Hellbringer PVP

treesclimber

With the changes that came in the last months what is the state of HB in pvp? I tried it last week but was using pve equipment (appart from burning gear) and the damage increase was really noticeable in part because of 42% damage increase from npnm. The major problem around HB was lack of self healing, taking a look at it now:

Life steal severity: mine is close to 110% now, not sure if anything would increase it much more, taking away lifedrinker, more or less 200% with endless consumption.

Transcendent negation + all incoming healing bonus (around 30% without SH one)

Out coming heal sources:

Wheel of the elements;
Drowned set;
Champions return;
Champions struggle;
Vampire's craving;
Oppressor's retrieve;
Elven tranquillity;
Enraged regrowth;
Gale retribution.


Complements:
T.fey.
Gladiator's guile.

So...i dont own most of this things to try it out do you guys think this is viable?

schietindebux

I am pretty sure it is not viable, soulbinder not only has sparks, wich are very hard to gain atm because of lolset fix, but also has the offhand feature wich spends you 15% deflectionschance at 30 sparks, wich is huge

treesclimber

It's 15% tops + healing traded for combat advantage full time + 5% targets less DR with the off hand bonus and the top pvp SW's have awesome survival already. Since offensive mount bonus arent anything of other world,in a endgame SB will many times have sparks at full HP and still the mounts insignias, it's like trying to fill the full bag. In adition to all this HoB is far superior to ED. Now i put another question (since i never was build focussing pvp only), if i maxed my character right now the amount of ls would surround the 7000 and HP 145k with guild boon, is in this case taking in consideration the ls severity and the constant c.a. ls reliable enough or it's just exposing more to SE 1 shots by investing on it?

fernuu

You have CA nearly full time anyway - positions + feats from other chars are granting it pretty often. HoB is great as debuff, but soulbinder has it too :P Soulbinder also has feat increasing flat damage from sparks, while HB need to have full AP which is pretty bad to keep

schietindebux

I respecced to fury / 14 points temp few days ago and my impression is.
The overall performance from warlock is not that good. Okay you got lifesteal, you are hard to kill by some classes, but
-one TR with first strike instant kills you 100 to zero because our class has no dodge
-one GF with a conquerer spec onrotates you, in case he can play his class

The problem about warlock is, lifesteal is worth nothing in case you get oneshooted at the start and since your sparks takes ages since lolset-fix to fill up in PVP, the class is even more gimped.
Maybe at Bis level it may work but you need a lot of HP like 200k to prevent instant death, I got oneshotted from a TR several times 30min ago, and there is not much you can do about that, no HP boon... so 134k in one shot. That TR got 41k power infight from buffs, I did not look up for the ammount of damage but... this guy will deal up to 170k with first strike or even more.
near all classes got defense mechanics like dodge, shield etc. against this c.rap...but devs ignore these problems for 2 years now.
DC, OP, GF, TR, Hunter, CW they can avoid getting oneshooted.

On top our class lacks in burst damage, the dots can´t kill some classes, if it is a propper PVP build you face. All classes have more burst than we got..TR, GF, GWF, CW.
Killing flame only works if you can get your opponent <50%, but that´s not that easy these days talking about geared player, so in case you get him to 50% you will be able to kill him anyway.
We know that warlock without buffs is low dps, I am pretty sure if you go to a dummy and run act most classes will deal more damage than a warlock will, just look at the 25 Tiamat run. In PVP we can experience , facing classes 1 on 1 how poor the output is.
If you want to test HB in PVP please do so and report, maybe you find the solution for our misery

ftryda

So I tried it just for shxt and giggles (on xbox). Lots of mount insignia bonuses for healing helps a ton, but I will say if you miss a step in a fight you are even squishier than Soulbinder.

Full fury spec (but PVE oriented feats and boons), Shadow Walk and No Pity No Mercy, WB, BoVA, KF, HoB.

It wasn't as horrific as expected. Swapped BoVA and HG a few times, but it's nice having blades attack while still casting HoB and they are active while shadow slipping as well.

High crit giving constant combat advantage is nice, but not earth shattering improvement.

Ultimately, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone although a better pvp warlock may be able to do more with it. I am a 90% pve player. Just for comparison I ran a match with a guildie that's fully pvp specced soulbinder fury. He went 13/1 whereas I went 12/3. (Damn TR dunks).

treesclimber

I did try but without:

Wheel of the elements; (DC sigil)
Drowned set; (Burning)
Oppressor's retrieve; (Magistrate restrain)

T.fey. (Pure. Vorpal)
Gladiator's guile. (Artificer's persuasion)

So.....way behind the full capability of it, the conclusions i took of it is that in nodes fights it's as fernuu said C.A. can come from 1000000 places but so do heals, in 1vs1 things are quite diferent, SB can gain C.A. from 2 diferent ways, puppet and IS, needless to say this is hard to make work, puppet seems to cover a big area to trigger C.A. but IS is a tiny angle straight behind the opponent so not very effective. About HoB, true that SB can use it too but i have seen almost no SB using it from start of battle, using always ED to gather sparks so there is the damage advantage.

Other thing that was pretty nasty to do was node hold against OP's, they take absolutly no damage so no ls, where SB can heal i couldnt, peharps with all pvp gear things may change.

It is as good for pve in case you dont have C.A., usualy running in pugs and solo content (not for damnation).

fernuu

In my opinion on nodes HB can go pretty well, dunno if better than SB - it's rather situational. But in 1v1 I prefer that nasty BT heal/deflect/damage from sparks than buff from CA.

On nodes fight I gather sparks pretty fast actually thanks to Dreadtheft and ~60% crit chance. On 1v1 it depends - gathering sparks vs. control chars can sometimes be pain.

treesclimber

fernuu said:

In my opinion on nodes HB can go pretty well, dunno if better than SB - it's rather situational. But in 1v1 I prefer that nasty BT heal/deflect/damage from sparks than buff from CA.

On nodes fight I gather sparks pretty fast actually thanks to Dreadtheft and ~60% crit chance. On 1v1 it depends - gathering sparks vs. control chars can sometimes be pain.

Exactly i tought the same thing when i tried acc+dt to stack the debuff, with gwf it works awesomely until the daily but that's fine for a SW pvp build, just shift away and heal, and repeat the cicle, with other classes......

zonoske

So is hellbringer with life seal stack viable?

gomok72

zonoske#5272 said:

So is hellbringer with life seal stack viable?

PvE, yes, PvP no.

I would love to go back to Hellbringer in PvP, but PvP now is very dependent on burst and outlasting the enemy, with that in mind you will be even more frustrated in PvP as you run into one Tr's or CW's control effect, ending up dead because you aren't being healed by soul sparks (Soul sparks is SW's life blood in PvP).

hellbringer is good in theory and worked well, previously of mod 6 but it needs a whole new rework in order to actually be on equal grounding as SB.

d4rkh0rs3

Hellbringer is inferior to Soulbinder in PvE and PvP.

PvE:
Soulbinder = Sparks = Damage and AP (Dust to Dust).

AP = Tyrannical Threat.

Tyrannical Threat = the foundation of SW DPS since forever.



PvP:
The passive healing and deflect chance from Borrowed Time is unmatched. Sparks also heal you when combat ends. SWs can facetank the best DPS classes, burst GF and GWF included, with a proper build, full sparks, and debuffs.



The only potential Hellbringer has in my opinion is with a straight PvP DPS Fury high crit+crit severity build implementing Murderous Flames, Prince of Hell, and No Pity, No Mercy. Even then, I don't recommend it (I have tried many times.)