Sedrahl wrote:
First of all, their survivability ranks among the worst out of any class I have played. For some reason Marauders get a +0 health rating when they completely lack the stealth and trapping capability of rogues, or the teleports and ambushing of Shadowblades. Even Arcane Blades get +2 Health Rating to go with the entire Aegis and Conveyance trees to further bolster their survivability. Marauders on the other hand get situational bonuses like Dual Weapon Defense and Riot-Born, and not much else. As far as things to help them cope with getting bursted down by ranged threats go, well, they have pretty much nothing.
I wouldn't call that situational: Marauders are the only dual wielders with Conditioning, and 50% conf, stun resistance is sweet. They are the two most disabling status effects, at least the common ones. They combine that with high damage. Dual Weapon Defense is worse, but if you max both Defense talents around level15-18, most enemies won't be able to hit you. Without putting a cat point in either tree, even Grushnak pride entrances had a good chance of missing (my Defense was 10-15 higher than their Accuracy).
Quote:
Second, for such a vulnerable melee fighter, their mobility is quite poor. This issue is pretty much tied in with the above survival problem. Marauders simply don't have very good mobility. Their only options are Rush and, if they invest a cat point and can survive 14 levels to get to it, Step Up.
Rush + Step Up is poor ? High damage of dual wield combined with Step Up makes me feel a lot more mobile than Bulwarks, which need to spend several turns killing an enemy. Both Marauders and Berserkers are playable with just rush + Movement infusion. True Grit grants the elemental defense you want, although I prefer to spend stamina on offensive abilities.
Quote:
Similar classes all have their own mobility options on top of what Marauder has, be it stealth, ambush, conveyance, rampage, etc. They also tend to have the versatility of being useful both offensively and defensively, whereas Marauder needs to invest specifically in Rush and Step-Up for offense, Disengage/Hack'n'back for defense, all of which work in an inflexible and often unreliable fashion. Marauder's more likely to end up in unfavorable positions as a result of this, and they can't survive these unfavorable positions as well as others.
I agree the problem is with Field Control and Mobility trees. Disengage is only useful for ranged classes, and even then you have to play very carefully to be able to use it at all. It would be much nicer if Disengage allowed choosing a square in a cone (first select an adjacent creature, second a square in a cone projected from it towards you). As for Hack&Back, it's solution looking for a problem! Both Marauder and Brawler are melee classes, hitting an enemy and jumping away is NOT good. You're making yourself vulnerable. I think Hack&Back shouldn't be fixed in similar way as Disengage (cone), because the 2 skills already overlap too much and a class has few reasons to take both. Instead, how about this skill as H&B replacement ?
Circle StrafeCooldown: 8
You hit the target for 100% damage. Second, you get Movement-infusion-like bonus which breaks as soon as you stop being adjacent to an enemy. (it would be best if it simply didn't allow moving away from enemies).
Uses:
- use an enemy as living shield
- reposition, to keep thwacking a monster. Hit a monster and make yourself less visible to OTHER enemies.
- at higher level, you should be able to circle a group of enemies. A good example is in the orc Ambush. You would hit one of them, then move around them to prevent them from cornering you.
Quote:
Third, Stamina. This one probably doesn't need much elaboration. Marauders burn through their stamina VERY quickly, as all their abilities and a lot of their sustains consume it at an alarming rate, and they only have Combat Veteran to try to curb the this appetite. Needless to say, it's not nearly enough.
Quite recently I complained about Marauder stamina problem - their Combat Veteran was LOCKED. But after more testing, I don't like unlocked Combat Veteran! It makes the 'rogue' archetype class play too much like a dual-wielded warrior. There is a synergy with Unending Frenzy (stamina for kill - it's really not that bad!). Mobility tree is supposed to help with Stamina, but does remarkably poor job at that. Anyway, I was able to get Total Thuggery running for long durations on marauders - the secret is Adrenaline Surge. In fact, once my stamina practically depleted, I would enable 5/5 Greater Weapon Focus and use both GWF and TT with talents like Flurry.
But you shouldn't have to do that. Total Thuggery is an awkward skill. The bonus isn't that high and requires practically maxed Str/Dex to do anything. The stamina cost is horrendous and has negative synergy with skills like Flurry, Whirlwind and all attack speed boosters. Usually when a skill has a cost per hit, it does something nice per hit, like +damage, the cost is relatively modest and you're happy to see more of it. With Total Thuggery, you want to make as few attacks per turn as possible.
For the record, I had Total Thuggery, True Grit and Greater Weapon focus active at the same time - but it required 5/5 Step Up, the +0.5 stamina talent, Unending Frenzy (stamina for kill), Adrenaline Surge. And that was on a 2-handed Marauder with Legacy of the Naloren (dual wielder might deal higher damage).
But back to stamina. Light of Foot bonus is a drop in the bucket. When maxed, you get something like -7% fatigue and 2 stamina per move. A Movement infusion which moves you 10 squares will give you... 20. Step Up of 7 will give you 14. And that's all provided that you move left-right-left-right-left-right-attack to milk every Movement or Step Up as much as possible - awful grinding. Additionally, Light of Foot encourages walking in a place like a little girl who wants to pee. You can't just Rest behind a corner until enemies come. It makes the interface worse.
One fix, aside from increasing the amount of stamina gained, would be giving the stamina in advance - at the moment when you activate Step Up, Movement or Roll With It. And give stamina proportional to the movement bonus gained.
Another could be something a little silly, but playable - Light of Foot gives you stamina proportional to distance from your last position. Translation: it would benefit even from Rush and Phase Door. Doesn't make much sense, but there would be many synergies, and that 80 distance Teleport would finally be good for something.
Another idea: all rogue archetype classes will be getting stamina for picking up items (especially gold). This will mostly help outside combat, or when no enemies are in view. This could be added to Piercing Sight talent, perhaps?
Quote:
As for my own suggestion, I don't know if it's considered a Berserker signature tree, but I think adding Technique/Bloodlust as a locked category would work wonders for Marauders. Bloodbath would significantly alleviate Marauder's durability and Stamina problems, while also having high synergy with Total Thuggery.
It could work, but try to imagine Bloodbath + Step Up. It would start snowballing ! It might be too powerful, I'm not sure. I always wanted to get Step Up on a Berserker.
Hmm, don't you think Vicious Blows (+5 APR, +5% critical mult) is a bit underwhelming ? The skill is highly situational and requires up to 5 points invested.
I like Giant Leap on marauder. You already do high damage, you have many disabling options (especially with poisons; but you get 2 sources of stun + Skullcracker). And if it's not the time for smacking, you can jump away.
Finally, have you tried Vile Poisons on a marauder ? Helps survivability very much, swarms get disabled with Numbing+Crippling poisons and Whirlwind or Swipe. Bosses can't do anything, only Grushnak perhaps. Surprisingly few enemies are resistant to poisons, and they have high chance of sticking.
-------------------------------
One more idea - change to Total Thuggery.
Total Thuggery -> Bully Whenever you attack an enemy with Bully active:
- physical penetration bonus unchanged. Flat +critical removed.
- if there's a wall on the opposite side of attacked enemy, you get up to +50% critical chance bonus
- if not, the skill checks if there's a free space behind your enemy. If there is, 1) the enemy is knocked back 1 square, 2) you move onto the square left by the enemy.
In summary, this skill would make you push enemies around into a wall, and once they're backed against a wall they would get heavy clubbing. Additionally, you would move while hitting enemies, which would greatly help against projectiles.