I guess it depends on the fight. If there's a section that would genuinely benefit from 30-60s of sustained increased output, instead of a narrow window of 15-20s increased output, then yes this tactic could be meaningful.

I don't think there is any boss that has a burst phase that lasts longer than ~20 sec except for burn phases at end, but i might be wrong

 

As for the rotation, that's comme-ci/comme-ca. You'd have to work out how much the Fury-blockage reduces damage output and weigh that against how much BT increases it, then further split the analysis by spec choice, to see what you're really getting.

I think it lowers dps if they doesn't have frenzy to give them more fury, but that is just my experience and I can't confirm that for anyone else

 

As far as Frenzy: with BT on 5m CD and Frenzy on 2.5m CD, it should be plausible to have a Frenzy-chain ready for each BT, right?

yes, but that would only work for 2 out of the 4 bloodthirsts in the 5 min phases

 

But I'm still curious about the people who keep saying "BT only affects your actual group", which drops the plausible Op-wide uptime to 30s in an 8-man. Unless, I guess, you structured it as "Tank / Tank / Heal / Heal" in one group and "DPS / DPS / DPS / DPS" in the other group... I guess that's plausible enough.

lots of groups like to run the 4 dps in one group mainly because of the benefit of bloodthirst, but I don't think it would work with the 4 marauders affecting each others fury buildup

 

I know I'm meandering a bit, I'm not very experienced with organized Ops, but I just find this topic interesting and want to explore it more.

Well that's wonderful, i wish that everyone would explore things that they don't completely understand in this game, especially the new players. I'm with you on this, i'll be keeping tabs on this thread to see if anyone can pull up on some hard evidence because right now i'm just saying what i think would happen. And i'm interested if it really is true that stacking marauders is the best.

_____

OP is right. Full marauders/sentinals dps raids are running rampage and that's the only setup you see every day. Nothing else since makes things so easy and awesome.

 

You obviously haven't ran with a raid full of Gunslingers. Try it sometime...............

 

@Shyroman From my experience, stacking 2 sents/maras in a single group can ruin both their dps. When I was running progression on my sentinel back for HM TFB and NiM EC I would complain about having another one in dropping my dps build up. I would get to 28 Centering and then pop goes an inspiration and I was screwed. It wasn't until both of us worked our rotation timings down for each fight that we were successful. Now stack 4 Maras/Sents together.....and well, you mess with their standard rotation and furry build............not the smartest thing.

You obviously haven't ran with a raid full of Gunslingers. Try it sometime...............

 

@Shyroman From my experience, stacking 2 sents/maras in a single group can ruin both their dps. When I was running progression on my sentinel back for HM TFB and NiM EC I would complain about having another one in dropping my dps build up. I would get to 28 Centering and then pop goes an inspiration and I was screwed. It wasn't until both of us worked our rotation timings down for each fight that we were successful. Now stack 4 Maras/Sents together.....and well, you mess with their standard rotation and furry build............not the smartest thing.

 

Thank you for the clarification, I never really had much experience with it since the only time where I noticed it was when a new marauder like to use predation whenever it was up

You obviously haven't ran with a raid full of Gunslingers. Try it sometime...............

 

@Shyroman From my experience, stacking 2 sents/maras in a single group can ruin both their dps. When I was running progression on my sentinel back for HM TFB and NiM EC I would complain about having another one in dropping my dps build up. I would get to 28 Centering and then pop goes an inspiration and I was screwed. It wasn't until both of us worked our rotation timings down for each fight that we were successful. Now stack 4 Maras/Sents together.....and well, you mess with their standard rotation and furry build............not the smartest thing.

 

Honestly this sounds more like a problem with group coordination than bloodthirst lowering the threat of all marauders in a group.

This ifrit noob must have never been in a HM before. Dude probably struggles in SM.

 

On my mara I lose dps when I have BT up, I agree with the rest of you.

