Source: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6801929#post6801929

From Mercenary's top 3 questions answers:

It is fairly clear now that Mercenaries/Commandos are not the dominating force on the field of battle that we originally feared they might be. With that said, some classes have utilities that are just too strong and/or cooldown durations that are quite possibly too short – the Marauder/Sentinel is a good example of a class like this. So while some classes may pine to be given cooldowns that will make them as strong as Sentinels/Marauders, we would rather reduce the effectiveness of Marauder/Sentinel cooldowns to make them more like the other classes when it comes to survivability.

So what we got that is worth nerfing?

Cloak? But we need to be in the melee fray with weaker armor.

Undying Rage? It already cuts our health by half, and it was BW who gave us back the extra 1s with PvP set bonus.

Saber Ward? That would affect Jugs too, so I doubt it. And it got a long cooldown anyway.

Camouflage? It is our threat reducer too, and it needs to be at 45s.

That is about it. I guess they can make Camouflage give no damage reduction for its duration, and remove set bonus and talents that buff Undying Rage, so that it is set on 1.5 min cooldown for 4s no matter what.

I sense fear in OP Man look you say that marauders are melee with "weaker" armor. How about madness assassins and conceilment operatives? lfmao

Comparison fail. Madness assassins and concealment ops are not intended to be front line fighters. With their stealth, they are designed to be ambushers who pick and choose their fights and their targets. Marauders are the complete opposite. They were designed to be in the thick of mêlée. However, since they are the only such class with medium armor. Effective defensive cooldowns are a necessity.

Judging from those comments it looks like they'll be doing away with the hybrid tax soon enough. The reasonings they provided almost mirror the ones given by WoW/Ghostcrawler back in 2008.

As a marauder I hope our utility and dps isn't gutted or "normalized" for PVE (and PVP) since we are frontline fighters and there are many more fights mechanics that are melee unfriendly. For example, most raids wouldn't mind having all ranged dps while all melee dps would raise eyebrows and present more challenges on fights like HM Tyrans and Titan 6. But I'm not holding my breath.

Comparison fail. Madness assassins and concealment ops are not intended to be front line fighters. With their stealth, they are designed to be ambushers who pick and choose their fights and their targets. Marauders are the complete opposite. They were designed to be in the thick of mêlée. However, since they are the only such class with medium armor. Effective defensive cooldowns are a necessity.

Comprehension fail. Whether or not they were 'designed to be ambushers' (good for ganking, but the majority of the endgame be it pve or pvp is teamplay and the whole lone wolf thing is no advantage) the fact of the matter is they need to be in melee range to do their damage just like maras/sents and when in melee range they are just as vulnerable to dangers that maras/sents face, except without those great cooldowns ( at least for ops cos sins have reasonable cooldowns).

My main worry is not that they suddenly decide Marauder/Sentinel need a nerf (I love the class), because yes it probably need a small one to its defensive cooldowns.

What worries me is how far they'll bring the nerfbat, because so far they don't exactly have a shining record when "nerfing" a class in balance.

They mostly nerfed them to the ground when the initial "balance" came, and took a year + to somewhat fix them.

Sorc? Nerfed to the ground in 1,2.

Operatives? Same.

Pyro PT? Yep. (altough fix was under a year)

What I'm worried is that they'll take the bread and butter solo pve cooldown that is Cloak of Pain/Rebuke and slap it on a 2-3 minute cooldown, when in PvP its actually very doable to force an opponent to *waste* it by a well timed CC when you see it pop, especially now that DoT do not refresh it anymore (rightly so imo).

What also worries me, is how merc, which damage has always been competitive with a battle rez (which is always a good thing to have on a DPS in an ops imo, since if someone died, it could mean its healing that is in a very intensive phase, and having an healer stop healing to revive someone might just kill another. And it so happens, merc top the damage board compared to sorc and operatives) are being sucked up to by devs, when they already have very good defensive cooldowns, and the main issue for Arsenal is not survivability but PvP shutdown issues.

they roughly get a permanent Marauder with Cloak of pain up DR, at range, with one of the most powerful tech instant-cast in game, and an immunity to knockbacks.

