About Prince of Hell, maybe something like "all your damaging powers apply lesser curse" or something like "all enemies within 25 feet are automatically cursed because your hellish presence". (…)
As bamf as it sounds to walk into a group and my mere presence curses the lot of them, please no. Not with Lesser Curse applying a DoT. It would mean that just riding around areas with this Power slotted you will get put in-combat every time you ride just a bit to close to the mobs. Including lower level areas where you (used to at least) could ride through and the enemies ignore you since you were 30-someodd levels higher than them.
Nice point, didn't remember that they do damage maybe this would be better Lesser curse does no damage now and all your damaging powers apply lesser curse Lesser curse does no damage now and all enemies within 25 feet are automatically cursed because your hellish presence I thought about this one this evening Your cursed enemies spread the curse to all nearby enemies every <amount> seconds or When you damage a cursed enemy the curse is spread to all nearby enemies
About Fiery Bolt losing the curse consume I don't feel like it, I have always used Fiery Bolt because their full area damage. If that damage is taken away I would probably not use it. I would either look for a passive or feat that makes Fiery Bolt and/or other powers spread curses, or just change Fiery Bolt so it can do both, if target is cursed then full area damage and if not cursed then spread curses
Has anyone already thought about the fact that the class features and i think some mount insignia bonuses will have diminishing impact on a build because they increase ratings by number and not by percent? With the better gear all these will have less and less influence on the absolute outcome. Probably it is a great thing if you level up and you get say 2500 ArPen double it up from 2500 to 5000, but if you have already say 26000 those additional 2500 will play nearly no role anymore. Am i right on this or am i missing some basic understanding of the new mechanics?
In my opinion you are neither wrong not right. As of today, most the you get +X% on something is being changed to you get +XYZ stat, so yes, you are right about the fact that 2500 points added to a pool of 20.000 can be noticed (or even maybe not), but that 2500 points added to a pool of 100.000 would be negligible. One of the reasons for this +X% changed to +XYZ stats is that if not done, then a level 70 boon, insignia or whatever you got today, could add a massive amount let say in 5 years when we could be let say level 110. So why would you change such an awesome item for a new one? One real example of this X% was the good old Fabled set from the warlocks which did X% damage of the current enemy HP. Initially at level 60 it was almost useless, but when the level 70 era came, although you could never kill anything with it, the first burst of damage was absolutely amazing.
Although I don't really like the additive counter stats system, they make sense at the very long term. There are other ways like "stat/(stat+counter)", "stat^2/(stat^2+counter^2) and many more, they all with their pros and cons. They decided to use the simple "stat-counter" so unless they decide to change it for another one, we need to get the best of it.
You forgot to mention that they also said that change was already pushed but if popular sentiment was for keeping it as an AoE power it would be reverted back.
They also asked us for ideas for Prince of Hell so we can propose whatever we want, that is what brainstorm is for, just throw your ideas, even a proposal like all cursed enemies under 10% HP automatically die is valid (yes, I'm proposing this too, maybe 10% HP is too much but as an idea). They will take all the feedback, their own ideas and finally implement what they think is better.
You forgot to mention that they also said that change was already pushed but if popular sentiment was for keeping it as an AoE power it would be reverted back.
Its not that I didn't forget to mention it..its thats I don't believe it. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
Just wanted to give my two cents. For myself it’s fairly obvious just to increase killing flames magnitude for variable 500-900 hp based for single target and then either take away the curse synergy from fiery bolt or just make it apply lesser curse automatically. Not sure what you were thinking for making FB single target, unless you were thinking of making HB a boss slayer but then you would need to change a ton more to make that a reality. Since curse bite seems to be integral for a multi target build now, we need more viable ways to quickly apply lesser curse.
I'm happy to see the conversations going on between the developers and playtesters.
I don't mean to be negative toward the devs - it's just for some reason, out of all the other characters I play every day, the only one I'm actually concerned about is the Warlock. The other characters I'll figure out and adjust to once M16 arrives, but the Warlock just has to be exactly right. I don't know why that is - whether it's because the lock's the oddball in the group, or simply so much fun to play, but it's the only one that matters to me.
Hello there! I may be wrong here, but for now I cannot see and viable dps and heal in both paragons. I don't want to blame anyone but it is pretty sad to see how barbarian's AOE makes more damage to single target than SW strongest daily. Changes in general are good but it still require a lot of re balancing. Also, I'm not sure if it was a good idea to reduce count of all daily&combat powers to this count. It's pretty good that we have new combat ability, but there are only 10 of them, I would like to have more of them...... Build makers are going to cry in the cornere because now we have only 5 feats. It's really dissapointing. For me, crucial part of every MMORPG is making my own build, which will fit my playstyle etc. But now I don't see many variations here. So, what I can see now: builds are dead, no dps, no heal(I don't want to heal when I play on SW, but if this character cannot do even this.....). What are your thoughts about all of this stuff? P.S. I understand that's it is only testing phase, and everything may be changed till release.
