Warlock Hellbringer Improvements - Revisited

tempus86

A few of the main problems with warlock DPS right now are:

At wills - Currently warlock At Wills are at least 30% behind every other class in At Will damage. All of which do around 100magnitude per second or better. Hellish rebuke for example has a cast time of 0.7seconds, deals 30 magnitude + 25% buff from Hellfire Expertise. and a further 25% damage overtime OR upfront if using NPNM. for a total of 49 magnitude per hit. or roughly 67magnitude per second and this is only with a class feature .

Lack of Burst - other than Killing Flames, every other ability is either low damage with short/medium CDs, Damage over Time, or has prerequisite conditions to work properly.

Lack of any real choice - Most of the class features are useless or extremely niche and only useful in very select situations. Same with the Feats and there really isn't all that much interaction between the feats and other aspects of the spec.

AoE - AoE is mediocre at best,
Fiery Bolt is a joke, 156magnitude single target and 78magnitude to all other targets. its pretty much useless except to apply curses for a Parting Blasphemy Build.
Hellfire Rings radius is too small and its damage over time is currently Bugged and doing 30-40% less than it should.
Infernal spheres radius is too small and regularly gets stuck when trying to trigger the explosion, requiring either all charges to be consumed by taking damage or manually slotting a new encounter power and back again.
Arms of Hadar is terrible. damage is ridiculously low and its cooldown increase per use lockout doesn't sync with 20% CD reduction from Hellfire Expertise so you have to delay using it to reset the timer, which totally defeats the point of any CD reduction.
Blades damage is OK, but it can be interrupted/removed with a stun/prone losing all damage and putting it on CD
Curse bite is still slow. regularly loses a charge even when the enemies are dead before the cast is complete. its recharge speed is not effected by cooldown reductions from Feats or Equip bonus's.

Class Mechanics
Lesser Curse - Damage is dreadful. It does 8 magnitude over 8 seconds, ( 4 ticks for 2 magnitude each) it may as well be 0 when compared to the Wizard equivalent of smoulder which is 80magnitude over 4 seconds.
Soul Investiture - Takes too long to get to 5 stacks, and its duration is too short so it regularly drops off even on boss fights that have short transition phases.
Soul Puppet - deals 45magnitude every 1.25 seconds (36magnitude/sec) cannot gain combat advantage, and Crit severity fixed at 50% ( this was recently an undocumented bug fix since it wasn't working before)
Soul Sparks - Certain bosses still do not generate Soul Sparks when attacking them. such as Valindra - the last boss in SoT. The Giant Crab in MEs and most recently the Last boss in Tales of old. there are probably others that I cant think of or haven't tried for a while.

So some possible solutions.

At wills
Increase at will damage by 30% across the board

Class Mechanics:

Lesser curse - Deals 40magnitude over 8 seconds (50magnitude with Hellfire Expertise).
Soul Investiture - Reduced to 3 stacks and 33.33% increased soul puppet damage per stack. Duration is increased to 30seconds and an additional 5seconds per stack for a maximum of 45seconds.
Soul Scorch - Deals 10 magnitude per spark. Max 15 sparks consumed and 5magnitude per spark radiating damage. applies lesser curse to all targets hit.

Class Features:

Shadow walk - Increases movement speed by 10% and increases stamina regeneration by 10%
Dark Ones Blessing - When a target effected by lesser curse Dies you gain 1 soul spark and 10 action points
Dark Prayers - When hitpoints are below 30% you gain 5% damage reduction
All consuming Curse - At Wills apply lesser curse and deal 25 magnitude damage. Can Crit and can deal Combat Advantage Damage.
No Pity No Mercy - keep the same
Flames of Empowerment - increases damage by 2% per stack. stacks 3 times
Deadly Curse - Increases Lesser Curse damage by 100% Curse Consume no longer removes Lesser Curse but consume mechanic is unchanged
Dust to Dust - Increases AoE damage by 10%

Feats:

