I've honestly though about this topic for about 10 years now, and this is more or less my feelings on the ability. It's a little different now due to the TB changes that the ROR devs have made, but the general idea has always been the same "make it a darn ability". I've thought a lot on how to do it without making it overpowered in consideration of the rest of the toolkit that the Marauder has.Stophy22 wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 6:38 pmI was hoping you’d chime in!Foofmonger wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 2:23 pm So the Mara heal debuff sucks, I think that's been covered in this thread to death, it has a lot of issues and I'd personally love to see it changed. However, as many people have pointed out, you'd also have to balance it to accommodate for the change, and there shouldn't be just a "straight Mara buff". Here's what I would do personally if I were the devs:
1. Remove Tainted Claw as a baseline ability. Put Draining Swipes at baseline. Draining Swipes as a core ability is hardly "strong", and this is basically a nerf.
2. Put Thunderous Blows back as the 5 point Savagery ability like it should be and always was. This is a small buff, but it's to fix a nerf from 2015 when this server was in t2 and early wounds debuffs mattered. They don't. You can still keep the nerfed value, so it's still nerfed overall from where it was on live.
3. Put Tainted Claw back in as the 13 point Savagery ability. The Marauder shouldn't have a 5 or 9 point heal debuff IMO, it should be 13 points for balance. Double the cooldown of tainted claw to 10 seconds to make it work like other heal debuffs. Boost it to a 50% heal debuff baseline, to be worth a 13 point ability.
4. Completely remove the current heal debuff/drain life tactic. The drain life is garbage, the fact that the Marauder has to waste a tactic slot is garbage, it's just pure garbage. Throw this entire tactic into the garbage bin.
5. Give Mara's a new random 11pt tactic, really doesn't even matter what it does, as long as it is occasionally situationally useful.
These changes would achieve a variety of things:
1. The Mara heal debuff would be much harder to get, and objectively weaker as an ability (higher cooldown), but frees up the Marauder to not have to waste a tactic slot to do what other DPS can do without one.
2. Draining Swipes, which is savagery only abiity, would be core instead of the 25% tainted claw, which is argueably weaker early on. Later on it still removes a Mara who doesn't spec for 13 savagery to get any heal debuff, which is fair.
3. Thunderous Blows goes back to where it should be and allows for more Marauder spec diversity.
TLDR: Nerf the heal debuff cooldown, remove it as a core ability, put it as a 13 point savagery ability, increase the debuff to 50%, and remove the tactic.
In my opinion, the above changes would be relatively balanced. This is a give and take, and the Marauder needs to give up something to get something here. That being said, the current way in which the Marauder heal debuffs is totally stupid and sucks in comparison to every other class with a heal debuff in the game. It made a lot of sense at live when the Marauder healing debuff tactic boosted Tainted Claw to a 75% heal debuff (which was overpowered), but the change to the tactic to make it 50% with the horrible horrible worthless lifeleech was a terrible decision by Mythic. It was a stupid idea in 2009, and it's still a stupid idea in 2020.
I do like your proposal, and I agree as it follows the same base-line if my proposal: give Mara an ability healdebuff not a tactic.
I’d prefer not to go 13 points when no one else has to but if thunderous blow is changed to 5 point I can make the trade. I very much agree that draining swipe should be base-line or core and tainted claws cool down increased to 10 seconds.
Thank you for the input
To be 100% fair, the WL outgoing heal debuff is 13 points, so it would actually create more parity between the WL/Marauder giving them both a specced 13 point heal debuff, of course the Mara would be incoming and the WL outgoing, but from an "availability standpoint" I think that's pretty fair. I'd also much rather have the "non mutation locked" ability be the 5 point ability in Marauder trees, so you can actually cross spec and get value (right now, theres basically no reason to spec Sav unless you are going full Sav, and there's no reason to spec 5 or less brut really, honestly Mutated Aggressor should also be the 5 point ability and swap with Guillotene, but that's another discusion).
So while I think the 13 point ability "hurts" I think that's what needed to make it "balanced" and "fair". The Marauder still has a lot going for it, and giving it a 5 or 9 point 50% heal debuff ability I personally think would be a little too strong. I think Marauder's should have to specialize heavily into Sav to get heal debuffs, and that Marauder's as a whole should have an easier time getting the wounds debuff.
You could of course make the case to do this: TB 5 point, heal debuff 9 point, Cutting claw 13 points. I'd personally rather keep the armor debuff at 9 point though.
Overall though, I think this is a great thread for promoting this discussion. This is something that's been on my mind for a while so thank you for your analysis. I really do like your suggestions!