I still think Hand of Blight is backwards. It certainly looks and feels like it was designed for melee - it really is a satisfying melee - but the increased magnitude is for ranged attacks. Wish it was reversed.
Just Chalk this off as a fail and bring back MOD 15 - at least make the combat system fun. One thing you guys need to start realising is the people you are trying to get to pay into your game want a pleasant experience, warlocks have sucked for months now and its been reported months ago. Since then we have had spiders size increases, paving stones and things being moved around in protectors, bears asses expanded and new PVP added that our underperforming class cant enjoy? Every update is negative lately, and every problem is fixed with a nerf. The game is no longer about progression and building your Character through the MODS. These changes were not done for he benifit of the players it was done to make your life easier. Yet you still keep chruning out the same old HAMSTER and problems.
I still think Hand of Blight is backwards. It certainly looks and feels like it was designed for melee - it really is a satisfying melee - but the increased magnitude is for ranged attacks. Wish it was reversed.
Magnitude is only part of the equation, the other part is time of the attack.
Melee hand of blight attacks are 0.4 seconds, ranged is 0.65.
I still think Hand of Blight is backwards. It certainly looks and feels like it was designed for melee - it really is a satisfying melee - but the increased magnitude is for ranged attacks. Wish it was reversed.
Magnitude is only part of the equation, the other part is time of the attack.
Melee hand of blight attacks are 0.4 seconds, ranged is 0.65.
Also while the increase to At will damage mostly is nice its still not enough. Every other class has at wills that do damage relative to its cast time, roughly 100 magnitude per second. some are even better.
examples:
Heavy slash- 100magnitude - 1 second cast time 100m/s Storm strike- 70 magnitude - 0.6 second cast time 116m/s Arcane Missiles- 25magnitude (5attacks)- 0.35 sec cast time 119m/s Lance of Faith- 80 magnitude - 0.6second cast time -133m/s Brash Strike 8-5 magnitude - 0.8second cast time - - 106 m/s Shielding Strike- 45 magnitude - 0.35second cast time - 128/s Sly flourish - 30 magnitude - 0.26second cast time - 115m/s Wanted to do Duelists flurry but was too much hassle to figure out the bleed effect, but sky flourish shows the point just as good,
Now Warlocks( with Hellfire expertise added on)
Eldritch Blast- 25 magnitude 0.38second cast time, (final hit does 40 but takes 0.76 secs) 48.4m/s Dark spiral Charge -87.5 per soul, cast time 0.8seconds. takes 0.8seconds to get a soul. so 1.6sec cast time in reality 54.7m/s Hellish rebuke 37.5 hit 9,4 dot(which doesn't stack) and 18.75 reflect damage. rebuke and the dot can virtually be ignored, but lets be generous and ad 5magnitude for the few times the dot ticks or you get a rebuke. so 42.5 magnitude - 0.7second cast time - 60m/s Hand of blight - Melee - 31.25magnitude, 0.4sec cast time - 78 m/s Hand of Blight - Ranged - 43.75 magnitude 0.65 second cast time - 65 m/s Rebuke with NPNM - 47magnitude - 0.7sec cast time - 66m/s
So hand of blight melee is the best at will, but slower Spark gain than rebuke, and still much less damage than other classes have access to Hand of blight ranged is bugged and only generates 1 spark per 4hit combo ( except for crits) and doesn't even scale with the melee hits. to match, magnitudes should be 31.25 melee and 50 ranged
So to match cast times to magnitudes should be more like
Eldritch Blast - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time Hellish rebuke - 70 Magnitude - 0.7sec cast time 17.5magnitude dot 35 magnitude Rebuke Hand of blight melee - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time Hand of blight Ranged - 65magnitude - 0.65 second cast time
This gives us an average of 100 magnitude per second for each with Hellish rebuke possibly being abit higher with a few dot ticks/reflects and brings our At wills in line with everyone elses
Infact I am amazed there isn't some basic formula for at wills and encounters based on cast time and cooldown. maybe there is I dunno but its not obvious Something like
Cast time + Cooldown x100 for at wills Cast time +cooldown x 40 for encounters Cast time + cooldown x20 for AoE encounters
With all due respect, you really cannot make comparisons of at-wills without actually taking the whole of the class in consideration as well. Take a cleric for example, in your list of at-wills, thecleric's at will (lance of faith) seems like the best of all, yet i can say that most of our damage comes from our encounters. Infact, our at will presumably has longer cast time than is indicated on the tooltip. If you test rogues, barbs and rangers, nearly 50% of their damage is from their at-will whilst 5-10% of our damage is from our at-will. We presumably have the best at-will yet we do not use it for our dps. hmmm. In fact, i would love to see a cleric show me his dps with using at-wills as 50% of his dps, will truly be amusing.
