Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
Arms of Hadar are wonky at best and barely hits anything. Rather long cast time too. And it doesn't even sync with the curse. What is up with that? It should have a boon from applying a curse, besides low and slow melee damage.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
Drop a smoke bomb, control everything in a large AoE around you, watch em melt and finish em off with a couple hits.
Logic with Arms of Hadar. Spend 1 year trying to faceplant a couple guys to the floor, if they're nice and stand still for you. As soon as the animation is complete, they're already back up ready to bash your brains out and without a scratch in sight
Same logic with blades, even the HR has a close quarter nuke with plant growth, and that has a greater range too.
You'd think that slow and short ranged powers would be rewarded with incredible damage. You're freaking slamming guys with a huge hand! Why is it's damage so low!? Are the DEVs afraid it'll become another shard of endless avalanche? It should deal heavy damage, why else stick your nose so close to danger otherwise!?
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
They should turn those arms either into a real AoE, perhaps with either grasping hands coming through the ground, or some big hands lifting the enmies up in the air... something like that, either way, most important, it should work faster and it should really hit harder and not just softly massage the enemies.
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
Control powers shouldn't be doing heavy damage. CW and TR stuff should be changed to do less damage if its doing to much. The targeting and animation on arms of Hadar should be corrected.
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
I put my sw to rest, invoking and professions only from now on. Can't do what class should do ->dps, so better to wait for fix and start playing after that. Let's see if this promised balancing come's this year...
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
Control powers shouldn't be doing heavy damage. CW and TR stuff should be changed to do less damage if its doing to much. The targeting and animation on arms of Hadar should be corrected.
Sorry to break it, but even that won't convince people to use it. Non-damaging control powers which barely control at all are never worth a DPS slot on your rotation.
Control powers shouldn't be doing heavy damage. CW and TR stuff should be changed to do less damage if its doing to much. The targeting and animation on arms of Hadar should be corrected.
Hand of hadar controls nothing its a waste bc, the animation sucks and the targetting is redicules as I remember correctly you have to curse targets first, then target them and hit them after the animation taht takes about 2 seconds? a controlpower that needs about an hour of preparation just to miss your target is nothing else than a garantee to lose and get HAMSTER in PVP it just sucks in PVE as well
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
Lifesteal is now split into 2 stats. One is the the chance of triggering lifesteal. The second is the amount of life gained as a percentage of damage. Mod 5 had the chance at 100% while the lifesteal stat affected the amount of life gaine. Mod 6 had the reverse.
I actually like how the new lifesteal works for classes other than the temptation warlock. What I would like to see is something in the temptation tree to lower the amount of life gained and increase the chance. Perhaps even lower the the life gained on a hit, but some life gain on a miss chance. Maybe lower the damage dealt for some way to more reliably gain life.
I think they can do something to help the temptation warlock without having to go full on back to Mod 5 lifesteal. The times I tried to make my Mod 6 temptation warlock work, I found it to be more interesting to play than Mod 5. I am still upset at the changes and I do feel that things could be better.
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
The Warlock is just a few tweaks away from being a solid class to play. I think each paragon should have a permanent Soul Puppet. One healing puppet, a tank/melee puppet, and a ranged dps puppet one for each paragon choice. We need a better shift mechanic, faster casting times, and our powers need to be revamped to be useful.
Out of the three pure casting classes we are the only one without a dodge. That is referring to the DC, CW, and SW. Our shadowslip negates 30% damage. The GWF is the only other class that can't 100% negate damage through his shift ability. All 6 other classes can. I suppose that isn't entirely true, GF's have 80% negation and Paladins 60% damage negation. But they can use their shift ability for far longer time frames than other classes.
The most successful dps classes in PVP are TR's, CW's, and HR's. They all have dodge mechanics, and all 3 have secondary defenses as well. Rogues have the ability to stealth, dodge, and they have natural high deflection chance/severity. Wizards have bubble shield, insane cast speeds, high control, and even a dodge as well. Rangers have high deflect, dodges, stealth, and quick cast stun abilities that are unrivaled. Excluding rangers, both other classes also have to ability to do MASSIVE burst damage.
