espasbadfistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 39Arc User
Maybe it is to some extent misleading that a Warlock now officially may queue as a healer. I must admit that i don't have the numbers but only my feelings running Vanrakdoom with only the gear that you can pick up during leveling 70->80. I lack the experience from running many dungeons on preview so i can't say anything about dps in comparison to other classes. But i am quite sure that the performance of Soulweaver and Hellbringer is comparable.
I see the Hellbringer doing its damage directly while the Soulweaver does depend stronger on its companion. Probably we have to take our companions more into account in the new module and i feel that this really makes sense. Up to mod 15 the companion was not more then a buff/debuff provider. Point. That led to the situation that depending on current fashion most of the folks selected the same companions. Hordes of Fire Archons at one time later Tigers at another. Boring!
Now we have to look closer (at least if you don't have BiS gear that may render all this considerations useless). For me it turned out that my Soulweaver neded a striker(e.g. Sellsword) and my Hellbringer a tank (e.g. Earth Archon). A healer companion did not bring much on the table for my Hellbringer but that could change if increasing its quality.
And i still feel that the way to go for dungeons could turn out to use Augments again (because healer and tank should be in the party anyway) and the additional stats from the augment my turn out to be superior to the usual companions gift mechanic.
Side note inspired by this discussion, but the live version of SW is in a rather good place both as a DPS and as a support. Granted, it took forever to get SW DPS back to a competitive position, but we ended up with a solid do-it-all path (Hellbringer) and a single-target specialized path (Soulbinder). Merging Soulbinder with Hellbringer didn't require major adjustments for players familiar with Soulbinder, but I understand that losing Pillar of Power to Soulweaver is still jarring for many despite having the somewhat similar Hellfire Ring (albeit not until max level).
Warlock as a DPS needs to maintain its position as a strong choice and minimize its worst weak point (dependence on DoT), which we seem to be on track for, especially with Creeping Death not even working properly It also needs to be less tedious, which I feel that they are trying to address by removing Curse Synergy and Consume from more encounters. Whatever we end up with, I just hope the flow of gameplay doesn't feel just like the already-tedious-but-useful Tab-Curse mechanic we've moved away from.
I maintain that Soulweaver is fine as a concept; if anyone has difficulty reconciling diabolical or demonic-themed powers with healing, just remember that evil needs healing once in a while, too. Where it conflicts with the lore...honestly, whatever at this point. The D&D lore has been developing and shifting for decades along with game design and various campaign storylines. Cryptic is the dungeon master, and it's their sandbox, so I'm down for most things they want to try.
espasbadfistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 39Arc User
@noworries#8859 : I am sure others will approve that the current situation with Risky Investment and Executioners Gift may have been a nice try to increase Warlock self buffs but it still does not make any sense to do it this way. In the current state it makes no sense to chose anything else but on the other hand it seems to be nearly impossible to get the full 5 stacks of Soul Investiture (maybe it is my stupidity but i don't get it).
As it seems you decided to stick to the old paradigms of Fury and Damantion when you designed the remodelling of the Warlock. That is fine but i think you then should do it right.
Fury := Creeping Death + Executioners Gift Damnation := Risky Investment + Soul Desecration
If you insist on "hey those old paragon paths belong to the nine hells" keeping it like
A := Risky Investment + X B := Soul Desecration +X
then you probably have to beef up Soul Desecration by some means to give it sense to use it and you will have to provide for a dummy proof means (for stupid me oc) to get Soul Investiture stack to maximum FAST.
I do have a question for @asterdahl went back and as reading the class roles and adjustments and saw the discussion as to the three tanks and healers way the game is going. But if you would be so kind, why when I went down to the Healing Adjustments did I see only the clerics and paladins spoken too and no mention at all toward the new primary healer role of the Warlock. You made sure to give the Barbarian a block so that it would fall more in line with the other tanks. Good job. But what about use .Are we to be out on some island apart from our other two healers? I understand that their healing gifts come from a much different place and you would want to use a different name for what we use, but should we not also have something that keeps use within the general healer group?
We've been working on a some general combat adjustments—Noworries will be posting the full details of those changes tomorrow, so I won't go into detail here—but we will be making some changes to things like at-will damage and, of interest to tanks and healers: damage resistance and mitigative powers. These adjustments will be featured in this week's build.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Well, I was just hoping. Since we only have 5 feats to pick, seem a shame the best dps capstone live still doesnt work in preview as a feat to even test.
