Just did a Tong run with my lock (I have super nice friends) and checked a few things on the combat log.
Contrary to what I thought was happening, PoP still doesn't crit. I don't know where I got the idea that it critted. Even though it still doesn't crit, the cooldown on OBC is still a major nerf to OBC, but it's still probably the best thing you can get on a Hellbringer before PoP starts critting. When it does crit then you can surely retire it.
But I wanted to focus only critical promise. With an average of 80% crit (I'm not at 100% anymore like many at this point I believe) critical promise contribution to total damage on the fury build I used was 0.25%. With an average effectiveness of 190% and a super powerful maximum hit of 1795!!! Awesome (yes, it's exclamation marks, not triple factorial, I'm not a GF)
Is making it able to benefit from buffs really going to make it that overpowered that you have to reduce the base numbers on it? It's hard to believe that it could go from that puny 0.25% to a scary 10%. That would happen if the average buff factor on my damage was a multiplier of 44.3x. I'm not sure to what number the buff multiplier averages out in general on a run with a gf, power sharing dc and paladin, since it's not as explicit as effectiveness numbers. Maybe 44 is not as outlandish as it sounds considering the base numbers on your powers and what the actual hit might be. But if the 44.3x multiplier is a hard to reach mark, it means that critical promise won't be that out of control if you allow it to scale with its current base numbers. Perhaps you have the numbers on how much an average party buff is multiplying our damages?
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your time and energy in improving our beloved Scourge Warlock. Also, thank you and the rest of the team for Rocktober.
This is the only class I play. We've had to change ourselves many times over the years (e.g. the old Tyrannical Threat days, the Soul Puppet days, etc.) and I was really excited when Amenar (aka Chris Matz) gave us some time back in the first half of 2016 (https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10074093-class-balance:-scourge-warlock). In that post he acknowledged the class was underperforming:
"Also want to just post a reminder of our intent - our intent with these changes is not to nerf the Scourge Warlock. While they have a few outstanding powers, overall, they are underperforming, and we want to bring up the class as a whole while making the "crutch" powers like Tyrannical Threat not an absolute must-have for the class to function."
Would you mind sharing your thoughts not only on some of the feedback posted here but also on your thoughts on the general state of the class akin to what Amenar shared in his review, please? Thank you again.
Hey there! My turn to give some suggestion in order to improve SWs game experience and help Devs work. First of all thanks to @balanced#2849 and all Devs for the post, it's always nice to have a dialogue. - general issues: as @tom#6998 and @etelgrin said, animations (Tab, TC, SS, AoH, HS, etc.) needs a lot of love, the same as cooldowns expecially due to the poor returns of investment in recovery. Many of those issues may need more time/work to be solved, but please don't forget about them. Following here some specific suggestion for each class. - temptation: honestly, I would not invest time/resources trying to buff a class that have in his core (heal) a mechanic almost useless in PvE. That said, my suggestion is to try to let it more desirable in PvP. How? I am not a PvP addict, i'll leave to @etelgrin and @paixnidiaris2 to develop more interesting solutions, my advice is to: increase the effectiveness of healings (i.e. making VE as piercing damage) and/or increase the temp HP buffs and/or converting some debuffs in damage absorption. - Damnation: easiest (and laziest) way to rework class is to make it the "starter" path. How? Make one/some buffs as party-buffs. Best pick IMO would be ghastly commander (a +15% party dmg buff could make puppet presence more bearable), and Pot9H, increasing PoP buff to 30%, with party benefiting of 50% of buff w/o the feat and 100% with feat slotted. For SB, making spirit able to debuff (up to 20%?) the puppet target. As a huge QoL improvement, please consider to get a mechanic via skill/feat/passive (i.e. 1st KF at start of combat) to telereport puppet in the middle of combat when it starts. That would not solve class issues, but surely will give low IL fellow SWs more party utility. - Fury: here comes the crucial spot. As many have said in this post, most of people that started a SW did that as casters in D&D are damage dealers (and according to https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Scourge_Warlock we are still striker/leaders!). Main problem is the lack of AoE and/or burst damage. Due to how our dps is build we need time, did that means no room in SWs in fast run? My answer is no ofc. Nerfing OBC has removed a strong source of AoE burst damage. Making some feats power scaling will increase overall damage (too lazy to even try to extimate the %), but delay the time it will be dealt, so benefit in trash clearing will be even less effective. So, how to increase SW's clearing potential? Will follow some possible ideas, ofc not asking all of them to be implemented: - Make SW benefit from lightning/power scaling ench, making it procs on each tick/target: will this be overwhelming? I don't think so, but if you do think, just put a target limit and/or a ICD on procs; - Even after incoming, fiw TC mechanic is meh, while TT mechanich was awesome and peculiar of the class. It may be restored, maybe reducing effectiveness of buff by the number of cursed target (+30% dmg in single target, +20% each for two, +10% each for three). Please give some love to DT too, old TT and DT were the bread and butter of SW' rotation, is to sad to see'em in such a poor state. - As SW seems to work decently in long boss fights (I may advice to buff a bit KF for more burst), expecially on his SB spec, you could focus then in increasing HB AoE dmg. GoH annouced fix are something, but not enough. As I consider HB a melee dps, my advice would be to give this spec some melee at-wills, i.e. let NPNM feat converting HR a multi-target-melee skill.
Ending this post with a proposal to my fellow SWs: instead of a 10 pages post with confused suggestion, let's join all ideas in class forum and collect the most reasonable ones in an single post (as a dev myself I care of @balanced#2849 headache ). Ofc mine are the best, but I can listen .
A few things I would like to see. One could you do some timed target dummy tests to compare. The damage the differeent striker class can do in a set amount of time . Alot of fights being a minute or less would be nice to see how we match up toward the other strikers in a timed setting test. Next we are known for as a cursed minded class and I can think of no other power better than "Knights Valor" that is a GF Tanks Encounter. I would very much like for us to have this power also . Just thinking of all the cursing that would cause would just warm my heart as an SW.
Why is it the lack of attention that SW are getting? Did we do something wrong? Are we all being punished for the select few that exploited that fabled set way back when, or is it something else?
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kieranmtornMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 382Arc User
A few things I would like to see. One could you do some timed target dummy tests to compare. The damage the differeent striker class can do in a set amount of time . Alot of fights being a minute or less would be nice to see how we match up toward the other strikers in a timed setting test. Next we are known for as a cursed minded class and I can think of no other power better than "Knights Valor" that is a GF Tanks Encounter. I would very much like for us to have this power also . Just thinking of all the cursing that would cause would just warm my heart as an SW.
Only possible for the dummy in Chult, since a decent build kills the dummies and that acts as a limiter on the dps you can test. As far as timed aoe/multi-target, it wouldn't matter, since inside 30 seconds the dummies will be dead for most of the good AOE dps classes.
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pyrosorcererMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 137Arc User
edited October 2017
I agree to the earlier mentioned change of feats. Swap "Power of the Nine Hells" (damnation) with the "Hellish Condemnation" (temptation).
Pros: The temptation warlock is 100% going to have to take the Power of the Nine Hells feat to be a proper buffer, hence having it in the Temptation tree makes it so a templock can actually take advantage of most of your proposed changes.