Edited May 16, 2013 by JDotter

As soon as they take away your ability to respec to tank role, then I'll be okay giving up utility. Simple as that. And utility is not a factor. There's a common statement: "Take the player, not the class". Our guild would not make someone reroll to Marauder if we had none in our group, nor would we take one who was subpar over a non-marauder who did good dps. So your utility argument is sort of moot.

 

This concept / argument seems to be getting overlooked, so I figured I'd emphasize it.

Alright, this is ridiculous. My main on pub side is a sent, imp marauder. I have one of each class except for a sage when it comes to dps, and 3 tanks, so I'm not some sole sentinel trying to prove a point. Bloodthirst is a 15% damage boost for 15 seconds with a 5 minute cd. That 5 minute cd prevents it from being used in most fights more than once, so assuming everyone was perfect you have a minute of 15% dps. Not a single fight requires you to have 15% more dps, and if this is the deciding factor in if you clear or not, your group needs to work something out. In exchange for this 15% dps, you are losing the 20% damage reduction for 15 seconds from a slinger, cc on 90% of trash mobs, the lack of an off-taunt, stealth rez's, etc. If you think about it, wouldn't it be more OP to bring 4 scoundrel dps? They would be able to stealth rez everyone who goes down almost all the time, AND pass off heals... if I wasn't in the middle of s&v I'd list more.

In addition to the above, you also (as has been mentioned several times) kill Fury/Centering generation for a whole minute.

 

On top of all of this, you'll still lose DPS versus a balanced composition on some fights because they just favour ranged so heavily.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Aurojiin

Alright, this is ridiculous. My main on pub side is a sent, imp marauder. I have one of each class except for a sage when it comes to dps, and 3 tanks, so I'm not some sole sentinel trying to prove a point. Bloodthirst is a 15% damage boost for 15 seconds with a 5 minute cd. That 5 minute cd prevents it from being used in most fights more than once, so assuming everyone was perfect you have a minute of 15% dps. Not a single fight requires you to have 15% more dps, and if this is the deciding factor in if you clear or not, your group needs to work something out. In exchange for this 15% dps, you are losing the 20% damage reduction for 15 seconds from a slinger, cc on 90% of trash mobs, the lack of an off-taunt, stealth rez's, etc. If you think about it, wouldn't it be more OP to bring 4 scoundrel dps? They would be able to stealth rez everyone who goes down almost all the time, AND pass off heals... if I wasn't in the middle of s&v I'd list more.

 

Agreed all needed

Honestly this sounds more like a problem with group coordination than bloodthirst lowering the threat of all marauders in a group.

 

With two maras.....yes a coordination issue. With 4 you start to loose fury build which is bad. (Don't forget to take into the 4% damage boost from the 4 piece)

This concept / argument seems to be getting overlooked, so I figured I'd emphasize it.

 

This argument isn't getting overlooked. It's not a factor in my argument. I trust everyone in my raid group. We clear 55 content on an alt night because we needed something to do with our second raid night. It doesn't matter what classes we play. However, some of us have several alts. When you have access to good players with several characters each, you start to notice how lacking many of the classes really are in all facets of the game. My main additions to this thread have been in regard to melee dps and the overwhelming dominance of the marauder class relative to the other melee dps classes. The damage/utility ratio needs to be balanced to promote class diversity. With the current implementation of melee dps, there is no reason to bring a melee dps that isn't a marauder.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Korse
Added New Sig

Ok first: OP is being very very silly because outside of doing something for the hell of it I don't know anyone actually running 8 mans with all sent/mara DPS. I will point out that with 4 it's entirely possible to simply do one every minute or something similar (think Kephess the Undying where you get yourself an inspiration on 5-6 pillars instead of 2).

 

However it provides an opportunity to talk about a change I'd like to see implemented: Namely, I think that inspiration/bloodthirst should be a raid wide thing instead of a group wide thing. On 8 man this isn't so bad because you can put all your DPS in one group so they all get inspiration. But in a 16 man operation, where your DPS corps is guaranteed to be in three different groups you suddenly are, ideally, looking into getting at least 3 sentinels which really starts cutting into the available melee DPS spots (because lets face it, in many fights being a melee is just a liability). Now to balance this out (to prevent something insane like stacking 10 mara DPS and just popping an inspire every 30 seconds, or in the Kephess example, on every single tower), there should be a raid wide debuff that follows inspiration, much like the use of a battle rez, that locks out being able to use inspiration, or receive the effects of inspiration, for 5 minutes.