So i really truly think that the best comparison is to do a 1min dummy test and compared with other classes, probably best to do with wiz (i know the wiz's will attack me on this) but you should only compare with the best class in ST dps.
And With all Due respect I think you have totally missed the point. Your example seems to have totally overlooked the fact that clerics use divinity for a lot of encounters meaning a lot of your abilities don't have a CD at all and the reason your at will damage is a low percentage is because you are using them MUCH LESS than everyone else as a result of this because that's not how you generate extra Divinity. NO other class has anything like this. When Our encounters are on CD.... the only thing we can do is use at wills, same with wizards, barbarians rogues ETC. Clerics are the odd one out having much less "time to fill" with at wills if you are using that particular build.
The reason Rangers At will percentage is so high because of flurry, which increases At Will damage by 100% and this is up all the time unless they HAMSTER up the rotation. The current warden build is going to use on average 15 encounters every minute and 2 dailies which takes about 13-15 seconds..... so for the other 45 seconds they are only casting at wills.
The reason barbarians At Will damage is high is during battle rage their at wills are doing 130% more damage, ( have the cast time and 15% buff and since their cooldowns are long they only get to use on average 13 encounters and 1 daily, which takes 9-10seconds. so the the remaining 50seconds all they have is at wills.
A warlock 4 encounters ( with soul scorch) so we get to use on average 25 encounters per minute and 1 daily which takes about 20seconds, BUT THATS STILL 40 seconds filled up with spamming at wills 60% of the time we are using at wills.
But really this is all pretty irrelevant anyway. wizards rogues and rangers are 25-30% ahead of clerics barbs warlocks and fighters. and to close the gap you have basically 3 options, increase buffs, increase Feats, or increase Magnitudes. or a combination of the 3.
and since warlock AT wills are significantly lower than everyone else, a simple and NOT OVERPOWERED way to make that smaller is buffing at wills up to 100m/s. will it erase the 25-30% gap? no, but it will knock it down to about 15-20% meaning less fiddling about with other things, (they want small changes...)
oh and as for the 1minute dummy test....warlocks are a damage overtime class. it takes 75 seconds to get up to full damage so that's a terrible idea
Also while the increase to At will damage mostly is nice its still not enough. Every other class has at wills that do damage relative to its cast time, roughly 100 magnitude per second. some are even better.
