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dalinoth
Member Posts: 4 Arc User
Brand new NW player - SW was the class I chose for my first toon. I have been trying to read up on all the current viable builds for pve. It is proving fruitless, however, as almost everything written is for advanced players. Can anyone please either: (a) provide me with links to viable builds that a new player can follow; or (b) provide me with a detailed explanation here of a viable build.
In addition, can someone please clarify what companions should be used? Everyone says Zhentarim Warlock but it costs 270,000 AD in the Auction House and is an utter impossibility. What does everyone use who can't afford that please.
Thanks in advance for your help.
In addition, can someone please clarify what companions should be used? Everyone says Zhentarim Warlock but it costs 270,000 AD in the Auction House and is an utter impossibility. What does everyone use who can't afford that please.
Thanks in advance for your help.
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There are both cheaper pets that you can buy and load out with the bonding stones, such as the Blink Dog. Or, you could use an augment pet if you can find one for cheap. Short of those, getting pets that can increase your damage (such as the various archons) or that can take the heat off of you as you level (various defender pets) are good choices.
I really don't like to be too prescriptive to new players, and feel like they should find a way to play their character their own way. However, I can give you some of my experiences as a returning player that picked up a SW:
1) I went Temptation Soulbinder as a first choice. The Soulbinder part was fine, and I recommend that. The Temptation part I don't. Temptation needs a certain amount of good gear and equipment to get the most out of it, and might be good for an end-game goal. But for leveling up, I had a lot harder of a time than I probably needed to, especially when going through the level 60-70 content, because I couldn't kill things fast enough. And when trying to do some of the end-game dungeons as a part DPS/part Healer, I found that I wasn't doing a whole lot of DPS, and couldn't really heal as well as I'd like, either.
2) So I switched to Damnation, and had a lot of fun with this build. The puppet will take a lot of heat off of you, and do a good amount of damage for you as well. Then you can either spend a few feat points to either do more personal damage (Fury Path) or more team support/defense (Temptation). I went Tempt because I still wanted to support the team a bit.
3) Warlocks have a fair amount of less-than-useful skills. I've tried many of them because I'm always looking for a diamond in the rough, but quickly realized that other people knew what they were talking about. You're going to have to take Infernal Spheres and Vampiric Embrace, unfortunately, but late-game you won't get much use out of them. Cursed Bite, Wraith's Shadow, and Arms of Hadar are all fairly useless as well. Try to avoid putting many points in any of these.
4) Your better powers will depend a lot on your playstyle. Most Warlocks that you see will use Essence Defiler and Dark Spiral Aura as at-wills, Dreadtheft, Soulscorch, and either Hadar's Grasp or Warlock's Bargain as Encounters. Daily powers are basically Tyrannical Threat for AoE, and either Flame of Phlegethos or Immolation Spirit for your other choice. However, based on your playstyle, you might want to switch in Fiery Bolt, Harrowstorm, or Blades of Vanquished Army for more AoE damage.
Hope this helps some!
With that said, I wish to echo that there are plenty of warlock powers that are just bleh. I will tell you the ones I used while leveling that weren't:
Infernal Spheres good for when you don't have Fiery Bolt yet, then get Fiery Bolt and learn to love it (you will). 90% of the time when facing mob groups one FB will clear all trash instantly. Keep Vampiric Embrace for as long as you can stand it, just to keep health topped off. But the real star of the show is Soul Scorch when you hit lev 30. Man, that is one awesome skill. The rest are kinda blech until lev 50 when you can get Blades of Vanquished Armies. BOVA is all kinds of gnarly -- each tick counts as a separate skill for proccing feats, and you just cuisinart groups of foes with it, spiking crits and getting soul sparks left and right while you can still do other attacks at the same time. I think that is one reason why I never used Dreadtheft, even though every other SW I see uses it constantly. I'm sure it's great and all, but I just don't want to get pigeonholed into standing there doing nothing else but having this fruity purple ray sticking out of my hand for 6 seconds. Oh wait, I forgot you can move around with it too.. big whoop, hope you don't need to sprint because then you just cancelled it. I'm not a fan of Dreadtheft.
As for at-wills... ppl swear by Dark Spiral Aura but I hate it. Aside from the goofy purple orbit thingy, I'm just not impressed with a skill that hits kinda hard only after the fight is basically over. Like, I never found myself wishing I had it -- if that makes any sense. I was super-glad to get Hand of Blight, however, and I still use it along with Essence Defiler, which you kinda need to have if you go Soulbinder path (which I highly suggest).
