SWTOR’s very first 8.0 PTS iteration includes level 85 changes for all 3 Marauder | Sentinel disciplines. We’ll explain what they are and what we think about them.
General Changes Approach
The changes on the PTS are very, very preliminary. Each combat style is getting one of their baseline abilities replaced with a version that adds a unique additional function for each discipline at level 83, like the second ability each class gets at level 15.
None of the unfinished business with ability trees and talent choice design have been fixed (yet), it’s just that new ability and a “new” passive at level 83, though that passive is almost always just that spec’s most popular tactical item.
It seems like they’re intending to make the most popular tactical less ubiquitous, rather than just balancing the alternatives properly, and the fact that they’re doing it this way has the potential to create even more imbalance without eliminating this flavor of the month issue because they’re going off of popularity rather than actual power level or intended use case.
Many players are not even aware that tactical items exist, nor that they’re designed like ability tree choices where they tend to be optimal against a specific enemy and content type, whether it be a boss (fight), trash mob (solo content), or player (PvP).
Some players just pick the one, usually the single-target sustained option meant for boss fights and end up doing worse in other types of content and end up disengaging rather than learning.
Tactical items also cost a lot of Tech Fragments and Credits and take up unnecessary inventory space while acting as an incentive against having alts.
Really, each discipline has ~3 tactical items that should just be migrated to their own new talent choice in the tree. The ones that need rebalancing or refining can be addressed individually.
So far, it feels like they’re trying to use a single size screwdriver to fix a bunch of specific and unique problems, but sometimes that screwdriver just doesn’t fit. I don’t think the same one-size-fits-all approach will work here like it did with Ability Trees because the problems for one spec aren’t shared by another.
Marauder | Sentinel
The level 83 modified ability for Marauders | Sentinels is Frenzy | Valorous Call. Currently, the ability just gives 30 stacks of Fury | Centering on a 2min, 30s cooldown.
Back when Predation | Transcendence cost Fury | Centering to use, the ability was a bit more important, but right now it basically just enables you to use Bloodthirst | Inspiration without disrupting your rotation or realign Berserk | Zen if its position gets messed up.
It can be more useful for Carnage | Combat specifically since 7.0 integrated into the rotation, but realistically, it needs a much shorter cooldown and/or additional effect, so these improvements are good, if infrequently available.
Since Warrior | Knight tactical items are generally quite bland aside from a couple outliers, your options for Marauder | Sentinel will tend to be more balanced.
The changes to all 3 Marauder | Sentinel specs are particularly prototypical, like I’m surprised they even attempted to implement any of this before having more solid ideas down on paper. Perhaps they were under a time crunch.
Annihilation | Watchman
The change to Frenzy | Valorous Call for Annihilation | Watchman grants unbelievably broken raidwide healing alongside tactical items that have barely any impact at all.
- Frenzy | Valorous Call now also empowers your next activation of Berserk | Zen to cause all critical bleed | burn attacks to heal members of your group within 10m for 2% of their max health for
15s20s. - The Spiteful Saber tactical is now the level 83 discipline passive for Annihilation | Watchman.
- This leaves Thirsty Blade or Overwhelming Offense as the new BiS for boss fights alongside Malmourral Mask for solo eras content (maybe) and Grit Teeth for PvP.
The changes on the PTS are very preliminary, so it’s not the case right now, but I expect that this effect is meant to replace the group healing effect on Annihilation’s Berserk | Watchman’s Zen.
Without some sort of rate limit, the overall potential healing provided by this effect averages out to something like 1-2% per second, which equates to 4.3-8.6k HPS per player using level 80 HP pools, and that’s before you factor in DoT spreading and Blood Wave | Flaming Wave enabling you to tick your DoTs on multiple targets on demand.
Even if this only affects 4 players max (which is a weird, unique contrivance that needs to go), that’s still 17.2-34.4k HPS for 20s per Marauder | Sentinel in single-target situations. For those out of the loop, that’s a pretty solid healing parse for demanding fights.