I am surely missing something on the big picture, but just checking skills magnitude makes me feel warlock everything but overpowered in the current state:
I understand the desire to compare the magnitudes of powers between classes, but it is no where near that simple of a comparison.
The different mechanics, feats, and combos of the classes causes different results. In fact if all of the classes had the exact same magnitudes on their powers, the classes would end up very imbalanced due to the other factors.
People keep using SW and healers in the same sentence which is horrible. Go back to heart of a SW they were meant to use cursed souls ie a pet if you will which we come to affectionately call a puppet by the way I do like the the constant pet feat I used it in on test. SW can "heal" typically by stealing from one and applying it to another or by sacrificing there own hp. This healer role idea kind of bites I can see them as a patch heal and debuffer but full on healer should remain a cleric and druid role. SW's or necromancy type should cause all sorts of dread and blight to debuff and DOT up the battle field.
Hi guys. New here, probably idk what im talking about but... some ideas: What if prince of hell makes teammates apply curse on crit or maybe while they are in PoP (augment).
Also for the hellbringer, change the name from soul sparks to hellish embers and make them reddish or something like that so it looks more unique.
Well, if there were tests using act logs of diffrent dps classes with similar base stats without companions/artifact/mounts/insignia bonus. Creating a base average mean of dmg with breakdowns of daily, encounter, atwills, and other, within say 5 minutes. We could see if there is a scaling issue with warlocks vs other classes in single target.
I understand that each class has individual feats that impact damage. So a side by side comparison would make it easier to judge. Then test again using weapons with different base damage.
It would show if there is any scaling issues with current magnitude/dot damage utilizing current soul mechanic, curse mechanic, and feats, etc.
I know it would be a big undertaking and not sure if any testers could coordinate to accomplish it. But, if the act logs are within a tolerance of say 5% between classes and have a repeatable result with base weapon damage changes. That would satisfy any concerns of magnitude or inherent scaling issues. And if/where magnitudes could be adjusted to balance in comparrison to other classes.
I'm a console player so if I was able to port my toons over, I would test this, but cannot unfortunately.
The feat Risky Investment does not explain what soul investiture is or how it works all it says is “Soul Investiture now grants you a 5% bonus to Encounter damage for each stack you have” so what is it? What gets causes these stacks? What do they do without the feet?
The feat Risky Investment does not explain what soul investiture is or how it works all it says is “Soul Investiture now grants you a 5% bonus to Encounter damage for each stack you have” so what is it? What gets causes these stacks? What do they do without the feet?
Soul Investiture tooltip is included at the bottom of Soul Puppet mechanic tooltip. In short terms: Every time you attempt to spawn a Soul Puppet while you already have one active, you gain 1 stack of Soul Investiture. Stacks up to 5 times. Refills Puppets HP and increases its dmg.
Whether it actually refills the puppet's HP and increases its dmg, I have not tested (and truthfully don't care since I'm not a big fan of the puppet). In one of my earlier tests I did see that Risky Investment was increasing my dmg when I had a Soul Investiture stack. If Hadar's Grasp curse consume gets fixed I'm quite eager to test Risky Investment even more.
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
I am surely missing something on the big picture, but just checking skills magnitude makes me feel warlock everything but overpowered in the current state:
I understand the desire to compare the magnitudes of powers between classes, but it is no where near that simple of a comparison.
The different mechanics, feats, and combos of the classes causes different results. In fact if all of the classes had the exact same magnitudes on their powers, the classes would end up very imbalanced due to the other factors.
no one is denying that a character's damage output varies largely depending on the the synergy between mechanics, feats etc. and powers, but what we've been saying and showing over and over again is that, simply put, the warlock is underpowered in its current state, and alarmingly so when compared to the other dps classes. we are a bottom tier dps class on live, and it seems that we'll keep being a bottom tier dps post-update.
my 10k ilvl dps cleric shouldn't be able to catch up to my 15ilvl dps warlock in terms of damage, considering that they're 10 levels apart, my cleric has almost no boons and the feats I picked have barely any impact in her current rotation, yet here we are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5J2Opi6oXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvrpgI1gz50 not to mention that my companion is still outdpsing me somehow:
when feats and boons are proving to be a joke, would buffing the magnitude of our skills a bit really hurt THAT bad?
