Mara's Balm is doing too much

OnGodiDoDis

Hold on to your hats because and get comfortable because this is going to be a long ride, ladies and gentlement.

Mara's Balm has been dominating the battlefield since its release. It has been doing so because currently there is no other set or skill that comes even close to doing as many things at once. MB has many effects tied to it and they all require the player to do absolutely nothing to reap the benefits of the set. Taking direct damage while you have negative effects on you (just like every single other person in pvp)? Free heal and purge. Hiding behind a tree while you have DoTs on you? No problem, free heal and purge.

There are other purge sets out there, but none of them compare to MB. Why? Because what makes MB stand out is the healing it provides. No other purge set heals the player when negative effects are removed. They may remove all negative effects, but with cooldowns way longer than MB. They may remove some negative effects, but no more than three at a time. MB removes everything...every...15...seconds...

I hold true to my claim that sets should never outperform skills. MB is doing exactly that by effectively putting purge/cleanse skills out of commision. The most powerful cleanse is the Purify synergy (meaning players can't spam it) and it costs almost 5k magicka to cast.


Cleanse is the closest to MB in terms of performance, but it costs and outstanding 8k magicka per cast. Even if a player had 30k health, Cleanse would only heal them for 4.5k HP at most. MB heals for 10,050 HP.


Even the "cheaper" version casts an arm and a leg to cast


There are even less attractive purge skills that have a much lower purge capacity. The strongest Necro purge only cleanses 4 negative effects. While it is the most efficient skill in term of cost to purge ratio, it offers no healing, unlike MB.

Compare


"So what?", you may be thinking. Mara's Balms is the equivalent to Caluurion's. During the Caluurion's meta (which lasted years), people could not possibly survive a stealth attack from Nightblades. Now, MB is making it impossible for people to die. This set needs to be fixed and it needs to happen now. The PvP community will not allow another set of years to go by to fix it like we did with Caluurion's. Get rid of the burst heal, instate a purge cap to 5 (which would be en par with the strongest "spammable" purge: Cleanse). It is unacceptable that a single set can have all those effects jammed into it.

Holycannoli

Been talked about since PTS but they only nerfed Nocturnal's Ploy, and over-nerfed it at that.

geonsocal

Heal me

Syiccal

While it exists there is no reason to run any other defensive set imo

XSTRONG

Im happy the way it is because im making alot of gold selling it

OnGodiDoDis

XSTRONG wrote: »

Im happy the way it is because im making alot of gold selling it

That's about the only good thing about the set

geonsocal

I had a bunch of glass cannon builds rocking almost all medium or light armor...

no more, finally giving in and working mara's balm (even if it's mostly just weapons and jewelry) in to my squishier builds...

hard to burst other players down whom are wearing it, and too many other players have figured out how to stay tanky and yet still do damage...

Rhaegar75

How is it now post nerf?

buzzclops

Rhaegar75 wrote: »

How is it now post nerf?

Its more balanced in terms of healing. The purge is still very good. But theres a new set that hard counters it now dealing oblivion damage everytime you get healed. Still a top tier set tho.

React

Still overperforming post-U37 nerf. Undoubtedly going to remain a staple in probably around 50% of player's setups in cyrodiil. Absolutely needs an adjustment to the cooldown on the purge. If it is going to keep the heal over time and the burst heal, it should be on a 30 seconds cooldown.

Luth7

Maybe it would have been best to leave the healing as it is and change "negative effects" to "status effects" (maybe change the cleanse treshold too in that case), or get rid of the cleansing (but leave the potential healing every 15s).

dsalter

so mara can purge ALL debuffs but wheres the trade off? oh right there isnt one. this makes it the best purge in the game and ITS PASSIVE.

Sergykid

after the adjustments it's equal to robes of hist sap

TechMaybeHic

Sergykid wrote: »

after the adjustments it's equal to robes of hist sap

Does hist sap purge?