All three classes previously mentioned also have very short casting delays, and most of their powers are instantaneous or very quick. Warlocks have long cast times, and easily avoided attacks. In the time it takes Warlock's Bargain to cast they can dodge, and regain enough stamina to dodge twice before the cool down ends. This goes for many of our other encounters and even our dailies as well.
I think the SW's encounters, powers, and class features are the worst out of all classes. There are only select powers worth selecting, and fewer class features that are viable. I'd like to see Pillar of Power's range increased to roughly the size of the HR's Thorn Ward or Split the Sky. I believe Arpen is one of the weaker stats to buff, which leaves many of the SW's mechanics useless. Hand of Blight is a slow encounter that could use a speed boost, Gates of Hell is more like a white picket fence, and let's forget the viability of Dreadtheft in a quality pvp match.
This isn't anything new, and quite frankly it's just something I felt needed to be said again. The one satisfying power that makes me enjoy playing my SW is Killing Flames. I just love it ^^
Good luck out there, and I have a feeling our future will be brighter. Or darker? We're Warlocks, so darker I guess. Mwahaha
Scourge Warlock viability in PvP / PvE - This one's a tough one. We want to improve this (and improve balance for all classes), but the major challenge is finding what we can address safely, with minimal chance of breaking things.
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
Um.. what did we win? They have not done anything yet because they are being cautious. Wish they had the same caution with GF damage, GWF survival, Mod5 TR nightmare, Mod8 rings, etcetcetc
Scourge Warlock viability in PvP / PvE - This one's a tough one. We want to improve this (and improve balance for all classes), but the major challenge is finding what we can address safely, with minimal chance of breaking things.
Ha, what about the OP being broken and they're worried about the SW being a normal DPS role without all the BS. OR GWF's being so lazy and powerful.
Scourge Warlock viability in PvP / PvE - This one's a tough one. We want to improve this (and improve balance for all classes), but the major challenge is finding what we can address safely, with minimal chance of breaking things.
Well it didn't take Cryptic long to break some class mechanics in the first place. It's not as though some of these issues where a surprise. Every player with a Temptation SW could see problems with the Mod 6 changes - and we told you prior to introduction. Let's say that again - we told you not to implement the Mod 6 changes for the SW as they where. And what did you do?
Ignored player feedback. In fact it was worse than this, you stated the SW would be a special case as the Temp tree was built around the use of LS, and you didn't follow through on your word. Now that's a harsh way of putting things - unfortunately it's also entirely accurate, with the Temptation feat build still a useless and ignored build.
Since then what have we had? A promise that one of the team would try out the SW to see what it was like - last reported sighting of this was at lvl 5. How bad is this? The point completely missed:
You shouldn't be trying out the class after near ruinous changes have been implemented - You should have done this 'trying out' way before any changes.
Now your prevarication about any fixes to the SW - not good enough, not by a long way. Fix what you broke, and with the same urgency.
...............vote for your favourite expansion.......... "Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity". ..............not this one then.............
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
all in all they deserve no feedback anymore imo too much ignorance and too much "being cautious" on the one hand and break tons of stuff on the other hand since they send warlock in the desert I will follow, so much other stuff to play All I will do is come to PE and get my key, wait for improvements
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
We won what? They just made another (empty?) promise of sw fix. We gave them lots of great ideas how balance sw without making class OP. Basically they ignore all our efforts/reports -> work we do for devs to fix things. Well it's time to leave clan and start to hibernate
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
What i've heard SW was ok class before lifesteal and animation time nerf. Easy solution roll back those. We need those both to survive. I wouldn't make any huge fixes without proper testing, just those that i mentioned.
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
What they could do for HB is buff pillar of power significantly. I love the idea of that power, just it's damage buff is way too low comparing to risk. Flames of emp. could use some buff too. Just wondering how time consuming those fixes really are? Programmers seem to be very busy, so that's why i don't to set my hopes too high to get major fixes.
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
SW needs a rework in respect to their ability to "stand alone". In a party, if the fight starts to linger SW will have time to launch the engine and the damage dealt will be correct. The big problem is this "time to launch the engine". Since we don't have a big tanking capability nor do we have massive control capability ( and rightly so we should be striker not controller) our foes should die quick.