Cons: This will be a setback for the damnation tree, but this tree has a lot more needed to even be considered fixed. So if we firstly do this change to make Temptation get back up on its feet, we will have to give Damnation some love at a later date when you see fit for another SW rework.
Fury will remain very much unaffected by this as you would anyways have to spend the same points in damnation atm.
I agree to the earlier mentioned change of feats. Swap "Power of the Nine Hells" (damnation) with the "Hellish Condemnation" (temptation).
Pros: The temptation warlock is 100% going to have to take the Power of the Nine Hells feat to be a proper buffer, hence having it in the Temptation tree makes it so a templock can actually take advantage of most of your proposed changes.
Cons: This will be a setback for the damnation tree, but this tree has a lot more needed to even be considered fixed. So if we firstly do this change to make Temptation get back up on its feet, we will have to give Damnation some love at a later date when you see fit for another SW rework.
Fury will remain very much unaffected by this as you would anyways have to spend the same points in damnation atm.
Disagree, that would be a straight nerf for both fury and damnation, especially the latter. Where it stands now, all 3 specs can take Power of the Nine Hells without taking a blow in dps, with the suggestion you are agreeing with, damnation would lose Gatekeeper's Empowerment (not enough spare feat points to get that and Po9H) which is one of the few SW feats worth something (so would make damantion even weaker) and fury would lose relentless curse or partying blasphemy which even though are meh still actually help a bit with dps unlike hope stealer and other temptation feats and that's the reason that idea would do far more harm than good so no thank you.
Designed as a striker with a bit of leader capabilities, it is important that first and foremost, SW can be brought in line with the other damage dealers and for such a thing to happen, fury, the best tree for dps, should be the first one to be addressed and reworked properly and only after that damnation and temptation should get their rework as well, I'd rather damnation gets take caren of before temptation.
Fury needs to make SW very powerful by itself to be competitive with the other damage dealers.
Damnation needs better feats so both personal and puppet damage are more powerful than now.
Temptation needs much better dps buffing capacity and a bit more of personal damage output.
Any comments or actions that will be taken based on our feedback? The class does have very specific problems that need to be addressed, while we thank you for trying to help the class a bit, it is imperative to state that buffing random feats instead of addressing the actual class problems will change little to nothing so SW will continue to be the weakest class in the game.
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pyrosorcererMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 137Arc User
Well, it would be far from a major hit for fury, and I assume you did not read my entire post as I said it would hurt damnation.
The thing is that if you have paid any attention to reworks in this game you should know there is a time limit. Easy fixes that can give major impacts are needed. You cry for huge changes you probably already know won't be realistic within the time frame they got to work with. If they make fury great by itself it should NOT need Potnh feat at all, as dps, just an option to sacrifice some damage for potential buffs. Also the only of the two mentioned feats that might prove helpful is Parting Blasphemy, which usually only is taken by a) people not interested in the feat but needs potnh feat b) some SB fury, but these will remain unaffected.
Damnation is in such a bad state that revamping it sounds a bit far off given the changes they have proposed until now. That is why I think it is smart taking one step in the wrong direction for damnation to move three steps in the right direction for Temptation.
That idea hurts 2 specs to marginally buff one that does not have the potential to make SW competitive, that's why I think Fury should be priority, first the class needs to be closer in perfomance to other damage dealers then other specs should be looked at.
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pyrosorcererMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 137Arc User
Marginally buff temptation? It would allow temptation to slot 10 more feat points into its own tree, and if they rework it nicely that can be a huge buff. And temptation should be the supporter type tree.
My point with fury is that they should make the higher tier feats strong enough that the selfbuffs from these are superior to even thinking of Potnh.
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pyrosorcererMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 137Arc User
Making it a hard choice, heavy dps or sacrifice a little for more buffs.
Po9H not only makes PoP buff more for the SW and allies, it adds more dps by virtue of making sure the buff has much better uptime by retaining it for 5 secs of stepping out of it. For fury to be better off without Po9H its feats would need to be buffed a lot (it would also need to compensate for teammates having a permanent 6% dps loss in static fights) and like you said it yourself that wouldn't be realistic within the time frame devs have to work with it, fury would need a very large dps boost to be free from Po9H and I don't think that would happen anytime soon if ever.
> @arod7932 said: > "Warlock's Bargain will now heal nearby allies for the same amount that it heals you" > > ...finally.....they finally did it......(cries)...
I guess the problem about not healing anything will stay in problematic phases like Nostura in Spellplague or Demogorgon in 2. phase, or Tong. Like someone posted, "Get your Pinata in position". Btw the first impact/tick of WB already healed your party in former mods, even if the target didn´t take any damage, but not the following ticks.
First off, I don´t want another DC class, I want at least to egalize the dps-loss templock stands for actually and get fury on par with other striker. Fury tree needs buffs to compete with other striker and templock needs groupbuffs/utility as a leader. Atm we suck as striker and are useless as leader...no role fitting. So please for the sake of balance @balanced#2849 buff dps from fury/damantion and give Templock mitigation- and groupbuffs:
1. mitigationbuffs, buff those damgedebuffs from aura to significant numbers, combine it with maybe stronger Temp-HP buffs (modify the capstone or vampiric embrance). Wraith Shadow did not work correctly last time I checked it, anyone can confirm?
2. spend Templock a significant groupbuff from aura or let the group benefit from WC, or better both, like said above. GF outperforms the hole warlockclass by just standing in the landscape and spamming ITF (35% open buff) and doing nothing else. Only to give a comparison to my DC: In the end my DC beats my warlock x times by near doubling the group dps from powersharing, debuffing for 42,5% (DG+ByS, CG), and buffing dps by 12,5% (DG)+35% (HG)+40% (eBTS inconsitent), not even talking about DR buffs, wich alone beats my warlock by far 40% (AS)+35% (HG)+17,5% (DG) ... any questions? * Reading those numbers, the planed buffs are more than redicules, tbh they are nothing.
3. give us a tool to directly heal the group in those bossfight where there is no target to damage like edemo, MSP, Tong
4. let templock be a real leader to queue as leader/heal, atm you wait for hours to get a heal in randomqueue. This could be also an argument at your meetings if some of you think there is no need of a 3. leaderclass, otherwise give Warlock a new second role to fullfill. Don´t be shy, share your thoughts or worries, otherwise this class or tree will never be from any use.
*Sharing his power my DC at near 40k basepower buffs allies/companions only with passives from BoB and WoL (feats) with about 10k power (25%), on top a teammate get´s this multiplied back from companion x1,95 (if 3xr14 bondings), leading to a passive powerbuff of 29500, pressing Annoited Army it´s another plus of >30k power (at 3xr14bonsd), more than doubling the dps of my teammates. Empowered BtS is 40% + dps and 40% damagedebuff for 8 seconds, even tough it´s hard to hold up eBts these days. Devine Glow is a 17,5% debuff and a 12,5% dps-buff, that buff is up close to 100% with decent recovery, this allone beats the utility of the warlockclass (PoP-inconsitent 18% +dps, 10% debuff) Exaltation is a 12% damagebuff, not used that much i guess, only by min-max amybe going for eBtS+DG+Exaltation (empowered it´s 29% open buff) Hollowed Ground is 35% ? +dps/+DR buff (daily) 24/7 using hastening light, tbh I guess below some basepower it beats Annoited Army since bonding nerf and buffs my dps by 40% if I am correct, so AA might be inferior in most cases. eForgemaster is 15% raidbuff (if prefered over eBtS) Terryfying Insight is a passive 24/7 20% dps multiplier from DO. If you combine DO and AC effectively (AA/HG+eBtS/eFF+TI/HL) you have enough arguments, why double-DC is the meta.