 

This brings us up to the only other even vaguely interesting point in this whole discussion which is PVE utility. Let us be honest here for a second and just admit that in PVE boss fights, perhaps the best utility provided in the game from DPS specced classes are Inspiration, Armor Debuffs, Transcendence, and Scrambling Field. Other little things like taunts and CCs are, I'll grant you, occasionally useful, but those four are by far the most consistently useful. I'll note that the armor debuff can be granted by Guardian tanks as well.

 

Now, when it comes to ranged DPS, the utility provided by scrambling field, while very useful, isn't enough by itself to meaningfully push out Sage and Commando DPS. A lot of that is due to the fact that ranged DPS are usually much kinder on the healers and much better able to transition from boss to add and back to boss, as well as the higher uptime on bosses where they can much more easily stand and pew pew while the ranged have to do a non-trivial amount of moving (Dread Guard comes to mind). This combined with the fact that having a DPS Sage or Commando in charge of battle rezzes, as well as the off heal capability off these two classes in something like 8 man Operations Chief (really ONLY that fight is the off healing all that useful, though the ability to cleanse themselves in something like Writhing Horror is also pretty spiffy) means that while Gunslingers can often top the ranged DPS parses, it's not significant enough, nor is scrambling field good enough, that you're gonna start making tough choices about taking sages or commandos in a DPS capacity. All 3 ranged DPS classes are perfectly viable, all bring varying utility skills that can be utilized, you can take any without knowing without a doubt beforehand that they're awesome.

 

Melee DPS is kind of another story. First off, in general the fewer melee DPS the better is often the opinion of many raid leaders. There are only a few boss fights that don't have some sort of mechanic which will turn the fight into a nightmare for healers when there's an overabundance of melee DPS. Additionally, conventional wisdom still says unless you know the Guardian, Vanguard, Scoundrel or Shadow is very VERY good at their class, you don't take them if you don't have to. Of course if you know the player in question to be very good then player > class, but in general if given the choice in a vacuum those four classes are going to be at the bottom of your list for desired DPS. They're gonna be the fat slow kids picked last for dodgeball until they show that they're the super agile fat kids with a cannon. Sentinels have inspiration and consistently high DPS. The others don't.

 

I mean seriously lets go through the DPS classes and just list them by order in which you would take them if available and why. The following is purely my opinion and I welcome discussion on this. I am still woefully ignorant of some classes, so it's always possible I'd miss something.

 

1) Sentinel: Inspiration and consistently high DPS to the point that I'll assume them to be good until they show themselves to be terrible. No more than 2 on 8 man. No more than 4 on 16 man. Prefer at least 1 on 8 man and at least 2 on 16 man.

 

2) Gunslinger. Highest Ranged DPS. Has an Armor Break, and Scrambling field isn't bad in a pinch. Definitely a spot for them if they want it. Will assume good DPS until shown otherwise. Would not fill every ranged spot with this in 8 man. In any mode really, but in 8 man especially I would prefer at least one or two of the next two.

 

3) Commando. Very good DPS. Honestly at the very top level of play sages probably edge them out by a hair, but a good commando can still put on a lot of hurt. The real reason I put them here over Sages though is because Gunnery has an in rotation Armor Break. The armor break increases the damage of everyone in the raid, and I'd rather a commando do it so a gunslinger doesn't have to which will also increase their DPS. Once you have 1, I would probably put sage and commando at more or less equal so pick your poison. A tech cleanse makes them a little better in Operations Chief as well. Both classes can out range the explosive probe, but only the commando and scoundrel can help cleanse the melee.