If we look the fury tree that specializes in dealing damage you see quite a problem: the key points are Cursed - killed - necrotic
problem:1 most of our encounter powers that deal significant damage consume the curse thus many SW are stuck with WB an TT
problem 2: the more bursty encounters deal fire damage and thus don't benefit from the capstone.
problem 3: the foes don't die quickly ( no burst, very few AoE ...)
If we look at the damnation tree, it starts with feats that makes you believe it will be a curse heavy speciality but when you reach T3 it's all about the puppet...
Temptation tree could have so much potential but in effect it is not that great because we hardly surpass the 5% cap not like some classes that breach the 25% barrier without an afterthought
Lastly, the difference between the parangon paths is more gimmicky than anything else: soulbinder has better survibility since it auto-heals but in both paths we are non-bursty strikers.
For things to change I'd tinker with:
curse mechanics:
curse: I would drop the bonus damage of the warlock curse in echange for it to be some kind of bucket you charge with your encounter powers. Each encounter "charges" the warlock curse differently. This charge would be released by the curse consume feature.
curse consume would be when you reapply the warlock curse to a target that already has a curse.
Minor curse would tick twice once when it's aplied to a target and once when it is removed, either by consuming it with curse consume described above or by its natural ending 4 to 5 seconds after being applied. This curse count as a curse for the purpose of determining the effect of the encounters powers but it won't be able to accept a special curse consume effect like the warlock curse.
Encounter power would have 3 effects with this kind of description:
normal effect: the effect of the power on a standard target. effect on cursed target: generaly an increased effect from the standard effect curse consume effect: what will happen if you consume the warlock curse while this was the last encounter.
This way the warlock curse would become a interesting tool. Curse consume "chage" could be things like "x damage to nearby foes" or "apply minor curse to nearby foes" or "target is prone - dazed - rooted (take your pick)" etc.
Then to adress the lack of burst, I would for example:
reduce the duration of DT to 4 seconds and amplifying each tick damage in oder to have a big hit quickly
reduce the number of soul sparks of the soulbinder to 15 (instead of 30) , halve the number of sparks needed for SS, and double the effectiveness of each spark in effect speeding the spark flow
for hellbringer I would trade the current flames of enmpowerment to a flat when you deal damage to a cursed target you gain "Empowerment" for 4 or 5 seconds. While empowered, your powers deal an extra ( 6 x level of feature) % damage as necrotic damage. This would be almost like the current flames while freeing HB to use their daylies, adding necrotic if they want to go the fury road at the cost of maintaining an effect by hiting cursed target.
These are only a few leads on what could be done. With so many feature changes, there is room for errors. What I would like is not necessarily a total damage increase but a huge increase in burst capability so as when I solo play I don't fear groups of foes since I would know I could drop the minions fairly easily and could survive long enough to kill the big ones among them. At the present time, you end up dead because even if you deal damage to enough target, you don't deal it fast enough, concentrated enough to reduce incomming damge by eliminating the weak ones. Please give us burst.
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
I would vote full rework, but it scares me what they' do. I think small tweaks are more what we could realistically expect them to deliver.
Playing the SW is mostly about figuring out how your powers *really* work. The tooltips are almost always wrong, or at best incomplete / misleading. You have to experiment *a lot* to figure out how things actually work. Like when to apply curse, curse consume, use powers that don't curse consume... I'd honestly be happy if they just held community poll to re-write the tooltip descriptions. (plus it'd be funny, because about half of our powers would get the description "do not use" / "ignore this power it's worthless" by significant margins in a vote!)
Animations being long and sometimes interrupted / interruptable, combined with lag, make many zones unplayable. Icewind Pass has been only a headache since the DHEs arrived. I feel bad for any SW just opening up that campaign and acutally having to play there to get boons. Aside from rubber banding just by walking around; SW is squishy enough that I'll cast a spell, see the screen lag, then go from full HP to dead when the screen jumps back to live. At least once a ~1 sec lag I went from full HP to killed, soul-forge rezd, then killed again! Dread ring - same / worse when slaughter comes up in your instance. Why can the WoD zone run smoothly most of the time but these other zones are ?!? Unless there's a lagadin nearby; then WoD is !@#$ too. This is not a problem with our class, it's a problem with the game. Our class just feels it worse than others.