Wow, they start looking at SW, mention it’s not a complete rework, and people aren’t happy yet? Without testing, everyone just bashes it saying “I want more power!!!!”
1) I agree templock should queue as healer. I don’t know about some of you, but I have successfully templocked FBI and MSP without clerics or pally’s. I was the healer and we beat the dungeons. I irritate healadins and DC’s because I trounce them in heals. I may not buff as much as they like, but no one dies so we kill the dungeon pretty quick. My guildies let me in as healer in private queues... so templock works. Try different specs if yours isn’t working.
2) I like where buffs are going. Scaling weapon damage will have me respecing my builds for more damage. SW’s versatility won’t put it on the top of the chart. I don’t play for that purpose. I play to run successfully. Fact is people invite me to dungeons constantly whether it’s templock or damage.
3) templock could use more group buffs. Make it full blown healer/buffer. Yes, healing is limited, but that’s the setback. Part of my success is breaking rotation and hitting at smart times so I can get heals out in those moments. If pally can heal or tank, why can’t SW dps or heal?
4) This is a start. The post says it isn’t a rework, just some buffs. Let them see the result, then maybe they’ll give us more. Some of you are suggesting Highly overpowered buffs. Some of these would make Sw too OP. Yes, that’d Be nice, but as we have said regularly, we want to be competitive with other dps, not trounce them. I agree we need buffs, but think balance, not OverPowered. It’s much better to be Paingiver when your class is equal to others, and not chart topping because your class is Op.
The problem is it takes a year for each little adjustment. If we get major buffs making us op, they will nerf it next patch... if they buff us and we are weak still, we wait another year for another minor buff. I would rather be op... weve been underperforming for far to long...
I like a lot of the ideas presented so far. Yes many may be extreme, but we need something done... an auto curse sure would be nice. As for curse being a buff for party members, that would be a great addition to the temp capstone. I dont feel fury or damnation should have this ability. It doesnt fit their roles. Although in fury it should give the caster more damage. In damnation it should buff the caster and puppet. Maybe allow puppet to spread curse?
pyrosorcererMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 137Arc User
Is there any set date for mod 13 launch yet or any approximate date? This would be very nice to know so people coming with feedback have some understanding of the timeframe for these tweaks.
Also having the tweaks coming at an earlier date than mod 13 would be welcomed by many if it would happen you finish earlier. Thank you for focusing on SW.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
"Wow, they start looking at SW, mention it’s not a complete rework, and people aren’t happy yet?"
Those tweaks don't address the class problems, how would people feel about that?
If the car SW is lacking top speed and acceleration and the dev buffs our brakes we still lack top speed and acceleration so such tweaks change little if anything.
Any comments or actions that will be taken based on our feedback? The class does have very specific problems that need to be addressed, while we thank you for trying to help the class a bit, it is imperative to state that buffing random feats instead of addressing the actual class problems will change little to nothing so SW will continue to be the weakest class in the game.
@balanced#2849 This is what all us warlocks have been asking for a long time now, no matter the minor issues we disagree on. Will u take the time out to listen to what we want for the class? I understand is an mmo sometimes you have to pay more attention and time to other classes and content, but when you do that it takes the fun out of playing the classes that you dont pay attention and detail to. I have alot of friend in the game, on SW there were alot who played the class because it was fun and now they play other classes becuz the overnerfing made the Sw less fun. This is the player base consensu. building up soul sparks anticipating the dmg to come, melting everything with dreadtheft b4 your teamates even catch up, massive heals in pvp and pve, back to 100% hp just using one encounter. Yea we were overpowered in the past and it mightve been a bit ridiculous when viewing other classes and its capability against the new SW class. A bit of balancing wouldve been workable, but then it was just overnerfed from the 1st few changes on. I very much did not like how tyranical threat was changed to a one target daily which lowered our dps by a significant amount. i would like TT to be reverted to the orignal 3 curse aoe. The player base think the SW was overnerfed, and I agree with them. I have main a SW since the release, and I do not want to main anything else. I have nothing against other classes, but none of them are imo all that fun to play compared to sw.(even though they outperform SW on just about everything)
@balanced#2849 we thank u for paying more attention to the class, but I feel that you should take a step further and bring us in line with the other strikers. What ive seen from the coming SW changes is not enough. no where near enough
Wow, they start looking at SW, mention it’s not a complete rework, and people aren’t happy yet? Without testing, everyone just bashes it saying “I want more power!!!!”
1) I agree templock should queue as healer. I don’t know about some of you, but I have successfully templocked FBI and MSP without clerics or pally’s. I was the healer and we beat the dungeons. I irritate healadins and DC’s because I trounce them in heals. I may not buff as much as they like, but no one dies so we kill the dungeon pretty quick. My guildies let me in as healer in private queues... so templock works. Try different specs if yours isn’t working.
2) I like where buffs are going. Scaling weapon damage will have me respecing my builds for more damage. SW’s versatility won’t put it on the top of the chart. I don’t play for that purpose. I play to run successfully. Fact is people invite me to dungeons constantly whether it’s templock or damage.
3) templock could use more group buffs. Make it full blown healer/buffer. Yes, healing is limited, but that’s the setback. Part of my success is breaking rotation and hitting at smart times so I can get heals out in those moments. If pally can heal or tank, why can’t SW dps or heal?
4) This is a start. The post says it isn’t a rework, just some buffs. Let them see the result, then maybe they’ll give us more. Some of you are suggesting Highly overpowered buffs. Some of these would make Sw too OP. Yes, that’d Be nice, but as we have said regularly, we want to be competitive with other dps, not trounce them. I agree we need buffs, but think balance, not OverPowered. It’s much better to be Paingiver when your class is equal to others, and not chart topping because your class is Op.
The problem is, warlock has no utility atm, no striker and no leader, except you run 24/7 T1 or T2. If that´s what you like it really doesn´t matter what class, what setup, gear or what build you run, just press some buttons and you will succeed. If you want to run endcontent, that class is a real burdon, nothing else. Due to missing dps (fury) and missing debuffs/buffs (templock) none of both roles is working. So if you do not want to be carried 24/7 you have to park your warlock on the shelve. That´s what I do and I played that class as main all the time since 4 years. The fixes we read about do not even compensate the minimum to survive. After the needed fixes during last mods, leading to a significant nerf of this class, and after the promise to take care about the second role of the class in a following rework (they said so in mod 6), the class is at the bottom I would say. Warlock doesn´t benefit from weapon enchant rework, has awefull casting times since the beginning and no utility in PVP, no good aoe and get´s beaten by near every class in terms of focus damage (once the special ability of warlock). I have no interest to exaggerate and try to resume as objective as possible. I tried to fit my role in Tong today and it was really laughabel. I swapped my stones to my DC and progress and get geared in no time, since this game is all about buffs. The devs called out for balance after mod 6 and here we are running endcontent with one striker one tank and three buffer, if we want to get things done adaequat.