examples:
Heavy slash- 100magnitude - 1 second cast time 100m/s Storm strike- 70 magnitude - 0.6 second cast time 116m/s Arcane Missiles- 25magnitude (5attacks)- 0.35 sec cast time 119m/s Lance of Faith- 80 magnitude - 0.6second cast time -133m/s Brash Strike 8-5 magnitude - 0.8second cast time - - 106 m/s Shielding Strike- 45 magnitude - 0.35second cast time - 128/s Sly flourish - 30 magnitude - 0.26second cast time - 115m/s Wanted to do Duelists flurry but was too much hassle to figure out the bleed effect, but sky flourish shows the point just as good,
Now Warlocks( with Hellfire expertise added on)
Eldritch Blast- 25 magnitude 0.38second cast time, (final hit does 40 but takes 0.76 secs) 48.4m/s Dark spiral Charge -87.5 per soul, cast time 0.8seconds. takes 0.8seconds to get a soul. so 1.6sec cast time in reality 54.7m/s Hellish rebuke 37.5 hit 9,4 dot(which doesn't stack) and 18.75 reflect damage. rebuke and the dot can virtually be ignored, but lets be generous and ad 5magnitude for the few times the dot ticks or you get a rebuke. so 42.5 magnitude - 0.7second cast time - 60m/s Hand of blight - Melee - 31.25magnitude, 0.4sec cast time - 78 m/s Hand of Blight - Ranged - 43.75 magnitude 0.65 second cast time - 65 m/s Rebuke with NPNM - 47magnitude - 0.7sec cast time - 66m/s
So hand of blight melee is the best at will, but slower Spark gain than rebuke, and still much less damage than other classes have access to Hand of blight ranged is bugged and only generates 1 spark per 4hit combo ( except for crits) and doesn't even scale with the melee hits. to match, magnitudes should be 31.25 melee and 50 ranged
So to match cast times to magnitudes should be more like
Eldritch Blast - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time Hellish rebuke - 70 Magnitude - 0.7sec cast time 17.5magnitude dot 35 magnitude Rebuke Hand of blight melee - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time Hand of blight Ranged - 65magnitude - 0.65 second cast time
This gives us an average of 100 magnitude per second for each with Hellish rebuke possibly being abit higher with a few dot ticks/reflects and brings our At wills in line with everyone elses
Infact I am amazed there isn't some basic formula for at wills and encounters based on cast time and cooldown. maybe there is I dunno but its not obvious Something like
Cast time + Cooldown x100 for at wills Cast time +cooldown x 40 for encounters Cast time + cooldown x20 for AoE encounters
With all due respect, you really cannot make comparisons of at-wills without actually taking the whole of the class in consideration as well. Take a cleric for example, in your list of at-wills, thecleric's at will (lance of faith) seems like the best of all, yet i can say that most of our damage comes from our encounters. Infact, our at will presumably has longer cast time than is indicated on the tooltip. If you test rogues, barbs and rangers, nearly 50% of their damage is from their at-will whilst 5-10% of our damage is from our at-will. We presumably have the best at-will yet we do not use it for our dps. hmmm. In fact, i would love to see a cleric show me his dps with using at-wills as 50% of his dps, will truly be amusing.
So i really truly think that the best comparison is to do a 1min dummy test and compared with other classes, probably best to do with wiz (i know the wiz's will attack me on this) but you should only compare with the best class in ST dps.
Agree about that. Comparing my Dps on my alts: Hellbringer (formerly main)-Dreadnaught-Arcanist, it looks like this on live on a quick test, CA 100% up at boss dummy in Port Nyanzaru, running my best option on Hellbringer without taking into account that DtD and NPNM/ACC are situationally stronger. Dreadnaught and Wizard run the actually recommended Class feature as far as I can tell.
Hellbringer: 150k power 123k CA, CS 144.5% multiplier->5%, 3%, 2x3%, 2.5%,10% WC, 4,5% 30x SS = 31% (no RI stacks no Executioners gift), Hellfire Expertise not mentioned. 1. HoBx12, HR 1x in between (ACC+DC) -> 50k dps, 58% LC, 34% HoB, 8% HR 2. HoB12x, HR 1x (ACC+DtD) -> 21k dps 81% HoB, 16% HR, 2% LC ..less than 50% as before Hands up, who run ACC+DC at bosses all time?
