Marauders need some love. They are tanky, have okay but not great DPS, and when set in one spot, blinged and bastioned, can fight off many times their number of t1 hulls with t2/meta fits, mostly in lower ship classes.
However, they rely extremely heavily on their resists, and usually on the high end resist modules most effected (in absolute terms) by the resistance module nerf. Due to this, and the fact that they missed out on the buffer bonus applied to their closest competitors in pirate/faction battleships, along with getting less of the scan res bonus than the t1 battleships (per patch notes), they’re in a bad way.
I’d like to see a major step made to bring them up in effectiveness, and more worth the rather large investment in both SP and either materials or isk. I propose giving them either full t2 resists, or something significantly closer to that.
Mauraders have been solo/standalone-in-fleet ships for far too long. These changes will make them more dependent on fleet coordination to be successful (ie. survive), which I consider to be a good thing. Since they can’t receive Logi or cap, fleetmates are going to need to help defend Mauraders to a significantly greater extent than previously given that Maurader tank is now more easily broken thanks to a lower repair multiplier (due to resist nerf) and enemies using +15% damage T2 ammo. Mauraders are also going to have to be more discretionary as to when they do and do not go into Bastion - that is, they will do so less frequently than previously. All these emergent player behavioral changes I believe to be good things - I do not believe Mauraders require any buffs to compensate for the changes introduced in Surgical Strike, a patch which I am 100% fond of.
What Marauders actually need is Bastion to not lock you into a single place. Just prevent warp. This would make flying a Marauder far more exciting, while still balanced by the fact they can’t receive any form of remote assistance.
Full T2 resists PLUS Bastion resists would be far too powerful. So if they got Full T2 resists they would need to lose resist bonuses off Bastion. This wouldn’t be a terrible thing as it would make them more viable without bastion in fleet situations as the HAC equivalent for Battleships, with a price tag to match.
I can live with the recent nerfs, for most of my game activities it’s had minor effects. However, in the past, the devs have said they wanted Marauders to bridge the gap between battleships and capitals, so I wouldn’t turn down a resist buff if they deemed such a balance pass was warranted.
+1
This would definitely be a nice trade off for the comparative net loss to Marauder’s defense.
I happen to minorly disagree with “way too powerful”, but the numbers that make up the basis of my disagreement will have to wait till tomorrow.
In general, I think bastion being knocked back to 20 or 25% would be sufficient absent any other changes. They’re still much tankier, but aren’t as overwhemingly so as 30% omni resist in all 3 layers would be on top of full t2.
I have gone back, now that I have some more time, and found part of the issue. My belief is that they need the next rung up on the t2 resist ladder, not the full AS/HIC/HAC resistances. This would align their base resist profiles with t3s, command destroyers, dictors, and the like.