Want to lift base/over all dmg output for all 3 build trees?
1) revise Ability Score: CHA - gives 0.5% Bonus dmg. 2) rework Heroic feat: Current Blood Pact of Cania
Current - Increases the amount of bonus damage Constitution gives you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Suggestion: Blood Pact of Cania - Increases the amount of bonus damage Constitution gives you by 0.5/1/1.5/2/3%, + CHA add 2/4/6/8/10% bonus dmg.
or
Blood Pact of Cania - Increases the amount of bonus damage Constitution gives you by 2/4/6/8/10% + CHA add 0.5/1/1.5/2/3% . bonus dmg.
Note: this would lift up over all Warlocks dmg output. Also without Blood Pact of Cania CHA would provide 0.5% bonus dmg.. At first seems not much, but it's better than nothing,, plus if player want higher bonus dmg,, would pick Blood Pact of Cania feat over others...
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Next, Templock lack utilities to help groups within fights..
No problem: Revisions =============================================== Dmg mitigation/reductions toward allies(including warlock itself)
Compounded Soul - Striking Cursed foes has a chance to grant 5/10/15/20/25% of players Max HP as Temporary shield. Hit Points to allies near the Warlock. Note: Time duration of buff is equal x2 of current Compound souls Temp HP duration... Note 2: Buff do not stack,, only refreshing..
===========================================
Personal protection
Infernal Sphere: Add 2 modes within encounter.
1) defensive Summoned infernal Spheres grant: Personal Barrier - each absorbing by Flat
2) Offensive
1) Defensive part: Summoned Infernal spheres: Grant User personal barrier, that absorb x flat amount damage per sphere. In additionally Spheres provide 1% Control resist 1% per rank.
Notes:essentially it's modified Barkshield Armor enchantments mechanic with lesser values, and have longer time for each sphere regeneration.. Also values to decide I leave for Staff and testers...
2) offensive part: By clicking encounter again while already having Sphere summoned, player switch to offensive mode for 4s per rank duration time.. ( up to 16s), upon time ending, spheres vanish.
Offensive mode = actively seek enemies(invisible too) , hit back attacker, apply lesser curse. Possible feature: Apply debuffs. Note: By switching from defensive to offensive mode, players lose:
personal shield
Spheres regeneration
Spheres remain same quantity as when where within defensive mode
. Values are not final ones..
Possible outcome: warlock would have barrier like encounter, which would provide personal protection within pvp or pve(depend on situation). On top offensive mode, would work as old infernal spheres which where good too seek hidden enemies(within pvp good stealth TR hunting tool).. As for debuffs, well it's possibility to add them too, but in exchange would be to remove chance apply lesser curse..
Vampiric embrace - Rip the life essence from your target, dealing damage and converting 75% of that damage into Hit Points.
Warlock's Curse Consume: Gain Temporary Hit Points equal to 70% the amount of health stolen. In additionally gain 20% dmg increase (5% per rank for 15s.) Warlock's Curse is expended. Note: Temptation Warlocks Soul Bonding - also provide this buff toward allies.... ===============================================================
Encounters:
Wraith shadows - This encounter need rework mechanic how it's applies toward foes.. Proposal use spider web mechanic. Player point to area where to cast, drop on ground. Thats also including slow effect.
Combined with Slow + damage reduction would provide CC + debuff utility..
===================
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
Additional feedback and suggestions: - creeping death: instead of giving 60% over time, the first tick should proc immediatly for 30%, which results in more burst damage (the other 30% are given afterwards as DOT)... And why not increasing the percentage from 60 to 80% ? - as others suggested, reduce cooldowns and casting times of powers. - increase base damage of all powers by a significant amount?
- rework class features to make some of them empower/self-buff the warlock. So far, only flames of empowerement gives a (meh) bonus damage and it is only for hellbringer. And currently the other "damage" class features offer terrible additional damage. - Lesser curse: please increase its damage. Also it is sometimes very difficult to overwrite a lesser curse with a regular curse: we waste a lot of time pressing tab. - Killing flame encounter: should reach maximum potential when targets are at 50% Hit Points or more (rather than 25% because the warlock can only cast one or two encounters at this stage, not to mention that some targets such as the dragon-turtle are gone...). - Brood of Hadar: the "bite" part should benefit from the curse and should proc creeping death - dreadtheft: the debuff part is nice but the warlock is stuck with this encounter during its channeling. Maybe increase its base damage? - essence defiler: increase its base damage, building sparks is already long enough - not a priority but most the warlock encounters are not used at all because too long to cast, or not effective.
- swap "Devastating Critical" heroic feat with "Weapon Mastery". - rework blood pact of cania to give more damage: Constitution cannot be rolled to the maximum when you create a SW, so this feat should be increased accordingly. - Executioner's Gift: the threshold to get the max 15% bonus damage should be decreased. - Parting Blasphemy: if not already, it should scale with powers and buffs. Or give it a DR debuff effect. - hellbringer: "power of nice hells" feat versus reworked "killing curse" feat: po9n always wins damage-wise. I am not convinced by killing curse. Or maybe you could merge po9n effect into pillar of power (and slightly reduce its damage boost effect if you think it is overpowered). In that case, killing curse could be a good option. - more DR reduction feats could be useful to give warlock a party utility.
But I wanted to focus only critical promise. With an average of 80% crit (I'm not at 100% anymore like many at this point I believe) critical promise contribution to total damage on the fury build I used was 0.25%. With an average effectiveness of 190% and a super powerful maximum hit of 1795!!! Awesome (yes, it's exclamation marks, not triple factorial, I'm not a GF)
Is making it able to benefit from buffs really going to make it that overpowered that you have to reduce the base numbers on it? It's hard to believe that it could go from that puny 0.25% to a scary 10%. That would happen if the average buff factor on my damage was a multiplier of 44.3x. I'm not sure to what number the buff multiplier averages out in general on a run with a gf, power sharing dc and paladin, since it's not as explicit as effectiveness numbers. Maybe 44 is not as outlandish as it sounds considering the base numbers on your powers and what the actual hit might be. But if the 44.3x multiplier is a hard to reach mark, it means that critical promise won't be that out of control if you allow it to scale with its current base numbers. Perhaps you have the numbers on how much an average party buff is multiplying our damages?
Only to visualize again what you wrote and to get it in context with balance and other classes.
https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Jagged_Blades If I run my GF he has this pretty feat called "Jagged Blades": When you critically strike a foe they begin bleeding. This bleed lasts 10 seconds and deals 150/300/450/600/750% of your weapon damage over its duration. Jagged Blades is a significant dps buff towards a critbuild, as far as I remember my GF with arround 60% crit never achieved higher ammounts like 15% overall dps by using that feature, maybe someone else runs a 100% GF-critbuild? The damage from Jagged Blades get´s buffed by ITF, mark etc. It benefits from buffs and debuffs from what I can tell and escalates the more buffs I add.
https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Critical_Promise "Critical Promise":After a critical hit, your next attack will also deal 10/20/30/40/50% of your weapon damage as Necrotic damage." (Before Amenar 10%) This damage get´s buffed by nothing, so it a pittiful feature, but warlock class pics this feat since 4 years now because there is nothing better. And this indicates also how this class is treated for years now. Every dev could have tested this feature to recognize it´s poor benefit. @balanced#2849 you speak off "Critical Promise" as if it would debalance the game by adding a buffed 50% weapondamage, compare those number 20% vs 750% If you estimate the benefit from this feature at 20% buffed, compared to GF´s 750%, it will deal about... 15% (GF) : 750 (weapondamage) x 20 (SW weapondamage) : 6 (GF 60% crit) x10 (SW 100%crit) arround 0,66% dps boost for a 100% critbuild...not that much Since it is no DOT it might be higher maybe >1%. If you want this feat to be a buff it needs a 50-100% weapon damage buff, resulting in maybe 2-5% plus dps, maybe less.