 

4) Sage. Still very good DPS, and consistently good in my experience. Only coming after commandos because of no armor break. As long as an armor break exists though sages can do some disgustingly good DPS. Stacking them is find, though I hear trying to track whose Weakened Mind is whose without some sort of third party debuff tracker is a royal pain in the butt.

 

A note on 3 and 4: In 8 man S&V I would take either 2 commandos, 2 sages, or 1 of each so that each team in Operations Chief has at least one person who can throw out heals. In any raid I would want at least one of either commando or sage for the ability to battle rez so healers don't have to. Note that both have a 60 second, combat castable mez for CCing trash which can make those trash pulls a lot less painful on healers, and therefore the raid. I'll note that commandos can still make theirs instant, and it has a 45 second cooldown, and for those reasons is marginally better. Once I had one armor break in the raid (preferably commando or guardian since theirs is in rotation), I would honestly put these two as equals. In fact to be perfectly honest, once an armor break is present, I'd put all 3 ranged DPS classes on equal footing. Gunslinger theoretically edges them out but not hugely in my opinion, and I'd take whoever signed up or whispered first. I'll also note that if no Sentinels are available I have absolutely no problem taking an entire DPS corps of just ranged DPS.

 

5) Guardian. Solid DPS, and an in rotation armor break. If I still have DPS spots open and none of the above 4 classes available, and no armor break yet, I'll probably take a guardian first. My experience has been that theirs is still consistently high damage, and as I said, they do have an armor break if, for some reason you don't have one.

 

6) Vanguard. Honestly I'd take these over guardians if an armor break is already in raid. In 1.7 they just did incredible DPS period and could justify a raid spot on their own. The only vanguard I regularly play with still does incredible damage and I'd still take him for that. A 10m range on most of their stuff also means they still do good damage from a modicum of range and that is nothing to sneeze at. If I still have DPS spots open, no more of the first 4 available, but already have an armor break, then I'd take a vanguard who was asking for sure.

 

7) Scoundrel. These last two are mostly based on what I've personally experienced, and unfortunately are fighting a bit of old bias that may not be true anymore combined with the aforesaid lack of experience to correct that bias. In 1.7 Scoundrels would have been last no question. I've heard they've become a ton better now though and should be more or less at par with everyone else. Still the only real utility they bring to a raid are off heals (useful only in 8 man Operations Chief imo, at least as a serious consideration for bringing them), stealth rezzing (need to know the individual player can actually do this), and stealth mezzing, and of course they have the standard issue battle rez as well. Stealth mezzing isn't really as good as the Sage/Commando versions since it can't be used once the enemy in question is in combat. Stealth rezzing is arguably better than blowing a battle rez, and the scoundrel version is better since their rez has no cooldown, so if they can consistently do it, then by all means they should. Otherwise though they're a melee class doing, so far as I understand it, pretty middle of the road damage, and that's about it. They do have Freighter Flyby, I'll give them that. Of course if I knew the scoundrel in question did really well, I'd take them, but this is the first class where I don't feel comfortable giving an untested player the benefit of the doubt when it comes to DPS.

 

8) Shadow. Stealth rez but not as good as Scoundrel since once they use it, it's done. Stealth mez is as good as scoundrels I suppose. Like scoundrels, I don't mind reserving a raid spot for a Shadow DPS who I just know rips things to shred, but I'm not likely to give an untested one the benefit of the doubt, so I'd probably only take an untested one if they were vouched for by someone I know to be a good judge of such things, or I knew the group was strong enough to carry them.

 

The main problem with 5 through 8 is that unless I'm specifically saving a raid spot for a player on one of these classes who I know, and who I know to be very good, I just don't really look for any of them. Moreover, while I would be perfectly fine filling out a raid team with nothing but ranged DPS, even forgoing inspiration if there were just no sentinels to be had, I'm much MUCH less likely to take nothing but melee DPS. Honestly even all Sentinels would make me nervous unless the entire point was to see if I could do it for the hell of it. I know way back in the days before TFB was even out some group, probably several did an all Mara HM EC run, but even that was mostly to do it just because they could.