An alternative to changing *anything* about our class: Make a lol-set like item that we're *supposed* to use as BiS end-game... 1) make it clear which powers will trigger it and which won't (that was hours of testing I shouldn't have had to do!); 2) the lolset is clearly intended for STR / DEX classes (hint... the stats on the belt). THAT'S NOT US?!?!?! so why is it so heavily recommended? (answer, because of what we assume are unintended interactions with a few of our DoTs; see #1). Just having a proper end-game ability boosting item would go far. *cough* valindra's crown *cough*...
Hellbringer needs something... especially when our artifact weapons default to HB specific powers? Why not default them at least to powers that either paragon can use? This is just a poor design choice (but, it did make me buy augmentation cubes... so I guess that's their primary design consideration?). Why not have hellish rebuke (or HB in general) get improved severity when the SW is hit, rather than reset duration? What an interesting mechanic to consider, hurting the SW makes them more powerful! You'd find builds and guides on how to manage your damage taken to optimize damage output and minimize risk. This could be interesting! And would go along with the *sacrifice* theme of making a pact with the dark side. But.... while interesting, I'm *certain* it'd be implemented poorly, so instead just give them some static stat buff (like OP increase heals by X%) for that paragon? At least that's harder to mess up in design / code... which honestly shouldn't be a consideration I have to bear in mind when providing feedback, yet here we are...
Essentially the implicit tradeoff in the SW class just isn't delivered. Lose burst DPS in exchange for higher overall DPS with DoTs.... that's the class I thought I was making. GWF / TR / some CW builds get more burst AND more sustained single target DPS (we get close on sustained DPS... but the tradeoff of low initial dmg / burst dmg isn't rewarded). The implied function of the class is missing. This can easily be fixed by adding some synergies to our DoTs (increase in damage if target is suffering from multiple things at once). WB and HG both on target? Give them each +x% dmg. If a dreadtheft also strikes them, each power gets another +y% damage. Now casting becomes more than just "wait for recast, press button" and something worthy of my attention... Side note: Why don't I have more powers to choose from in the example above? Oh, that's right, the *vast* majority of our powers can be ignored as they're miles behind the ~5 powers all SWs end up using.
Lastly.... the pet... I actually think it's okay; for damnation only. It hits hard (sometimes? where's an in-game description of the pet dmg scaling that we all know is there?). But high dmg hits are okay because it's not something the player can directly control also the pet can't crit, so gives us some balance in stat choices (haha, just kidding stack crit). Ya our pet runs around dishing out dmg... usually on whatever mob we target first. Have a need to change targets? Too bad, pet's not paying attention (or sometimes it is... I'm still working on that logic). Ok, if it's free damage I can't really complain. If they fix the undocumented damage scaling (by actually documenting it... not by actually changing anything. oh god, please don't mess it up and have our pet start doing *less* dmg in higher ilvl instances...). Or, they can give us more control (summon pet as an encounter... if you have a mob targeted they attack that target until it's dead or they are.... then live X seconds longer; where X is effected by some damnation feats?). Otherwise.... I guess we deal with a little chaos in our combat. That's at least more in-line with the class theme (them devils / demons are unpredictable). Oh, but the pet for any tree other than Damnation? Hahaha.... what pet? We have only 2 skills to summon it (one daily and the other killing flames which requires a timed last-hit; or... near-last-hit... will sometimes work despite what the tooltip says.... again...). Fighting a boss without adds? No puppet for you! First wave of anything? No puppet for you! Cut-scene animation? Sorry, puppet has left the building. So... yeah.... that's worth about half of jack squat. Oh, if you do want to time a last hit... too bad, mob is already dead from the *real* DPS classes, you're stuck in gimped dmg mode for a while longer. Better luck next mob!
Small rework. (Change only some feats and or feed tree.)
