Please fix marauder

[Duelle]

You just can't come up with a justification for marauder's effectiveness. It's physically impossible, because the concept of marauder isn't new.

It's really hard for you to understand that you can have tank classes with slight niche advantages while still remaining equally effective in general play. As an example, Warriors in WoW have a disadvantage in AoE tanking because they only have a handful of abilities with cooldown and resource restrictions. Bear Druids have a much easier time tanking groups of mobs because they have stuff like Swipe, which have low cooldowns, relatively low rage cost and can thus be spammed. Both are good single target tanks, but bears have a slight edge over warriors because of Swipe + Mangle + Demoralizing Roar + Provoke vs Cleave + Thunderclap + Shockwave.

That's a possible dynamic between GLD and MRD. Both could tank single targets at the same level of profficiency, while MRD could slightly have an edge on multiple mobs while GLD has the advantages that come with equipping a shield.

If you can't sleep the adds, even more reason for your best tank to get your job and the more dependable AoE'ers to get your job too. Marauder would be an undependable liability in such a fight.

Not if having the MRD hold the targets in place is less risky than tossing a GLD in there. That would be like making a warrior to tank heroic shattered halls when the safer alternative is tossing in a bear or paladin tank. Again, this is all dependent on changes made to MRD to make this sort of thing possible.

So again, MRD needs changes. You're making this much evident. I'm proposing opening the option to be a tank on equal footing to a GLD with its own twist here and there. We should be doing everything we can to not repeat the crap of "one tank, one healer, 18 DPS" that FFXI suffered for so long.

[Peregrine]

It's really hard for you to understand that you can have tank classes with slight niche advantages while still remaining equally effective in general play. As an example, Warriors in WoW have a disadvantage in AoE tanking because they only have a handful of abilities with cooldown and resource restrictions. Bear Druids have a much easier time tanking groups of mobs because they have stuff like Swipe, which have low cooldowns, relatively low rage cost and can thus be spammed. Both are good single target tanks, but bears have a slight edge over warriors because of Swipe + Mangle + Demoralizing Roar + Provoke vs Cleave + Thunderclap + Shockwave.

That's a possible dynamic between GLD and MRD. Both could tank single targets at the same level of profficiency, while MRD could slightly have an edge on multiple mobs while GLD has the advantages that come with equipping a shield.
Not if having the MRD hold the targets in place is less risky than tossing a GLD in there. That would be like making a warrior to tank heroic shattered halls when the safer alternative is tossing in a bear or paladin tank. Again, this is all dependent on changes made to MRD to make this sort of thing possible.

So again, MRD needs changes. You're making this much evident. I'm proposing opening the option to be a tank on equal footing to a GLD with its own twist here and there. We should be doing everything we can to not repeat the crap of "one tank, one healer, 18 DPS" that FFXI suffered for so long.

There's a niche market for a Paladin versus a ninja. That is, something with 95th percentile defense versus 90% evasion. It takes that much of a difference. Marauder is neither of those. It's a mediocre tank and a mediocre AoE'er. It has no niche.

I don't want marauder to be a tank. People don't pick Great Axe to tank.

[Duelle]

There's a niche market for a Paladin versus a ninja. That is, something with 95th percentile defense versus 90% evasion. It takes that much of a difference. Marauder is neither of those. It's a mediocre tank and a mediocre AoE'er. It has no niche.

This is dependant on how encounter design fleshes out once they start making things that are actually difficult. Your NIN vs PLD example is a horrible one because you have one that has a notable edge over the other because, as you mentioned in the archer thread, 0 damage taken (in this case because of evasion stacking and Utsusemi) will always be superior to taking some damage during a fight. NIN outed PLD more than once during FFXI's life, and that's one thing I do not want to see happen again (not discounting the number of ninja purists that hated tanking and wanted to deal damage from the shadows or throw stuff at mobs).

Really, take a step back and look at how games with multiple tanking classes work. The good ones have tanks that are interchangable so that you're not held hostage by tank class A because no one else can get the job done. Hell, WoW has four tanking classes (Prot Warriors, Prot Paladins, Bear Druids, Blood Death Knights) and they're all equally valuable while having different styles of play. That's the kind of thing we could have here with MRD. MRD as a foundation would open up opportunities for other jobs (namely Dark Knight and Samurai) to tank and alleviate the problems that Paladin-only will create.

And for the love of god, don't talk about blink tanking as if it was a good thing. It was a stupid oversight that the developers chose to leave be despite all the other issues it created. Evasion tanks ALWAYS outclass damage mitigation tanks. Hence why certain dev teams are quick to nerf methods and exploits that involve taking no damage.

I don't want marauder to be a tank. People don't pick Great Axe to tank.

Tell that to Death Knights and their two-handed swords, hammers and axes. >.>

In all seriousness, I'm more for a MRD doing A and B being damage dealer, and MRD doing C and D being a tank if properly set up. Then both camps are happy. You get your high-performance MRD damage dealer, while the crowd that may enjoy tanking on MRD would become better at it thanks to game mechanics and be more useful to their groups.

[Aztecguy82]

my only beef with MRD is the low acc, i miss 50% of the time

[Peregrine]

A gladiator is already a waste of a party slot in the entirety of the designed game thus far. They're already going to have a hard time getting invites to these new parties that reward effort and innovation. If you invite a gladiator to field SP party right now, you will get less sp because of it. As bad as mrd is at tanking, a glad is even worse at DD'ing. I'm saying these horrible things now because no amount of politeness or pretending is going to hide that truth from the population eventually when **** hits the fan and it's your sp per hour on the line when the TNL's are 230,000.