Same counts towards "Killing Curse" former 5% weapondamage, after Amenar a 15% unbuffed weapondamage, dealing nothing like 0,0xy% dps in a party with decent buffs. You want to buff this feature? Raise it towards a 50-100% buffed weapondamage like above, even by that you will not get warlock near other striker, they will stay outside endcontent because a 5-10% dps increase will not be a significant boost.
About "Daughter´s Promise" .... I promise , even with a buffed 100% weapondamage noone will spend 5 points into that feat. It´s a dead end, that will not help your build or performance. If you want to push it make it a 500% proc on three targets ... even by that I would think about the 5 points twice, because I won´t benefit in most bossfights and I have to kill a target before I get a benefit. If you want to make it a fun feature, give that feat more of the aspect like "corpse exploition", dealing a fix ammount of the targets max HP towards 3 other targets, like 50% or less (to prevent a chainreaktion). It would be a significant plus towards the poor aoe of warlock and a funny trashkiller.
Sorry for the monologue, but this has to be said. We talk about a 0,5 to 1,5% dps boost against other striker like the GWF that can boost it´s dps > x6 times due to selfbuffs, a 10k Sure Strike becomes >100k.
GWF: classfeature Destroyer https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Destroyer and feat Focused Destroyer. 3 stacks of that classfeature buff my damage by 3x15,5 damage= 46,5% !! up in no time
Destroyer capstone 50% dps buff.
Classfeature Weapon Master https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Weapon_Master With offhand feat 6 stacks grant a 15% critbonus, up in 3 seconds, that´s a 6000 critbuff for a relavant stat in PVE. Didn´t the GWF community asked for more tankyness? Just hand over that 15% deflect and get us their 15% crit.
Soulbinder has a compareable feat combined with Borrowed Time, spending a 15% deflect from sparks, takes 2 min in PVP to get the sparks to 30 and benefit from that feature, you are killed in <10 seconds by most Tr´s that proc SOD on you. That feat would´t help anyway since it´s irresistable piercing damage, the worst implementation in NWO PVP since ever
Sorry for the monologue, but this has to be said. We talk about a 0,5 to 1,5% dps boost against other striker like the GWF that can boost it´s dps > x6 times due to selfbuffs, a 10k Sure Strike becomes >100k.
GWF: classfeature Destroyer https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Destroyer and feat Focused Destroyer. 3 stacks of that classfeature buff my damage by 3x15,5 damage= 46,5% !! up in no time
Destroyer capstone 50% dps buff.
Classfeature Weapon Master https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Weapon_Master With offhand feat 6 stacks grant a 15% critbonus, up in 3 seconds, that´s a 6000 critbuff for a relavant stat in PVE. Didn´t the GWF community asked for more tankyness? Just hand over that 15% deflect and get us their 15% crit.
Soulbinder has a compareable feat combined with Borrowed Time, spending a 15% deflect from sparks, takes 2 min in PVP to get the sparks to 30 and benefit from that feature, you are killed in <10 seconds by most Tr´s that proc SOD on you. That feat would´t help anyway since it´s irresistable piercing damage, the worst implementation in NWO PVP since ever </p>
For pvp, deflect is useless against burst and piercing damage. Defense is useless on sw.. More hit points is a better defense. All we have is hitpoints and lifesteal + decent healing from borrowed time, But with the new changes to healing and tenacity mod12b... we gonna be 1 hit kill. Borrowed time is going to be useless, we can't tank with hp and healing anymore, we can't dps and now the devs wants to nerf Eldritch Momentum because we gain too much stamina in battle... what a joke ! Instead of looking how to fix those big amount of broken stuff/things and underpowered feats and underpowered, long/slow casting encounter powers, etc, etc they look at things like Eldritch Momentum because it's not ok to gain that amount of stamina in battle (smh)
Comments
Contrary to what I thought was happening, PoP still doesn't crit. I don't know where I got the idea that it critted. Even though it still doesn't crit, the cooldown on OBC is still a major nerf to OBC, but it's still probably the best thing you can get on a Hellbringer before PoP starts critting. When it does crit then you can surely retire it.
But I wanted to focus only critical promise. With an average of 80% crit (I'm not at 100% anymore like many at this point I believe) critical promise contribution to total damage on the fury build I used was 0.25%. With an average effectiveness of 190% and a super powerful maximum hit of 1795!!! Awesome
Is making it able to benefit from buffs really going to make it that overpowered that you have to reduce the base numbers on it? It's hard to believe that it could go from that puny 0.25% to a scary 10%. That would happen if the average buff factor on my damage was a multiplier of 44.3x. I'm not sure to what number the buff multiplier averages out in general on a run with a gf, power sharing dc and paladin, since it's not as explicit as effectiveness numbers. Maybe 44 is not as outlandish as it sounds considering the base numbers on your powers and what the actual hit might be. But if the 44.3x multiplier is a hard to reach mark, it means that critical promise won't be that out of control if you allow it to scale with its current base numbers.
Perhaps you have the numbers on how much an average party buff is multiplying our damages?
This is the only class I play. We've had to change ourselves many times over the years (e.g. the old Tyrannical Threat days, the Soul Puppet days, etc.) and I was really excited when Amenar (aka Chris Matz) gave us some time back in the first half of 2016 (https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10074093-class-balance:-scourge-warlock). In that post he acknowledged the class was underperforming:
"Also want to just post a reminder of our intent - our intent with these changes is not to nerf the Scourge Warlock. While they have a few outstanding powers, overall, they are underperforming, and we want to bring up the class as a whole while making the "crutch" powers like Tyrannical Threat not an absolute must-have for the class to function."
Would you mind sharing your thoughts not only on some of the feedback posted here but also on your thoughts on the general state of the class akin to what Amenar shared in his review, please? Thank you again.
My turn to give some suggestion in order to improve SWs game experience and help Devs work. First of all thanks to @balanced#2849 and all Devs for the post, it's always nice to have a dialogue.
- general issues: as @tom#6998 and @etelgrin said, animations (Tab, TC, SS, AoH, HS, etc.) needs a lot of love, the same as cooldowns expecially due to the poor returns of investment in recovery. Many of those issues may need more time/work to be solved, but please don't forget about them.
Following here some specific suggestion for each class.
- temptation: honestly, I would not invest time/resources trying to buff a class that have in his core (heal) a mechanic almost useless in PvE. That said, my suggestion is to try to let it more desirable in PvP.
How? I am not a PvP addict, i'll leave to @etelgrin and @paixnidiaris2 to develop more interesting solutions, my advice is to: increase the effectiveness of healings (i.e. making VE as piercing damage) and/or increase the temp HP buffs and/or converting some debuffs in damage absorption.