I understand the desire to compare the magnitudes of powers between classes, but it is no where near that simple of a comparison.
The different mechanics, feats, and combos of the classes causes different results. In fact if all of the classes had the exact same magnitudes on their powers, the classes would end up very imbalanced due to the other factors.
I'd love to see the combination of gear, feats, powers, pets, mount bonuses, boons and rotation of the testers that make the warlock seem overpowered. Not to be snarky, but because no matter what combo I try I can't seem to get anything decent out of the class anymore. Not that it's magnificent on live...
Some real experience from your warlock testers would be greatly appreciated. I would love for the warlock to be DPS king for a while, I mean honestly, in what world is a sword swinging humanoid the king?
Low level wizards carry the low level fighters gear....high level fighters carry the high level wizards gear is how I believe it goes.
I am surely missing something on the big picture, but just checking skills magnitude makes me feel warlock everything but overpowered in the current state:
I understand the desire to compare the magnitudes of powers between classes, but it is no where near that simple of a comparison.
The different mechanics, feats, and combos of the classes causes different results. In fact if all of the classes had the exact same magnitudes on their powers, the classes would end up very imbalanced due to the other factors.
You are absolutely right comparing magnitudes is a wrong approach, probably wasn't clear enough on my previous statement, apologies for that, apologies too if I looked sarcastic, wasn't mean to. The idea comes to mind while i saw my way less geared lvl 70 fighter (can check gear on preview Ramboh 3) hitting 3x hard as a strongest hit than my nearly BiS lvl 80 warlock (Ramesh 31). Got to add that what's probably best warlock self buff (risky investment: 1.05 stacking additively 5x) wasn't working last week, but that's not a 3x buff. I know is a wrong approach, but for what i got dmg formula now is AxBxCxDxE where: A: weapon dmg B: Accuracy/Crit/CA multipliers C: party buff/debuff D : magnitude modifier E: self buff/debuff For my understanding A, B and C are equal on each class, so I have to focus on D and E. Warlock doesn't have old CD granting 75% DoT on dmg (new one is less than a 5% dmg increase for what testing are showing) and self buffs provided by feats/powers doesn't look that powerful to fill the gap on magnitude we got vs some other classes i showed on previous post. IMHO if a feat/mechanic is too powerful in your eyes, better to tone it down: that will also grant more free choices to players. At last, like some other pointed out, I am also curious to know setups used for internal tests, results are way too different from what has been showed in this thread that we are surely doing something wrong..
TL;DR: I am strongly against standardization, but if smoothing some spikes in self-buffs/magnitude values between classes would help a better and safer balancing, allowing the Dev team to focus on incredible amount of job (thank you all again for that) still needed to let this mod going live, why not?
Class Feature overhaul suggestion: Soul Bonding, to replace Prince of Hell When your Lesser Curse does damage, it has a small chance to apply one of several stacking effects. This chance is much higher when a Lesser Curse is consumed. Effects are applied in a 50-meter radius around the cursed target. Nearby allies deal 30 magnitude damage on each hit, based on your stats (can crit) for 5 seconds. Nearby allies are affected by a 30 magnitude heal each second for 5 seconds. Nearby allies move 5% faster for 5 seconds. Nearby allies take 5% less damage for 5 seconds. Nearby allies reflect 5% of damage taken for 5 seconds.
The idea here is to have a fairly small proc chance (say 5-10%) on each tick, and a larger chance on consume (50%) so that in a pack, you can consistently get multiple buffs rolling, and against a boss, you can consistently have at least 1. Since I don't think it makes thematic sense for Warlock to be the best healer, this injects some well-needed utility to make up for the gap between us and other healing classes.
Edit: I'm looking at Essence Mastery, and it's a very boring class feature. It'd have to be 15% for me to slot it often, and even then it wouldn't be exciting, just an option. To make it more exciting, I would add 'Also heals allies for 50% of the amount you're healed' and bump the buff up to 10% for good measure. It would then pair astoundingly well with Essence of Time... If Essence of Time worked. As previously reported by many players, Essence of Time is bugged, causing Essence Drain to deal and heal zero damage. Please fix.
I am surely missing something on the big picture, but just checking skills magnitude makes me feel warlock everything but overpowered in the current state:
I understand the desire to compare the magnitudes of powers between classes, but it is no where near that simple of a comparison.