Double scorch -Soul Scorch No longer consumes soulsparks. Deals 200 magnitude to primary target 100magnitude radiating damage but has a 15second cooldown
Power of the Nine Hells - Daily powers Grant 3 stacks of Soul investiture and refreshes duration
Parting Blasphemy - all Curse Consumes deal an additional 100 magnitude and Critical hit chance is increased to 100% for 4seconds
Warlocks Curse - stays the same
Risky Investment - Soul Investiture grants 5% to all damage per stack
Soul desecration - Soul puppet will no longer disappear, each attack generates 1 Soulspark and deals damage 50% damage to all targets within 10feat
Creeping Death - Each attack applies Creeping death Which deals 10% damage of that attack over 5 seconds. each time creeping death is reapplied to the target the previous creeping death is consumed dealing all remaining damage instantly.
Executioners Gift - Same
Soul Spark Recovery - each Soulspark Spent grants 1% recovery speed for 15 seconds and 3 action points. double scorch assume 15sparks used.
Wrathful souls - same.

Encounters:

Killing Flames - same
Vampiric Embrace - 240magnitute (300 with hellfire expertise)
Dreadtheft - 340 magnitude ( 425 with hellfire expertise)
Hadars Grasp - 200 magnitude 280 with curse consume (350 with hellfire expertise)
Curse Bite - 200 magnitude (250 with hellfire expertise) 12second cooldown
Fiery Bolt 160 magnitude to all targets within 15feet (200 with hellfire expertise) 12 second cooldown.
Infernal Spheres - 40magnitude per sphere (50 with hellfire expertise) 20 ft radius explosion. 12 second cooldown.
Blade of vanquished Armies - Cooldown starts immediately. cannot be removed with stuns/knockdowns. Deals 20magnitude to all enemies within 10feet every 0.5 seconds for 6 seconds(25magnitude with hellfire expertise) 18 second cooldown
Arms of Hadar - 100 magnitude (125 with hellfire expertise) 2 second knockdown. 10 second cooldown. remove cooldown increase.
Hellfire Ring - 80 magnitude initial hit (100 with hellfire expertise 200 magnitude over 8 seconds (240magnitude with hellfire expertise), increase radius by 5 feet

Dailies:

Accursed souls- keep the same
Brood of harder - keep the same
Tyrannical Curse - keep the same but fix the split damage so it doesn't deflect
Gates of Hell, reduce to 500 action points
Flames of Phelegethos - 1200 magnitude (1500 with hellfire expertise) radiates 20% damage to targets within 15 feet.

frogwalloper

Honestly, I'd be pretty thrilled if things just worked right, but I think those are great recommendations.

Personally, only changes I'd make:

No Pity No Mercy - drop the Hellish Rebuke buff for a more general boost to cc at-wills so Hand of Blight benefits. As it stands, it drives me nuts that one of my favorite feats is half wasted on an at-will I despise so much.

Soulscorch - I like the decrease to encounter cooldown the way it is currently. If the rate of sparks generation was simply increased, I'd feel a little better about the low damage. I feel like we should be able to accumulate it fast enough to potentially drop two seconds off every rotation.

mordekai

I agree with most of what is in the OP, but I'd like to add that the Soul Sparks need someone to take a really good look at how they work.

One of the biggest problems for me from a simple "Enjoying the class" perspective is Soul Sparks and Investiture.

The reply to "magnitudes suck" is "hey... build stacks and get a bonus to damage!"
The reply to "cool downs suck" is "hey... burn stacks and shave some time off!"

It seems like they lowered some of the Class capabilities to make Soul Sparks appear more useful, not realising that the "one or the other" option for using them in the standard way, makes them equally useless. (See also: "How they ran out of ideas for Warlock Feats and eventually gave up trying and said "Oh just make the last one a flat damage bonus...")

They need to swap out the depletion/heal. (If anyone even realised it exists, it's so useless.)
I don't know if anyone mentioned this to the Dev who wrote that stupid effect, but (and my Warlock is not some end game Demigod,) I don't NEED 0.5% of my HP healed every half a second for 10 or 15 seconds when "Out Of Combat".
Because there's this "Out of Combat" thing called "Regeneration" which makes the Soul Spark healing effect pointless.

I have never EVER come away from a combat with zero sparks left and gone "DAMN!!! I need that healing!!! I wish I hadn't used up all my soul sparks! How will I ever get my hit points back between fights now???"

(The fact is, I only even realised the healing existed when I was looking through the Powers to see if I could work out what the problems were... that was about 2 months after Mod 16 dropped... I have never noticed it in action for the obvious reason.)

