If empower is changing before patch drop, can we please adjust Mara’s Balm?

MentalxHammer · August 2022

Many players have tested Mara’s Balm and concluded that the free healing it gives upon any negative effect ending or refreshing is too strong in PvP. If the set doesn’t see adjustments then the PvP meta will inevitably become stale as the time to kill will go through the roof.

Considering Rich made a discord post mentioning that empower will only buff fully charged heavy attacks, it doesn’t seem like it’s too late to make minor tweaks to the upcoming patch. Please spare us 3 months of an unintentionally high time to kill meta and balance this set.

ThirdEye_PULSE · August 2022

Unkillable basically... check out new YT video about this set. Dude sits there and lets his two buddies parse on him with frontbar backbar maras and with just using HoTs he was completely unkillable.

Now imagine a halfway competent player using Maras with dodgerolls, blocks, HoTs, and your oh crap heals... hands down gonna be best defensive set in game. Only gets better the more people are attacking you, but even 1v1 better then every other set.

Dont understand how it doesnt have a cooldown. Blows my mind.

React · August 2022

Yep. This needs to be adjusted before live or it will more or less be mandatory for competitive PVP setups, and we will have a very boring patch where people can't die.

A 1 second cooldown on the effect might not be enough.

p00tx · August 2022

Mara's Balm is a kiss/curse set though. A huge portion of the population will still be in Plaguebreak, and purges will still be dangerous in dense groups, especially groups of pugs who may not have the hp to stand up to the plague bomb. I would personally not wear this set in PvP right now. To be fair though, I'm a ballgroup PvPer, so I don't know how it'll effect the 1vX crowd.

If they made the purge immune to Plaguebreak though, that's a whole other problem.

React · August 2022

p00tx wrote: »

Mara's Balm is a kiss/curse set though. A huge portion of the population will still be in Plaguebreak, and purges will still be dangerous in dense groups, especially groups of pugs who may not have the hp to stand up to the plague bomb. I would personally not wear this set in PvP right now. To be fair though, I'm a ballgroup PvPer, so I don't know how it'll effect the 1vX crowd.

If they made the purge immune to Plaguebreak though, that's a whole other problem.

This is not what a "kiss-curse" is by definition. That implies there is an actual drawback built into the set.

This can only potentially proc PB once every 15 seconds at minimum, and when that purge effect DOES proc it is also going to grant you the 1k heal for every effect you have on you that it removes. So if it removes 6 effects including PB, sure you'll take the PB damage, but you're also going to get healed simultaneously for 6k. Chances are in most situations, IF the mara's purge happens to purge a PB, you'd out heal the damage that the PB did to you.

You probably wouldn't use this in your ball group, no. That isn't really the concern here.

FrankonPC · August 2022

I took an occult overload while wearing the set and didn't even notice until I checked the cmx later, that's how much healing it gave me.

Like react said, I don't think you notice most plaguebreak procs, and the pros vastly outweigh the cons. You can basically bypass not having healers by running the set, so no need to stack tightly for heals and thereby avoiding nasty pb procs.

Idk, after testing it I dont see many instances where I wouldn't wear it. Even if ball groups don't use it though, it's still a set that needs an adjustment.

SillyGT · August 2022

Please look into this set. My friends and I conducted an similar experiment to the original post and can confirm it is far too strong in most situations. Ways of adjusted the set is reducing the healing or adjusted the proc conditions to a more balance version. Such as not allowing it to fire under status effects, and or add a second cool down for the HOT involved as well as the burst heal.

Lykeion · August 2022

I hope dev will provide an additional patch today. The changes in 8.1.4 respond to some player calls, which is great, but adding so many such drastic changes to the final patch means that there is no room for feedback and tweaking. This could lead to some potential problems, such as the nerf to SA that has already caused so much debate.

Firstmep · August 2022

p00tx wrote: »

Mara's Balm is a kiss/curse set though. A huge portion of the population will still be in Plaguebreak, and purges will still be dangerous in dense groups, especially groups of pugs who may not have the hp to stand up to the plague bomb. I would personally not wear this set in PvP right now. To be fair though, I'm a ballgroup PvPer, so I don't know how it'll effect the 1vX crowd.

If they made the purge immune to Plaguebreak though, that's a whole other problem.

Plaguebreak is getting nerfed tho, it will get a 20 sec cooldown.
Regardless, unless you have 5-6 ppl stacked on you plaguebreak is not really an issue.

Firstmep · August 2022

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Gilliam even just an acknowledgement that you guys are aware of this issue would be great.

ThirdEye_PULSE · August 2022

p00tx wrote: »

Mara's Balm is a kiss/curse set though. A huge portion of the population will still be in Plaguebreak, and purges will still be dangerous in dense groups, especially groups of pugs who may not have the hp to stand up to the plague bomb. I would personally not wear this set in PvP right now. To be fair though, I'm a ballgroup PvPer, so I don't know how it'll effect the 1vX crowd.

If they made the purge immune to Plaguebreak though, that's a whole other problem.

The effect triggers anytime a negative effect ends on PTS apparently. So this triggers a lot more than a simple cleanse/purge.

Jaraal · August 2022

Nerfing heals in general, and especially making Dark Cloak effectively worthless…. but here, have an overpowered healing armor set that will make you forget all about it!

Seems about right.

p00tx · August 2022

Well this should be a super fun patch then...

MentalxHammer · August 2022

If any developers read this thread and want more than “anecdotes”, check out this video our friend Frank here put out.

https://youtu.be/gW2rAvPffXs