The different mechanics, feats, and combos of the classes causes different results. In fact if all of the classes had the exact same magnitudes on their powers, the classes would end up very imbalanced due to the other factors.
no one is denying that a character's damage output varies largely depending on the the synergy between mechanics, feats etc. and powers, but what we've been saying and showing over and over again is that, simply put, the warlock is underpowered in its current state, and alarmingly so when compared to the other dps classes. we are a bottom tier dps class on live, and it seems that we'll keep being a bottom tier dps post-update.
my 10k ilvl dps cleric shouldn't be able to catch up to my 15ilvl dps warlock in terms of damage, considering that they're 10 levels apart, my cleric has almost no boons and the feats I picked have barely any impact in her current rotation, yet here we are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5J2Opi6oXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvrpgI1gz50 not to mention that my companion is still outdpsing me somehow:
when feats and boons are proving to be a joke, would buffing the magnitude of our skills a bit really hurt THAT bad?
I agree with you about summoned companions, they deal too much dmg imo.
Regarding your test, however, I don't. You sorted the data incorrectly, you have to look at EncDPS and according to that your Warlock deals ~38% more dmg than your cleric, leveling up doesn't really add to your stats, it pretty much only unlocks new powers. The stats of your characters may be *similar*, but they differ too much to actually extract meaningful informations from your test, furthermore you are playing your cleric *better* than your warlock, you are not using Soul Scorch at all, even though you have the feat that reduces cooldowns on Soul Scorch activation.
If you want to do a more meaningful comparison, I suggest you to do a dps rotation on a naked toon with zero power and ~50% crit chance (2x crit/def rings from WB preview store) and wooden test weapons(100-100 dmg) versus a target dummy in PE over a course of ~5 minutes. While this test would be somewhat better, you'd still need to interpret it correctly, because in real dungeon scenarios you have to dodge etc and it only represents single target damage, not AoE.
i still dont see how warlock is going to compete on dps , atm is the weakest by far
on healing , no 1 cares because who made a warlock for healboting? still look like Cleric is miles ahead , dunno about OP.
woudl have been cooler if u maded the puppet master a tank spec , kinda like DaoC necro or something like that
Indeed, i don't made Warlock to be a healer, for me Soulweaver is a waste of paragon because i refuse to play healer on Warlock. But now, we have people against the fact that classes with DPS/Support roles shouldn't be as good DPS as "Pure" DPS classes. Not only Warlock isn't a class that can compete on DPS, now in mod 16 we aren't considered a FULL DPS class. For people that chose the class for DPS it's a horrible change. People played Temptation just to get a place in end-game groups, or just for support damage dealing path, not for full healing.
i still dont see how warlock is going to compete on dps , atm is the weakest by far
on healing , no 1 cares because who made a warlock for healboting? still look like Cleric is miles ahead , dunno about OP.
woudl have been cooler if u maded the puppet master a tank spec , kinda like DaoC necro or something like that
Indeed, i don't made Warlock to be a healer, for me Soulweaver is a waste of paragon because i refuse to play healer on Warlock. But now, we have people against the fact that classes with DPS/Support roles shouldn't be as good DPS as "Pure" DPS classes. Not only Warlock isn't a class that can compete on DPS, now in mod 16 we aren't considered a FULL DPS class. For people that chose the class for DPS it's a horrible change. People played Temptation just to get a place in end-game groups, or just for support damage dealing path, not for full healing.
only a few made a warlock for a "temptation" build , i liked the idea , draining health and healing my group is warlock-ish , but when u think in Warlock , u dont think in a guy that is behind healing others.... i think in curses , necrotic , dark arts , demons...the only "healing" a warlock should do is life leeching and "maybe" share it with others just to help
I wonder if people even test before commenting here...
Nobody seems to like Fiery Bolt being a strong single target encounter even if it's one of the best changes we had so far... And why ? "Because Killing Flames were supposed to be our most damaging single target encounter ?" Guys, you know what ? It has always been supposed to but it hasn't been the case since mod 10 (counting the Murderous flames bug before). Soul Scorch was way better and nobody complained. And more important : why couldn't we have both KF and FB be strong single target encounters ?
And so, what do you want it to be ? An AoE again, without Curse Synergy ? We already have more reliable ways to spread lesser curses (even if it can still be improved a lot) and if it returns to 160 magnitude, it won't deal enough damage. Let's keep it like this. It would be useless otherwise...
That being said, even if FB is doing pretty good results, we re still underpowered on single target. (My SW, similarly geared as my CW deals 30% less damage than him on single target. And CW is already under other dps like HR or TR for single target. On AoE, it deals ~10% damage less, with a realistic build so this is pretty okay.) So... We can buff a lot of things to compete.
One point on which i agree is that Killing flames has to be a strong single target encounter. Devs kept the same flaw Killing flames has on live : too much difference between min and max damage, while doing pretty low damage overall, this time. Let's make Killing flames have 500-750 magnitude.