Fighters-Dreadnaught : 113k power 92k CA, CS 87%, multiplier ->5%+2x3%+ 20% Vengeance+5% EV+ 5% HS, 4.5% Bronzewood=44,5% 3. Brazen Slash 12x/ Heavy Slash 1x refreshing (Momentum, End Vengeance) ->20,3k dps BS 88%, HS 12%
Arcanist: 120k power, 125k CA, CS 89.5% multiplier-> 5%+3%+2,5%+15% AMx10, 4,5% Feytouched= 30% buffs 4. Ray of frost+Storm Pillar to keep 10xAM stacks (Arcane Presence+ Storm Spell)->32k dps 29% SS, 37% RoF, 15%Chill, 9% Storm Pillar
If you go one step further and use Jannes damagecalculator to equalize the numbers by deviding with the applied damagemultiplier, you end up this, effectively some of those multiplier above are not additive for warlock and Wizard: 1. 50/6.8=7.35 (not of usage in general) 2. 21/6.8=3.08 (normal way to run At Wills) 3. 20,3/4.6=4.41 4. 32/5.38= 5.95
At max buffs (in theory) RI 25%/Executionres Gift average 10%) 1. 50x1.35/6.8=9.9 (the more valid number is like 50x1.2/6.8=8.8, since you run 2xRI average..if at all) 2. 21x1.35/6.8=4.17 (look above, 3.7) 3. 20,3/4.6=4.41 4. 32/5.38=5.95
I know this is not 100% exact, but that's how it may look like approximately. End of the line: Hellbringer is top dps with At Wills, if you use ACC+DC* on bosses. Hellbringer is at the bottom if you run DtD (5%dps) plus NPNM/ACC, wich is quite more common since you benefit from encounter more than from AT Will usage not only due to encounter having lower CD and you need to cast 4 of them in between. If the upcoming changes switch from multiplicative to additive and Hellbringer expertise is deleted -> 3.7/1.25 (-HExp)= 2.96 You end up dealing about half of what a CW will deal with his best At Wills slotted (if at all), comparing the output on a dummy.
In the end I don't think At Wills are from much impact on a Hellbringer anyway (actually it's <10% as far as I remember, where your dps is generated by encounter since you have less usage compared to other classes with longer CD's. I consider AT Wills in terms of dps pretty pointless for a Hellbringer atm, though being needed tools to generate sparks or to Curse by running ACC. Not that I would disagree about a needed buff same way.. but this won't change a thing, where a better spark generation and faster buffs would. The path needs options to buff up faster and lacks in terms of synergies between powers and feats/features. But these core problems will obviously stay untouched for the upcoming changes, fiddeling about magnitudes for and back, wich leads to the same bad setup of the class in the end, released in mod 16 i an unfinished sad state imo.
While I applaud the attempt at testing, im sorry but I need to point out some pretty big flaws with this experiment.
Firstly, your stats are not the same. not even close, this is going to totally throw of those results. power is very different on all 3 classes.
Secondly, the combat dummy in Chult has exceptionally high defence. more than 80k, ( I used 82.7k and this gave me full effectiveness), so unless all your classes have exactly the same Armour penetration as each other, OR at least 82k or more, this is going to totally change the result.=, they all have different weapon enchants, where's the weapon procs/effects?
Thirdly, Deadly curse isn't an at will buff, it has no impact at all on the amount of damage done by any at wills so isn't relevant as your test without it clearly puts it behind the wizard, and only slightly above the fighter ( who are also in a pretty HAMSTER state for dps right now)
and finally, the max buffs section.... Risky Investment is an encounter buff, so again, this will have zero impact on the dps of at wills.
so lets tackle the stats problem. im going to assume armour penetration is the same on all classes ( though I suspect its not)
the warlock is getting a (x2.5) power modifier. The Fighter is getting a (x2.13) power modifier, and the wizard is getting a (x2.2) power modifier
SO lets work backwards. warlock 21k divided by 2.5 is 8,400dps ( no power) Fighter - 20.3k divided by 2.13 is 9,530dps ( no power) Wizard 32k divided by 2.2 is 14,545dps ( no power)
Now we give them THE SAME power as the warlock
warlock - 8400 x 2.5 = 21,000 DPS fighter - 9530 x 2.5 = 23,825 DPS Wizard - 32k x 2.5 = 36,364 DPS
This now puts warlock at the bottom, colour me surprised. so ye testing is great, but please do it right or it just muddies the water with bad data
as for Deadly Curse, not only is this currently bugged anyway and is double proccing its only doing and extra 3% total damage ( if they fix it, it will be 1,5%) and it forces you to use ACC, meaning you cant use Dust to Dust. So simply swapping Deadly curse with Dust to Dust is a 2% overall dps increase, ( slightly more currently since it will multiply with other buffs)
Edit nevermind. they changed it to deal crit+CA damage. good to know, its still double proccing though
Warlocks just dont have any burst dps options, coupled with low magnitudes, slow, non synergistic mechanics and feats. Current core mechanics will consistently fail balancing passes against other dps classes as stats and gear improves, or in actual scaled content.