What’s the expectation here? Does Broadsword want you to skip bringing an extra healer for many fights? Why are they so open to the idea of being able to completely invalidate any and all heal checks in the game or force groups to bring Annihilation | Watchman to compensate for ridiculously overtuned fights?
Less importantly, if the effect lasts so much longer than Berserk | Zen ever will, what’s the point of tying the healing buff to an activation of Berserk | Zen at all? Why not just make it so Frenzy | Valorous Call grants the healing outright? Furthermore, why does it need the 10m range or group-only restrictions if it’s on a 150s cooldown?
Maybe, we just need to get rid of the clunky Annihilator | Merciless and Juyo Form stacks so the spec can work properly outside of boss fights and then it wouldn’t need some sort of busted utility for people to justify playing the spec.
On the tacticals front, Thirsty Blade is super weak and probably isn’t better than Overwhelming Offense, not that Malmorral Mask is that much better.
Carnage | Combat
The change to Frenzy | Valorous Call for Carnage | Combat adds an effect to grant extra Ferocity | Precision charges and activations of Devastating Blast | Clashing Blast. and folds Shard of Mortis into the tree.
Frenzy | Valorous Call now also empowers your next activation of Berserk | Zen to additionally grant 3 charges of Ferocity | Precision and consuming a charge Berserk | Zen stack greatly reduces the cooldown of Devastating Blast | Clashing Blast.- Frenzy | Valorous Call turns your next activation of Berserk | Zen into a 3s channel of Ravage | Master Strike that grants 3 charges of Ferocity | Precision (over the course of its channel?). During this special Berserk | Zen, consuming a charge of Berserk | Zen finishes the cooldown on Devastating Blast | Clashing Blast.
- The old Fanged God Form tactical from 6.0 that enabled you to spam Massacre | Blade Rush infinitely and was replaced by Shard of Mortis is now the level 83 discipline passive for Carnage | Combat.
- This leaves Andeddu’s Malevolence as the new BiS for boss fights alongside Undying Cloak for PvP and nothing really for solo eras content, though the cooldown reduction suggests they’re wanting you to use The Prosecution and Furious Power | Force Clarity for something.
- Unlisted: Improved the VFX for the Marauder’s Ataru Form strike
The Carnage | Combat changes are a complete mess, and the description does not accurately explain what I think is happening. Part of it seems like they’re trying to create a better reason to use The Prosecution tactical, which makes Devastating Blast | Clashing Blast benefit from Furious Power | Force Clarity, but it breaks the rotation in a way that Berserk Gore | Zen Lance and Frenzied Blade | Valor Blade fixed in 7.0.
The problem is that Furious Power | Force Clarity isn’t worth taking as Carnage | Combat because Swiftness is so much better the spec is lacking in powerful abilities to buff with Furious Power | Force Clarity, either. Granted, The Prosecution does become a bit more compelling in PvP, but Carnage | Combat can already make great use of Undying Cloak, so it’s not really necessary, again, especially when you have to give up Swiftness.
The other part of the change to Frenzy | Valorous Call gives you an additional activation of Ferocity | Precision, but it’s more complicated than it needs to be and wrecks the rotation.
It also seems like they’re trying to make Frenzy | Valorous Call grant a proc that turns an off-GCD ability into a channeled attack that is the old 3s channel for Ravage | Blade Barrage, which is probably then meant to build the 3 stacks of Ferocity | Precision over the channel, but that ain’t gonna fly.
All they need to do is make than an ability replacement for Overwhelming Slashes | Debilitating Slashes at level 27 so players can use it if they want.
The only spec where it would disrupt the rotation is Vengeance Juggernaut | Vigilance Guardian, but that’s easy enough to fix by reverting the change to Major Fracture | Cauterizing Brand, but I digress.
