Marauder Start Area Feedback

My issues with the Marauder Start:

Lack of Dexterity, lack of Accuracy: There is Versatility, but it's 4 travel points to get there and then it's a dead end. While there is %Accuracy built into weapon damage nodes, this is all worthless because you have no Dex/base accuracy to percent increase. You are basically forced to always take Resolute Technique.

Lack of Attack Speed: I get that the Marauder theme is to hit slower and harder, but there needs to be some attack speed, pure attack speed regardless of weapon choice. There are like two 4% AS nodes, and they are in dead ends and don't even stack. One is 4% AS, one-hand only; the other is 4% AS, two-hand only. Having to wait until after leaving the starting area to get any kind decent attack speed nodes is extremely annoying.

Purity of Essence cluster is worthless.

All the Critical Hit Chance/Damage nodes are worthless due to lack of Dexterity and Accuracy (see above).

Knockback. Melee, everyone avoids this like the plague. More useless nodes. I'm not saying knockback is useless. Put it on the Ranger side of tree for bow users, awesome. But knockback for Marauder, class designed to be the defacto melee tank, no one wants this.

Is the current Marauder area completely terrible, no. It's a terrible, starting area. But, it's a great place to go from a different starting area. A lot of Duelist, Scion, and Templar builds go to the Marauder area after spending their first 30 to 40 skill points. At this point, they all have picked up their damage/life/attack or cast speed nodes and are looking for more life, more resists, more armor, and for melee builds more damage... which the Marauder has in abundance.

Quite honestly, any time I want to do a melee build, Marauder is not even a starting choice. Marauder is where I go mid to end game after choosing Duelist, Scion, or Ranger. These starts are just better.

A lot of people here are trying to make Blood Magic work with auras, I don't think that's a good idea. It would just go back to how it used to be, and it didn't exactly stand out there either.

As it stands Blood Magic is too weak, and that's because you're sacrificing auras and getting virtually nothing in return. For melee you could just run mana leech on gear and have 0 troubles with mana. You could even get MoM and run clarity with mana on gear and actually be a lot more tanky than before, while solving all your mana issues and not even costing any traveling since it's in the melee area.

Spellcasters don't have it as bad, as they don't get as much of a benefit from auras as melee does (there only offensive aura is Haste, and they're innately ranged). However, they also don't get as much of a benefit from it either. They're surrounded by intelligence instead of strength and end up having more than enough mana to cast spells with little investment. It is actually much more efficient for a spellcaster to go down to grab IR, as well as MoM and the sweet life nodes on the way, and just run clarity (maybe grace as well) and have no mana troubles as well as much more survivability and versatility. The travel distance is similar for both options but one of the options is clearly much, much better.

So currently Blood Magic only fits a single build type right now and only because of the node after it. Low-life max auras blood magic. But even this build is overshadowed by a simple low life build using a mix of mana and life auras. It actually gets more effective auras out, doesn't cost as much, and doesn't suffer from the penalty of not regenerating ES until your life is full.

All in all it's clear Blood Magic needs a rework to give it a some versatility, or general usability. A few options are:

1) Add a cluster behind Blood Magic similar to CI. They don't have to be life nodes, but they need to give some incentive to taking Blood Magic. This is probably my least favorite idea.

2) Add an additional effect to Blood Magic. Maybe Mana from intelligence is converted to life. There are a few options you could to do make Blood Magic stand out more. (Obviously this effect should be native to the Blood Magic passive and not the skill gem).

3) Add a keystone after a cluster after Blood Magic, akin to the Whispers of Doom cluster. The second keystone should give a benefit in return for being completely unaffected by auras. This would make it a choice so that if you like auras when playing in parties you should avoid it, but if you don't want to use auras it provides a benefit in place of that.

My personal favorite is choice 3. The flavor text for Blood Magic says "Lay open your veins, and draw power from your own spilled life." This shows a purpose that you should be generating your own power. Not leeching off the power of auras or allies.

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All the Critical Hit Chance/Damage nodes are worthless due to lack of Dexterity and Accuracy (see above).

You can get enough accuracy from gear in endgame. Or from accuracy gem. For some builds, like mine Shadow, those crit nodes in maradeur area are a great boon.

