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Marauder Changes - Game Update 2.5


EricMusco

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Hey everyone,

 

Below are the planned Marauder changes for Game Update 2.5. Please use this thread to give feedback for these changes. You can read the full class changes blog here!

 

Sith Marauder

 

General

  • The stacking buff provided by Juyo Form now lasts 24 seconds (up from 15) and can be applied once every second (down from every 1.5 seconds).
  • Bloodthirst and Predation no longer prevent the Marauder from building Fury while they are active.
  • Bloodthirst now affects your entire Operation group up to 40 meters away from the Marauder (up from 30 meters) but also applies a debuff which lasts for five minutes on all affected group members. This debuff prevents affected players from regaining Bloodthirst while it is active.
  • Undying Rage now has a 2 minute cooldown (up from 1 minute and 30 seconds).
  • The health for Undying Rage is now spent when the damage reducing effect expires, rather than when it begins. It still costs 50% of current health.

Annihilation

  • The stacking Annihilator buff provided by Annihilate now lasts 24 seconds (up from 15).

Rage

  • Undying no longer increases damage reduction but still reduces the cooldown of Undying Rage by 15/30 seconds.
  • Force Vigor no longer interacts with Undying Rage. It now permanently increases passive damage reduction by 1/2% and still builds 1/2 Rage when Dual Saber Throw is used.

Edited by CourtneyWoods
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Liking the Annihilation changes, they are quality of life fixes (as you say) which should make Annihilation more viable in the current atmosphere of pausing, phase-changing content, while not increasing DPS in fights where the ramp up isn't prone to dropping off. A+ change there. Bloodthirst changes are welcome as well, this is the kind of fix that should have occurred from the very beginning. Building Fury with Predation/BT up should net a small boost to dps overall, another excellent quality of life change.

 

Not sure how I feel about the effects of Undying Rage changes. The fact that the health is spent at the end (assuming it uses your current health at the end rather than the beginning) will be extremely penalizing in PvE, almost to the point of not wanting to use it. It makes sense from a PvP standpoint, but in PvE, if you health drops you can pop it to allow healers to catch up and top you off, only to lose another 18k HP seconds later... seems silly.

 

I hope this is not all there is to come, as I'd like to see some tweaking to carnage.

Edited by Stippling
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Posting here since marauders got the most attention.

 

Will there be a Mercenary / Trooper blog or update? Kinda seems odd that one of the worst advanced class isn't even on the list.

 

While this has no business here, I agree and hope you all get some attention.

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The change to bloodthirst giving it the 5 min debuff seems good for ops groups abusing it, but reminds me of the changes to heroism/bloodlust in WoW.

 

The problem they ran into doing the same change was that progression guilds using it early in the fight then had to wait for the debuff to drop before doing another attempt. They solved this, i believe, by having the debuff drop upon death or boss reset(not sure which) and I think that might be a better way to go than make groups sit and wait for the CD to reset before pulling again.

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Annihilation changes = good

 

The smash changes will not affect the survivability of the rage marauder at all. The reason smash marauders are overpowered is entirely due to their ability to "stall." The 3 talents which allow the marauder to do this are Fear, Undying rage and Camo.

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Other than Juyo Form this seems to be a lot of nerfs.

 

Undying rage has been nerfed into uselessness outside of a suicide run and the reason for the change is cause Marauders have too much defence if they have a pocket healer in PvP. Talk about hitting an entire class for a few cases.

 

Bloodthirst now attracts a debuff so should you have a second Marauder in your group they wont be able to fire it when it most benefits them if the other marauder has used it. I personally like to kick it off when I'm in berserk and strength adrenal is popped.

 

And sadly we see nothing brought to the table for non Juyo from builds. As class representatives have been scraped and we didn't get 3 questions is this really want the Jedi thought was the big issues for our class.

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Bloodthirst now attracts a debuff so should you have a second Marauder in your group they wont be able to fire it when it most benefits them if the other marauder has used it. I personally like to kick it off when I'm in berserk and strength adrenal is popped.

 

This can be viewed as a buff in some cases, depending on how serious one in min-maxing raid comp. This can in fact net an increase in raid dps for groups running one marauder or <4 marauders in 16 man. While it will suck not having complete control over the bloodthirst, an organized raid group will have no issue popping off a bloodthirst at the time most beneficent to the group as a whole. Hell, make the other marauder do it. Now it's a free excuse to double pop Berserk for all the other marauders.

