Please fix marauder

[Duelle]

They WILL sit in town the second this game gets hard unless something is done. People will start making fun of marauders and pugs just like blms, plds, nins, and rdms made fun of dragoons and thieves when they tried to defend themselves in XI.

This depends on whether encounter design is lop-sided in favor of certain classes while making others much less useful. DRG had the problem of image since it was seen as gimp but really wasn't since the TP return nerf. THF was tied to a gimmick that was obviously useless after the 60's.

I'd rather them put the damage dealers close to each other so that this discrepancy that causes groups to take one but not the other is reduced as much as it can be. Even then, we'd still have the slashing/blunt/piercing damage thing to deal with. In the case of LNC and MRD, they should be DD with a slight edge in their respective bonuses (MRD in area damage, and LNC in minor buffs). 1H or Dual Wield GLD (or maybe Fencer if they get around to introducing that and are bent on keeping GLD tank-focused) could probably join that camp too. Edit: Looking over MRD again, I thought of something. The class could work well as a tank if a couple of the things available to it are distinct from the stuff that makes MRD a damage dealer. Thus, on a concept level a DD MRD would be something like "a fearless warrior that does not yield until its targets are all dead" while a tank MRD would be "a stalwart warrior that brandishes his weapon to draw the attention of his enemies while protecting his allies". Workable concept, no?

Something interesting to note in all this is that the harbinger of the new battle system happens to be the same guy that did the battle system in FFXI. If he had anything to do with party dynamics in relation to encounters and overall encounter mechanics for bosses, my forecast for the future is not very good right now.

[Peregrine]

Edit: Looking over MRD again, I thought of something. The class could work well as a tank if a couple of the things available to it are distinct from the stuff that makes MRD a damage dealer. Thus, on a concept level a DD MRD would be something like "a fearless warrior that does not yield until its targets are all dead" while a tank MRD would be "a stalwart warrior that brandishes his weapon to draw the attention of his enemies while protecting his allies". Workable concept, no?

Something interesting to note in all this is that the harbinger of the new battle system happens to be the same guy that did the battle system in FFXI. If he had anything to do with party dynamics in relation to encounters and overall encounter mechanics for bosses, my forecast for the future is not very good right now.

I hope that the battle designer feels badly for what happened to meleers for the first three years of the game, how it set them up to be second class citizens to mages, tanks, and rangers. I hope even more that he knows precisely what he did improperly. Archer was designed with the same exact problems that led to ranger running FFXI for years. Mages, not so much luckily.

The concept of marauder being a multi-mob tank honestly won't ever work. A marauder can't tank more mobs than a gladiator, so the mobs would have to be numerous and weak for marauder's AoE meleeing to ever make it come out on top. And even if it is, you're better off getting the BEST tank--gladiator--occupy them wile the BEST Crowd controllers-thaumaturge and conjurer--nuke them all down. Marauder, the 2nd best tank and 3rd, arguably 4th best AoE'er is just inefficient and insufficient for that job. If the enemies ARE numerous and weak, a pack of archers could make such quick work of them that before steadfast even activates, they're not even a large group any more. Half of them are dead.

Thus, the marauder becomes useless at any group of mobs it COULD tank because an archer group could just end them immediately.

The inescapabilities of being a meleer go for this game as they went in FFXI. You are either a good DD or you're not. Warriors don't get points for being off tanks. Samurais don't get points for being skillchain specialists. Thieves don't get points for hate control. Dark knights don't get points for spike damage. Monks don't get points for parry and HP. You are either good at DD, or you're a gimp job, because THAT is your only viable role, and the only thing about you that matters to anyone.

Marauder needs overhaulled at its core. Archer can not outdamage it, otherwise there is ZERO point in marauder. You'll get a dozen marauders hop in this thread and scream about how great they are at tanking and crowd control, and no they're not. They will never be, otherwise it's GLADIATOR that will need massive enhancements. Marauders can not win the fight they are destined to lose here. They are NOT tanks. They are NOT crowd controllers. They are NOT AoE'ers. They are bad at all of those things, because other jobs already own that position.

There is no point in letting a marauder tank if you have a gladiator, because all marauders really do when they tank is keep a mage, the true AoE damagers, from nuking as often as it would because marauder isn't as good a tank and demands more cure attention.

It pains me to correct marauders that over-play the job on the board here, but being a fanboy of the job isn't going to save it. Didn't save DRG. Didn't save THF. Won't save this mess. When they claim that they shined at the old Braggodocios and dodore camps: Honestly no they didn't, as their healer talking here. Marauder would do when there was no gladiator around. That's about it. I could keep one alive. I could still kill the brags faster with a glad tanking them than a mrd.

Let's put it this way...at the oldschool HPBB camp where marauder "shined" as a thaumaturge healed him...would actually go better if the thaumaturge tanked and the marauder healed HIM.

[Duelle]

The concept of marauder being a multi-mob tank honestly won't ever work. A marauder can't tank more mobs than a gladiator, so the mobs would have to be numerous and weak for marauder's AoE meleeing to ever make it come out on top.

I never said anything about keeping marauder as a second-rate tank. I'm more for making it a tank on par with GLD, just finding mechanics and a style of play that defines it and separates it from GLD. Because if we continue with that "one best tank, one best nuker, etc" mentality, we're going to run into the exact same problem we had in XI when it came to group composition for content that matters. What I'm saying is that DD MRD and tank MRD need to be better defined to give players that want either role what is needed to participate and be seen as viable. GLD's tank thing could involve the shield, whereas a tank MRD could rely more on techniques that require a two-handed weapon to get the job done. This is all at a base level, by the way; I'm sure the devs could come up with something more wholesome and better.

By the same token, DD GLD should become a possibility, especially if they go with adding a job system on top of the weapon class system we currently have.

If the enemies ARE numerous and weak, a pack of archers could make such quick work of them that before steadfast even activates, they're not even a large group any more. Half of them are dead.

I wouldn't be so sure. Bringing in my experiences outside of FF, trash packs of mobs in WoW raids would not just blown up by the select few classes/specs that were good at AoE damage. Likewise, raids were not sitting everyone else who is only good for single-target damage. What makes it work in one game and not in the other? (Hell, if anything people complained about AoE damage not mattering unless the boss encounter involves adds that need to be killed)