Allow any unspent Sparks to either hang around for a while like the Cleric Spheres so they might get used in the next fight/wave of monsters, or allow the player to burn them to affect cool downs for the same reason... If the Devs will insist on these bloody things being an "either or" in combat, don't just burn the damned things away afterward in exchange for the "Healing" no one even notices, let the player decide what's most useful to THEM in the immediate situation.

Hellfire Ring also needs changing so that it procs Curse on all ticks, and not just the first! Compare it to Icy Terrain on the Wizard list, which is a low level power... That melts mobs when its adding Chill and smoulder through crits and the Wizard is set up properly.

Since Wizards can stack and upgrade their chill/smoulder/rimefire, why can't a Warlock incrementally up their curse power?

How about a proper AoE At Will? (Again, Wizards got one...) Not just "the third strike does some cast off damage..." If it's not Hellish Rebuke, I'm probably only using it to quickly apply Curses, so hitting the same target three times with a Non Hellish Rebuke is not really in my plans.

I'm going to stop now... before I get into full rant mode.

I still think magnitudes of damage are not the main problem with Warlocks, (don't get me started on how clunky Shadow Slip is compared to other classes, but I hear that got at least tweaked on PC for ME Runes, so hopefully I'll see that on XBox soon...) but the synergy of the whole Powers/Feats structure needs tightening and improving, and the Effects, more than just the flat damage need fixing and improving.

giz

To be effective for DPS be need to claim a separate Warlock class, Warlock in the current state is a support class with a DPS path for maybe low dungeons and solo. If we can't be considered a real DPS class we can't be like the top DPS classes, it's a fact. Because if a Warlock player don't want to be healer, we have a useless paragon path. And even when we run as Hellbringer, the META is forcing you to play healer. Yes, i know that a lot of Warlock players are happy to be able to queue as healers, but we are paying this chance with our own damage. And i hope we have a lot of players that want to play their Warlock only for DPS (I'm one of them) So, We need two separate Warlocks (the healer) and (pure DPS) Because let's be honest. Never a DPS/support class gonna be the same compared with DPS/DPS classes.

vorphied

giz#2086 said:

To be effective for DPS be need to claim a separate Warlock class, Warlock in the current state is a support class with a DPS path for maybe low dungeons and solo. If we can't be considered a real DPS class we can't be like the top DPS classes, it's a fact. Because if a Warlock player don't want to be healer, we have a useless paragon path. And even when we run as Hellbringer, the META is forcing you to play healer. Yes, i know that a lot of Warlock players are happy to be able to queue as healers, but we are paying this chance with our own damage. And i hope we have a lot of players that want to play their Warlock only for DPS (I'm one of them) So, We need two separate Warlocks (the healer) and (pure DPS) Because let's be honest. Never a DPS/support class gonna be the same compared with DPS/DPS classes.

There's no reason why the two paragon paths can't both be successful. If anything, Soulweaver is worse off for sharing the same class base since it gets practically no benefit from the association and gains useless junk like Dreadtheft. Even the better DPS powers perform poorly on Soulweaver since it lacks access to the passives that make them work for Hellbringer.

The hybrid DPS tax is a concept invented by players who believe that characters with the potential to swap roles should suffer from a lower DPS ceiling as a result; Cryptic has outright stated that this isn't their design philosophy, and I fully agree with that since none of these configurations are actually hybrid in gameplay function (you are either on your DPS paragon or the other one). Hopefully once they implement their next major round of balance changes we will see some improvement. Hopefully. Maybe.

giz

vorphied said:

giz#2086 said:

To be effective for DPS be need to claim a separate Warlock class, Warlock in the current state is a support class with a DPS path for maybe low dungeons and solo. If we can't be considered a real DPS class we can't be like the top DPS classes, it's a fact. Because if a Warlock player don't want to be healer, we have a useless paragon path. And even when we run as Hellbringer, the META is forcing you to play healer. Yes, i know that a lot of Warlock players are happy to be able to queue as healers, but we are paying this chance with our own damage. And i hope we have a lot of players that want to play their Warlock only for DPS (I'm one of them) So, We need two separate Warlocks (the healer) and (pure DPS) Because let's be honest. Never a DPS/support class gonna be the same compared with DPS/DPS classes.