I really hope some solution or progress is made to counter the fundamental class mechanics issues, but as is, magnitude adjustments just wont be enough.
The current largest buff from ri, Si stacking in it's current state by design will never perform well against a majority of combat mechanics, short phases, stuns, fast groups, anything that slaps a soul puppet insta dead, etc.
In endgame content like tomm, during a majority of combat, si stacking will be limited to build up and actually benefit from, or impossible to even attain from aoe puppet death, meaning a garanteed damage deficit.
Thx, RI is encounter exclusively, forgot that. I know about that dummy, my chars have similar stats concerning offence, same that I did run that Janne calculator to equalize the outcome a bit. You fill in your offensive stats and under the line it tells you about the total buff of your damage. Deviding your damage by that number you can estimate the approximate performance, even running differents stats for power, crit and critseveritiy. About Weapon enchants I put that Fey at 4.5% same as Bronzewood, Vorpal is a 45%+ CS , it all runs into that bill more or less. https://jannenw.info/pages/mechanics16/stats In the sum it's about having low damageoutput with At Wills in a normal setup, but aside that you can deal top results with ACC+DC in case you have Combat Advantage all time. Despite that I know that ACC and DC are not ment to be feature for a singel target outload, but they do give the best results out of all other options on a singel target (100% CA provided). You land at LC doing about 16% and At Wills at 10%, equalizing or even topping your outcome with Kiling Flame. You might check it. That only works in theory where it is far more commmon to run NPNM+ xy in reality.
That the thing, I dunno if the dummies in stronghold are screwed up, or the chult one is, but I get Vastly different results for lesser curse,
Chult dummie was giving me about 17% lesser curse as total But the stronghold one was only 2% lesser cruse total.
I was expecting it to be lower but not this much, because of Demo set/executioners gift, but 15% difference? So I looked at the breakdown on the chult dummy , lesser curse hit 885 times on the stronghold dummie, only 258 times
exactly the same stats buffs gear everything, rotation, and over a 5minute period Very strange
I did no testing with different Weapon enchants, but some also do work with HoB more effective than other , Bilethorn to name , rememebr it procs 2x maybe a go for in mod 18 Aside all that, the path will not improve by all the changes wich lead to a nerf in the end, many mentioned it allready. Hellbringer as now will be a nogo in upcoming mods at least if you look at actual numbers, valid testing missing atm.
I Did a couple of hours testing last night when the Fixes went live on preview.
its not as bad as I feared it would be, but even with the magnitude changes I was still doing about 5% less than I currently do on live Hellfire ring is still bugged, which doesn't help, but that's only at best a 1% increase when it works fully Hadars grasp is actually doing less magnitude, it does 300 magnitude on preview with the extra second from curse consume, where as live its 262.5 + 25% from hellfire expertise, 319 magnitude, this doesn't help either, magnitudes shouldn't be less than live
The Soul Scorch buff is nice though, so is curse bite, thanks for that Fiery bolt still kinda sucks, there's no need for that 50% aoe penalty
If they every actually fix creeping death, or rework it, it will overtake executioners gift for sure. Ill do more testing later
And With all Due respect I think you have totally missed the point. Your example seems to have totally overlooked the fact that clerics use divinity for a lot of encounters meaning a lot of your abilities don't have a CD at all and the reason your at will damage is a low percentage is because you are using them MUCH LESS than everyone else as a result of this because that's not how you generate extra Divinity. NO other class has anything like this. When Our encounters are on CD.... the only thing we can do is use at wills, same with wizards, barbarians rogues ETC. Clerics are the odd one out having much less "time to fill" with at wills if you are using that particular build.
The reason Rangers At will percentage is so high because of flurry, which increases At Will damage by 100% and this is up all the time unless they HAMSTER up the rotation. The current warden build is going to use on average 15 encounters every minute and 2 dailies which takes about 13-15 seconds..... so for the other 45 seconds they are only casting at wills.