I might be a weirdo, but I would actually give Soul scorch(replace pillar, because a good player must move) and dust to dust(replace prince of hell, it doesn't work), immolation spirits (heeey, burning spirits from hell, who else should have it?!) to hellbringers and ofc give them current spark gain/heal mechanic.
instead of that give soulbinders ability to actually "bind" the soulsparks, therefore keep souls from vanishing instantly and instead of soul scorch give SB something more defensive: like barrier encounter, that is like mage shield that spends soulsparks to block cc effects. For example it spends 1 soulspark per 1,2,3,4 seconds to mitigate 4, 6, 8, 10% of all dmg and spends 6,5,4,3 soulsparks to negate a cc effect, ends if u run out of soulsparks and goes into cooldown Change borrowed time to provide mitigation instead of healing Boost snuff out to be useful, or don't, because we will use borrowed time anyway. Replace dust to dust with feature that makes soulsparks increase our recovery or crit chance replace immolation spirits with a daily, that "pulses" several times, slowing all enemies around, dealing damage on each pulse and taking soulspakrs for each enemy hit.
now we get a damagy SW and a tanky SW
Also, make essence defiler ans soul scorch violet, because usually fire spells are green and necrotics are violet
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jiubiizeekkMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 144Arc User
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
Soul sparks are pitiful now I actually have to use dreadtheft to gain soulsparks and its horrible... i hate being locked into combat
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jiubiizeekkMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 144Arc User
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
1. Reverse the utterly incompetent Mod6 destruction of this spec that must have been done by someone who knew absolutely nothing about the class.
2. or - delete the Temptation option as it's just taking up screen space and put some nice scenic pictures there. At least this would be more pleasing to the eye.
You utter bunch of incompetents. You specifically stated this would be treated as a special case in regard to the Lifesteal changes - and what did you do?
Went back on your words, basically misled players. So now what?
You where quick enough to ruin the spec, when if ever are you going to rectify your glaring error?
Mod 6 was a complete and utter HAMSTER up, the likes of which I haven't seen over many years of gaming. Mind you, I haven't had too much experience of Cryptic before NW.
Once is enough for this bunch of jokers.
temptation out heals OP. Get facts straight.
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jessiefloraMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 21Arc User
Full rework. (Change the 'dodge'/ class ability's like soul sparks and curse / powers and feats.)
I say full rework, while I do love the innate procs that we get such as creeping death for Fury, I think it needs a full work to have more and higher burst abilities.
...... Temptation tree just need a whole new rework, life steal is a HAMSTER stat now and you have to stack too much of it in order to get an effect that is depressed, every time you use it in PvP (Are you serious?). Capstone should be "your life steal is increased to "100%" of your life steal stat and heal yourself and group on every attack. a bonus to life steal severity to (200% LS severity.) in order to actually be viable all the way around.
All stats spend should be useful for Warlocks, another given example
There should be a clear path that define us as a class and currently, there really isn't since Mod SHIIT (six).
ck Just gonna delete my Temp Lock ... can't see a re-work within 12 months ... waited too long already. Did not want another straight dps; wanted something more interesting and was sold a pup. farewell Lock
Comments
Logic with Arms of Hadar. Spend 1 year trying to faceplant a couple guys to the floor, if they're nice and stand still for you. As soon as the animation is complete, they're already back up ready to bash your brains out and without a scratch in sight
Same logic with blades, even the HR has a close quarter nuke with plant growth, and that has a greater range too.
You'd think that slow and short ranged powers would be rewarded with incredible damage. You're freaking slamming guys with a huge hand! Why is it's damage so low!? Are the DEVs afraid it'll become another shard of endless avalanche? It should deal heavy damage, why else stick your nose so close to danger otherwise!?
almost forgot its existence
Imo they can take it and put it where the sun never shines
as I remember correctly you have to curse targets first, then target them and hit them after the animation taht takes about 2 seconds?
a controlpower that needs about an hour of preparation just to miss your target is nothing else than a garantee to lose and get HAMSTER in PVP
it just sucks in PVE as well
I actually like how the new lifesteal works for classes other than the temptation warlock. What I would like to see is something in the temptation tree to lower the amount of life gained and increase the chance. Perhaps even lower the the life gained on a hit, but some life gain on a miss chance. Maybe lower the damage dealt for some way to more reliably gain life.