There's no reason why the two paragon paths can't both be successful. If anything, Soulweaver is worse off for sharing the same class base since it gets practically no benefit from the association and gains useless junk like Dreadtheft. Even the better DPS powers perform poorly on Soulweaver since it lacks access to the passives that make them work for Hellbringer.

The hybrid DPS tax is a concept invented by players who believe that characters with the potential to swap roles should suffer from a lower DPS ceiling as a result; Cryptic has outright stated that this isn't their design philosophy, and I fully agree with that since none of these configurations are actually hybrid in gameplay function (you are either on your DPS paragon or the other one). Hopefully once they implement their next major round of balance changes we will see some improvement. Hopefully. Maybe.

But there's a reason to claim for a pure DPS Warlock class. Because if we have a character only for DPS we have a useless path, we haven't the 2nd DPS choice, and always with the stigma of being support and being forced to run as healers in a game where the lack of healers is big. Our DPS path is nothing and we are considered support for the Pure DPS classes and for end game groups, that's a shame for someone that built a DPS character and refuse to have a healer loadout, but i'm paying the tax of having a Warlock and no a DPS/DPS character. I don't believe in Cryptic's words about class balance, for some reason i believe that all this difference between classes is intended.

hrakh

Lets not feed in to the "hybrid" mythology that is really only being used by people playing "pure" classes in attempts to prove they have a right to their relative over-performance and to ensure they will not get nerfed. The justification is stale, self-serving and blatantly ignores cryptic's stated intent.There is nothing wrong with having two separate and separated roles within one class and both paths should simply be viable for the stated role.

So lets not get ourselves distracted with hybrid theory and get back to desperately vying for any cryptic attention or acknowledgement, or barring that, echoes from the abyss.

Here let me try a shout: Hello @nitocris83 Warlocks are still dying for even the smallest sign that you are seeing our continued discontent.

Now to wait for the echo

mongol69

The last time devs made any changes to warlock dps it was during preview by reducing fb damage and reducing cb damage after making a comment in the paladin thread.

For some god awful reason they mentioned in paladin class preview thread they felt warlocks just did..uh...too much damage? Smh, I guess they didn't like it doing more than 70% damage of wizards, rangers or rogues.

schietindebux

I thought that nerf was according to some "data" on preview, where all asked, how they came to the conclusion that warlock overperforms, when playtesting veterans said the class is weak compared to any other of their toons.... except Soulweaver dealing redicules amounts of damage with bugged undying spirits

@tempus86#1158 really a pretty good list, @noworries#8859 should call you in time, if still responsible for the class?

vorphied

giz#2086 said:

vorphied said:

giz#2086 said:

To be effective for DPS be need to claim a separate Warlock class, Warlock in the current state is a support class with a DPS path for maybe low dungeons and solo. If we can't be considered a real DPS class we can't be like the top DPS classes, it's a fact. Because if a Warlock player don't want to be healer, we have a useless paragon path. And even when we run as Hellbringer, the META is forcing you to play healer. Yes, i know that a lot of Warlock players are happy to be able to queue as healers, but we are paying this chance with our own damage. And i hope we have a lot of players that want to play their Warlock only for DPS (I'm one of them) So, We need two separate Warlocks (the healer) and (pure DPS) Because let's be honest. Never a DPS/support class gonna be the same compared with DPS/DPS classes.

There's no reason why the two paragon paths can't both be successful. If anything, Soulweaver is worse off for sharing the same class base since it gets practically no benefit from the association and gains useless junk like Dreadtheft. Even the better DPS powers perform poorly on Soulweaver since it lacks access to the passives that make them work for Hellbringer.

The hybrid DPS tax is a concept invented by players who believe that characters with the potential to swap roles should suffer from a lower DPS ceiling as a result; Cryptic has outright stated that this isn't their design philosophy, and I fully agree with that since none of these configurations are actually hybrid in gameplay function (you are either on your DPS paragon or the other one). Hopefully once they implement their next major round of balance changes we will see some improvement. Hopefully. Maybe.