 

In any kind of progression, especially if they've made things difficult without necessarily making ranged super difficult, I would actively shy away from a melee heavy squad, and what melee I did take would be sentinels.

 

The solution here would be to really bring some sort of better utility to 5 through 8, or start designing some fights that punish being at ranged more, or somehow force melee range much like TFB herself does, and to a large extent Styrak as well. Of course it's all well and good for the last bosses to be like that, but if all your other fights punish melee, then they'll not get to those last fights regardless.

Edited May 16, 2013 by ArchangelLBC

And you completely missed what I said.

 

All melee dps should be roughly around each other... meaning PT's, Ops, Juggs, and Sin's should all do within 5% of the dps of each other.

 

Marauder dps should not be lowered because they bring more utility. As I said, Utlity and DPS are two independent things.

 

Y I' misread you there I agree with you

Edited May 16, 2013 by DarthSpekulatius

uhhh what?

Warriors are not a ranged class.

 

Wrong. Warriors CAN do leap - and that's from a ranged point.

It's an unusual definition most of you won't like (to follow) anyway, though.

Thread still makes no sense to me.. how can they use it "constant" if it's a 5 min cooldown and only lasts 15 seconds. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but if each Marauder uses their bloodthirst after the previous runs out, doesn't that still give a 4 minute window when no one is buffed by it?

 

Maybe because of this ?

 

Not true. The first one is the only one hurt by that. The 2nd through 4th can use BT at 30 stacks of fury and then pop Frenzy-Berserk. That's what we've done in our raids when we have 2 Marauders.

 

If the first one does Bloodthirst - all 4 are affected - it runs out - then the second starts it - it runs out - then the third starts it - then it runs out - then the fourth starts it ...

 

4 x 15 seconds - that would be 60 seconds = 1 minute, right ?

 

I must admit that I'm not familiar with this class because I don't play it - but, for the usual lengths of Boss Fights this is quite a number ...

 

After that - if the DPS is high enough - any Boss Fight would be over. IF the DPS is strong enough during it, of course.

 

 

 

 

You obviously haven't ran with a raid full of Gunslingers. Try it sometime...............

 

On imperial side ? This thread is about Marauders. You simply can't play Gunslingers on the imperial side.

 

 

 

Alright, this is ridiculous. My main on pub side is a sent, imp marauder. I have one of each class except for a sage when it comes to dps, and 3 tanks, so I'm not some sole sentinel trying to prove a point. Bloodthirst is a 15% damage boost for 15 seconds with a 5 minute cd. That 5 minute cd prevents it from being used in most fights more than once, so assuming everyone was perfect you have a minute of 15% dps. Not a single fight requires you to have 15% more dps, and if this is the deciding factor in if you clear or not, your group needs to work something out. In exchange for this 15% dps, you are losing the 20% damage reduction for 15 seconds from a slinger, cc on 90% of trash mobs, the lack of an off-taunt, stealth rez's, etc. If you think about it, wouldn't it be more OP to bring 4 scoundrel dps? They would be able to stealth rez everyone who goes down almost all the time, AND pass off heals... if I wasn't in the middle of s&v I'd list more.

 

 

I disagree. Between Boss Fights there's usuually a lot of low-level fighting going on - fighting which just doesn't require too many things. Even a healer could take out light enemies single-handedly.

 

So - these 5 minutes are gone quite quickly. Then it's ready again.

Edited May 16, 2013 by AlrikFassbauer

This argument isn't getting overlooked. It's not a factor in my argument. I trust everyone in my raid group. We clear 55 content on an alt night because we needed something to do with our second raid night. It doesn't matter what classes we play. However, some of us have several alts. When you have access to good players with several characters each, you start to notice how lacking many of the classes really are in all facets of the game. My main additions to this thread have been in regard to melee dps and the overwhelming dominance of the marauder class relative to the other melee dps classes. The damage/utility ratio needs to be balanced to promote class diversity. With the current implementation of melee dps, there is no reason to bring a melee dps that isn't a marauder.