- Immolation spirit not fading away - Parting blasphemy not working at all - Flames of Empowerment stacking til x10 (stated x3) - Creeping Death stopped by DoTs or multiple attacks (but does not proc for DoT damage) - t3 and t4 feat selection (ie: picking risky investment hides executioner gifts) - Harrowstorm not critting and hitting party with stun effect - Vampiric embrace is not summoning puppet
Looks code cleaning started (thank you for that), can somebody double check these? + looks Tyrannical curse debuff is applied to other powers than TC itself, not to derived procs (ie: lesser curse) but i guess that's intended.
Wow, they made a huge nerf on prev: Cures Bite magnitude is now 175, Fiery Bolt 120 (with half damage on secondary targets), Hellfire Ring 80, Hellgate 500 and so on...
El sol negro brilla, en la frente de la locura el firmar, Kelemvor tomó mi trono de la muerte, pero soy eterno en la oscuridar... https://www.youtube.com/c/cyric
Wow, they made a huge nerf on prev: Cures Bite magnitude is now 175, Fiery Bolt 120 (with half damage on secondary targets), Hellfire Ring 80, Hellgate 500 and so on...
Encounter same as Dailies from all classes got nerfed , to improve At Will damage as stated from devs side.
I checked values in short, taking Killing Flame and Vampiric embrance as reference power. Tooltips are incorrect or not addressed for: 1. Hadar Grasp 218 mag not 175 2. Brood 550+600=1150 not 2200 3. Hellfire Ring, Dot is 160 not 220 4. Flames of Ph. 1050 not 750 Same issues as before, concerning incorrect tooltips for HG, Brood, HR, FoPh. As far as I know At Will damage stays same. Imo for Warlocks this turns into a more significant nerf compared to other classes, since the class has a high recovery and cooldowns are pretty low, dealing most of it´s damage with encounter power actually. AtWills stay a small number in the damage table, like 10%+ and Dailies are also from no importance as before 4-5%.
Devs commented these changes are done to buff At Wills but instead of doing fine tuning to some classes, they implement a flat nerf to all classes ignoring how a class is or is not dependend on At Wills. They obviously think all classes are played as a melee class with 20 sec encounter cooldowns .... warlock is not fyi, maybe they did not recognize, no dev actually plays this class as it looks. If you devs do want all classes to use more At Wills you need to nerf warlocks Cooldowns significant, double it, so we get closer to the "zero" as mentioned above
Class feature ACC+Deadly Curse still outperform Flames of Emp. + Dust to Dust significant on a boss encounter. Risky Investment still sucks in the sum.
Stats as now: Int spends about 2% range-dps taking 8 points, similar to Strength for physical damage. Charisma spends 2% recharge and 4% companion influence at 8 points. Augments spend nearly 100% more stats than "non augments", same as a pretty high ammount of HP like 80k+, but companions as now deal significant dps plus utility (CA) wich might overcome the augment (as long as you don´t need the statbuff to get to cap) looks pretty much balanced, not sure how augment vs companion will look like at a boss encounter, esp. if your augment is build to buff power.
I did a quick 0 Rune Expedition, to get a better understanding of the impact of the changes on Warlock I'll need to start at 70 again and climb up. With essentially BIS gear the difficulty was fine once I sorted my ArP to 60k, even in LotMM solo (where I was plenty squishy and more interested in measuring the effect of my ArP on damage vs a moving target).
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Maybey warlock now wai? Besides, who wants to outperform a soul puppet and companion anyways. That way creeping death is meaningful if it procs as you hit and run in circles.
Just have a question for us Warlocks in the room. Curse Bite . Did it always remove the curse with every hit or is that something new going forward? As it stands on test one must first put a curse on a target then use curse bite one time, then you need to use another power to put another curse on a target, then you can use it a second time to remove the curse again. Was thinking on live you could use Curse Bite two times before it removed the curse, perhaps I'm just seeing things.
Just have a question for us Warlocks in the room. Curse Bite . Did it always remove the curse with every hit or is that something new going forward? As it stands on test one must first put a curse on a target then use curse bite one time, then you need to use another power to put another curse on a target, then you can use it a second time to remove the curse again. Was thinking on live you could use Curse Bite two times before it removed the curse, perhaps I'm just seeing things.