I think they can do something to help the temptation warlock without having to go full on back to Mod 5 lifesteal. The times I tried to make my Mod 6 temptation warlock work, I found it to be more interesting to play than Mod 5. I am still upset at the changes and I do feel that things could be better.
Out of the three pure casting classes we are the only one without a dodge. That is referring to the DC, CW, and SW.
Our shadowslip negates 30% damage. The GWF is the only other class that can't 100% negate damage through his shift ability. All 6 other classes can. I suppose that isn't entirely true, GF's have 80% negation and Paladins 60% damage negation. But they can use their shift ability for far longer time frames than other classes.
The most successful dps classes in PVP are TR's, CW's, and HR's. They all have dodge mechanics, and all 3 have secondary defenses as well. Rogues have the ability to stealth, dodge, and they have natural high deflection chance/severity. Wizards have bubble shield, insane cast speeds, high control, and even a dodge as well. Rangers have high deflect, dodges, stealth, and quick cast stun abilities that are unrivaled. Excluding rangers, both other classes also have to ability to do MASSIVE burst damage.
All three classes previously mentioned also have very short casting delays, and most of their powers are instantaneous or very quick. Warlocks have long cast times, and easily avoided attacks. In the time it takes Warlock's Bargain to cast they can dodge, and regain enough stamina to dodge twice before the cool down ends. This goes for many of our other encounters and even our dailies as well.
I think the SW's encounters, powers, and class features are the worst out of all classes. There are only select powers worth selecting, and fewer class features that are viable. I'd like to see Pillar of Power's range increased to roughly the size of the HR's Thorn Ward or Split the Sky. I believe Arpen is one of the weaker stats to buff, which leaves many of the SW's mechanics useless. Hand of Blight is a slow encounter that could use a speed boost, Gates of Hell is more like a white picket fence, and let's forget the viability of Dreadtheft in a quality pvp match.
This isn't anything new, and quite frankly it's just something I felt needed to be said again. The one satisfying power that makes me enjoy playing my SW is Killing Flames. I just love it ^^
Good luck out there, and I have a feeling our future will be brighter. Or darker? We're Warlocks, so darker I guess. Mwahaha
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1210443/underdark-preview-patch-notes-nw-55-20160106a-0/p1
Sopi SW Youtube channel pvp brickabrack
Every player with a Temptation SW could see problems with the Mod 6 changes - and we told you prior to introduction.
Let's say that again - we told you not to implement the Mod 6 changes for the SW as they where. And what did you do?
Ignored player feedback. In fact it was worse than this, you stated the SW would be a special case as the Temp tree was built around the use of LS, and you didn't follow through on your word.
Now that's a harsh way of putting things - unfortunately it's also entirely accurate, with the Temptation feat build still a useless and ignored build.
Since then what have we had? A promise that one of the team would try out the SW to see what it was like - last reported sighting of this was at lvl 5.
How bad is this? The point completely missed:
You shouldn't be trying out the class after near ruinous changes have been implemented - You should have done this 'trying out' way before any changes.
Now your prevarication about any fixes to the SW - not good enough, not by a long way. Fix what you broke, and with the same urgency.
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............
too much ignorance and too much "being cautious" on the one hand and break tons of stuff on the other hand
since they send warlock in the desert I will follow, so much other stuff to play
All I will do is come to PE and get my key, wait for improvements
Well it's time to leave clan and start to hibernate
Just wondering how time consuming those fixes really are? Programmers seem to be very busy, so that's why i don't to set my hopes too high to get major fixes.
If we look the fury tree that specializes in dealing damage you see quite a problem: the key points are Cursed - killed - necrotic
problem:1 most of our encounter powers that deal significant damage consume the curse thus many SW are stuck with WB an TT
problem 2: the more bursty encounters deal fire damage and thus don't benefit from the capstone.
problem 3: the foes don't die quickly ( no burst, very few AoE ...)
If we look at the damnation tree, it starts with feats that makes you believe it will be a curse heavy speciality but when you reach T3 it's all about the puppet...
Temptation tree could have so much potential but in effect it is not that great because we hardly surpass the 5% cap not like some classes that breach the 25% barrier without an afterthought
Lastly, the difference between the parangon paths is more gimmicky than anything else: soulbinder has better survibility since it auto-heals but in both paths we are non-bursty strikers.