It would work better just to give Ferocity | Precision a second charge and let Frenzy | Valorous Call build 2 Rage | Focus and recharge 1 charge.
They could even expand on this idea by making Ferocity | Precision work more like Furious Power | Force Clarity where 1 ability charge grants 1 Ferocity | Precision Charge. You’d just have to halve the cooldown and make Berserk | Zen reset the cooldown on 1 charge while Frenzy | Valorous Call resets 3 charges under this framework.
The Shard of Mortis Fanged God Form tactical being migrated to the tree will help balance out the remaining choices, assuming they really meant Shard of Mortis, which is good, but applying this structure to all disciplines will probably create more balance issues than it solves.
Fury | Concentration
The change to Frenzy | Valorous Call for Fury | Concentration adds some nonsensical splash damage to all discipline-specific rotational attacks. Rather than having one of its tactical items moved to the tree, the spec gets a brand-new passive.
- Frenzy | Valorous Call now also empowers your next activation of Berserk | Zen to additionally make Raging Burst | Focused Burst, Obliterate | Zealous Leap, Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice, and Force Crush | Force Exhaustion to deal reduced damage to up to 8 enemies near the primary target for 20s.
- Fury | Concentration has a new passive at level 83 called Shii-Cho Obliteration, which has the following effect:
- Activating Obliterate | Zealous Leap now doubles the effect of Shii-Cho form for 6s. In addition, Obliterate/Zealous Leap is now more responsive within 4m of the target. (Obliterate/Zealous Leap no longer moves you when activated if you’re already within 4m of the target)
- BiS tacticals remain unchanged.
The current Frenzy | Valorous Call effect for Fury | Concentration feels more like a general goal that the devs want for the spec rather than a final implementation.
The visuals for Marauder | Sentinel solo content-oriented AoE tacticals (Malmourral Mask, Enrage Crush, and Tome of Unyielding Blades) are already a tough sell. Extending similar visuals to all the single-target attacks doesn’t help, though their implementation isn’t bad.
You could do something like the following:
- Smash | Force Sweep does not consume the damage boost procs
- Obliterate | Zealous Leap gains a Smash | Force Sweep type of visual effect to convey AoE damage
- Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice works like a narrow cleave that deals full damage or it could have some sort of Force Flagellation type of deal where it sends out a Blade Storm-type effect
- Raging Burst | Focused Burst and Force Crush | Force Exhaustion already have mechanisms that enable them to deal AoE damage, so they don’t need to be included in this effect
Also, Fury | Concentration desperately needs an additional charge of Frenzy | Valorous Call. A single activation either wrecks the rotation or wastes the 30 stacks. Honestly, even a third charge with the ability’s cooldown only getting halved is necessary.
That way, you have 2 charges to use back-to-back and the third for Bloodthirst | Inspiration and recovering from mistakes.
Fury | Concentration is the only spec in the initial batch not to have one of its tactical items migrated to a discipline. Instead, it gets a new effect that gives you +3% damage dealt and Damage Reduction for 6s, creating an incentive to use Obliterate | Zealous Leap immediately after Raging Burst | Focused Burst instead of Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice.
This way, you’ll have greater overlap between Shii-Cho Obliteration and Cascading Power | Heightened Blows, though the number of Cauterized Coronary ticks benefitting from the latter will probably be inconsistent due to tight timings.
Really, Cauterized Coronary should just deal its damage as 3 ticks over 3s rather than the current 3 ticks over 6s. This way it would be done before either buff falls off and feel a bit more unique as a DoT.
The change where Obliterate | Zealous Leap no longer moves you if you’re still in melee range is absolutely fantastic, though it doesn’t need to be attached to Shii-Cho Obliteration; it should just be part of the base ability like it is for Low Slash. It definitely still needs to root the target, though.
Situational attacks like Dual Saber Throw | Twin Saber Throw, Mad Dash | Blade Blitz, and Force Choke | Force Stasis need to contribute to Rout | Nimble Slashes as well.