But there's a reason to claim for a pure DPS Warlock class. Because if we have a character only for DPS we have a useless path, we haven't the 2nd DPS choice, and always with the stigma of being support and being forced to run as healers in a game where the lack of healers is big. Our DPS path is nothing and we are considered support for the Pure DPS classes and for end game groups, that's a shame for someone that built a DPS character and refuse to have a healer loadout, but i'm paying the tax of having a Warlock and no a DPS/DPS character. I don't believe in Cryptic's words about class balance, for some reason i believe that all this difference between classes is intended.

Hellbringer is our "pure" DPS Warlock class. There's no reason to expect that Cryptic would suddenly decide to balance it upwards if it were split off from Soulweaver.

If you believe that Cryptic is deliberately designing with a hybrid tax in mind despite what they are saying, then the whole discussion is moot. Personally I think that they are simply making balance mistakes and are taking much too long to address them (not that they want Hellbringer to be a third-world DPS simply because Soulweaver exists).

If hybrid tax were a thing, you'd expect Fighter and Paladin to be poor tanks, which they are not. And Devout to be a poor healer, which it is not. I don't think DPS is getting singled out deliberately.

giz

No, a class with both paths for DPS always will be better than one with only one path, it's sad for us, but it's the truth, they are designed to be DPS. Even when Hellbringer is a "pure" DPS path, the class is designed to be SUPPORT, so they're giving us the damage for a SUPPORT class even when we're only DPS. A class that has only DPS role is a complete damage machine. I don't understand why Warlock players want to heal with a class that was designed for damage....you can say: but templock blah blah, templock was supporting with damage, you healed because of your DAMAGE, not a healbot like SoulWeaver. I want my DPS Warlock back, it's like playing with an incomplete character with only one path and the other totally useless, ignored, and hated for someone that made the character to be DPS. I'm not conformist, and I'm sick of "if you want DPS play a Wizard" replies. Because Warlock DPS is totally dead for the game, the playerbase, end game groups and devs.

We haven't Cryptic attention or acknowledgement because it's the order that they want, we're in the place that belong to us. Low DPS and meh heals with convenient party buff for the new content, be happy you're the new heal-toy, be happy with this role. It's all that we have for Warlock class.

giz

Look how fast is the nitocris reply for wizards, and we are here crying about Warlock waiting for fixes and being ignored. https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1251668/thaumaturge-wizard-current-bugs-with-smolder

silverwolf

Yeah, 3 days for a Wizard turn-around and how long for the Warlock? The perception in the Warlock communitee is that @noworries#8859 , @asterdahl , @nitocris83 etc just hate the entire class and would rather do anything else except address the issues that have been pointed out way too many times and for far too long.

mongol69

Considering in 5 months complete dev silence with only one comment recently made about adding even more additional data collecting on "percieved" dps issue after preview players confirmed warlocks absolutely cannot run tomm at all as either dps or heal. They then finnessed only the healing path yet again, and have basically left it as "healer role actually can" run it now. Job done, warlocks good to go.

It's quite obvious they either don't have any clue on how to salvage the dps role, or really don't intend to fix anything and thus continue ignoreing the many many many many threads on the dps role failfest that has been around since before preview went live.

They have only made adjustments to soulweaver, since it was thier new grand idea role assignment that was awkwardly blatant on how outright nonfunctional as a healer role it's been for over 4 month's straight.

Absolutely the worst class for both roles is now a functional subpar healer...

Warlock qol has been and still is a joke

silverwolf

It's not like they can't fix the DPS side; I devoted approx 170 man-hours to testing just the DPS side and coming up with ways to change feats/class feats and powers.

I'm not expecting them to follow all of my suggestions but at least they can internally discuss and start to get some traction on it.

schietindebux

... collecting data... maybe it takes so long to collect since there are no data to collect, player left that class the game or shelved warlock, happy collecting

mongol69

If they havent made a single improvement from preview, mod 16, mod 17, and warlocks are included in classes "over performing" from multiplicative buffs.

They have already made it clear from "the plan" that thier intention is to take time and slowly roll out additive changes on preview servers and test before even implementing live, let alone to console.

I roughly translate that to mod 20something before any improvement changes to warlocks. It's a flat out quit or move on to another class scenario.

In half a year they havent even tried to assured warlocks of actually improving the situation at all.

