Warlocking and Soul binding.

random1self

So, questions ... Please note that I'm asking as a SB warlock and yes I know HB is BiS for warlocks, but I find pew pew pew! with soul scorch more enjoyable.

General:

With my con/cha score currently 27/26 with the demonlord set (25/26 without) and my CW 31 INT with the Greater Owlbear belt (28 without, the belt is only purple so it only gives a +3 atm). Is it worth it to reroll to get a higher CON stat so my base damage boost isn't lacking compared to other classes?

Weapon enchant:

My vorpal seems to be a dps dead end at pure with no dps gain until unparalleled which is only a jump of 50% to 55% crit severity. My first thought was a dread because upping the crit damage on my biggest hitter (while getting around our ridiculous cool downs) would be a good buff. Plus with the DR debuff would help on my templock loadout as well. But then I get a lot of use from Immolation Spirits and I don't want to reduce the effectiveness of IS.

I'm starting to work on a feytouched for bosses because so don't need to use dread theft as my "safe" spell as Hadar's Grasp generates soul sparks on crits with a feytouched equipped. However I don't have issues generating soul sparks while fighting mobs as my play style is "jump in the deep end with with BoVA active, fiery bolt the big guy while BoVA spreads minor curse with ACC, pew pew pew while immolation spirits barrages from the outside" which leads me to lightning enchant. If BoVA and soul scorch proc's the chain effect, it would help with more AoE damage plus the cooldown reduction would help with spamming Arms of Hadar or make fiery bolt come up more often which would lead to more up time for BoVA.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to a lightning enchant to see if it works.

Soul Binding feats:

If I'm going pew pew pew! with soul scorch, how much benefit I'm I getting Burning Soul? How much benefit would I get if I switch to Dust to Dust on my off hand for the "up to +5% damage boost" over ACC's off hand +5% crit severity? The extra damage from Parting Blasphemy on pew pew pew! then the extra five second up time on Immolation Spirits seems like it would be more effective.

On my templock loadout, I'm running ten points in the fury for the dps boost with Critical Promise and Burning Soul, but I'm tempted to drop Soul Breaker for Infernal Wrath. 5% less DR over 10% ap gain to one random nearby ally?

Thoughts?

hadestemplar

@random1self,

SoulBonding feat:

Your powers now heal your allies for a percentage of their damage equal to your Life Steal Chance. This effect is 30% as effective on Area of Effect powers. The healing component of your Vampiric Embrace now also heals allies for 100% of its value.

So as you can see, by having Burning Soul feat you will increase dmg output, same goes to Dust to Dust off hand:+5% damage boost. And any dmg boost lead to healing increase.

As for your powers set. BoVa + Fiery bolt + soul scorch. Good idea, have met Temptation SB who have similar build..

When using soul scorch, it's effectiveness will not get adjusted as AoE do. Plus soul scorch is high dmg power, so most of time you will heal everyone to max HP with each hit.

Downside, it's single target burst power. Thats mean, you need higher Life steal chance than DoT and AoE powers.
I think BoVa will be your main Spark and healing tool. Because BoVa hit multiple targets, multiple times. So it have highest chance to trigger life steal.

IF you play on PC platform, check it via preview server.

tyrtallow

Crit is crucial to ANY warlock because it's really one of the few innate damage multipliers available to the class. You should weigh your options very carefully if you trying to trade crit for just a marginal damage boost - if your crit chance is already sky-high then yeah it's something to consider, otherwise just no.

Dread vs Vorpal really depends on your preferred power loadout and how much you rely on your at-wills. You should be able to figure that out on your own. Feytouched is a good investment on any class (considering how cheap it is atm vs gains) and is arguably more useful to temptation because of the enemy damage debuff - as a temptlock your healing is only going to be useful if people don't die in one hit, and Feytouched helps with that. Lightning is only good for very specific builds because lightning is all about procs - notably, for a warlock using lightning your go-to powers should be Hadar's Grasp (must always be used with Warlock's Curse) and Hand of Blight (melee). Soulscorch only procs it once (regardless of curse consume) and BoVA procs it unreliably (I think it's only 2-3 procs total + extra procs when a blade flies off to hit something with Warlock's Curse). You should always try to have Dreadtheft whenever possible when running temptation imo, it's an AoE 25% mitigation debuff. For the record once you've worked on your crit rate BoVA + Immolation Spirits should be enough to power your Soul Scorch spam.