Meanwhile, sorcs got told to heal to full, LoS and make them pay. I missed something somewhere?

Comprehension fail. Whether or not they were 'designed to be ambushers' (good for ganking, but the majority of the endgame be it pve or pvp is teamplay and the whole lone wolf thing is no advantage) the fact of the matter is they need to be in melee range to do their damage just like maras/sents and when in melee range they are just as vulnerable to dangers that maras/sents face, except without those great cooldowns ( at least for ops cos sins have reasonable cooldowns).

Yes, but even if madness assassins and concealment ops are required to be melee they don't engage in large fights (defeats the purpose of being ambushers). Marauders are a large fights class, and hence why they need effective defense.

Will be impossible to survive as a marauder, it'll affect everybody because the healers really fear marauders, not anymore.

Next step: nerf heals because the only one able to push burst to kill them were nerfed.

Next step: nerf ranged classes because melees are so poor.

Duran'del here,

YES! Nerf them! Marauders need to be squishier so AP PTs have a chance of killing them! Yes!

Maras have some of the highest DPS outputs. It requires 0 skill to play. So they need to be squishy. Finally, BW is balancing out this game.

Will be impossible to survive as a marauder, it'll affect everybody because the healers really fear marauders, not anymore.

Next step: nerf heals because the only one able to push burst to kill them were nerfed.

Next step: nerf ranged classes because melees are so poor.

Durandel here,

Aww, do the Marauders finally get balanced? I'm sorry you can't be OP anymore.... qq more plz

Durandel here,

 

Aww, do the Marauders finally get balanced? I'm sorry you can't be OP anymore.... qq more plz

:p OMG this guy is so amusing.

Some nerfs that I feel can be appropriate for maras:

- Get rid of Interceptor, I mean force charge and force crush already have a similar effect, just use one of those

- Remove crippling slash, dual saber throw is more then enough (not to mention the many other slows and mezzes in the game)

- Remove obfuscate (or increased it's CD to 5 minutes)

- Reduce Force choke's range to 4m (part of the reason for this one, is to due with latency, if I try to run away or I push the mara back, and I get force choked, it can happen where they'll be just over 10m away from me (outside of the intended range), and instead of waiting for the cast to finish, they'll proceed with, say obliterate (since they're within the range to do so), giving me even less chance to counteract. However, this could be an over-arcing issue with teh game itself anway).

- Remove Force Vigor

The way I see it is maras survivability should not even come close to a jugg dps.

Ranged should never put out more dps than melee.

Maras should be about speed and damage. That's it.

High alacrity, high power. Click like you've never clicked before.

Some nerfs that I feel can be appropriate for maras:

 

- Get rid of Interceptor, I mean force charge and force crush already have a similar effect, just use one of those

- Remove crippling slash, dual saber throw is more then enough (not to mention the many other slows and mezzes in the game)

- Remove obfuscate (or increased it's CD to 5 minutes)

- Reduce Force choke's range to 4m (part of the reason for this one, is to due with latency, if I try to run away or I push the mara back, and I get force choked, it can happen where they'll be just over 10m away from me (outside of the intended range), and instead of waiting for the cast to finish, they'll proceed with, say obliterate (since they're within the range to do so), giving me even less chance to counteract. However, this could be an over-arcing issue with teh game itself anway).

- Remove Force Vigor

Obfuscate is very situationnal, and doesn't reduce tech/force accuracy. Falling back on such attack if that ONE PERSON move appears on you is an efficient work around, it last for roughly 4 GCD.

So a 5 minute CD on this? No thx. It also cannot be used on ops bosses, so its pretty much on par with the MM sniper smoke canister, at higher acc penatly, but shorter range. Possibly adjusting its penalty to 60% or so would be possible change.