Lesser Curses damage component is really bad. Let's get rid of it, call Curses once again "Warlock's Curses" and buff Warlock's curse feat to 10%, as @noworries#8859 suggested before last update.
I'm really glad you didn't swapped Creeping death with Risky Investment. It would have completely ruined the choice between the gameplays of the Warlock : Soul Puppet and raw damage. To gain a lot of single target damage, i suggest to buff Creeping Death to 20% more damage, but making it a dot once again that deals its damage over 4 seconds. Otherwise, i fear it would be OP on AoE too.
For the Soul puppet, why did you take out the possibility to summon a new soul puppet each time a curse is removed from an enemy ? It was the only way to reliably stack Soul investiture. Please put this mechanic back in Soul Desecration feat.
You could then change Hadar's Grasp curse consume effect to a little buff (5%, for example) to Soul puppet damage, accordingly to Soul Desecration change.
Now, for lesser curse generation, please, take out the curse synergy of Blade of vanquished armies. This way, we could have a good lesser curse generator while building sparks, on single target. Plus, Arms of Hadar are very good to apply curses but is a bit clunky right now. It often bugs and just don't touch enemies and you can't target wide packs. I'd like to see it's arc raised by 10°.
And last point : for Soulweaver.
I don't like being forced to use Harrowtorm to apply curses. It really kills diversity, imo. I suggest Pillar of power dealing damage once again (even for a little magnitude, like 50 total) just to have it apply curses.
Conclusion :
- Killing flames with 500-750 magnitude. - Lesser curses not doing damage and Warlock's curse feat buffed to 10%. - Keep Creeping death and risky investment where they are and buff creeping death to 20% more damage, as a dot that deals its damage over 4 seconds. - Put back the possibility to summon an other puppet by removing a curse. (In Soul desecration feat) - If this mechanic is added once again : change Hadar's grasp curse consume effect to a 5% buff to the soul puppet damage. - Take out curse synergy from Blade of vanquished armies. - Widen the arc from Arms of Hadar to at least 50°. - Make pillar of power hits enemies for 50 total magnitude.
Creeping death still bugs and don't proc correctly. This is a mandatory fix to balance SW...
Ps : Sorry for this too long message. Ps2 : If you are curious, i can post Act logs i made before commenting.
Imagine how players who favor the other traditional dps classes would react if their class were assigned this healing role.
But I agree that the Warlock makes sense as a healer so long as it's a vicious kind of healing - ripping the life from an enemy should be a damaging or debilitating act. Which creates a possibility for Prince of Hell.
On the healing path perhaps any time the warlock uses a healing power, Prince of Hell could inflict damage/more damage to cursed foes - simulating drawing the life from enemies. Our foes should be withered little raisins lying in the dust after we're done with them.
On the dps path, perhaps it could allow the warlock's attacks to steal life/more life from cursed foes - Life steal, I know, but that's an ability the warlock's had since its inception. Is Vampiric Embrace still a thing? I looked around for a list of the proposed powers, but couldn't find it.
Nobody seems to like Fiery Bolt being a strong single target encounter even if it's one of the best changes we had so far... And why ? "Because Killing Flames were supposed to be our most damaging single target encounter ?" Guys, you know what ? It has always been supposed to but it hasn't been the case since mod 10 (counting the Murderous flames bug before). Soul Scorch was way better and nobody complained. And more important : why couldn't we have both KF and FB be strong single target encounters ?
For me: I liked the aoe of FB - used it all the time, and the Warlock already had a single target encounter in KF that needed work. It makes sense to me to fix KF, and either leave Fiery Bolt alone or improve it.
- Complaining about healing Warlock being a thing makes no sense to me. It’s like complaining that you got free cake with your dinner. Being able to fill two different roles is advantageous, and you can freely ignore either if you prefer.
- Fiery Bolt is fine as a single-target nuke. Hellfire Ring neatly takes its place as a Curse-inflicting power as long as they implement the shorter-CD version. If Warlock DPS is lacking, it isn’t because of the Fiery Bolt change.
- Complaining about healing Warlock being a thing makes no sense to me. It’s like complaining that you got free cake with your dinner. Being able to fill two different roles is advantageous, and you can freely ignore either if you prefer.
It's more like getting free cake with a cremation. It's just a strange fit is all when you've got a particular notion in your head of how a class should be - how it's always been. I'd just like to see it done well. You make a great point about the advantages.