The reason barbarians At Will damage is high is during battle rage their at wills are doing 130% more damage, ( have the cast time and 15% buff and since their cooldowns are long they only get to use on average 13 encounters and 1 daily, which takes 9-10seconds. so the the remaining 50seconds all they have is at wills.
A warlock 4 encounters ( with soul scorch) so we get to use on average 25 encounters per minute and 1 daily which takes about 20seconds, BUT THATS STILL 40 seconds filled up with spamming at wills 60% of the time we are using at wills.
But really this is all pretty irrelevant anyway. wizards rogues and rangers are 25-30% ahead of clerics barbs warlocks and fighters. and to close the gap you have basically 3 options, increase buffs, increase Feats, or increase Magnitudes. or a combination of the 3.
and since warlock AT wills are significantly lower than everyone else, a simple and NOT OVERPOWERED way to make that smaller is buffing at wills up to 100m/s. will it erase the 25-30% gap? no, but it will knock it down to about 15-20% meaning less fiddling about with other things, (they want small changes...)
oh and as for the 1minute dummy test....warlocks are a damage overtime class. it takes 75 seconds to get up to full damage so that's a terrible idea
Sorry but i think i didn't portray my my point clearly in the first sentence of my previous comment.
First of all, dps cleric does use at-wills to generate divinity, that is one of the main ways you should regen div. if you do happen to see a dps cleric praying in the middle of combat for longer than 0.5sec, punch him for me plz. Secondly, we also use at-wills to do increased damage. So our at-wills are in the centre of build, without which we just can't function. But why do we then not use them as much? I'll explain later.
Second, we do not have CD's because we have divinity and so we are time gated by divinity instead of CD's. But let us jump to the point.
My simple point was that since other classes who presumably have much lower At-wills than cleric, but still happen to do most of their dps with their at-wills is as you said because of the buffs to their at-wills from their class paragon. A dps cleric does not have any such buff, but instead our class is full of buffs to divinity that indirectly increases our damage. So we just happen to benefit more from our encounters than at-wills.
Now i do not know anything about warlocks, but you guys work much similar to other classes than a dps cleric. If a 1min test doesnt work, do a 2min test but compare it with 2min test of another class. It's not the numbers that matter, it's the disparity in dps that matters and as i have been reiterating throughout my posts in here.
That the thing, I dunno if the dummies in stronghold are screwed up, or the chult one is, but I get Vastly different results for lesser curse,
Chult dummie was giving me about 17% lesser curse as total But the stronghold one was only 2% lesser cruse total.
I was expecting it to be lower but not this much, because of Demo set/executioners gift, but 15% difference? So I looked at the breakdown on the chult dummy , lesser curse hit 885 times on the stronghold dummie, only 258 times
exactly the same stats buffs gear everything, rotation, and over a 5minute period Very strange
Yh i can confirm that chult dummies do not give you any Demo set bonus (if dummies full health there) and there is at least a 15% dmg difference with other dummies.
Also while the increase to At will damage mostly is nice its still not enough. Every other class has at wills that do damage relative to its cast time, roughly 100 magnitude per second. some are even better...
So to match cast times to magnitudes should be more like
Eldritch Blast - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time Hellish rebuke - 70 Magnitude - 0.7sec cast time 17.5magnitude dot 35 magnitude Rebuke Hand of blight melee - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time Hand of blight Ranged - 65magnitude - 0.65 second cast time
I think you made a really good point, and these are great suggestions.
*made this comment in the patch notes thread but adding it here as well*
Great to see lock getting some attention.
Most of the attention is on HB but SW needs a little love too.
So far the soulweaver changes have been pretty nice but I think some things could be improved still.
Soul defiler - 1% of dmg dealt is returned as healing half of that to the team. ----- this should be increased to something more meaningful. As of now, it's often returning 1-9 hp per tick except on some bigger hit encounters or dailies, then im seeing 200 to maybe a few thousand. When players have 250k-700k hp it quickly becomes clear why this hardly makes a difference. On top of that, soulweavers aren't exactly topping DPS charts, especially since killing flames was moved to HB only. Maybe get rid of the "half of that to the team" bit and just make it 30% of dmg returned as healing to yourself AND the team. **changing it like this would also require adjustment to thief of life to prevent it from becoming overpowered.**
Fixing soul defiler would really give soulweaver an identity other than "warlock cleric" as it would allow a strong warlock to use more damaging abilities without sacrificing too much healing power. It would also make up for the warlock's lack of a serious panic heal.
