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Official: M13 Scourge Warlock Changes

balanced#2849 balanced Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 41 Cryptic Developer
Hey everyone,

While this isn't a complete rework (or really anything close), we thought Scourge Warlocks needed a small boost in effectiveness, especially for Temptation. There are a couple of other changes to Scourge Warlock, through bug fixes and quality of life changes, that have been made during Rocktober and aren't listed here. The changes listed below are specifically ones that did not belong in the Bug Fix thread. As a note, these will be going into M13!

I'm going to start out by explaining the feats that now scale with power/buffs, since that patch note might be a little unclear. There were a number of feats that dealt bonus damage based on your weapon damage but didn't scale at all. An example of this would be Critical Promise which did a flat 50% (at max rank) of your weapon damage on every hit. If you had a fixed damage weapon that did 1000-1000 damage then this feat would always deal 500 damage when it triggered, even if you had 100,000 power and 5 different 10% damage buffs. Now, that 500 damage is going to scale with all of those buffs (and your power)! Critical Promise actually ended up doing far too much damage (for a first point feat) because of this and that's why its damage was lowered. Overall, this should still be a pretty significant gain - and Killing curse is going to be MUCH stronger.

For Temptation, we found that this tree was a bit lackluster. Before M12b, it started to pick up in usage due to the Owlbear Cub's ACB. But, after the Owlbear was given a 1 second ICD, there were a lot of concerns for this playstyle. While we don't want a class relying on a single companion ACB, we think that this one was hit especially hard by that change. A lot of the changes below are meant to make the Temptation tree a more group-oriented support build. To go in depth on some of these changes, let's start with Dark Revelry.

Dark Revelry had a couple of things wrong with the tooltip that made it very confusing. It stated that there was a chance on lifesteal, when in reality that chance was 100% (so I guess technically correct!). It also stated that you were given Revelry as a buff, which buffed nearby allies, but actually just gave all nearby allies (and yourself) this buff. The tooltip has been updated so that it no longer mentions that it has a chance to proc and that the buff it applies is placed onto allies. Hopefully this will clear up some confusions on how this feat works.

For the 4th column of the tree, both of the Auras were a little weaker than we wanted them to be. As a result, these have both had a small boost added to them which will provide more group utility.

After reading around on various forums, including our own, I've seen that a lot of people actually like Eldritch Momentum. While I was hesitant to change it, the amount of stamina gained in rapid-damage situations (such as PvP and DoTs) was far too high. the changes below should make it a much more group-oriented feat while still offering a bit of Stamina recovery. Darkness now provides a bit more damage (for only the SW) when you damage an enemy, this is to provide a small damage boost for the spec as it is (rightfully) lacking in that field.

Finally, Soul Bonding was yet another feat with some confusing wording. The tooltip for this has been updated so that it more clearly explains how it functions. It also grants 10% Life Steal Chance (passively) so that you gain a small kick-start in effectiveness, and we wanted to make sure that this capstone gave you (the SW) at least a minor benefit for solo play. To provide an alternative to Vampiric Embrace, Warlock's Bargain will now heal nearby allies for the same amount that it heals you.

Fury:
Daughter's Promise: The damage dealt from this power now scales with power/buffs
Critical Promise: The damage dealt from this power now scales with power/buffs
Critical Promise: Damage reduced to 4/8/12/16/20% (down from 10/20/30/40/50%)
Killing Curse: The damage dealt from this power now scales with power/buffs
Killing Curse: Damage increased to 5/10/15/20/25% (up from 3/6/9/12/15%)
Killing Curse: Fixed an issue where this feat was dealing less damage than intended
Creeping Death: Damage increased to 75% (up from 60%)

Damnation:
Ghastly Commander: Damage increased to 3/6/9/12/15% (up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
Ghastly Commander: Lifesteal Chance increased to 1/2/3/4/5% (up from 0.4/0.8/1.2/1.6/2.0%)
Power of the Nine Hells: No longer grants 10/20/30/40/50% of Pillar of Power's buff amount to allies
Pillar of Power: Now grants 75% of its buff effect to allies standing in it