 

I am sick and tired of this argument. It is a L2P issue with these other class. Here is some evidence for you taken from 8 man HM records on Torparse:

 

 

#1 on Torparse for Writhing Horror: Operative http://www.torparse.com/a/227519/9 <-- Seriously ***, no AoE class beating it? Think about it.

#7 on Torparse for Dread Guards: Operative http://www.torparse.com/a/216508/47 (NO MARAUDER ABOVE IT, ONLY RANGED CLASSES)

#9 On Torparse for Operator IX: Shadow http://www.torparse.com/a/190567/22 (NO MARAUDER ABOVE IT, ONLY RANGED CLASSES)

#4 On Torparse for Kephess: Operative http://www.torparse.com/a/216508/62 (NO MARAUDER ABOVE IT, ONLY RANGED CLASSES)

#1 on Torparse for TFB: Operative http://www.torparse.com/a/205699/18

#8 on Torparse for Dashroode: Shadow http://www.torparse.com/a/219749/37 (Only 1 Marauder above it, rest ranged)

#4 on Torparse for Titan 6: Juggernaut http://www.torparse.com/a/202973/9 (Only ranged above it)

#10 on Torparse for Titan 6: Scoundrel http://www.torparse.com/a/194440/19 (Ranged and 2 jugs above it)

#10 and 11 on Torparse for Thrasher: http://www.torparse.com/a/216088/9, http://www.torparse.com/a/191446/77 (First fight Marauders beat the others, 2 place higher)

#15 on Torparse for Operations Chief: Operative http://www.torparse.com/a/216508/89 (Only ranged classes above it)

#5, 6 and 7 on Torparse for Olock the Shadow: Operative, Guardian and Assassin http://www.torparse.com/a/215320/24, http://www.torparse.com/a/224655/20 and http://www.torparse.com/a/190426/25 (Only ranged above them and some more melee that are not marauders below them.....then marauders.)

#7, 8 and 10 on Torparse for Cartel Warlords: Juggernaut, Vanguard and Operative http://www.torparse.com/a/221801/30, http://www.torparse.com/a/208042/22 and http://www.torparse.com/a/229498/58 (Only ranged above)

#7, 12 and 13 on Torparse for Styrak: Juggernaut, Operative and Operative http://www.torparse.com/a/202973/38, http://www.torparse.com/a/203625/37 and http://www.torparse.com/a/213255/7 (The Marauders legitimately have the other melee classes beat in this fight....what is that 1 out of 12!?)

 

 

Now, do me a favor and L2P these other classes you guys are deeming as inferior!

 

Wrong. Warriors CAN do leap - and that's from a ranged point.

It's an unusual definition most of you won't like (to follow) anyway, though.

 

By this definition Guardians/Juggernauts and Shadows/Assassins are ranged tanks -_- The classes still have to be within melee ranged to do damage, hence melee class.

 

 

On imperial side ? This thread is about Marauders. You simply can't play Gunslingers on the imperial side.

 

Then run it with Snipers. Learn the mirror classes and stop being a troll.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Grimsblood
More response.

Most of you have missed the point of this thread. It is not that Marauder dps is too good, It is that they provide too much raid utility for the damage they do. This is compounded when a hypothetical boss fight(s), lets say Nightmare TFB allows you to run as much melee as you want and enrage is a real concern. It is a common strategy to bring in extra marauders if you can't quite make enrage in Nightmare Progression fights because rolling Bloodthirst is overpowered.

 

Of course superior players of every class exist, OMG XYZ TORPARSE!!!! proves nothing. The game is not balanced around the top 0.1% of players.

Wrong. Warriors CAN do leap - and that's from a ranged point.

It's an unusual definition most of you won't like (to follow) anyway, though.

 

Wow, you're reaching there. A leap is not a ranged attack you idiot.

Wrong. Warriors CAN do leap - and that's from a ranged point.

It's an unusual definition most of you won't like (to follow) anyway, though.

We don't "like to follow" that definition because it's WRONG.