Harrowstorm - Increase heal mag to 300 per tick, increase dmg mag to 150 per tick, increase soul spark cost from 3 to 5.
Consuming action - I think this just needs a complete rework or replacement
Soul sparks - increase total amount to 40.
nb4 anyone says "you just have to build properly" or "learn to play the class", I play a 25k+ soulweaver built for healing and have done all the content in the game. The class is very capable in the right hands and even is better than pally or cleric in some specific situations due to the fluidity of the soul spark meter. But there are still some really weak points.
nb4 anyone says "you just have to build properly" or "learn to play the class", I play a 25k+ soulweaver built for healing and have done all the content in the game. The class is very capable in the right hands and even is better than pally or cleric in some specific situations due to the fluidity of the soul spark meter. But there are still some really weak points.
It's entirely different coming from someone who actually plays the class.
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My sw would make good use of updated at-wills too. I spend even more time with at-wills as an sw than an hb.
This conversation has really made me appreciate how smoothly both paragon classes integrate at-wills. Furthermore, HB might be the only class where I actually have to choose between at-wills 'cause most of the time I can find a reason for using any of them. With the rest of the classes, it's a no-brainer.
I agree that Soul Defiler is pointless in its current form, but any meaningful improvement may leave us over-performing as healers as the top end, so I'm not sure what ought be done. I'm on PS4 (no Tower yet) and there isn't any content left that's challenging to heal anymore, and which would therefore make healing buffs desirable. Personally I'd rather we get a boost to our buffing/debuffing abilities so that we can contribute more to low scaled content where endgame healing is nigh-irrelevant.
Right now, I throw my Hellbringer gear onto my Soulweaver and burn trash with Harrowstorm/Curse Bite and a Lostmauth set in anything less than LOMM or Ravenloft, and so long as I don't mess with my comps, I'm *still* over-healing.
I still think a lot of the issue stems from the soul puppet, and its damage being over estimated in the design. and its true if you ignore combat advantage and Crit severity . it is a huge portion of our base damage, about 40%
At full output with class buffs ( no gear ) and feats and CD reduction, so 5 stacks SI basically the average magnitude output. so to be clear, just Magnitudes warlocks do about 21,000 magnitude per minute. arcanist about the same 20,800 + Chaos magic, bit hard to give that an average since the buff is random. and ranger warden is a bit behind doing about 20,000
So on the surface that looks fine, nice and close together, and the warlock seems to be in a good state. BUT crit severity and Combat advantage, totally throw that out the window.
that average 21000 magnitude, 11,400 is coming from at wills dailies and encounters, 9600 of that is coming from the soul puppet, which does not get combat advantage and old Crit severity. so if you ignore Crit severity for the moment, and just add the x2 combat advantage multiplier we get and assuming 100% uptime
41600 magnitude for the wizard, 40,000 for the ranger, and now only 32,400 magnitude for the warlock (11,400 x2+9600)
now we add in some crit severity, so, lets give everyone a base of 100%, warlock gets 10% more and ranger gets 130%. and assuming 50% crit that's gonna be roughly
Crit +CA hits+ CA only Hits (21000 x 2 x 2) + (21000 x 2) , 126,000 magnitude for the wizard + chaos Magic (20000 x 2 x 2.3) +(20000 x 2) 132.000 magnitude for the Ranger (11600 x 2 x 2.1) +11600 x 2) + ( 9600 x1.5) = 86,320 magnitude for the warlock
Now these are not exact figures by any means, and Combat advantage is rarely 100% uptime, and Crits are never a perfect 50% split, but I think it highlights very well the problem we have. Too much BASE damage is dependant on soul puppet, and not enough BASE damage from at wills encounters etc, so I think its contribution to over all damage is being vastly over estimated.
