proc despite hitting a large group with lots of hits. You can see the main fight was around ten seconds without a proc. The tooltip says it's a 25% chance but it feels less.

I had guard, so the low damage taken is likely because of that.

It's possible you were guarded against/detaunted/debuffed as well. If a Marauder has tooltip damage higher than a WL (and they do, for everything except AOEs) they should put out slightly higher damage per hit.

[Foofmonger]

Long time Marauder player here, and I don't love your suite of suggestions.

The problem people generally have with balancing games is wanting to do too much at once, instead of iterative A/B testing. The chance of the devs doing a "full Marauder overhaul" in a single patch is 0, it's just not realistic at all. Also, a lot of the "swap this around or completely rework this ability" are effectively pipe dreams.

Yes, I agree with some of your points, and I used to argue against them in the official Warhammer forums in terms of Marauder balance. I had campaigned for years that the 3, 3 point tactics that are mutation locked are functionally worthless tactics and wastes, but to be honest there are a ton of tactics in this game that are effectively garbage, and even if the devs changed these, theres still a 90% chance you'd never use them over other options.

How balance should be done: In stages, and iterative.

How what changes should be defined: You need to look at the overall meta-game, class specifications, mirrors, etc.. it's not an easy thing and balance does not happen in a vacuum. You can't just compare the Marauder to say a White Lion or a SW and call it a day, you need to compare it's capabilities holistically against every other class and role in the entire game, to really properly balance anything. So with that being said, the question really is, "What is currently wrong with the Marauder"? If we can answer that question, then we can figure out what balances changes are needed for the class.

Now, I've only been on this server playing for a few weeks, and I'm far from max RR, so I'm not exactly sure what is up with the Marauder here, but from my reading through the patch logs and forums, as well as seeing how other classes are currently applied in the meta, here's my rough analysis:

1. ROR comes out - classes are effectively the live versions, but its at a low level and there is no endgame. At this point, the Marauder eats an early series of nerfs (many to the Savagery path), to balance them for their early game power. Most other classes had not yet had any significant changes or buffs.
2. Years pass, and the devs do a variety of balance changes and passes on a variety of classes and archetypes. However, they basically leave the marauder untouched during this period of time.
3. We are now here, with many of the classes in this game being in better shape or more powerful than they were on live, with a few glaring exceptions. One of the most obvious exception is the Marauder, who is actually still nerfed below where they were on live. This seems to indicate that the developers have power-creeped the classes in this game to a degree, but in doing so left some of the behind as they may not have done the same level of pass on all classes. I'm not ragging on the devs at all, they are doing a better job of balancing this game then Mythic did in my person opinion, just stating basically what happened.

So really what you have is most classes being better than they were on live, with the Marauder actually being worse. Now, we have to say "why the heck is that".

So, lets start with the nerf. In the current T4 meta with Sov gear, and years and years of classses being buffed, it's pretty obvious that the early Marauder nerf on this server was a good idea at the time, but the times have changed. The easiest and first thing the devs should do is revert all Savagery nerfs from the early days of ROR. It was a nice idea/experiment, but it was only a good idea in the context of T2/T3 level caps and people having awful gear and getting wounds debuffed. The Marauder class should be put back to where it was (power wise) on live, that's at least a start.

Now, after that is done, some time should pass, we should test out the changes and see if that is enough to make the Mara more competitive and what it should be.

If it isn't, then I would suggest "low hanging parity fruit" as the next step. What I mean by this is easy/quick changes that bring parity to both Order/Destro as well as MDPS/RDPS, etc... Some examples of options here are things like reducing the cooldown of Mutated Aggressor to match the shadow warrior, or giving Marauders the teleport that was given to shadow warriors (again), or whatever. It's the things that are given to Order and not properly mirroed onto Destro. Now this does not mean you ask or give Marauder "pounce", Squigs already have a "pounce" variant, and therefore there is already parity. Asking for pounce for the Marauder here would show an immature understanding of parity and balanace.

And then you repeat the process, you make 1-2 tweaks, test them out for a bit, and then eventually you will land on a spot where the Marauder feels "right" in terms of overall balance.

To summarize: My cursory analysis of Marauder balance on this server leads me to believe that their primary issues are directly related to the rest of the balancing
that the ROR devs have done. If the devs never buffed any of the live classes, and just nerfed the Marauder, then the Marauder would still probably be really good (since they were very strong on live). However, the combination of nerfing this class while subsequently heavily buffing many other classes has done a double whammy of power creep here, where classes are now heavily surpassing the Mara in terms of overall power and usefulness.

Double nerfing Thunderous Blows (which the wounds debuff if you don't remember, was already a nerf versus the original version), by both moving it to be a 13 point ability and gutting the value was a tremendous nerf to this class, and not just savagery spec, and is a much bigger nerf than I think most people realize. On live, you could pick up TB in a variety of specs, and now, you can only pick it up in exactly 1 spec, and it's barely worth it because of the nerf it had. It makes absolutely no sense as a 13 point ability, and never in the history of the Marauder did the Mythic devs ever think that putting the "stanceless" mastery ability as the 13 point ability was a good idea, this is because it isn't. The purpose of the stanceless abilities in the marauder mastery trees is to be able to grab them in your "off spec", and if you put them 13 points up it defeats their entire purpose for even existing. So realistically, what the nerf did was basically remove the wounds debuff from the class except in some specific situations, whereas before most specs would be grabbing it. It was replaced with an ability that is "ok" and only works in a single spec, so therefore this change nerfed every single Marauder spec heavily and gave them basically nothing in return. This is roughly the equivalent of doing something like taking Pounce from the WL, and sticking it up 13 points into the Guardian tree, a place where nobody would ever go pick it up, and roughly equates to "a soft deletion of the ability from the game".

TLDR: Step 1: Revert the Nerfs. Step 2: Make small and targeted balance changes that are about bringing parity to Order/Destro, and don't try to change too much at once or just buff everything about the class or change every single tactic or try to swap a ton of abilities around, these are pie in the sky unrealistic expectations that the developers will not take seriously.

[teiloh]

Don't necessarily disagree with the Thunderous Blow revert but a ton of Order classes were given huge nerfs. Knight, SW, BW, Slayer, Engineer, WL. Chosen and DOK were also nerfed to a lesser extent.

No Order class really got any major buffs other than Assault Shadow Warriors.