Optimal field sp is 4 meleers and a heal-nuker right now. Every meleer can tank every NM fine. The only use a gladiator has is the rare instance where MRD and PUG shouldn't be able to tank, otherwise, gladiator has no point. It's a poor DPS job in a game dominated by killing being a requisite goal.

If you make mrd anything other than a mediocre tank then you completely eliminate gladiator's usefulness. If you enhanced gladiator's damage capability then you completely eliminate marauder's usefulness. If you make them both about the same then what is the fundamental point in even making them different at all, why don't you just make it a heavy nuking class that can heal.

[Duelle]

A gladiator is already a waste of a party slot in the entirety of the designed game thus far. They're already going to have a hard time getting invites to these new parties that reward effort and innovation. If you invite a gladiator to field SP party right now, you will get less sp because of it. As bad as mrd is at tanking, a glad is even worse at DD'ing. I'm saying these horrible things now because no amount of politeness or pretending is going to hide that truth from the population eventually when **** hits the fan and it's your sp per hour on the line when the TNL's are 230,000.

Your mistake is assuming grind parties for SP. I have a feeling a good chunk of content and progression as a whole is going to be tied to dungeons...where you need a tank to get through as much as you need healers and DPS.

If you make mrd anything other than a mediocre tank then you completely eliminate gladiator's usefulness. If you enhanced gladiator's damage capability then you completely eliminate marauder's usefulness. If you make them both about the same then what is the fundamental point in even making them different at all, why don't you just make it a heavy nuking class that can heal.

You're thinking all or nothing, whereas I like to think of emphasis on player choice. The comparison to healer/nuker is pointless and baseless at best, because they're both melee classes with tanking potential. People do things for reasons other than most DPS or most damage mitigation (hence why I am a melee Red Mage enthusiast). It can remain this way provided the devs don't do something stupid like start copying the timesinks and risk/reward ratios from FFXI. Ideally, if a guy likes tanking with a two-hander instead of sword and board, then by god he should be allowed to. Specially so if it helps increase the pool of available tanks.

We need to stop this crap about choice being non-existent. Multiple playstyles per weapon class is a good thing. I just wish the Matsui had opened that option for the upcoming jobs as well.

[Peregrine]

People do things for reasons other than most DPS or most damage mitigation (hence why I am a melee Red Mage enthusiast). It can remain this way provided the devs don't do something stupid like start copying the timesinks and risk/reward ratios from FFXI.

You mistake FFXI's difficulties as unique to it. It's the same across any MMO in which your job in part defines who you are, which is mroe true to FF than in any other MMO. Red mage is a terrible idea: A mediocre mage and a mediocre meleer is what it is online. Offline sure, who cares. Yay jack of all trades. Online though, it's King of all Gimps. You refresh, haste, and dispel...or you sit in town because you're a waste of a party slot otherwise. If you so much as touch a sword, you're gone. If you even show up in a search filter with /nin as a sub, some people will never acknowledge you were born.

This is because in a world of pressure and stress, mediocrity is a liability. A class can not try to posture that it can do more than one thing kinda well. No one will care. If you're a meleer, you're a DD or you're nothing.

Marauders are the red mages of this game. Mediocre tanks, mediocre DD. In straddling the fence, they end up castrating themselves.

Red mage meleers were horrible in XI, because either being a 1st tier mage or a first tier DD was superior to trying to be both. That system is still in place.

[Duelle]

You mistake FFXI's difficulties as unique to it. It's the same across any MMO in which your job in part defines who you are, which is mroe true to FF than in any other MMO. Red mage is a terrible idea: A mediocre mage and a mediocre meleer is what it is online.

You're going off-topic, but why else do you think I have to spam these boards every couple of posts and have RDM-related stuff in my sig? I'm hoping it gets through the developers' heads that design like Red Mage's is bad in an MMO context.

Marauders are the red mages of this game. Mediocre tanks, mediocre DD. In straddling the fence, they end up castrating themselves.

Again, it won't be a problem if there are mechanics in place that allow a MRD to specialize in damage or specialize in tanking while keeping both possible roles separate from one another. FFXIV doesn't have to copy WoW's talent system to achieve this, by the way.

[Chinook]

lol marauder

[Peregrine]

You're going off-topic, but why else do you think I have to spam these boards every couple of posts and have RDM-related stuff in my sig? I'm hoping it gets through the developers' heads that design like Red Mage's is bad in an MMO context.
Again, it won't be a problem if there are mechanics in place that allow a MRD to specialize in damage or specialize in tanking while keeping both possible roles separate from one another. FFXIV doesn't have to copy WoW's talent system to achieve this, by the way.

So it wouldn't be a problem if fail could somehow be gussied up and made win is what you're saying.

The CONCEPT of a jack of all trades in MMOS FAILS. Period. Inherently. It wouldn't be a problem if...if...if what? They made everyone the same and good at everything?

It will always be a stupid idea to try to make a job good at two different things. There aren't enough roles, they will pay for being good at two things by not being great at anything, and that job will be left in town.

That's how this works. Your red mage was never going to be anything more than a refresh and haste whore. Ever. Impossible. We will NEVER let you use that sword. Or sub nin. We will ALWAYS make fun of you for doing so. Because the alternative is that there is no point in being anything other than a red mage if you were actually *good* at anything.

Black mages laugh at a red mage's ability to nuke. White mages laugh at a red mage's ability to heal. meleer's laugh at a red mage's ability to strike.

Marauder will go the same way. I laugh at their ability to AoE. Glads laugh at their ability to tank. Archers laugh at their ability to DPS.

Doesn't matter if they're *okay* at all 3 things. They're gimp at all of them.

Marauder is useless. Token maimer, maybe. But that's unreliable. That's not enough to justify wasting the spot. Could just get an archer. Don't need maim then.