- Damnation: easiest (and laziest) way to rework class is to make it the "starter" path.
How? Make one/some buffs as party-buffs. Best pick IMO would be ghastly commander (a +15% party dmg buff could make puppet presence more bearable), and Pot9H, increasing PoP buff to 30%, with party benefiting of 50% of buff w/o the feat and 100% with feat slotted. For SB, making spirit able to debuff (up to 20%?) the puppet target. As a huge QoL improvement, please consider to get a mechanic via skill/feat/passive (i.e. 1st KF at start of combat) to telereport puppet in the middle of combat when it starts. That would not solve class issues, but surely will give low IL fellow SWs more party utility.
- Fury: here comes the crucial spot. As many have said in this post, most of people that started a SW did that as casters in D&D are damage dealers (and according to https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Scourge_Warlock we are still striker/leaders!). Main problem is the lack of AoE and/or burst damage. Due to how our dps is build we need time, did that means no room in SWs in fast run? My answer is no ofc. Nerfing OBC has removed a strong source of AoE burst damage. Making some feats power scaling will increase overall damage (too lazy to even try to extimate the %), but delay the time it will be dealt, so benefit in trash clearing will be even less effective. So, how to increase SW's clearing potential? Will follow some possible ideas, ofc not asking all of them to be implemented:
- Make SW benefit from lightning/power scaling ench, making it procs on each tick/target: will this be overwhelming? I don't think so, but if you do think, just put a target limit and/or a ICD on procs;
- Even after incoming, fiw TC mechanic is meh, while TT mechanich was awesome and peculiar of the class. It may be restored, maybe reducing effectiveness of buff by the number of cursed target (+30% dmg in single target, +20% each for two, +10% each for three). Please give some love to DT too, old TT and DT were the bread and butter of SW' rotation, is to sad to see'em in such a poor state.
- As SW seems to work decently in long boss fights (I may advice to buff a bit KF for more burst), expecially on his SB spec, you could focus then in increasing HB AoE dmg. GoH annouced fix are something, but not enough. As I consider HB a melee dps, my advice would be to give this spec some melee at-wills, i.e. let NPNM feat converting HR a multi-target-melee skill.
Ending this post with a proposal to my fellow SWs: instead of a 10 pages post with confused suggestion, let's join all ideas in class forum and collect the most reasonable ones in an single post (as a dev myself I care of @balanced#2849 headache
GG ev1,
Ram.
Those tweaks change little to nothing as they do not address the class problems, we'll be in the same spot or worse vs other classes.
@ramesh84
I recommend you to edit your post, not to be a jerk but it is highly unlikely the dev would bother reading that wall of text.
Pros: The temptation warlock is 100% going to have to take the Power of the Nine Hells feat to be a proper buffer, hence having it in the Temptation tree makes it so a templock can actually take advantage of most of your proposed changes.
Cons: This will be a setback for the damnation tree, but this tree has a lot more needed to even be considered fixed. So if we firstly do this change to make Temptation get back up on its feet, we will have to give Damnation some love at a later date when you see fit for another SW rework.
Fury will remain very much unaffected by this as you would anyways have to spend the same points in damnation atm.
Designed as a striker with a bit of leader capabilities, it is important that first and foremost, SW can be brought in line with the other damage dealers and for such a thing to happen, fury, the best tree for dps, should be the first one to be addressed and reworked properly and only after that damnation and temptation should get their rework as well, I'd rather damnation gets take caren of before temptation.
Fury needs to make SW very powerful by itself to be competitive with the other damage dealers.
Damnation needs better feats so both personal and puppet damage are more powerful than now.
Temptation needs much better dps buffing capacity and a bit more of personal damage output.
Any comments or actions that will be taken based on our feedback? The class does have very specific problems that need to be addressed, while we thank you for trying to help the class a bit, it is imperative to state that buffing random feats instead of addressing the actual class problems will change little to nothing so SW will continue to be the weakest class in the game.
Well, it would be far from a major hit for fury, and I assume you did not read my entire post as I said it would hurt damnation.
The thing is that if you have paid any attention to reworks in this game you should know there is a time limit. Easy fixes that can give major impacts are needed. You cry for huge changes you probably already know won't be realistic within the time frame they got to work with. If they make fury great by itself it should NOT need Potnh feat at all, as dps, just an option to sacrifice some damage for potential buffs. Also the only of the two mentioned feats that might prove helpful is Parting Blasphemy, which usually only is taken by a) people not interested in the feat but needs potnh feat b) some SB fury, but these will remain unaffected.
Damnation is in such a bad state that revamping it sounds a bit far off given the changes they have proposed until now. That is why I think it is smart taking one step in the wrong direction for damnation to move three steps in the right direction for Temptation.
That idea hurts 2 specs to marginally buff one that does not have the potential to make SW competitive, that's why I think Fury should be priority, first the class needs to be closer in perfomance to other damage dealers then other specs should be looked at.
Marginally buff temptation? It would allow temptation to slot 10 more feat points into its own tree, and if they rework it nicely that can be a huge buff. And temptation should be the supporter type tree.
My point with fury is that they should make the higher tier feats strong enough that the selfbuffs from these are superior to even thinking of Potnh.
Po9H not only makes PoP buff more for the SW and allies, it adds more dps by virtue of making sure the buff has much better uptime by retaining it for 5 secs of stepping out of it. For fury to be better off without Po9H its feats would need to be buffed a lot (it would also need to compensate for teammates having a permanent 6% dps loss in static fights) and like you said it yourself that wouldn't be realistic within the time frame devs have to work with it, fury would need a very large dps boost to be free from Po9H and I don't think that would happen anytime soon if ever.
...finally.....they finally did it......(cries)...
> "Warlock's Bargain will now heal nearby allies for the same amount that it heals you"
>
> ...finally.....they finally did it......(cries)...
I guess the problem about not healing anything will stay in problematic phases like Nostura in Spellplague or Demogorgon in 2. phase, or Tong. Like someone posted, "Get your Pinata in position".
Btw the first impact/tick of WB already healed your party in former mods, even if the target didn´t take any damage, but not the following ticks.
First off, I don´t want another DC class, I want at least to egalize the dps-loss templock stands for actually and get fury on par with other striker.
Fury tree needs buffs to compete with other striker and templock needs groupbuffs/utility as a leader. Atm we suck as striker and are useless as leader...no role fitting.
So please for the sake of balance @balanced#2849 buff dps from fury/damantion and give Templock mitigation- and groupbuffs:
1. mitigationbuffs, buff those damgedebuffs from aura to significant numbers, combine it with maybe stronger Temp-HP buffs (modify the capstone or vampiric embrance). Wraith Shadow did not work correctly last time I checked it, anyone can confirm?
2. spend Templock a significant groupbuff from aura or let the group benefit from WC, or better both, like said above.
GF outperforms the hole warlockclass by just standing in the landscape and spamming ITF (35% open buff) and doing nothing else.
Only to give a comparison to my DC:
In the end my DC beats my warlock x times by near doubling the group dps from powersharing, debuffing for 42,5% (DG+ByS, CG), and buffing dps by 12,5% (DG)+35% (HG)+40% (eBTS inconsitent), not even talking about DR buffs, wich alone beats my warlock by far 40% (AS)+35% (HG)+17,5% (DG) ... any questions? *
Reading those numbers, the planed buffs are more than redicules, tbh they are nothing.