For things to change I'd tinker with:
curse mechanics:
curse: I would drop the bonus damage of the warlock curse in echange for it to be some kind of bucket you charge with your encounter powers. Each encounter "charges" the warlock curse differently. This charge would be released by the curse consume feature.
curse consume would be when you reapply the warlock curse to a target that already has a curse.
Minor curse would tick twice once when it's aplied to a target and once when it is removed, either by consuming it with curse consume described above or by its natural ending 4 to 5 seconds after being applied.
This curse count as a curse for the purpose of determining the effect of the encounters powers but it won't be able to accept a special curse consume effect like the warlock curse.
Encounter power would have 3 effects with this kind of description:
normal effect: the effect of the power on a standard target.
effect on cursed target: generaly an increased effect from the standard effect
curse consume effect: what will happen if you consume the warlock curse while this was the last encounter.
This way the warlock curse would become a interesting tool. Curse consume "chage" could be things like "x damage to nearby foes" or "apply minor curse to nearby foes" or "target is prone - dazed - rooted (take your pick)" etc.
Then to adress the lack of burst, I would for example:
reduce the duration of DT to 4 seconds and amplifying each tick damage in oder to have a big hit quickly
reduce the number of soul sparks of the soulbinder to 15 (instead of 30) , halve the number of sparks needed for SS, and double the effectiveness of each spark in effect speeding the spark flow
for hellbringer I would trade the current flames of enmpowerment to a flat when you deal damage to a cursed target you gain "Empowerment" for 4 or 5 seconds. While empowered, your powers deal an extra ( 6 x level of feature) % damage as necrotic damage. This would be almost like the current flames while freeing HB to use their daylies, adding necrotic if they want to go the fury road at the cost of maintaining an effect by hiting cursed target.
These are only a few leads on what could be done. With so many feature changes, there is room for errors. What I would like is not necessarily a total damage increase but a huge increase in burst capability so as when I solo play I don't fear groups of foes since I would know I could drop the minions fairly easily and could survive long enough to kill the big ones among them. At the present time, you end up dead because even if you deal damage to enough target, you don't deal it fast enough, concentrated enough to reduce incomming damge by eliminating the weak ones. Please give us burst.
Playing the SW is mostly about figuring out how your powers *really* work. The tooltips are almost always wrong, or at best incomplete / misleading. You have to experiment *a lot* to figure out how things actually work. Like when to apply curse, curse consume, use powers that don't curse consume... I'd honestly be happy if they just held community poll to re-write the tooltip descriptions. (plus it'd be funny, because about half of our powers would get the description "do not use" / "ignore this power it's worthless" by significant margins in a vote!)
Animations being long and sometimes interrupted / interruptable, combined with lag, make many zones unplayable. Icewind Pass has been only a headache since the DHEs arrived. I feel bad for any SW just opening up that campaign and acutally having to play there to get boons. Aside from rubber banding just by walking around; SW is squishy enough that I'll cast a spell, see the screen lag, then go from full HP to dead when the screen jumps back to live. At least once a ~1 sec lag I went from full HP to killed, soul-forge rezd, then killed again! Dread ring - same / worse when slaughter comes up in your instance. Why can the WoD zone run smoothly most of the time but these other zones are ?!? Unless there's a lagadin nearby; then WoD is !@#$ too. This is not a problem with our class, it's a problem with the game. Our class just feels it worse than others.
An alternative to changing *anything* about our class: Make a lol-set like item that we're *supposed* to use as BiS end-game... 1) make it clear which powers will trigger it and which won't (that was hours of testing I shouldn't have had to do!); 2) the lolset is clearly intended for STR / DEX classes (hint... the stats on the belt). THAT'S NOT US?!?!?! so why is it so heavily recommended? (answer, because of what we assume are unintended interactions with a few of our DoTs; see #1). Just having a proper end-game ability boosting item would go far. *cough* valindra's crown *cough*...