They cant even get events to work without also breaking everything else non related in the first place. If they try balancing and the 3 dps even capable of running it break also. Then no one will complete tomm, the "dungeon for endgame players"....unless your dps warlock, gf, gwf, or arbiter. Aka the dungeon only possible for 1/3rd of the actual endgame dps community.

The largest working buff feat ri, is so bad that it's a struggle to even get more than 2 stacks at a time during tomm runs resulting in 1/2 the damage of the dual dps classes.

frogwalloper

It's probably like someone pointed out in another thread. They just don't have the time.

There are so many bugs persisting and cropping up everywhere, that players don't even bother reporting them anymore. In just the last few days I ran into three new ones no one's mentioned, recorded some video, but realized there's no point. If they don't even have the time to fix the bugs, they certainly don't have time to fiddle with a class that's "playable."

The main issue here to me is that the class is only playable if players stick to restricted courses. When more than half of our options don't work properly, how can it truly be considered "playable"? I don't care if our damage is subpar. I don't play with endgame scrubs who insist on filling the party with top dps. I do care when I try to play what I want to play, how I want to play, and the class CANNOT because things don't work properly.

If there is some moron at the top pushing the devs to the breaking point, he/she/they need to be kicked.

vorphied

giz#2086 said:

Look how fast is the nitocris reply for wizards, and we are here crying about Warlock waiting for fixes and being ignored. https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1251668/thaumaturge-wizard-current-bugs-with-smolder

Julia isn't a dev; she can reply to any topic all day long without guaranteeing timely developer follow-up. Unless I'm mistaken, it's not her job function.

Again, players should absolutely not accept the premise that "hybrid" (which it isn't) does and should equal lesser capability. If the developers want to design that way, they should reverse their previous position. Otherwise we'll be expecting attention at some point. Or we'll all be playing whichever DPS is getting the attention, either way.

frogwalloper

vorphied said:

Again, players should absolutely not accept the premise that "hybrid" (which it isn't) does and should equal lesser capability.

I really don't get this hybrid nonsense.
It's only a hybrid if it's some mixture of both at the same time.

How is the Hellbringer a mixture of dps and healing?

I'm willing to argue that the Thaumaturge is a hybrid path too since it's a mixture of dps and cheese.

schietindebux

When actual patches implement 10-20 new severe bugs (companions, dungeons, random queue..) every time and you scale this up towards mod 20, the game will be unplayble in short anyway.
A singel class played by a small number of player will never be from any importance or priority for a long time.
Atm I run healer laodout on my paladin and warlock to get random AD as fast as possible. The most annoying thing i run into is the bug where I can't refill sparks on my Soulweaver since Essence Drain bugs out and is blocked at several bossfights same as reviving, I have no sparks to heal the party and myself running at 20k HP....

vorphied said:

giz#2086 said:

Look how fast is the nitocris reply for wizards, and we are here crying about Warlock waiting for fixes and being ignored. https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1251668/thaumaturge-wizard-current-bugs-with-smolder

Julia isn't a dev; she can reply to any topic all day long without guaranteeing timely developer follow-up. Unless I'm mistaken, it's not her job function.

Again, players should absolutely not accept the premise that "hybrid" (which it isn't) does and should equal lesser capability. If the developers want to design that way, they should reverse their previous position. Otherwise we'll be expecting attention at some point. Or we'll all be playing whichever DPS is getting the attention, either way.

At least someone could hop in and pretend to hand this mess to anyone in the company, it´s the general attitude towards all this complaints getting ignored 100%, where other threads or specific player get a reply in short, hard to accept and simply pouring oil into the fire.

frogwalloper

Lately I've been playing a lot of "dps" dc (if there is such a thing), and it occurred to me this morning that it goes through things about as quickly as my hellbringer.

ouch

mongol69

At endgame peoperly geared arbiters actually perform abit better but suffer pip consumption slow ramp ups the same as soul sparks. But nothing as bad as si stack loss. Also, as long as hammer isnt interrupted constantly for em. But things will change after divinity changes coming to console.

frogwalloper

Oh, I didn't mean the arbiter, I meant the devout cleric - the healer.

Edit: okay, okay - maybe not a fair comparison since my warlock at the time was training a low companion, and my healer was running at optimum.