Temptation:
Dark Revelry: This buff can now be refreshed while active
Aura of Cruelty: Now also grants 10% Life Steal Severity
Aura of Despair: Now also causes enemies to take 5% increased damage
Darkness: Now causes enemies to take 10% increased damage from you
Darkness: Tooltip updated to mention Harrowstorm (functionality unchanged)
Eldritch Momentum: This feat has been reworked and now triggers when a daily power is used
Eldritch Momentum: Now gives you, and nearby allies, 3/6/9/12/15% of your stamina when a daily is used
Eldritch Momentum: Now gives you, and nearby allies, Combat Advantage for 4/5/6/7/8 seconds
Soul Bonding: Now passively grants 10% Life Steal Chance
Soul Bonding: Now causes Warlock's Bargain to heal nearby allies for the full amount
Soul Bonding: Allies now deal 20% increased damage to targets affected by your Warlock's Curse
Post edited by asterdahl on
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Comments

  • reg1981reg1981 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,435 Arc User
    Exciting news!!!! I look forward to testing on preview!
  • pyrosorcererpyrosorcerer Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 137 Arc User
    Fantastic! Though mod 13 is a bit of a wait this looks very nice
  • akta#9913 akta Member Posts: 93 Arc User
    edited October 2017
    Before I share any feedback I would like to see the fully written out tooltips for these feat reworks.
  • lowjohnlowjohn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,061 Arc User

    To be frank, as SW currently stands, I don't want to queue into a templock trying to heal in a healer slot. I would rather queue into a DC or OP tyvm and have the templock waste a dps slot.

    I would rather a templock grab a healer slot in a T1 or T2 dungeon and 4 other people be able to finish the dungeon, than 5 people sit waiting for a healer when it's a T1 or T2 and there's a templock RIGHT THERE.

    Sure, they're not good enough to run FBI or MSP, but that's a future fix. Right now, they're only getting into queues when they're either NOT REQUIRED or REQUIRED BUT FAILING TO MEET THE MINIMUM. So let's fix that first, then worry about them meeting T3 requirements.
  • arcanjo86arcanjo86 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,093 Arc User
    edited October 2017
    @bellkazi

    Original feat description:

    Aura of Despair- Enemies within 20ft of you deal 5% less damage(this description was taken from nwcalc.com)

    and they will add the folowing:

    "Aura of Despair: Now also causes enemies to take 5% increased damage"
  • kieranmtornkieranmtorn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 382 Arc User
    edited October 2017
    As somebody who play's a templock alt, I would not want handicap a party even with the m13 listed buffs in any end-game dungeon. Since the templock provides almost no damage mitigation or damage buffing capacity even with the changes, it would be basically a wasted slot, since it's DPS is basically lackluster after the OBC nerf. Healing in combat is really a waste beyond a certain point, since a competent party will have decent self-heals (life steal/insignia sets/artifacts/skills). So it looks like m12.5 & m13 will continue to see my templock hiding in the castle or playing solo (and randomly queuing only if I want to handicap my party members). Instead I would recommend the party get a decent CW/MoF, DPS DC, or buffing HR, all would provide a better choice.

    Hindsight is a wonderful, thing, I wish I hadn't spent the RP & AD to gear this character up, but unfortunately it's a sunk expense, and at least I've learned enough to stop now before I waste any more.
  • hawkeyelhawkeyel Member Posts: 389 Arc User
    The best thing about an SW is the bar is set very low in group play. Even if you can just make it to the end of a run .You will be looked at as viable.
  • gromovnipljesak#8234 gromovnipljesak Member Posts: 1,053 Arc User
    A guildmate of mine completely abandoned the main toon - SW in favor of a CW. It should give you something to think of. While a buff is good, this probably isn't enough. Basically something like what @jaime4312#3760 said would be about enough to make SW competitive. After that, the TR, and the game is in a great position for you to just release content that we all can enjoy.
  • c3rb3r3c3rb3r3 Member Posts: 277 Arc User
    Will there be changes for other classes as well ?
  • hustin1hustin1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,458 Arc User
    einsieg said:

    Are further Damnation changes planned or under review? Nobody plays Damnation in group content anymore.

    The Temptation changes are terrible. A 5% debuff and more excessive amounts of healing that don't do anything useful does not make Temptation a viable support class. It does not make Temptation compete with Devoted Clerics or Paladins nor does it give us any reason to take a Temptation as another support in place of another DPS.

    Temptation already heals far more than we could ever need in this game. It heals tens of millions of HP trivially. Temptation heals several times more HP than any DC build possibly can, and nobody cares. Giving Templocks more healing is completely useless. Stop. Give them more party buffs for preventing damage and enemy debuffs to help deal more damage.

    Why do we need life steal severity? We already heal more than our own HP every time we lifesteal because of the raw damage we do.

    I play a Damnation (Hellbringer). If you see Brianna Nightbane ingame, that's me. I do think Damnation does need some love, though. I don't know what happened but for the past few weeks my SW has felt really gimped.
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