Comments
Lesser curse does no damage now and all your damaging powers apply lesser curse
Lesser curse does no damage now and all enemies within 25 feet are automatically cursed because your hellish presence
I thought about this one this evening
Your cursed enemies spread the curse to all nearby enemies every <amount> seconds
or
When you damage a cursed enemy the curse is spread to all nearby enemies
About Fiery Bolt losing the curse consume I don't feel like it, I have always used Fiery Bolt because their full area damage. If that damage is taken away I would probably not use it. I would either look for a passive or feat that makes Fiery Bolt and/or other powers spread curses, or just change Fiery Bolt so it can do both, if target is cursed then full area damage and if not cursed then spread curses
One of the reasons for this +X% changed to +XYZ stats is that if not done, then a level 70 boon, insignia or whatever you got today, could add a massive amount let say in 5 years when we could be let say level 110. So why would you change such an awesome item for a new one?
One real example of this X% was the good old Fabled set from the warlocks which did X% damage of the current enemy HP. Initially at level 60 it was almost useless, but when the level 70 era came, although you could never kill anything with it, the first burst of damage was absolutely amazing.
Although I don't really like the additive counter stats system, they make sense at the very long term.
There are other ways like "stat/(stat+counter)", "stat^2/(stat^2+counter^2) and many more, they all with their pros and cons.
They decided to use the simple "stat-counter" so unless they decide to change it for another one, we need to get the best of it.
They also asked us for ideas for Prince of Hell so we can propose whatever we want, that is what brainstorm is for, just throw your ideas, even a proposal like all cursed enemies under 10% HP automatically die is valid (yes, I'm proposing this too, maybe 10% HP is too much but as an idea). They will take all the feedback, their own ideas and finally implement what they think is better.
I don't mean to be negative toward the devs - it's just for some reason, out of all the other characters I play every day, the only one I'm actually concerned about is the Warlock. The other characters I'll figure out and adjust to once M16 arrives, but the Warlock just has to be exactly right. I don't know why that is - whether it's because the lock's the oddball in the group, or simply so much fun to play, but it's the only one that matters to me.
I may be wrong here, but for now I cannot see and viable dps and heal in both paragons. I don't want to blame anyone but it is pretty sad to see how barbarian's AOE makes more damage to single target than SW strongest daily. Changes in general are good but it still require a lot of re balancing. Also, I'm not sure if it was a good idea to reduce count of all daily&combat powers to this count. It's pretty good that we have new combat ability, but there are only 10 of them, I would like to have more of them......
Build makers are going to cry in the cornere because now we have only 5 feats. It's really dissapointing. For me, crucial part of every MMORPG is making my own build, which will fit my playstyle etc. But now I don't see many variations here.
So, what I can see now: builds are dead, no dps, no heal(I don't want to heal when I play on SW, but if this character cannot do even this.....).
What are your thoughts about all of this stuff?
P.S. I understand that's it is only testing phase, and everything may be changed till release.
The different mechanics, feats, and combos of the classes causes different results. In fact if all of the classes had the exact same magnitudes on their powers, the classes would end up very imbalanced due to the other factors.
Hellbringer-DPS
New here, probably idk what im talking about but... some ideas:
What if prince of hell makes teammates apply curse on crit or maybe while they are in PoP (augment).
Also for the hellbringer, change the name from soul sparks to hellish embers and make them reddish or something like that so it looks more unique.
We could see if there is a scaling issue with warlocks vs other classes in single target.
I understand that each class has individual feats that impact damage. So a side by side comparison would make it easier to judge. Then test again using weapons with different base damage.
It would show if there is any scaling issues with current magnitude/dot damage utilizing current soul mechanic, curse mechanic, and feats, etc.
I know it would be a big undertaking and not sure if any testers could coordinate to accomplish it. But, if the act logs are within a tolerance of say 5% between classes and have a repeatable result with base weapon damage changes.
That would satisfy any concerns of magnitude or inherent scaling issues. And if/where magnitudes could be adjusted to balance in comparrison to other classes.
I'm a console player so if I was able to port my toons over, I would test this, but cannot unfortunately.
Not remove all the dots, but stop building the class around the idea it’s magically getting full effect of its dots.
Especially the Curse based dots.
Use Curse as a mechanism for triggering extra damage for powers and other utility effects (stuns etc), not as a core expectation for our damage.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
In short terms: Every time you attempt to spawn a Soul Puppet while you already have one active, you gain 1 stack of Soul Investiture. Stacks up to 5 times. Refills Puppets HP and increases its dmg.
Whether it actually refills the puppet's HP and increases its dmg, I have not tested (and truthfully don't care since I'm not a big fan of the puppet). In one of my earlier tests I did see that Risky Investment was increasing my dmg when I had a Soul Investiture stack. If Hadar's Grasp curse consume gets fixed I'm quite eager to test Risky Investment even more.