On live it does not remove the Curse. Only on Preview does it (last I checked) consume Lesser Cruse.
Warlock: Don't want to let you down but I am hell bound. - Imagine Dragons Cleric: You can be an angel of mercy or give in to hate. - Shinedown Wizard: The more the dark consumes me, I pretend I'm burning bright. - Shinedown Barbarian: Am I beautiful... as I tear you to pieces? - In This Moment
Just have a question for us Warlocks in the room. Curse Bite . Did it always remove the curse with every hit or is that something new going forward? As it stands on test one must first put a curse on a target then use curse bite one time, then you need to use another power to put another curse on a target, then you can use it a second time to remove the curse again. Was thinking on live you could use Curse Bite two times before it removed the curse, perhaps I'm just seeing things.
On live it does not remove the Curse. Only on Preview does it (last I checked) consume Lesser Cruse.
So do you think it would be an issue if they just allowed Curse Bite to remove the Curse on the second hit rather than each hit. So it would go back to being a POP ,POP rather than the POP this, that and the other thing then POP ?
1
espasbadfistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 39Arc User
From my POV doing my feeling tests in Vanrakdoom the nerf of the magnitudes did not hurt as much as i expected on first noticing them. Maybe this is because Intelligence now delivers some magic damage bonus that compensates for this. After all i did not notice that much of a difference to before.
Anyway i felt strongly upset when fooling around there. This was because of the increasing feeling that really good intentions (better balancing, more challenge, more meaning for comps, more choices) currently leads to a point where there seems to be no choices at all. Instead of getting the chance to create several viable builds we already seem to have the situation again where only one or two choices really make sense.
Why must it be that i have to chose my feats out of mutual exclusive pairs. Most of the effects are so laughable anyway when looking at current situation on live that it really would not hurt to just give ppl 5 feat points and let them decide those that really make sense.
And to bring some diversity on the table it is a bad joke to make them all useless at all so that it does not really matter what choices you make after all. This is especially true for those class features like Dark One's blessing - 1 Soul Spark and 1% HP, really? If you get hit by a lvl 80 critter they easily steal you 20-50% of your Health. Let it be 6 Sparks and 10% HP and i might consider using it.
Parting Blasphemie 75 magnitude on curse remove. Only problem is to leverage it i probably have to use Curse Bite that i hate like the plague. For that power it brings an additional 50%+x damage. If not using Curse Bite i can kick it to the bin because either i am dead or the mob is dead before the curse expires.
Another thing i find really annoying is the damage from the Puppet. If i did not observe wrong it is about a 1/5 or 1/10 of the damage my companion deals. Again: Really? There are two feats coupled to that dirty flying cloak and it hits not even as hard as my weakest at-wills?
Seriously if after all this time you cannot fix these things can we just get rid of the power and make something new to replace it that doesn't leave a trail of server load around?
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Seriously if after all this time you cannot fix these things can we just get rid of the power and make something new to replace it that doesn't leave a trail of server load around?
Yeah I came here to mention something about that. I really hope they fix that before it gets live. Or disable the ability to use of that daily power within any social area.
From my POV doing my feeling tests in Vanrakdoom the nerf of the magnitudes did not hurt as much as i expected on first noticing them. Maybe this is because Intelligence now delivers some magic damage bonus that compensates for this. After all i did not notice that much of a difference to before.
Intelligence is a 2% plus damage at 8 points. I did not run all zones and dungeons after patch and I won´t do so since it´s obviuos that things are too srewed to even start a feedback at given time. If you run Vanrakdoom actually, mobs die in short because devs tuned down HP and stats from mobs, according to the downgrade of encounter power from classes. Reading through general feedback threats, it looks like there are so many issues with balancing areas same as groupcontent, they simply have no time left to care about classes as it looks. Some mentioned that level 70 content turns out to be far more challenging than lev 80 zones after patch. Why not check stuff first before patching to avoid all motivated player on preview from wasting their time with unthought changes and a sloppy patch ?
The last changes to encounter power were ment to lift At Will damage... warlock has exactly one aoe At Will, wich only impacts on 3. hit at 10 feet. Do they think all warlocks now slot Eldritch Blast to benefit from the 3. aoe hit and push AT Will damage that way? I even can´t find any hint that At Wills got buffed in the tooltip. Not to mention the persisting problem to curse targets constantly to even make corefunctions of the class work fluently without slotting one specific class feature-ACC- not adressed until now. This all just proves, they actually have no clue how classes work and how damage is generated. Doing a flat change to all powers, without taking into account that some classes have nothing than encounterdamage to deal aoe.