 

So what I see is a buff to 8 mans, a greater buff to 16 mans (in low marauder scenarios), and an environment supportive to a "BT buffbot" while the other marauders reap the rewards. Just make sure it isn't you. ;)

 

(This is assuming you're not cheesing a huge marauder group with chain BT's, which prior to the above changes would suck for Fury building anyways)

Edited by Stippling
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The changes to annihilation are nice. However, I doubt it will still feel viable for PvP. Going to have to wait and see how changes to madness DoTs work out.

 

Undying rage changes appear to be good changes from a PvP stand point.

 

I know :(

 

Well...Mercs did get some improvements with 2.4 but I think mercs are just a tougher beast to tackle atm. Does seem like they are working on them though and some changes may take a long time. It's still possible they will sneak in some changes for 2.5. If not, hopefully we'll see something for 2.6.

 

Hell, snipers aren't even seeing any kind of tweaking for 2.5 even though the devs admitted they are over tuned. And of course, lightning sorcerers being shut down easily has yet to be addressed.

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The change to bloodthirst giving it the 5 min debuff seems good for ops groups abusing it, but reminds me of the changes to heroism/bloodlust in WoW.

 

The problem they ran into doing the same change was that progression guilds using it early in the fight then had to wait for the debuff to drop before doing another attempt. They solved this, i believe, by having the debuff drop upon death or boss reset(not sure which) and I think that might be a better way to go than make groups sit and wait for the CD to reset before pulling again.

 

Baby steps first :)

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Baby steps first :)

 

No need to make "baby steps first" when they can fix a problem before it starts.

 

On a side note, I sure hope that the Bloodthrist debuff winds up being called "Quenched". Perhaps a Gatorade logo for the icon as well.

Edited by OMGITSJAD
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Eric,

 

Please clarify the change to GbtF and Undying Rage. I am reading it as the health spent is still 50% of the health that your character had when the ability was used. While others see it as 50 % of your current health when the ability fades.

 

My understanding is the only change is when you lose the health.

Edited by Onrush
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Ironically, I think the undying rage changes hurt the class much more in unorganized play then it does in organized. If you get spiked by an enemy team in arenas, it will still give your healers some breathing room, you will be at 100% when it ends and in the target of your healer and probably guarded by your tank. Chances are, it's still enough to save you from certain death, even if it's available significantly less often.

 

In unorganized play though undying rage + medpack is much more dangerous now. To get the most out of it, you would have to wait out the final tick and then medpack, leaving you wide open for cc in the meantime, so you'll probably have to use it during the abilities uptime, losing half of your medpack's effectiveness.

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Does that mean we should use ravage earlier in our opener ?

 

Good question. Currently the first 2 MH hits happen within the first half second of the channel while the last hit happens towards the end of the 3s. Thus, I doubt there is reason to rethink our rotation/priority. Perhaps this is a way to increase the usefulness of Alacrity...

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Eric,

 

Please clarify the change to GbtF and Undying Rage. I am reading it as the health spent is still 50% of the health that your character had when the ability was used. While others see it as 50 % of your current health when the ability fades.

 

My understanding is the only change is when you lose the health.

 

The way the ability works is that the 50% health cost happens at the end of the abilities duration, not based on when the ability activates but when it ends. That means in simple terms, under the best case scenario, when the ability ends you will go from 100% to 50% health.

 

-eric

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The way the ability works is that the 50% health cost happens at the end of the abilities duration, not based on when the ability activates but when it ends. That means in simple terms, under the best case scenario, when the ability ends you will go from 100% to 50% health.

 

-eric

 

Thank you for the clarification.

 

This is basically useless in PvE now unless you're absolutely desperate. You'll end up taking far more damage from using it than not using it, unless all the healers are dead.

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I think it turns UR into a viable escape ability, but it no longer has any other productive utility use in PVE. That's fine, but it seems to be a silly change, once again, for the sake of PVP without considering the effect on PVE.

 

Again, it's not a serious problem IMO...It just changes the usefulness of UR and what it will probably be used for. No longer a cushion for healers to get you healed, now a solo escape mechanic instead.

 

I wonder if it was originally intended as an escape mechanic....

Edited by LordArtemis
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The way the ability works is that the 50% health cost happens at the end of the abilities duration, not based on when the ability activates but when it ends. That means in simple terms, under the best case scenario, when the ability ends you will go from 100% to 50% health.

 

-eric

 

It would of been better to put a healing percentage decrease on it or no healing in general till it ends. Putting the health drop after the ability ends makes it useless in pve now and in pvp it just means marauders are going to save camo for after they pop UR and get healed during camo or simply just run away.

 

This really wasn't a well thought out change and was a mechanic I was hoping BW would stay away from and maybe change with endure pain for juggs which also has a HP drop off after the ability ends which, again, I think is a terrible design that is now being implemented into another ability.

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