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
my 10k ilvl dps cleric shouldn't be able to catch up to my 15ilvl dps warlock in terms of damage, considering that they're 10 levels apart, my cleric has almost no boons and the feats I picked have barely any impact in her current rotation, yet here we are:
not to mention that my companion is still outdpsing me somehow:
when feats and boons are proving to be a joke, would buffing the magnitude of our skills a bit really hurt THAT bad?
Some real experience from your warlock testers would be greatly appreciated. I would love for the warlock to be DPS king for a while, I mean honestly, in what world is a sword swinging humanoid the king?
Low level wizards carry the low level fighters gear....high level fighters carry the high level wizards gear is how I believe it goes.
Guild: Ruathym Corsairs
The idea comes to mind while i saw my way less geared lvl 70 fighter (can check gear on preview Ramboh 3) hitting 3x hard as a strongest hit than my nearly BiS lvl 80 warlock (Ramesh 31). Got to add that what's probably best warlock self buff (risky investment: 1.05 stacking additively 5x) wasn't working last week, but that's not a 3x buff.
I know is a wrong approach, but for what i got dmg formula now is AxBxCxDxE where:
A: weapon dmg
B: Accuracy/Crit/CA multipliers
C: party buff/debuff
D : magnitude modifier
E: self buff/debuff
For my understanding A, B and C are equal on each class, so I have to focus on D and E.
Warlock doesn't have old CD granting 75% DoT on dmg (new one is less than a 5% dmg increase for what testing are showing)
and self buffs provided by feats/powers doesn't look that powerful to fill the gap on magnitude we got vs some other classes i showed on previous post. IMHO if a feat/mechanic is too powerful in your eyes, better to tone it down: that will also grant more free choices to players.
At last, like some other pointed out, I am also curious to know setups used for internal tests, results are way too different from what has been showed in this thread that we are surely doing something wrong..
TL;DR: I am strongly against standardization, but if smoothing some spikes in self-buffs/magnitude values between classes would help a better and safer balancing, allowing the Dev team to focus on incredible amount of job (thank you all again for that) still needed to let this mod going live, why not?
on healing , no 1 cares because who made a warlock for healboting? still look like Cleric is miles ahead , dunno about OP.
woudl have been cooler if u maded the puppet master a tank spec , kinda like DaoC necro or something like that
When your Lesser Curse does damage, it has a small chance to apply one of several stacking effects. This chance is much higher when a Lesser Curse is consumed. Effects are applied in a 50-meter radius around the cursed target.
Nearby allies deal 30 magnitude damage on each hit, based on your stats (can crit) for 5 seconds.
Nearby allies are affected by a 30 magnitude heal each second for 5 seconds.
Nearby allies move 5% faster for 5 seconds.
Nearby allies take 5% less damage for 5 seconds.
Nearby allies reflect 5% of damage taken for 5 seconds.
The idea here is to have a fairly small proc chance (say 5-10%) on each tick, and a larger chance on consume (50%) so that in a pack, you can consistently get multiple buffs rolling, and against a boss, you can consistently have at least 1. Since I don't think it makes thematic sense for Warlock to be the best healer, this injects some well-needed utility to make up for the gap between us and other healing classes.
Edit: I'm looking at Essence Mastery, and it's a very boring class feature. It'd have to be 15% for me to slot it often, and even then it wouldn't be exciting, just an option. To make it more exciting, I would add 'Also heals allies for 50% of the amount you're healed' and bump the buff up to 10% for good measure. It would then pair astoundingly well with Essence of Time...
If Essence of Time worked. As previously reported by many players, Essence of Time is bugged, causing Essence Drain to deal and heal zero damage. Please fix.
Regarding your test, however, I don't. You sorted the data incorrectly, you have to look at EncDPS and according to that your Warlock deals ~38% more dmg than your cleric, leveling up doesn't really add to your stats, it pretty much only unlocks new powers.
The stats of your characters may be *similar*, but they differ too much to actually extract meaningful informations from your test, furthermore you are playing your cleric *better* than your warlock, you are not using Soul Scorch at all, even though you have the feat that reduces cooldowns on Soul Scorch activation.
If you want to do a more meaningful comparison, I suggest you to do a dps rotation on a naked toon with zero power and ~50% crit chance (2x crit/def rings from WB preview store) and wooden test weapons(100-100 dmg) versus a target dummy in PE over a course of ~5 minutes.
While this test would be somewhat better, you'd still need to interpret it correctly, because in real dungeon scenarios you have to dodge etc and it only represents single target damage, not AoE.
PS: 50% crit because Warlock has a crit-synergy.
Nobody seems to like Fiery Bolt being a strong single target encounter even if it's one of the best changes we had so far...