Sergykid

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

after the adjustments it's equal to robes of hist sap

Does hist sap purge?

not but it has double the heal, that is constant in a brawl. Compensates for the cleanse

AdamLAD

Sergykid wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

after the adjustments it's equal to robes of hist sap

Does hist sap purge?

not but it has double the heal, that is constant in a brawl. Compensates for the cleanse

Where is the double heal on hist sap

OBJnoob

I think he's just pointing out the tooltip is higher. Not that Hist Sap somehow has two heals. Maras is definitely better due to the cleanse and burst, but I don't think he's necessarily wrong to try and compare the two.

I have used Hist Sap in PvP and can confirm it basically has 100% uptime, if that means anything. Plus the 2-3-4 bonuses are decently damage oriented. A viable alternative I think for those that don't need quite so much defense.

Sergykid

AdamLAD wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

after the adjustments it's equal to robes of hist sap

Does hist sap purge?

not but it has double the heal, that is constant in a brawl. Compensates for the cleanse

Where is the double heal on hist sap

OBJnoob wrote: »

I think he's just pointing out the tooltip is higher. Not that Hist Sap somehow has two heals. Maras is definitely better due to the cleanse and burst, but I don't think he's necessarily wrong to try and compare the two.

yes, maras have 1k hot and hist 2k hot. Maras compensate with the cleanse heal. And it has extra the removal itself of debuffs, but histsap compensates with uptime.

i tried both against roughly the same players, some bgs at same time in a row, and felt quite equal, and hist having a bit higher heal on metrics but cleanse from maras doesn't appear there.

TechMaybeHic

The full cleanse plus a heal is what I have issue with on Maras.

Abilities in support are limited in amount cleansed and cost ~5k mag or 7 or 8 k to have limited cleanse and a heal.

Other sets have longer cool downs or that's all they do.

Templar Extended Ritual is just a little less than 5k and has a HOT but it's limited to 5 nd the HOT is not sticky which matters in the movement and LOS meta.

Necros cost health and are limited, and Wardens is automatic and free but 1 at a time so they'd have to spend a lot of GCDs to get clear

It would almost be like if they made a set that every 15 seconds you could press crouch, disappear instantly like cloak, and guarantee invisibility rather than have damage or detect skills pop you out. With the new mist form acting a little like ball of lightning; I'm not so sure something like that isn't coming. Guess there are invis pots but those have the long cool down

Ohh or buff 2 hand ultimate to do both resist and pen to match DK. One morph can just restore health, mag and stam. The other can sit and not be used to match

OBJnoob

I think a decent fix would be to keep the cleanse but eliminate the burst heal. Cleansing is perhaps a contentious topic on its own... But since the mechanic already exists I think it's fair to offer a set for people that can't otherwise get it.

As for other sets that cleanse but do nothing else -shrugs- I mean maybe they could be buffed a little. Do people not use wyrd tree because of maras or did they never use it? Ya know?

TechMaybeHic

OBJnoob wrote: »

I think a decent fix would be to keep the cleanse but eliminate the burst heal. Cleansing is perhaps a contentious topic on its own... But since the mechanic already exists I think it's fair to offer a set for people that can't otherwise get it.

As for other sets that cleanse but do nothing else -shrugs- I mean maybe they could be buffed a little. Do people not use wyrd tree because of maras or did they never use it? Ya know?

Armor, crit resist, and healing taken on the 4 piece helps a lot to make it useful beyond what it does

You don't think there's any correlation to the 2 top classes right now being ones that couldn't cleanse before? Then they tell other classes they shouldn't have everything. Ironically; where I guess it was helping sorc with a burst heal, that parts been reduced.

Afterip

I think Mara's set deserve second nerf because even now almost everyone use it, especially DK and NB...

