SW Power/Feat/Mechanics Questions

vorphied

I truly tried to avoid making this kind of post, but it seems difficult to find a single comprehensive, updated, and well-researched reference like the one maintained for CWs. Searching through forum posts yields a lot of contradictory info, so any help is appreciated.


1. SW debuffing feats, powers, and features to prioritize? SW is packed with abilities that increase damage dealt to targets and short on those that outright buff its damage, and I don't think I have a good handle on the diminishing debuff situation and how to correctly practice triage in selecting similar-looking feats and such.

E.g. Darkness is an interesting-looking Templock feat on paper, but is it very effective in practice since it increases damage dealt to the target by 10% rather than buffing the caster with +10% damage, and it requires that you be using either BoVA or HS to activate it?

Also, Flames of Empowerment looks impressive, but how do the numbers add up given the relatively short duration of stacks and the requirement to be building them with At-Wills?


2. Is ACC ever NOT a good feat to be slotting when you have 100% crit?


3. NPNM - am I correct in assuming that this feat is relegated mostly to solo play? Granting CA to oneself is great, but I'm not sure about its value on, say, dungeon bosses, where there's usually a GF or good, old-fashioned positioning.


4. KF - seems that a lot of players still factor it into single-target loadouts, but I've also heard the wide damage variance, restrictive condition for getting the highest output, and possible bugged damage vs. lvl 73 targets make it underperform.


5. Following from the above, what does the optimal single-target DPS loadout look like? HS/PoP/WB? I've seen HG mentioned, but the tooltip (yes, I know Cryptic's tooltips often fail to tell the whole story) comparison between HS and HG seems to favor HS, especially when you compare cooldowns.




Thanks for any info or feedback.

eclipseblood

Darkness is meh cuz u need to use a lower damage encounter, flames of empowerment is good for single target u wont get to get 3 stacks on every mob inbetween bosses, i swap out acc during single target bosses and take the feat in damnation that applies lesser curse when wc is removed, i like killing flames and murderous flames either way it does good burst damage and u can add in murderous flames to make it stronger. For single target i use hadars grasp, killing flames, and pop, hellish rebuke dot doesnt stack so through it out and use ur 2nd at will between cooldowns.

schietindebux

1. PoP+Dreadtheft is the best option running a templock
10%+25% debuff , there is no better option, you should allways run this combo.
Darkness is not worth the points that much, since it only buffs your damage+debuff towards enemy (for soloplay it´s nice though), but group orientated not necessary for a templock imo, I chose eldritch momentum.
Flames of empowerment is a 100% must have for a dps setup, 15%-18% debuff is up most of the time as fury lock if your rotation is correct.

2. ACC is good for trash, at bosses you can switch to whatever you want (FoE+xy) since your WC is up all time and PoP applies LC on top, by that you will profit from Capstone anyway.

4. If I do first Boss in tong as main dps I switch to FoE + NPNM, since that "bloody buff" doesn´t work with dots and NPNM is double damage that way = more Bloody damage
Normally NPNM is used for soloplay, if your teammates do their job. If not, CA for the hole group is a pretty nice.
You can run NPNM+FoE at bosses as long as you can spam Hellish Rebuke without interruptions, there will be no big difference.
HR is your best At Will by far and I think HoB is obsolete (debuff not worth it), since you will deal more dps by spamming HR than using HR+HoB in between, if or if not using NPNM. Depends maybe on your weapon enchant, Bilethorn works with HoB by double procs... but noone uses Bilethorn.

4. KF is an annoyance imo, I hope for a buff in mod 14, for a legit setup there is no better option than HG+pop+KF imo, with or without MF.

5. at Bosses, I run Pop, HG+WB combined with Brood , wich works pretty nice, even not WAI, since warlock only works with bugs I don´t care any more. You could switch to KF for the last 30% (cradle 3.phase).
My standart-dps-setup does not include MF, since I prefer PotnH even as main dps-> less epeen, more group orientated. I know that most player prefer KF though.

vorphied

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Edit:

- Eldritch Momentum looks great for a party with no GF, but otherwise I'm not sold. Maybe worth including one load out for that exception.

- Dreadtheft I totally agree is mandatory for Templock on bosses, but I'm finding it of limited use on trash. Everything dies so quickly with or without it, and it's inconvenient that the AoE is a narrow line that pivots on the primary target's last recorded location. Fiery Bolt seems to deal better results for trash clear in my experience thus far, especially since full debuffs on trash is overkill IMO.

- Still not sure why HG makes it into single-target rotations when HS deals similar damage (again, looking at the tooltip, not comparing ACT) with a significantly lower CD. Is there an interaction of powers or even a bug that I'm missing?


Edit Again: Is HG used because of the +15% damage to Curse effects?

schietindebux

HG procs weaponenchant on every single tick (14x) and procs other stuff on top. You deal the best focus-dps with that encounter, beside KF.
HG, WB and Hellishrebuke plus Brood are Dot´s that allow you to run as main dps in codg and tong, otherwise Hellbringer or warlock in generell would be condemned to run a buff-setup all day long, since you can´t hold against every other striker-class
SB not enough selfbuffs -> near zero selfbuffs
HB not enough hard hitting encounter -> "Chilling Flame"
Soulbinder is not that suitable in most cases.

duckntroll

vorphied said:

Edit Again: Is HG used because of the +15% damage to Curse effects?

That's it!
Moreover, it's stated in the last debuff list that the 15% are shared with the party, I'm wondering if it's still true with mod14 as it doesn't match the tooltip?

For using ACC you have to take into account the weapon power granting +5% Critical Severity (meaning +5% DSP on a 100% critical build).

For Darkness it's as schietindebux said : great for solo, otherwise not worth it.
It's a shame for a Temptation ONLY feat that ISN'T SHARED!

schietindebux

The 15% is not shared with anyone, except he runs a soulpuppet or curses in theory.
From my observation that 15% is not taken into account most of the time, since Warlcoks Bargain, Lesser Curse etc. are not buffed by 15% effectiveness following ACT, even testing at a Dummy.
It´s said to be a debuff, but maybe @balanced#2849 got more informations.
Bosses are immune to the cc "lift" , so they will not be affected at all.

I got an images from test on preview mod14.
Critical promise and Killing Curse, same as Creeping Death procs 1:1+dot.
Lesser Curse (missing) procs on top same as weapon enchant (missing) procs 14 times.
We don´t have another Dot´s that works with weapon enchants, CP, KC same way, so it simply deals more than most other encounter, except KF (legit).

rodosto

As mentioned above, HG is too good to pass and its FAST to use. Our Rebuke already does encounter-like dps anyways. Combined with Brood and WB with added burst of KF makes us a good dps contender. You can consider running PoP instead of WB to buff melee side too.

Dreadtheft is best friend of the Templock.

rodosto

Also if you just want to get rid of stuff quickly in solo play, just go with PoP+BoVA+Dreadtheft/Fiery Blast with Darkness feat for BoVA. Sit in the turtle mode and things falls off quickly.

mirajanesitri

9m unbug ss(17-23m bug ones i have in logs) vs 5m bug hr erm no only reason hb is a decent dps is cause of its fluent combat mechanics..while sb is litle chunky you need to animation cancel alot to make use of big ss spam..so to a person who plays sb mostly and to be able to have faster cast speed on encounters that already puts sw on a competitive state vs other strikers to some degree(though we still need more buffs to lessen the gap) if devs can find that sweet spot between fast encounters and self buffs(not to overpower either to much) i would get orgasms