3. give us a tool to directly heal the group in those bossfight where there is no target to damage like edemo, MSP, Tong
4. let templock be a real leader to queue as leader/heal, atm you wait for hours to get a heal in randomqueue.
This could be also an argument at your meetings if some of you think there is no need of a 3. leaderclass, otherwise give Warlock a new second role to fullfill. Don´t be shy, share your thoughts or worries, otherwise this class or tree will never be from any use.
*Sharing his power my DC at near 40k basepower buffs allies/companions only with passives from BoB and WoL (feats) with about 10k power (25%), on top a teammate get´s this multiplied back from companion x1,95 (if 3xr14 bondings), leading to a passive powerbuff of 29500, pressing Annoited Army it´s another plus of >30k power (at 3xr14bonsd), more than doubling the dps of my teammates.
Empowered BtS is 40% + dps and 40% damagedebuff for 8 seconds, even tough it´s hard to hold up eBts these days.
Devine Glow is a 17,5% debuff and a 12,5% dps-buff, that buff is up close to 100% with decent recovery, this allone beats the utility of the warlockclass (PoP-inconsitent 18% +dps, 10% debuff)
Exaltation is a 12% damagebuff, not used that much i guess, only by min-max amybe going for eBtS+DG+Exaltation (empowered it´s 29% open buff)
Hollowed Ground is 35% ? +dps/+DR buff (daily) 24/7 using hastening light, tbh I guess below some basepower it beats Annoited Army since bonding nerf and buffs my dps by 40% if I am correct, so AA might be inferior in most cases.
eForgemaster is 15% raidbuff (if prefered over eBtS)
Terryfying Insight is a passive 24/7 20% dps multiplier from DO.
If you combine DO and AC effectively (AA/HG+eBtS/eFF+TI/HL) you have enough arguments, why double-DC is the meta.
1) I agree templock should queue as healer. I don’t know about some of you, but I have successfully templocked FBI and MSP without clerics or pally’s. I was the healer and we beat the dungeons. I irritate healadins and DC’s because I trounce them in heals. I may not buff as much as they like, but no one dies so we kill the dungeon pretty quick. My guildies let me in as healer in private queues... so templock works. Try different specs if yours isn’t working.
2) I like where buffs are going. Scaling weapon damage will have me respecing my builds for more damage. SW’s versatility won’t put it on the top of the chart. I don’t play for that purpose. I play to run successfully. Fact is people invite me to dungeons constantly whether it’s templock or damage.
3) templock could use more group buffs. Make it full blown healer/buffer. Yes, healing is limited, but that’s the setback. Part of my success is breaking rotation and hitting at smart times so I can get heals out in those moments. If pally can heal or tank, why can’t SW dps or heal?
4) This is a start. The post says it isn’t a rework, just some buffs. Let them see the result, then maybe they’ll give us more. Some of you are suggesting Highly overpowered buffs. Some of these would make Sw too OP. Yes, that’d Be nice, but as we have said regularly, we want to be competitive with other dps, not trounce them. I agree we need buffs, but think balance, not OverPowered. It’s much better to be Paingiver when your class is equal to others, and not chart topping because your class is Op.
I like a lot of the ideas presented so far. Yes many may be extreme, but we need something done... an auto curse sure would be nice. As for curse being a buff for party members, that would be a great addition to the temp capstone. I dont feel fury or damnation should have this ability. It doesnt fit their roles. Although in fury it should give the caster more damage. In damnation it should buff the caster and puppet. Maybe allow puppet to spread curse?
[The Legendary Outlaws] (Guildhall 20)
Also having the tweaks coming at an earlier date than mod 13 would be welcomed by many if it would happen you finish earlier. Thank you for focusing on SW.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
"Wow, they start looking at SW, mention it’s not a complete rework, and people aren’t happy yet?"
Those tweaks don't address the class problems, how would people feel about that?
If the car SW is lacking top speed and acceleration and the dev buffs our brakes we still lack top speed and acceleration so such tweaks change little if anything.
@balanced#2849 we thank u for paying more attention to the class, but I feel that you should take a step further and bring us in line with the other strikers. What ive seen from the coming SW changes is not enough. no where near enough
If you want to run endcontent, that class is a real burdon, nothing else. Due to missing dps (fury) and missing debuffs/buffs (templock) none of both roles is working.
So if you do not want to be carried 24/7 you have to park your warlock on the shelve. That´s what I do and I played that class as main all the time since 4 years.
The fixes we read about do not even compensate the minimum to survive. After the needed fixes during last mods, leading to a significant nerf of this class, and after the promise to take care about the second role of the class in a following rework (they said so in mod 6), the class is at the bottom I would say.
Warlock doesn´t benefit from weapon enchant rework, has awefull casting times since the beginning and no utility in PVP, no good aoe and get´s beaten by near every class in terms of focus damage (once the special ability of warlock).
I have no interest to exaggerate and try to resume as objective as possible. I tried to fit my role in Tong today and it was really laughabel. I swapped my stones to my DC and progress and get geared in no time, since this game is all about buffs. The devs called out for balance after mod 6 and here we are running endcontent with one striker one tank and three buffer, if we want to get things done adaequat.
1) revise Ability Score: CHA - gives 0.5% Bonus dmg.
2) rework Heroic feat: Current Blood Pact of Cania
Current - Increases the amount of bonus damage Constitution gives you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Suggestion:
Blood Pact of Cania - Increases the amount of bonus damage Constitution gives you by 0.5/1/1.5/2/3%, + CHA add 2/4/6/8/10% bonus dmg.
or
Blood Pact of Cania - Increases the amount of bonus damage Constitution gives you by 2/4/6/8/10% + CHA add 0.5/1/1.5/2/3% . bonus dmg.
Note: this would lift up over all Warlocks dmg output. Also without Blood Pact of Cania CHA would provide 0.5% bonus dmg..
At first seems not much, but it's better than nothing,, plus if player want higher bonus dmg,, would pick Blood Pact of Cania feat over others...
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Next, Templock lack utilities to help groups within fights..
No problem: Revisions
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Dmg mitigation/reductions toward allies(including warlock itself)
Compounded Soul - Striking Cursed foes has a chance to grant 5/10/15/20/25% of players Max HP as Temporary shield. Hit Points to allies near the Warlock.
Note: Time duration of buff is equal x2 of current Compound souls Temp HP duration...
Note 2: Buff do not stack,, only refreshing..
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Personal protection
Infernal Sphere:
Add 2 modes within encounter.
1) defensive
Summoned infernal Spheres grant: Personal Barrier - each absorbing by Flat
2) Offensive
1) Defensive part:
Summoned Infernal spheres:
Grant User personal barrier, that absorb x flat amount damage per sphere. In additionally Spheres provide 1% Control resist 1% per rank.
Notes:essentially it's modified Barkshield Armor enchantments mechanic with lesser values, and have longer time for each sphere regeneration.. Also values to decide I leave for Staff and testers...
2) offensive part:
By clicking encounter again while already having Sphere summoned, player switch to offensive mode for 4s per rank duration time.. ( up to 16s), upon time ending, spheres vanish.
Offensive mode = actively seek enemies(invisible too) , hit back attacker, apply lesser curse.