Burning Soul should be a low priority feat if you intend to spam Soul Scorch, the damage gain is going to be minimal + you have other options. Only take it if you absolutely need a filler to get T3s. Parting Blasphemy can actually crit and when it does it can proc certain effects like Magistrate's Patience/Consideration, something to consider for your temptlock. Relentless Curse is interesting in that you can force it to proc just by spamming Warlock's Curse on as many mobs as you can, but loses value if you like to slot ACC. Sparkbinder can be great depending on whether you run an AP generation setup - recasting Immolation Spirits while the old ones are out DOES NOT reset the timer or extend the duration on the ability and is basically wasted 100% AP - so you gain the best benefits while having low AP generation or stupid high AP generation (so you can use another daily while waiting for your current IS to disappear). Dark Revelry is always a solid option and the T3 Fury feats can be useful depending on setup.

Dust to Dust is an amazing feature for solo content or trash clearing, and should be used for that reason. The 5% damage boost however is marginal and should really be higher, do NOT slot it for that reason alone. Even Deadly Curse with off-hand bonus + SS spam is going to generate more damage than that 5% since the feature itself is useless in fights without pauses (like a lot of boss fights). Soul Breaker is better in fights with mobs and Infernal Wrath is better for bosses. Choose which setup gives you more trouble - personally I'd go with Infernal Wrath.

As a temptlock you should try to find some way to stick DoTs on your targets through gear/items/etc. otherwise you're screwed if your teammates need healing and there's nothing for you to attack (which happens more often than you think).

random1self

As fury, I run SS, BoVA, and FB or AoH unless I need to keep a safe distance. I'd much rather run HG than DT as my safe spell when I can't stay close enough for BoVA to generate sparks.

As temptation, I run SS, WS, and DT. WS is nice because it's a DoT plus a 15% debuff on enemies out going damage. I wish I knew exactly how much because the tool tip doesn't say base debuff then each rank adds a +5% debuff value. Sometimes I'll switch out WS for AoH incase we need more CC in the party.

I logged into the preview server after finding out I can just buy any weapon enchant at trans and headed off to Chult with trans lightning and trans dread in hand. In an very "official" testing manor, I killed everything I came across. The dread does the job, but it feels like it takes longer to melt down mobs. Not by much, but enough to be noticeable. I did lose 10% crit chance with the bonding stone nerf so maybe that's effecting it?

As for the lightning enchant in general, you're right. It only proc's 3 times off BoVA and once off everything. Randomly, why's the lightning green when I use essence defiler? xD lol.

And thank you for the other feed back

tyrtallow

The thing about Wraith's Shadow is that it's buggy and difficult to use. Note that it allows you to target allies, for example, although it won't actually let you cast the power on them. As result when an ally is blocking your target you'll get a lot of error messages while trying to cast Wraith's Shadow.

I'm still waiting for them to fix that and hopefully add more utility to the power while they're at it.

Lightning and DT have a complicated relationship, yeah. On one hand DT no longer multiprocs Lightning, but on the other Lightning can potentially make DT much, much more spammable. It all boils down to your specific build, in the end.

random1self

I'm personally not a huge fan of DT unless it's for healing purposes because it's a long, steady stream of damage for a good heal over time effect. But, in my fury build I only use it when I need to stay a safe distance otherwise it's duration time is as long as our cool downs and that's time spent not spamming SS.

pyrosorcerer

Last I've heard the debuff and utility from Wraith's Shadow does not even work. It now can truly spawn a puppet and deal minor damage, but not much more unless they ninja fixed the debuff.