SW debuffs and buffs questions

protagonist

After reading michela's thread on debuffs (link = http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1226436/pve-damage-resistance-debuffs-effectiveness/p1 ), I had a few questions for SWs who have the tools to be able to test this sort of stuff.

1) Was warlocks curse and brutal curse unintentionally omitted as debuffs in that thread (they are worded very similar to flames of empowerment) or are they treated as buffs (aka - are they capped at 200%)?

2) Can anyone confirm flames of empowerment works like a debuff instead of a buff?

3) Does Tyranical curse (20% debuff) stack with warlocks curse? I recall reading somewhere on this forum that in mod 10.5 they no longer stacked and wanted to confirm.

If anyone can answer these I'd greatly appreciate it!

schietindebux

I can confirm that in mod 10 TC eats WC, so you drop in dps, since TC is a 20% effectiveness win, but WC is a 20% damageboost wich is better dps.
WC a debuff? I thuoght it´s a damagebuff.
FoE work like a debuff in terms of lifting your effectiveness for 15% (like 120->135%)

naoqueroforum

Tyrannical curse doesn't buff or debuff at all. It says 20% damage increase as in a regular WC, but actually it doesn't add any buff or debuff. On top of that, it blocks your regular curse. So in a sense it is a debuff, but which debuffs the warlock's damage potential on single targets.
The thing with TC before mod 10.5 is not that it stacked with WC, which wouldn't be too outrageous and which it probably didn't even do, but the fact that the buff was way over 20%. From some numbers I remember getting on my lock before 10.5, it could be well over 100%, but I didn't do any rigorous testing. I just recall that getting 2M hits on training dummies with personal buffs was trivial before, and now I rarely see a hit over 1M with group buffs, that 100% might be even underestimated.
And yes, WC is a damage buff. Preview server with the 1k fixed damage weapon is great for testing this stuff.

Also, last time I went on preview, PoP didn't add any debuff to the target damage resistance. At first I thought it was adding just a 2% debuff, but then realized it was from the trans vorpal debuff. Without the vorpal, there wasn't any damage debuff. They said it was fixed on live, but maybe that fix last thursday went directly to live before hitting the preview. I will test it again on preview later today, since I think they updated it some time after the last live patch.

schietindebux

Actually my TC spends 20% plus effectivenss to my damage, and that´s what it does since mod 10.
WC is a damagebuff, TC is debuff. Debuffs increase effectiveness on your target.
TC eats WC, so it is ineffective on a singel target.

naoqueroforum

I'm gonna go to preview and test TC again and try to find out why there was no added effectiveness.

Since we are talking about debuffs, remember before mod 10 when hadar's grasp had that stacking 3% lowered resistance? On the final stack it added a 39% damage resistance debuff on targets and was pretty neat.
Then when mod 10 was being discussed, a dev on the warlock forums, whose name I can't recall, said he was reworking the skill because the damage resistance debuff was useless on pve since virtually everyone had 60% resistance ignored. So he removed the debuff and added that amazing 15% extra damage from curses and puppets. Does anyone even get more than 1% total damage from curses? Could be somewhat meaningful to a damnation puppet, but even in that case it was a major downgrade on a skill that buffed everyone's damage.

Makes you lose faith that a dev has any understanding of the skills he is supposedly working on.

Another bad rework was on dreadtheft. You could max its stacks on a single target before, now you can barely stack 2 with a swarm of mobs, so barely matters that you need only 3 stacks instead of 5 to max it. The duration of each stack is so short that you get small intervals during the cast in which the buff is not present. The last ticks of damage don't even apply the buff and debuff. If you cancel it early, the buff instantly disappears, as opposed to before when you could cancel it and benefit from your own buff on some other higher damaging skill. I would totally consider using dreadtheft if the buff/debuff sticked for a longer duration and specially if you could use at-wills while casting.

michela123

TC loses its debuff at dummies if you don't attack fast enough after you cast it, probably because you go out of combat.

naoqueroforum

Well, the curse was still there, the damage link was also active and the attacks were immediatly after cast. Anyway, it was just a quick test without ACT while waiting for server to get back up. I'm gonna go back in soon and test this and other stuff like the PoP debuff and buff for allies when they have some time.

lilianahh

Hey everyone new here so i cant start my own post but I been loving the sw sense I started playing neverwinter noob alert! But seem to be having troubles understanding some stuff do
1. Do curses do any kinda damage? On Xbox
2.if not what's the point of scornful curse feat?
3. Or maybe I'm miss reading scornful curse.
4. Also if curses do do damage which ones? Because grasp of hadar at says increases curse damage by 15% but when I curse a dummy I see no damage happening... again all on xbox one

naoqueroforum

lilianahh#5262 said:

Hey everyone new here so i cant start my own post but I been loving the sw sense I started playing neverwinter noob alert! But seem to be having troubles understanding some stuff do

1. Do curses do any kinda damage? On Xbox

2.if not what's the point of scornful curse feat?

3. Or maybe I'm miss reading scornful curse.

4. Also if curses do do damage which ones? Because grasp of hadar at says increases curse damage by 15% but when I curse a dummy I see no damage happening... again all on xbox one

Yeah, that bonus for curse damage on hadar's grasp is a joke. Let me think about what curses we have. Warlock's curse is the one you use all the time, but it does no damage itself, only increases damage you deal to targets with it. It can deal damage if you use deadly curse, but it's a really small damage and not worth it unless I missed something. Lesser curse is the curse that deals damage over time, and is triggered by some encounters, passives, dailies or feats. The damage it does is quite small, so boosting it even 100% is not enough for a 1% overall damage increase. Then there are the other things which act as curses but which I'm not sure hadar's grasp treats them as such. You have warlock's bargain which deals decent damage and tyrannical curse. So off to preview I go to test those two and see what happens. Did I forget any other curse?



By the way, tested TC again on preview and the effectiveness increase which wasn't happening before for me worked properly this time. Still, too bad it is effectiveness increase and not damage increase. The PoP eff. increase was also doing its job this time, but I know that one was bugged before. I might have done something wrong before with TC.