The Pros and Cons of a Marauder

I had to stop reading when he said marauders are easily kited. 12s CD charge, predation, force camo, spammable snare. Of all the melee classes in the game marauders are by far the hardest to kite.

I don't think you've looked comparatively at the toolset and potential, and I can guarantee you haven't looked at the performance over a large sample size (no, forum whining is not a large enough sample size).

Constantly asserting Marauders are OP doesn't make it true. Honestly, it sounds to me like people are trying to go 1 v.1 with them instead of using their team, and getting destroyed. I do fine against Marauders on my Merc, because I can get the drop on them, and generally out-damage them.

I mean, want to talk about a long 6 seconds? How about when they burn their charge and immediately eat a jet boost, so they're knockbacked and snared. Then while they're coming back to me they eat a 5k homing missile crit.

I mean, of the list of AC's I have trouble against in PvP, Marauders are like 17th. And on a sorcerer or sage I can't see any reason you should have trouble with them at all. You have a slow, and an AoE knockback. Learn to use the terrain and your team, and stop trying to beat Marauders in 1 v 1 melee.

With an amazing ability to instantly break distance and root the target, speed buff, ranged attacks, choke/stasis, shields and stealth, dual wielders suffer kiting nor more, or maybe even less, than other melee classes. My scoundrel is very susceptible to being kited - he does't have jumps or force speed.
Also, kiting in this games is incredibly hard because, unlike actions games or first person shooters, you run much slower when backpedaling, and strafing is even harder because of camera and LOS problems.

"Very low" is light armor. And the last part: only characters who are able to survive being in middle of enemy team are those who have stealth getaway, and those are, actually, shadows/assasins, agents/scoundrels and... marauders.

What an incredible flaw for a DPSer.
It's strange how fast you disregard things like 3D movement and speed buff mentioned elsewhere.

Clearly you exaggerate here about mythical teams of snipers and healers going together to slay "teams" of marauders. Gunslingers/snipers are probably counter leapers somewhat, because they don't let them use their 3D movement, but for that to work, they should have quite the superior position. That usually could happen on a single map only: the Huttbal. Sniping nests near middle turret on Alderaan are not bad, but can be easily avoided by running underneath them. I have a Guardian and Sniper, and did't really notice that a big issue - I just jump on someone near sniper/gunslinger, and use CC when they are not "bunkered".
Also, sniper countering marauder counters your argument that dual wielders are susceptible to kiting, because, you know, cover-based characters really suck at that. IMO, it's not that hard to use your speed, choke or vanish ability to master-strike sniper from behind.

Marauders are spike-damage dealers. If anyone, they are best at killing healers of any kind. I am DPS sage, and have a lot of controls, and still have some issues killing them. Clearly, anyone with heals, shields, good CC AND vanish is hard to kill, particularly in melee. Making operatives/scoundrel healers "a counter", imo, is ridiculous - counter class is that who can KILL YOUR CLASS, not one who SURVIVES YOU BEST.

Well, if dual wielders are weak at killing tanks in PvP, then I probably just have to forget about them at all, as I had trouble killing tanks with every other class.

Now, from my post, you could think I am nit-picking and concidering dual wielders unkillable. I'm not, I killed them many times, and I've seen them die many times too. But it's really hard not to nitpick here, because dual-wielder defenders make such general statements (like "My class is weak, because everyone mezz and root me!" ) that it's hard not to. Concider this: you are getting rooted and ganked by one reason only: people are afraid of you and your damage. And that's a thing to think about when it comes to balancing classes.

P.S. Thing that amazes me the most is that people think that, in a PvP where randomly picked classes get to randomly fight each other, someone should be a counter for someone else, and that someone should be best in 1 vs. 1 than other class. You see, by that logic, we can assume that a team solely consisting of counter class to some class would always win, because every player of that team would win in a duel with someone from other team. Basicaly, if we take rock/paper/scissors, a warzone could come to a non-win scenario. So by saying that a dual wielder is better than anyone else in a 1 vs. 1 duel, you actually CONCUR that a no-win scenario actually exists.
A game with rock/paper/scissors classes can work if game mixes classes in PvP to match each other. In Warzones as now, every class should win every other class if a player has more skill than other player. Or you could just, you know, roll some marauders and tankasins.

Most replies I seen in here can be summed up as a "Wahh I got pwned by a Marauder because I can't L2P, Nerf them! Wahh!"

The class is a pure melee dps class, ALL IT CAN DO IS DPS. So now that it's doing it's job correctly and not a useless class anymore you guys want to nerf it? Nerf the range classes damage output then while you at it.

While I agree with most of what the OP said, there's one thing that should be edited out.

Mar/Sent interrupt is off the GCD, and now has no cost. So the only GCD used would be with Force Leap if Anni spec as an emergency interrupt if close range, running out as other specs to do it.

Sigh

What about Assassin's DPS? They have ranged and melee, and both can really lay a hurt. NERF THEM! THEY CAN KILL YOU!

Your list of cons are applicable to a lot of classes, yet those classes also do not have the same pros as Maras.

1. Very susceptible to being kited.
This con is arguable, but for argument's sake I will grant you this. Concealment Ops and dps Assasins are even more susceptible to kiting than Maras. Any difficulty in staying on a target is shared with Juggs as well. You have a talent tree that helps to mitigate this weakness. You also need this weakness or else your damage would have to be toned down.

2. Very low survivability outside of defensive CDs.
Everyone dies quickly outside of defensive CDs. The difference between medium armor and heavy armor is very little, especially in a PVP context. Focus fire is the real danger in PVP, and Maras are given 2 great CDs to counter focus fire. Mara CDs are also fairly short considering the amount of CDs they have and the strength of those CDs.

3. Nearly no utility outside of pure damage.
This is not true. Maras provide 2 unique group utility abilities in Predation and Bloodthirst, in addition to being 1 of only 2 ACs that have a healing debuff. You certainly bring more utility than all other dps classes/specs.

4. Are hard countered by Snipers in Group PVP to an almost impossible degree.
Your con is you are countered by the least played AC in the game. Every class has a hard time killing operative healers because they are built to be elusive so you are again not alone on that con.

5. Very weak at killing tanks in PVP.
Very few tanks actually utilize tanking stats because they have less usefulness in PVP. Further, the tanks you are likely talking about are tanksins which take everyone a long time to kill because of CDs and self-healing capability. I see very few full tank Juggs and virtually no full tank PTs as you are just sacrificing too much for minimal survivability. But, if you really want to kill tanks you can gear for more accuracy to overcome their defensive stats, of course this would lower your damage to all other targets. Or you can just go kill the healers or dps, instead of attacking the tanks.

I don't want them to gut Maras, but small adjustments need to be made for PVP balance (something that Bioware decided to just throw out in 1.2).

Edit: Tanksins need to be adjusted as well, and worse performing ACs brought up a bit.

You'll have no troubles getting some fraps of you destroying these marauders then I assume. Please post these in the Trooper/Merc forums with a nice "Video-guide for beating marauders" title so I dont miss it. Many thanks!

I cant wait

He will show you a team focus firing, since according to him you need a team and can't 1 v 1 them. Somehow that isn't OPed.

The Mara that can't figure out how to get in to do damage is going to show you how to beat other dumb Maras that can't use any of their abilities correctly, and don't use Undying Rage (and probably think Force Camo is useless too).

If the only Maras I ever played can only charge me every 12 seconds and are otherwise clueless, I agree it would be a terrible class. Although every class would suck when you don't use their best abilities.