My playstyle is more close range than most other warlocks I've seen. I'm right there on the front lines blasting away with BOVA, slashing with my Blighted Claws while those blades shred everything around me. Since I'm temptation, huge clouds of green numbers fly all over the place when I'm fighting a dragon or in some other HE with other players, as the frontline guys tend to be the ones who need healing the most, and there I am -- right there with my heal and auras buffing everyone with Dark Revelry and Compounded Soul. My gear is r7 enchants, so nothing mindblowing. I do have about 30% Lifesteal when you add up all my buffs and so on. I built for survival.
Sorry I don't know more, but this was my first SW, and I haven't tried the Fury or Damnation. I don't even use skills that can summon a puppet in the first place.
EDIT: forgot to mention: the souls sparks thing REALLY starts to help once you can reliably build up a quick stash of them with ED at will or get lots of crits with other stuff. If you slot the class feature Borrowed Time, it will make things WAAAY easier when you get surrounded and have to stress a little bit. The tooltip numbers for the power are in fractions of a percent, and may seem insignificant, but I can attest it is a lot more healing than you might imagine, especially after you can fill up soul sparks quickly and keep them ready as a kind of "health shield". I usually get up to 5 pips pretty fast and maybe use one here and there with Soul Scorch, but the real awesomeness of the Soulbinder paragon is having that health maintenance ability to keep you alive through things that you have no business surviving. Your health bar spazzes out sometimes as you take massive damage, heal it, get damaged, heal it, and so on.
Buy all the Archons (Air, water, fire, earth) they are 10k each on AH.
Buy 3 lesser bonding runes and put them on one of the archons and summon him (they are cheap 50k each), if you can't afford that don't worry it's not a big deal for a new player.
Spec:
Go soulbinder(sparks) damnation(puppet), the feats don't actually matter much, as long as you grab the last feat on damnation that will keep your puppet uptime 24/7 you're good (the puppet scales up from various buffs and dungeon difficulty, it will do more damage than you most of the time, so keep an eye on it and make sure it's not stuck somewhere).
Items:
Try to get vorpal as weapon enchant, everything else stack CRIT/POWER
Encounters to use:
This is debatable but i'd use Tyranical Threat daily, Essence defiler at will, Warlocks bargain, Dreadtheft, soul scorch for DUNGEONS.
For daily quests and solo stuff I'll switch to fiery bolt and killing flames + dreadtheft.
*PS: when you get close to 1mil AD, spend it on getting Lostmauth set (Neck, belt, artifact 3/3), it will boost your effective damage by ALOT.
One crit from Hadar grasp will spend 14 sparks (wearing lolset).
Harrow storm spends 6 sparks on crit, even without lolset, but it´s not that effective.
doing trash/solo my setup is firy bolt, BoVA , dreadtheft, Dust to dust, ACC and ..... accursed souls, yes accoursed souls, it´s the fastes way to kill a group of low level mobs, Dreatheft spends sparks+damage+60% DR buff in case you use ACC.
Dungeons as a templock or damnationlock I run HG+SS+DT, or WB+HG+SS (boss encounter), using TT (trash/boss) or spirits (damnation), classfeature DtD+ACC (trash), BT+ACC (boss)
furylocks use killing flame + morderous flame in boss fights instead of DT --> HG+SS+KF, right?
try to push crit as good as possible especially using p vorp wich is BIS.
<CO docs> .: Petco :. // Base DPS Sheet (needs revision) // PSA on Power Activation Delay
- Themed Tanks // Misc Build Dump // Ayonachan's Gift Horse (stat data)
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
I too am a new player and, reading your post above, agree with all of your likes and dislikes. In other games I often play a warlock but as usual pets are not always what plays best (for me). Do you even use the warlock pet? Anyhow, your post sounds encouraging ... and your build sounds like a good way to learn this game.
Being new, the powers, feats and load-out will get me started.
My build right now is HG, BOVA, and SS for encounters. I use HoB and ED as at-wills, favoring HoB when I can afford to not build sparks as fast as possible. Sometimes I need to rely on ED to get maximum sparks for my "health shield" from the BT feature, and the other feature is not really a big deal compared to how important Borrowed Time is (your best bet is ACC when you can get it). I will switch out HG for FB when I'm just questing through normal zones, HG is for dungeons and the like where there are more elites that I can stun and hopefully crit for a huge burst of sparks that I will then spend on whipping some SS's on selected targets. Dailies are TT and IS, but I very rarely use Tyrannical Threat. Mostly I just pop Immolation Spirits when I remember that I have a daily power to use.
I do not use the warlock pet. Ever. Never slotted Dreadtheft either. In fact, I never even put a single point in it. I don't use companions. I would use an ioun stone, but don't have one.