Crippling slash cost reduce any possibility of it being spammed, nothing wrong here. DST is on a long enough cooldown compared to the snare it does, and they have considerably buffed rdps ability to fight snares in last patches, only sorc still need its baseline one.

I agree with force vigor health cost reduction on undying rage however removal however. Thing is powerful enough to warrant the full 50% health loss.

As for force choke range, there is always a delay between where you see yourself and where server sees you. If he manages to start channelling choke, then you didn't get away. Just like i'm sure you are happy getting a hit go on someone who "left your range" with whatever ability you were casting before he did with whatever class you play.

10m is rather a short distance, something an escape moves cover rather fast.

Imo the nerf will be on Cloak of pain. Either change the DR to a defense chance or reduce it, or increases its cooldown/decrease max duration.

So long as they don't pull an illogical move off their hat and nerfbat annihilation's self-heals when rage and carnage are the problem.

I think cloak of pain is fine as is.

I think obfuscate is fine as is.

One to looked at is force camo which they could fix by Increasing it's frequency up from 45 to a 90 second.

The other is undying rage which would be fine if the healing received while activated was reduced by say 60%.

I think that would be fair if nothing else changed.

I think cloak of pain is fine as is.

 

I think obfuscate is fine as is.

 

One to looked at is force camo which they could fix by Increasing it's frequency up from 45 to a 90 second.

 

The other is undying rage which would be fine if the healing received while activated was reduced by say 60%.

 

I think that would be fair if nothing else changed.

Increasing the cool down on our threat drop is ridiculous. We are one of the highest threat dps and on any fight with a threat drop mechanic wed pull constantly. If it needs to,be nerfed, remove the damage reduction.

Increasing the cool down on our threat drop is ridiculous. We are one of the highest threat dps and on any fight with a threat drop mechanic wed pull constantly. If it needs to,be nerfed, remove the damage reduction.

That.

Force camouflage is also the sole escape mechanic on the marauder right now. We have nothing else boosting our speed, other than predation which is obviously not availaible on demand if you consider you need to handily have 30 stack of unused fury when you figure you gotta get away, plus sacrifying a berserk, and predation does not allow for an "escape" that much, since running fast 30 meter is still running a very very long 30 meters.

And as for cloak of pain, I'm looking at the skill tree. They slapped defense chance in the carnage tree to fix its "squishiness". There's an ability nearly no one uses unless for solo pve purpose on retaliation in the bottom of the annihilation tree (and imo, you're still better doing something that hit harder with that 3 rage, end the fight faster, and overall less dead you). So my suspicion at what they are going to do goes there.

I'm "hoping" for either 10% DR down from 20%, or something like 20% defense/resist chance with retaliation being free while the cloak is active. That would make it an offensive cd when focused (free dps boost) and make cloak of annihilation somewhat worth it from its rather less than attractive position, as well as being slightly less of an all around powerful defensive cooldown.

What I'm really hoping for is they don't change the cooldown on it, since some spec rely on this thing at a certain level. Namely carnage hits a certain squishyness in the 30 range where I remember using this a lot before respeccing to annihilition when I was leveling around 1,2 on my marauder (2nd toon, no "great" gear, but decent enough, started struggling on Taris with some thrash pull without quinn)

what I'm also hoping, is they don't change annihilation too much. Thing shine because its one of the best all around damage/survivability spec in PvE, and can take on your average roaming champion great in PvE. They take away that, lets all be gore-happy or reroll miralukian and go HULK SMASH.

You know, the Devs always shift back and forth on this topic.

- Undying Rage was too good, 1s was removed from it. Then they gave it back to us through PvP set bonus.

- Carnage was too squishy, they gave Carnage Frenzied Sabers to boost its survival.

- Now they are saying the survival cool downs are too good? What? If the cool downs are nerfed across the class, then that will put Carnage back to its squishiness, which means they will have to buff Frenzied Sabers to make up for it.

So are the cooldowns really too strong? Or are the specs that buff the cooldowns made them too strong?