Possible feature: Apply debuffs.
Note: By switching from defensive to offensive mode, players lose:
- personal shield
- Spheres regeneration
- Spheres remain same quantity as when where within defensive mode
.Values are not final ones..
Possible outcome: warlock would have barrier like encounter, which would provide personal protection within pvp or pve(depend on situation).
On top offensive mode, would work as old infernal spheres which where good too seek hidden enemies(within pvp good stealth TR hunting tool)..
As for debuffs, well it's possibility to add them too, but in exchange would be to remove chance apply lesser curse..
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Vampiric embrace - Rip the life essence from your target, dealing damage and converting 75% of that damage into Hit Points.
Warlock's Curse Consume: Gain Temporary Hit Points equal to 70% the amount of health stolen. In additionally gain 20% dmg increase (5% per rank for 15s.) Warlock's Curse is expended.
Note: Temptation Warlocks Soul Bonding - also provide this buff toward allies....
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Encounters:
Wraith shadows -
This encounter need rework mechanic how it's applies toward foes..
Proposal use spider web mechanic. Player point to area where to cast, drop on ground. Thats also including slow effect.
Combined with Slow + damage reduction would provide CC + debuff utility..
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“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
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- creeping death: instead of giving 60% over time, the first tick should proc immediatly for 30%, which results in more burst damage (the other 30% are given afterwards as DOT)... And why not increasing the percentage from 60 to 80% ?
- as others suggested, reduce cooldowns and casting times of powers.
- increase base damage of all powers by a significant amount?
- rework class features to make some of them empower/self-buff the warlock. So far, only flames of empowerement gives a (meh) bonus damage and it is only for hellbringer. And currently the other "damage" class features offer terrible additional damage.
- Lesser curse: please increase its damage. Also it is sometimes very difficult to overwrite a lesser curse with a regular curse: we waste a lot of time pressing tab.
- Killing flame encounter: should reach maximum potential when targets are at 50% Hit Points or more (rather than 25% because the warlock can only cast one or two encounters at this stage, not to mention that some targets such as the dragon-turtle are gone...).
- Brood of Hadar: the "bite" part should benefit from the curse and should proc creeping death
- dreadtheft: the debuff part is nice but the warlock is stuck with this encounter during its channeling. Maybe increase its base damage?
- essence defiler: increase its base damage, building sparks is already long enough
- not a priority but most the warlock encounters are not used at all because too long to cast, or not effective.
- swap "Devastating Critical" heroic feat with "Weapon Mastery".
- rework blood pact of cania to give more damage: Constitution cannot be rolled to the maximum when you create a SW, so this feat should be increased accordingly.
- Executioner's Gift: the threshold to get the max 15% bonus damage should be decreased.
- Parting Blasphemy: if not already, it should scale with powers and buffs. Or give it a DR debuff effect.
- hellbringer: "power of nice hells" feat versus reworked "killing curse" feat: po9n always wins damage-wise. I am not convinced by killing curse. Or maybe you could merge po9n effect into pillar of power (and slightly reduce its damage boost effect if you think it is overpowered). In that case, killing curse could be a good option.
- more DR reduction feats could be useful to give warlock a party utility.
that's all for now.
https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Jagged_Blades
If I run my GF he has this pretty feat called "Jagged Blades": When you critically strike a foe they begin bleeding. This bleed lasts 10 seconds and deals 150/300/450/600/750% of your weapon damage over its duration.
Jagged Blades is a significant dps buff towards a critbuild, as far as I remember my GF with arround 60% crit never achieved higher ammounts like 15% overall dps by using that feature, maybe someone else runs a 100% GF-critbuild?
The damage from Jagged Blades get´s buffed by ITF, mark etc. It benefits from buffs and debuffs from what I can tell and escalates the more buffs I add.
https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Critical_Promise
"Critical Promise":After a critical hit, your next attack will also deal 10/20/30/40/50% of your weapon damage as Necrotic damage." (Before Amenar 10%)
This damage get´s buffed by nothing, so it a pittiful feature, but warlock class pics this feat since 4 years now because there is nothing better. And this indicates also how this class is treated for years now. Every dev could have tested this feature to recognize it´s poor benefit.
@balanced#2849 you speak off "Critical Promise" as if it would debalance the game by adding a buffed 50% weapondamage, compare those number 20% vs 750%
If you estimate the benefit from this feature at 20% buffed, compared to GF´s 750%, it will deal about... 15% (GF) : 750 (weapondamage) x 20 (SW weapondamage) : 6 (GF 60% crit) x10 (SW 100%crit) arround 0,66% dps boost for a 100% critbuild...not that much
Since it is no DOT it might be higher maybe >1%.
If you want this feat to be a buff it needs a 50-100% weapon damage buff, resulting in maybe 2-5% plus dps, maybe less.
Same counts towards "Killing Curse" former 5% weapondamage, after Amenar a 15% unbuffed weapondamage, dealing nothing like 0,0xy% dps in a party with decent buffs.
You want to buff this feature? Raise it towards a 50-100% buffed weapondamage like above, even by that you will not get warlock near other striker, they will stay outside endcontent because a 5-10% dps increase will not be a significant boost.
About "Daughter´s Promise" .... I promise
If you want to push it make it a 500% proc on three targets ... even by that I would think about the 5 points twice, because I won´t benefit in most bossfights and I have to kill a target before I get a benefit.
If you want to make it a fun feature, give that feat more of the aspect like "corpse exploition", dealing a fix ammount of the targets max HP towards 3 other targets, like 50% or less (to prevent a chainreaktion). It would be a significant plus towards the poor aoe of warlock and a funny trashkiller.
We talk about a 0,5 to 1,5% dps boost against other striker like the GWF that can boost it´s dps > x6 times due to selfbuffs, a 10k Sure Strike becomes >100k.
GWF: classfeature Destroyer https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Destroyer and feat Focused Destroyer.
3 stacks of that classfeature buff my damage by 3x15,5 damage= 46,5% !! up in no time
Destroyer capstone 50% dps buff.
Classfeature Weapon Master https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Weapon_Master
With offhand feat 6 stacks grant a 15% critbonus, up in 3 seconds, that´s a 6000 critbuff for a relavant stat in PVE. Didn´t the GWF community asked for more tankyness? Just hand over that 15% deflect and get us their 15% crit.
Soulbinder has a compareable feat combined with Borrowed Time, spending a 15% deflect from sparks, takes 2 min in PVP to get the sparks to 30 and benefit from that feature, you are killed in <10 seconds by most Tr´s that proc SOD on you.
That feat would´t help anyway since it´s irresistable piercing damage, the worst implementation in NWO PVP since ever
Defense is useless on sw.. More hit points is a better defense.
All we have is hitpoints and lifesteal + decent healing from borrowed time, But with the new changes to healing and tenacity mod12b... we gonna be 1 hit kill. Borrowed time is going to be useless, we can't tank with hp and healing anymore, we can't dps and now the devs wants to nerf Eldritch Momentum because we gain too much stamina in battle... what a joke ! Instead of looking how to fix those big amount of broken stuff/things and underpowered feats and underpowered, long/slow casting encounter powers, etc, etc they look at things like Eldritch Momentum because it's not ok to gain that amount of stamina in battle (smh)
R.i.p Sw.
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