 

That's called a gap closer. It's used to get in melee range to keep attacking.

Most of you have missed the point of this thread. It is not that Marauder dps is too good, It is that they provide too much raid utility for the damage they do. This is compounded when a hypothetical boss fight(s), lets say Nightmare TFB allows you to run as much melee as you want and enrage is a real concern. It is a common strategy to bring in extra marauders if you can't quite make enrage in Nightmare Progression fights because rolling Bloodthirst is overpowered.

 

Of course superior players of every class exist, OMG XYZ TORPARSE!!!! proves nothing. The game is not balanced around the top 0.1% of players.

 

The irony of this is that we now start to argue player skill or class skill. Watchmen/Annihilation is an easy rotation and priority list to run. So, people can do good damage with not a whole lot of skill. As a result people think the class is OP due to the "good" damage and the raid utility that it brings.

 

Now you also say that the utility vs damage is not balanced. I say to you, why on earth are there no Marauders post live parses at least HALF the time above these other classes? Wouldn't it be logical to assume that there are skilled Marauders out there able to do great damage?

 

Here, lets throw some more at you. Operatives parsing above the rest of the melee dps most of the time in live fights AND able to stealth res people! OMGZ that is too powerful!!! Let's stack a full raid of good Operatives so we have unlimited res's and can ignore mechanics!!!!! Like seriously!? Ooooo, here is another one. How about you stack a raid with ALL dps Shadows, Vanguards and Guardians on boss's that move (8 dps) Everyone stands in a circle and you use the taunt to move the boss around. In this way he spends more time walking then attack, therefor doing less to no damage = WIN!?

 

Utility is balanced in this game, it is just different utility for different things. Stealth res's are great to save you in a pinch when people are having a bad night, Taunts are great if a tank goes down (taunt, pop defensive CD, get tank up), off heals in some situations, pulls when people need to be moved ASAP, RAID WIDE 20% damage reduction, 15% increased group damage dealt, in combat cc's, movement speed increases. One may value a particular utility over another, but in the end that argument goes to personal preference and not imbalance.

1. Bloodthirst (and other Temporary Group Buffs) are GROUP only (even in Ops).

2. Since they are on such a long CD and have high requirements (expending 30 stacks), even if the group had four of them, there would be 3 minutes of no temporary buffs.

Thread name is misleading as you want a raid wide lockout on use, not a GCD.

 

1) Please bring melee DPS only to every fight in the game and let me know how it ends up working out for you

2) If marauder DPS is so much better because of BT, why doesn't everyone play a marauder? It's not like everyone hasn't had a year and a half to level one.

3) Just because utility doesn't increase DPS, doesn't mean it isn't utility. Being able to cleanse or heal yourself is valuable for many fights to lighten the load on healers. Having a raid wide shield for damage spikes keeps everyone alive. Stacking armor debuffs on the boss actually DOES increase DPS.

4) Most fights take ~5 minutes to finish up atm and many of them don't offer good windows to utilize the full time that BT gives you. In a perfect world of beating on dummies, this may be a factor, but as there is quite a bit more going on in boss fights, this ability is on par with other utility type abilities.

Content that is not hard is not relevant. Doing leet dps on a boss that is trivial does not prove very much.

 

HM 8 Styrak is one of the only bosses that was non-trivial and 4 of the top 6 parses for it are Marauders. That Marauder DPS is very good is not the concern, that they do top tier dps and provide the strongest buff is a problem.

 

All other class utility is simply execution, if you can already execute a fight properly and your group is still hitting enrage, Marauders can fix it. The fact that you can swap out your worst dps for a Marauder that does slightly less damage than them and be further ahead is a balance problem.

BTW HM 8 Man Golden Fury is the other fight that was non-trivial and 7 of the top 8 parses are Marauders or Sentinels.

Content that is not hard is not relevant. Doing leet dps on a boss that is trivial does not prove very much.

 

On the other hand, if you think about it in terms of NiM TFB, which classes can do the most damage given the mechanics of TFB bosses becomes a very relevant question.