On a sidenote. Going on preview there are hurdles to take to even get your char maxed by refining stuff. No enchanting stones rank4 available same as wards, actually mandatory to even refine stuff. Devs really think I transfer one char 10 times on preview to have enough blue enchanting stones and wards to max out my char, since preview misses key components ? At least I could not find them anywhre, hidden like easter eggs maybe somewhere.. Same that I have no access to a stronghold and boons, have to build a guild or get an invite, same as missing level 80 dummies alternatively, so many stuff I could not solve without loosing time.
Comments
I see the Hellbringer doing its damage directly while the Soulweaver does depend stronger on its companion. Probably we have to take our companions more into account in the new module and i feel that this really makes sense. Up to mod 15 the companion was not more then a buff/debuff provider. Point. That led to the situation that depending on current fashion most of the folks selected the same companions. Hordes of Fire Archons at one time later Tigers at another. Boring!
Now we have to look closer (at least if you don't have BiS gear that may render all this considerations useless). For me it turned out that my Soulweaver neded a striker(e.g. Sellsword) and my Hellbringer a tank (e.g. Earth Archon). A healer companion did not bring much on the table for my Hellbringer but that could change if increasing its quality.
And i still feel that the way to go for dungeons could turn out to use Augments again (because healer and tank should be in the party anyway) and the additional stats from the augment my turn out to be superior to the usual companions gift mechanic.
Warlock as a DPS needs to maintain its position as a strong choice and minimize its worst weak point (dependence on DoT), which we seem to be on track for, especially with Creeping Death not even working properly
I maintain that Soulweaver is fine as a concept; if anyone has difficulty reconciling diabolical or demonic-themed powers with healing, just remember that evil needs healing once in a while, too. Where it conflicts with the lore...honestly, whatever at this point. The D&D lore has been developing and shifting for decades along with game design and various campaign storylines. Cryptic is the dungeon master, and it's their sandbox, so I'm down for most things they want to try.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
As it seems you decided to stick to the old paradigms of Fury and Damantion when you designed the remodelling of the Warlock. That is fine but i think you then should do it right.
Fury := Creeping Death + Executioners Gift
Damnation := Risky Investment + Soul Desecration
If you insist on "hey those old paragon paths belong to the nine hells" keeping it like
A := Risky Investment + X
B := Soul Desecration +X
then you probably have to beef up Soul Desecration by some means to give it sense to use it and you will have to provide for a dummy proof means (for stupid me oc) to get Soul Investiture stack to maximum FAST.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
(From the Paladin thread)
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
(Bold added for emphasis)
Guild: Ruathym Corsairs
Guild: Ruathym Corsairs
We will have to wait for patch notes to know anything.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
+ looks Tyrannical curse debuff is applied to other powers than TC itself, not to derived procs (ie: lesser curse) but i guess that's intended.
Kelemvor tomó mi trono de la muerte, pero soy eterno en la oscuridar...
https://www.youtube.com/c/cyric
I checked values in short, taking Killing Flame and Vampiric embrance as reference power.
Tooltips are incorrect or not addressed for:
1. Hadar Grasp 218 mag not 175
2. Brood 550+600=1150 not 2200
3. Hellfire Ring, Dot is 160 not 220
4. Flames of Ph. 1050 not 750
Same issues as before, concerning incorrect tooltips for HG, Brood, HR, FoPh.
As far as I know At Will damage stays same.
Imo for Warlocks this turns into a more significant nerf compared to other classes, since the class has a high recovery and cooldowns are pretty low, dealing most of it´s damage with encounter power actually. AtWills stay a small number in the damage table, like 10%+ and Dailies are also from no importance as before 4-5%.
Devs commented these changes are done to buff At Wills but instead of doing fine tuning to some classes, they implement a flat nerf to all classes ignoring how a class is or is not dependend on At Wills.
They obviously think all classes are played as a melee class with 20 sec encounter cooldowns .... warlock is not fyi, maybe they did not recognize, no dev actually plays this class as it looks.