Feats:
Heroic: Energizing Curse 5/5, Weapon Mastery 3/3, Toughness 3/3, Empowered Rituals 3/3, Soul Reaping 3/3, Devastating Critical 3/3 and if Human (I am one) also Scornful Curse 3/3
Temptation: Hope Stealer 5/5, Compounded Soul 5/5, Dark Revelry 5/5, Aura of Cruelty 5/5, Aura of Despair 5/5, Soul Bonding
Damnation: Relentless Curse 5/5, Syphoning Curse 5/5
Fury: Daughter's Promises 5/5
Note that in later levels with ACC and Relentless Curse slotted you will see lesser curses blossoming all over the place without you having to keep hitting tab, but you should still make a habit of tabbing the bigger guys for the debuff so you can burn them down with Scorches quickly.
You may wish to check the "PvP temptation, build by quallo" thread; specifically, the "IMPORTANT" note immediately after the feat pic about putting 1 point in Parting Blasphemy and 5 in Vengeful Curse. Parting Blasphemy also damages YOU. Effectively you take a tiny bit of damage and in return curse your foes.
1. Cast and remove lesser curse continuously , when removed the DOT is also removed, this happens so fast that only the first tick will actually count for damage.
2. It will stack 5 times(max) DT damage buff/debuff, you will be able to use it in all the skills in the next seconds and the DT included. These stacks can be gain: in TT using DT, no need for acc or only 3 stacks by simply cursing 3 targets and use DT very very fast. So, you get 5 stacks granted with acc, that's something like 60% more damage.
3. Boost dps further for you and team with infernal wrath, as lesser curse applied by acc acts as 5% damage boost, if your RI has already reach the max required for that enemy the damage will still be increased.
Syphoning curse has some weird numbers it doesn't work really has it's written, it heals far more, but even so i dont remend it, it's very variable.
If you intend to go pvp, try Quallo build or Fernu.
If you intend pve, i advise you to take damnation SB, when you get reasonable high IL, you may chose temptation or fury, they will be viable.
So, for now: http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/sw?b=23ci:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,19iioii:150u000:1a0vt5v:1000000&h=0&p=slb
Partying blasphemy has (or did some weeks ago) some weird character interactions, attacking player, stacking negation ecchant, not sure about anything else, either way, both feats are bad, lesser curse deals much little damage even with Scornful curse. 1 point in mocking spirits because: Spirit fire doesn't work has it's written, damage is higher but even so, it's low damage, i will explain latter, more points in mocking spirits affect aggro of tanks in losthmauth for example, turning losthmauth to your puppet and then tank, puppet, tank, so basicly a mess, tail wipes everywhere, with 1 point you will be able to hold a scorp with your puppet and maybe even 2 or other enemies that have not been damaged yet can be "aggro locked" to your puppet untill someone breaks the "aggro barrier" (110% more aggro than your puppet), this can save lives.
Get off hand class feature of dust to dust and keep it always, as second feature borrowed time.
Encounters single target: SS, WB, KF.
Encounters multi target, DT, SS, KF or BoVA. Use TT as much as possible multy target and IS single target. I use KF to snipe targets, you can also use BoVA or FB, they are also good.
The reason to ignore lesser curse is that in t2 for example with nice buffs the puppet can hit for millions and spread TT, lesser curse and spirit fire are nothing compared to that.
If you want to go temptation endgame pve, i use this build:
http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/sw?b=23ci:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,19iioii:150z000:1000000:150uzu1&h=0&p=slb
Same playstyle, exept class feature, DtD and ACC, i life steal enough to keep health bar up.
If you want to go fury check this very good build:http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1205018/soul-madness-pve-build-my-way-to-1-paingiver
. If you're not 70 yet it doesn't matterbut when you do reach 70 I do not and repeat do not recommend temptation if you are low item level, you wont be able to deliver damage, many times heals wont be needed and buffs are precarious, it may seem that you help, but you wont.
I think I am beginning to understand a few things. Should that worry me?
Now related to what you wrote above the build does include the influence of the puppet being active or not, but that is not to worry, soul desecration (the habillity that makes you spawn a puppet) will spawn a puppet the next time you deal damage and it's cooldown is 15 seconds, so, supose your puppet dies in the beggining of a soul desecration cicle, it will spawn another one in at least 15 seconds later, 15 seconds in a dungeeoun time is almost nothing and to be honest a puppet is a tough guy, really hard to get killed, pvp and solo pve it dies reasonably fast, but normally that isn't a problem because content is easy outside. There is also other situation, whe puppet get's trapped in a glass door in a dungeon, just move far enough so it teleport to you.
About the critic, hellbringer is not a very advisable paragon at the moment so critic is not just beneficial in that feat but also for the creation of soulsparks used to keep you alive and use in some powers, and also because critic is valorized over power in matters of dealing damage in this game, vorpal + critic build cannot be beaten by power + fey for example, if it does is a very specific build or a much stronger player.
Hope this helped.