Hellbringer needs something... especially when our artifact weapons default to HB specific powers? Why not default them at least to powers that either paragon can use? This is just a poor design choice (but, it did make me buy augmentation cubes... so I guess that's their primary design consideration?). Why not have hellish rebuke (or HB in general) get improved severity when the SW is hit, rather than reset duration? What an interesting mechanic to consider, hurting the SW makes them more powerful! You'd find builds and guides on how to manage your damage taken to optimize damage output and minimize risk. This could be interesting! And would go along with the *sacrifice* theme of making a pact with the dark side. But.... while interesting, I'm *certain* it'd be implemented poorly, so instead just give them some static stat buff (like OP increase heals by X%) for that paragon? At least that's harder to mess up in design / code... which honestly shouldn't be a consideration I have to bear in mind when providing feedback, yet here we are...
Essentially the implicit tradeoff in the SW class just isn't delivered. Lose burst DPS in exchange for higher overall DPS with DoTs.... that's the class I thought I was making. GWF / TR / some CW builds get more burst AND more sustained single target DPS (we get close on sustained DPS... but the tradeoff of low initial dmg / burst dmg isn't rewarded). The implied function of the class is missing. This can easily be fixed by adding some synergies to our DoTs (increase in damage if target is suffering from multiple things at once). WB and HG both on target? Give them each +x% dmg. If a dreadtheft also strikes them, each power gets another +y% damage. Now casting becomes more than just "wait for recast, press button" and something worthy of my attention... Side note: Why don't I have more powers to choose from in the example above? Oh, that's right, the *vast* majority of our powers can be ignored as they're miles behind the ~5 powers all SWs end up using.
Lastly.... the pet... I actually think it's okay; for damnation only. It hits hard (sometimes? where's an in-game description of the pet dmg scaling that we all know is there?). But high dmg hits are okay because it's not something the player can directly control also the pet can't crit, so gives us some balance in stat choices (haha, just kidding stack crit). Ya our pet runs around dishing out dmg... usually on whatever mob we target first. Have a need to change targets? Too bad, pet's not paying attention (or sometimes it is... I'm still working on that logic). Ok, if it's free damage I can't really complain. If they fix the undocumented damage scaling (by actually documenting it... not by actually changing anything. oh god, please don't mess it up and have our pet start doing *less* dmg in higher ilvl instances...). Or, they can give us more control (summon pet as an encounter... if you have a mob targeted they attack that target until it's dead or they are.... then live X seconds longer; where X is effected by some damnation feats?). Otherwise.... I guess we deal with a little chaos in our combat. That's at least more in-line with the class theme (them devils / demons are unpredictable). Oh, but the pet for any tree other than Damnation? Hahaha.... what pet? We have only 2 skills to summon it (one daily and the other killing flames which requires a timed last-hit; or... near-last-hit... will sometimes work despite what the tooltip says.... again...). Fighting a boss without adds? No puppet for you! First wave of anything? No puppet for you! Cut-scene animation? Sorry, puppet has left the building. So... yeah.... that's worth about half of jack squat. Oh, if you do want to time a last hit... too bad, mob is already dead from the *real* DPS classes, you're stuck in gimped dmg mode for a while longer. Better luck next mob!
instead of that give soulbinders ability to actually "bind" the soulsparks, therefore keep souls from vanishing instantly and instead of soul scorch give SB something more defensive: like barrier encounter, that is like mage shield that spends soulsparks to block cc effects. For example it spends 1 soulspark per 1,2,3,4 seconds to mitigate 4, 6, 8, 10% of all dmg and spends 6,5,4,3 soulsparks to negate a cc effect, ends if u run out of soulsparks and goes into cooldown
Change borrowed time to provide mitigation instead of healing
Boost snuff out to be useful, or don't, because we will use borrowed time anyway.
Replace dust to dust with feature that makes soulsparks increase our recovery or crit chance
replace immolation spirits with a daily, that "pulses" several times, slowing all enemies around, dealing damage on each pulse and taking soulspakrs for each enemy hit.
now we get a damagy SW and a tanky SW
Also, make essence defiler ans soul scorch violet, because usually fire spells are green and necrotics are violet
Just gonna delete my Temp Lock ... can't see a re-work within 12 months ... waited too long already. Did not want another straight dps; wanted something more interesting and was sold a pup. farewell Lock