If you devs do want all classes to use more At Wills you need to nerf warlocks Cooldowns significant, double it, so we get closer to the "zero" as mentioned above
Class feature ACC+Deadly Curse still outperform Flames of Emp. + Dust to Dust significant on a boss encounter.
Risky Investment still sucks in the sum.
Stats as now: Int spends about 2% range-dps taking 8 points, similar to Strength for physical damage.
Charisma spends 2% recharge and 4% companion influence at 8 points.
Augments spend nearly 100% more stats than "non augments", same as a pretty high ammount of HP like 80k+, but companions as now deal significant dps plus utility (CA) wich might overcome the augment (as long as you don´t need the statbuff to get to cap) looks pretty much balanced, not sure how augment vs companion will look like at a boss encounter, esp. if your augment is build to buff power.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Only on Preview does it (last I checked) consume Lesser Cruse.
Cleric: You can be an angel of mercy or give in to hate. - Shinedown
Wizard: The more the dark consumes me, I pretend I'm burning bright. - Shinedown
Barbarian: Am I beautiful... as I tear you to pieces? - In This Moment
Anyway i felt strongly upset when fooling around there. This was because of the increasing feeling that really good intentions (better balancing, more challenge, more meaning for comps, more choices) currently leads to a point where there seems to be no choices at all. Instead of getting the chance to create several viable builds we already seem to have the situation again where only one or two choices really make sense.
Why must it be that i have to chose my feats out of mutual exclusive pairs. Most of the effects are so laughable anyway when looking at current situation on live that it really would not hurt to just give ppl 5 feat points and let them decide those that really make sense.
And to bring some diversity on the table it is a bad joke to make them all useless at all so that it does not really matter what choices you make after all. This is especially true for those class features like Dark One's blessing - 1 Soul Spark and 1% HP, really? If you get hit by a lvl 80 critter they easily steal you 20-50% of your Health. Let it be 6 Sparks and 10% HP and i might consider using it.
Parting Blasphemie 75 magnitude on curse remove. Only problem is to leverage it i probably have to use Curse Bite that i hate like the plague. For that power it brings an additional 50%+x damage. If not using Curse Bite i can kick it to the bin because either i am dead or the mob is dead before the curse expires.
Another thing i find really annoying is the damage from the Puppet. If i did not observe wrong it is about a 1/5 or 1/10 of the damage my companion deals. Again: Really? There are two feats coupled to that dirty flying cloak and it hits not even as hard as my weakest at-wills?
Seriously if after all this time you cannot fix these things can we just get rid of the power and make something new to replace it that doesn't leave a trail of server load around?
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
- Mark the target from bronzewood weapon enchantment do not works?
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
I did not run all zones and dungeons after patch and I won´t do so since it´s obviuos that things are too srewed to even start a feedback at given time. If you run Vanrakdoom actually, mobs die in short because devs tuned down HP and stats from mobs, according to the downgrade of encounter power from classes.
Reading through general feedback threats, it looks like there are so many issues with balancing areas same as groupcontent, they simply have no time left to care about classes as it looks. Some mentioned that level 70 content turns out to be far more challenging than lev 80 zones after patch.
Why not check stuff first before patching to avoid all motivated player on preview from wasting their time with unthought changes and a sloppy patch ?
The last changes to encounter power were ment to lift At Will damage... warlock has exactly one aoe At Will, wich only impacts on 3. hit at 10 feet. Do they think all warlocks now slot Eldritch Blast to benefit from the 3. aoe hit and push AT Will damage that way? I even can´t find any hint that At Wills got buffed in the tooltip. Not to mention the persisting problem to curse targets constantly to even make corefunctions of the class work fluently without slotting one specific class feature-ACC- not adressed until now.
This all just proves, they actually have no clue how classes work and how damage is generated. Doing a flat change to all powers, without taking into account that some classes have nothing than encounterdamage to deal aoe.
On a sidenote. Going on preview there are hurdles to take to even get your char maxed by refining stuff. No enchanting stones rank4 available same as wards, actually mandatory to even refine stuff.
Devs really think I transfer one char 10 times on preview to have enough blue enchanting stones and wards to max out my char, since preview misses key components ?
At least I could not find them anywhre, hidden like easter eggs maybe somewhere..
Same that I have no access to a stronghold and boons, have to build a guild or get an invite, same as missing level 80 dummies alternatively, so many stuff I could not solve without loosing time.