Amerises

Honestly, I know other classes have access to Mara’s as well, but after the nerf I tried other sets and even with the nerf of over 30% heal, it’s still the best set to pair with Rallying on a Templar. Templars are already struggling hard (mag or stam) and to imagine another nerf to one of the best sets for Templar would be pretty crushing. Being able to use extended ritual when Mara’s is still on CD is huge for survival. I still hit like a wet noodle, but at least against equally skilled opponents we can decide to walk away rather than me always choosing a respawn location. I can kill squishies or people less skilled in PvP still alright, but my kills are certainly harder fought for than Warden, NB, and DK’s… if there’s another nerf to Mara’s templars need a buff somewhere offensively. 3 nerfs (jabs, PotL, BL) was way too much, and with the Living Dark nerf, Mara’s is pretty well needed.

arch1t3ct

My problem with mara is its cooldown for burst cleanse+heal. It's stupid how much it can save a player when you drop your burst combo on them. You drop your skills and your ult on the enemy then BOOM they are burst healed and completely cleansed without touching a single button.

Of course i try to time my combo right to hop into the cooldwon window.. BUT 15 seconds is really not enough to get all your buffs and debuffs up, to catch the right position, the state of the enemy and so on. IMO just 1 set should NOT change the course of the fight this much.

15 seconds is just such a no brain carry...
The cooldown definitely should be prolonged. Make it 25 seconds at least.

TechMaybeHic

Yeah if you back bar it, and go to heal l, you can carry more debuffs than the minimum to proc it and get a bigger heal, also right when you are hitting your active burst heal for a complete 0-100ish spike.

They're out of ideas though, so sets will only get worse in being trash or being godly. Not much middle ground anymore

MEBengalsFan2001

To me Mara should have a burst or a HoT not both. Removing one of the healing function with Mara would improve the set a bit. As for cleanse it shouldn't remove 5 negative effects. It should only remove 2.

Durham

Feed back has been overwhelming on this set! This company moves way to slow it will take them a year to fix something broke! Im sorry this is unacceptable. PVP in this game is broke nothing but tanks everywhere... Unkillable groups not because they are cordinated but because of the way healing works in this game! Also groups of 24 running at Max speed all the time ! Just stupid ! If ZoS really wanted to fix the game they would or they dont even know or play PVP in this game.

Amerises

Durham wrote: »

Feed back has been overwhelming on this set! This company moves way to slow it will take them a year to fix something broke! Im sorry this is unacceptable. PVP in this game is broke nothing but tanks everywhere... Unkillable groups not because they are cordinated but because of the way healing works in this game! Also groups of 24 running at Max speed all the time ! Just stupid ! If ZoS really wanted to fix the game they would or they dont even know or play PVP in this game.

When BG DM run out of time, it’s pretty obnoxious. I understand sometimes, but it’s more times than not

Melzo

It's funny that the creator of this post said that the necromancer purge is the best considering the fact that no one uses it. The same templar cleanses for mana and not for its own life and at the same time imposes healing on a huge area and gives better synergy for pvp.

Mara is pretty good in the form it is now. I don't see the point in nerfing him. This set shows itself well because of two patches. The patch in which we changed the battle spirit from 44 to 50 and the second patch in which we changed the dot damage and hot healing. If returned back, this set will give a rather mediocre healing. For example, my necromancer spirit healed 5 thousand every two seconds, which is 2500 per second, which is 5 times higher than mara. Burst damage will be superior and you will take sets that give resistance to critical damage and corny a lot of armor. Mara will be nerfed today, and tomorrow they will change the overall meta, and the set will not only be greatly weakened, but will completely fall into the trash with other previous sets. In the form in which it is now, it is not bad.

pedrogonzalez

I have an idea.
Just make it heal when negative ended/cleansed.
Set should not cleance you.
So it will be suitable only for templars. Why not.

Amerises

pedrogonzalez wrote: »

I have an idea.
Just make it heal when negative ended/cleansed.
Set should not cleance you.
So it will be suitable only for templars. Why not.

I can agree to this. Remove the cleanse and increase the heal to where it was last patch.