And why ? "Because Killing Flames were supposed to be our most damaging single target encounter ?"
Guys, you know what ? It has always been supposed to but it hasn't been the case since mod 10 (counting the Murderous flames bug before).
Soul Scorch was way better and nobody complained.
And more important : why couldn't we have both KF and FB be strong single target encounters ?
And so, what do you want it to be ? An AoE again, without Curse Synergy ?
We already have more reliable ways to spread lesser curses (even if it can still be improved a lot) and if it returns to 160 magnitude, it won't deal enough damage.
Let's keep it like this. It would be useless otherwise...
That being said, even if FB is doing pretty good results, we re still underpowered on single target. (My SW, similarly geared as my CW deals 30% less damage than him on single target. And CW is already under other dps like HR or TR for single target.
On AoE, it deals ~10% damage less, with a realistic build so this is pretty okay.)
So... We can buff a lot of things to compete.
One point on which i agree is that Killing flames has to be a strong single target encounter.
Devs kept the same flaw Killing flames has on live : too much difference between min and max damage, while doing pretty low damage overall, this time.
Let's make Killing flames have 500-750 magnitude.
Lesser Curses damage component is really bad. Let's get rid of it, call Curses once again "Warlock's Curses" and buff Warlock's curse feat to 10%, as @noworries#8859 suggested before last update.
I'm really glad you didn't swapped Creeping death with Risky Investment. It would have completely ruined the choice between the gameplays of the Warlock : Soul Puppet and raw damage.
To gain a lot of single target damage, i suggest to buff Creeping Death to 20% more damage, but making it a dot once again that deals its damage over 4 seconds.
Otherwise, i fear it would be OP on AoE too.
For the Soul puppet, why did you take out the possibility to summon a new soul puppet each time a curse is removed from an enemy ? It was the only way to reliably stack Soul investiture. Please put this mechanic back in Soul Desecration feat.
You could then change Hadar's Grasp curse consume effect to a little buff (5%, for example) to Soul puppet damage, accordingly to Soul Desecration change.
Now, for lesser curse generation, please, take out the curse synergy of Blade of vanquished armies. This way, we could have a good lesser curse generator while building sparks, on single target.
Plus, Arms of Hadar are very good to apply curses but is a bit clunky right now. It often bugs and just don't touch enemies and you can't target wide packs. I'd like to see it's arc raised by 10°.
And last point : for Soulweaver.
I don't like being forced to use Harrowtorm to apply curses. It really kills diversity, imo.
I suggest Pillar of power dealing damage once again (even for a little magnitude, like 50 total) just to have it apply curses.
Conclusion :
- Killing flames with 500-750 magnitude.
- Lesser curses not doing damage and Warlock's curse feat buffed to 10%.
- Keep Creeping death and risky investment where they are and buff creeping death to 20% more damage, as a dot that deals its damage over 4 seconds.
- Put back the possibility to summon an other puppet by removing a curse. (In Soul desecration feat)
- If this mechanic is added once again : change Hadar's grasp curse consume effect to a 5% buff to the soul puppet damage.
- Take out curse synergy from Blade of vanquished armies.
- Widen the arc from Arms of Hadar to at least 50°.
- Make pillar of power hits enemies for 50 total magnitude.
Creeping death still bugs and don't proc correctly. This is a mandatory fix to balance SW...
Ps : Sorry for this too long message.
Ps2 : If you are curious, i can post Act logs i made before commenting.
But I agree that the Warlock makes sense as a healer so long as it's a vicious kind of healing - ripping the life from an enemy should be a damaging or debilitating act. Which creates a possibility for Prince of Hell.
On the healing path perhaps any time the warlock uses a healing power, Prince of Hell could inflict damage/more damage to cursed foes - simulating drawing the life from enemies. Our foes should be withered little raisins lying in the dust after we're done with them.
On the dps path, perhaps it could allow the warlock's attacks to steal life/more life from cursed foes - Life steal, I know, but that's an ability the warlock's had since its inception. Is Vampiric Embrace still a thing? I looked around for a list of the proposed powers, but couldn't find it.
- Complaining about healing Warlock being a thing makes no sense to me. It’s like complaining that you got free cake with your dinner. Being able to fill two different roles is advantageous, and you can freely ignore either if you prefer.
- Fiery Bolt is fine as a single-target nuke. Hellfire Ring neatly takes its place as a Curse-inflicting power as long as they implement the shorter-CD version. If Warlock DPS is lacking, it isn’t because of the Fiery Bolt change.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
It's just a strange fit is all when you've got a particular notion in your head of how a class should be - how it's always been. I'd just like to see it done well. You make a great point about the advantages.