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Knockback. Melee, everyone avoids this like the plague. More useless nodes. I'm not saying knockback is useless. Put it on the Ranger side of tree for bow users, awesome. But knockback for Marauder, class designed to be the defacto melee tank, no one wants this.

Spectral Throw? Well, maybe it could use some buffs...

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Quite honestly, any time I want to do a melee build, Marauder is not even a starting choice. Marauder is where I go mid to end game after choosing Duelist, Scion, or Ranger. These starts are just better.

Yeah, seems to be true.

And there is a big problem regarding Armour. In its current state, armour isnt very useful, stacking high amounts of life proves to be much more benefitial way to obtain tankiness. Therefore, tons of armour passives turn useless.

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SinisterGrin написал:

1) Add a cluster behind Blood Magic similar to CI. They don't have to be life nodes, but they need to give some incentive to taking Blood Magic. This is probably my least favorite idea.

2) Add an additional effect to Blood Magic. Maybe Mana from intelligence is converted to life. There are a few options you could to do make Blood Magic stand out more. (Obviously this effect should be native to the Blood Magic passive and not the skill gem).

3) Add a keystone after a cluster after Blood Magic, akin to the Whispers of Doom cluster. The second keystone should give a benefit in return for being completely unaffected by auras. This would make it a choice so that if you like auras when playing in parties you should avoid it, but if you don't want to use auras it provides a benefit in place of that.

I disagree with your claim that #3 needs to be immediately next to Blood Magic. I think having the keystone somewhere nearby is close enough. For along time, Unwavering Stance and Iron Reflexes were somewhat easy to travel between, and they were a plenty strong combo as a result.

My suggestion for a new keystone:

This synergizes very well with Blood Magic keystone — especially in maps and/or solo, the two areas where BM keystone is weakest.

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ScrotieMcB написал:

This synergizes very well with Blood Magic keystone — especially in maps and/or solo, the two areas where BM keystone is weakest.

I actually like this idea. It would give me a reason to go BM again.

Nice one Scrotie, even the naming of it is pretty cool.

Lol,
New skill tree is similar to my suggestion xD

Please give us the old tree back,
It adds nothing of a choice because the damge nodes are still useless,
and now you even get less life for more points.
While the duellist got an amazing strrting area the whole Marauder area it totally inefficint for every build,
everthing is spread and the nodes are so small the biggest life nodes are not in the Marauder area, makes not much sense somehow,
compare bloodless to Thick skin and Purity of Flesh pl and yo use what i mean, and the 2x 8/8/12 cluster between duelist and ranger is much better too than everything near marauder the biggest life nodes at the marauder start are 8% ones, thats just ridiculess and there are much to many of that 6% life nodes, the duellsit got 15% meledamge + 12 maximumlife, and 12% meleedamge the marauder got 15% melee damge and 12% melee damge,
nothing else,

just compare the big nodes from both directly and you will the that marauder is a really bad are,
as example while duellist can grab life and a 12% attackspeed node and ther is the ignores movementpenalyty from armor, whiel the marauder still got extremly useless 2% movementspeed

the marauder got not such awesome things, every marauder is forced to get into the duellist are becasue ther are the best nodes for melee character

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StormHunter написал:

and now you even get less life for more points.

It was 40%ish before, with a long trek to an additional 24% by the old blooddrinker. It's 90% in one spot now.

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duellist are becasue ther are the best nodes for melee character

The Duelist is mediocre if you're not dual wielding. If you can't make use of dervish and the extra 6% "while dual wielding" ias node. It's a graveyard of skill points if you're using a two-handed weapon.

I will of course offer no resistance against the assertion Strong Arm and Butchery are still terrible, because they indeed are. And that the route from Born to Fight -> Resolute Technique is one point longer than Bloodless -> Resolute Technique kind of sucks too. And also how By the Blade is way better than Blunt Instrument.

And also how Blood Drinker is in a kind of distant spot hanging out in Neptune now.

I'm a huge fan of the new marauder.

I don't like the bottom start point (%armor, flat life) too much, but other than that, it is great. Finally we get a fine connection between the damage and defense sections.