Personally, I kinda welcome the puppet nerf currently on preview, so its less detrimental if it dies or does something stupid, BUT ONLY if the BASE damage its lost is transferred into encounters dailies at wills or class buffs, so they scale with CA and Crit SEV
And yes I know fighters and Barbs are in an equally bad position but I play warlock and this is a warlock thread
It is nice to have the feeling that there is attention for the Warlock's plights, even though there is a significant chance we are just deluding ourselves and that attention will go back to its normal "Wait, we have a Warlock class???" level...
Since, as has been repeatedly stated by @noworries#8859, this is NOT a Warlock rebalancing, but instead just adjustments, I would be happy if we just do not lose any DPS as Hellbringer...
Does not seem like we are hitting that mark yet though, so I will request again that at the very very least we retain parity with the current DPS status on live. Quite a few classes look to gain significant amounts of damage from the formula changes due to the increased impact of crit severity. Is it really too much to ask Warlocks at least not lose any?
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It certainly looks and feels like it was designed for melee - it really is a satisfying melee - but the increased magnitude is for ranged attacks. Wish it was reversed.
That 7 looks suspiciously like an 8 to me... what do you guys think?
I'm almost 108% positive (that's one hundred seven in case anyone's confused).
Melee hand of blight attacks are 0.4 seconds, ranged is 0.65.
Hand of blight is missing from the updated list, I hope this is an oversite not intentional
With all due respect, you really cannot make comparisons of at-wills without actually taking the whole of the class in consideration as well. Take a cleric for example, in your list of at-wills, thecleric's at will (lance of faith) seems like the best of all, yet i can say that most of our damage comes from our encounters. Infact, our at will presumably has longer cast time than is indicated on the tooltip. If you test rogues, barbs and rangers, nearly 50% of their damage is from their at-will whilst 5-10% of our damage is from our at-will. We presumably have the best at-will yet we do not use it for our dps. hmmm. In fact, i would love to see a cleric show me his dps with using at-wills as 50% of his dps, will truly be amusing.
So i really truly think that the best comparison is to do a 1min dummy test and compared with other classes, probably best to do with wiz (i know the wiz's will attack me on this) but you should only compare with the best class in ST dps.
The reason Rangers At will percentage is so high because of flurry, which increases At Will damage by 100% and this is up all the time unless they HAMSTER up the rotation. The current warden build is going to use on average 15 encounters every minute and 2 dailies which takes about 13-15 seconds..... so for the other 45 seconds they are only casting at wills.
The reason barbarians At Will damage is high is during battle rage their at wills are doing 130% more damage, ( have the cast time and 15% buff and since their cooldowns are long they only get to use on average 13 encounters and 1 daily, which takes 9-10seconds. so the the remaining 50seconds all they have is at wills.
A warlock 4 encounters ( with soul scorch) so we get to use on average 25 encounters per minute and 1 daily which takes about 20seconds, BUT THATS STILL 40 seconds filled up with spamming at wills 60% of the time we are using at wills.
But really this is all pretty irrelevant anyway. wizards rogues and rangers are 25-30% ahead of clerics barbs warlocks and fighters. and to close the gap you have basically 3 options, increase buffs, increase Feats, or increase Magnitudes. or a combination of the 3.
and since warlock AT wills are significantly lower than everyone else, a simple and NOT OVERPOWERED way to make that smaller is buffing at wills up to 100m/s. will it erase the 25-30% gap? no, but it will knock it down to about 15-20% meaning less fiddling about with other things, (they want small changes...)
oh and as for the 1minute dummy test....warlocks are a damage overtime class. it takes 75 seconds to get up to full damage so that's a terrible idea
Agree about that. Comparing my Dps on my alts: Hellbringer (formerly main)-Dreadnaught-Arcanist, it looks like this on live on a quick test, CA 100% up at boss dummy in Port Nyanzaru, running my best option on Hellbringer without taking into account that DtD and NPNM/ACC are situationally stronger. Dreadnaught and Wizard run the actually recommended Class feature as far as I can tell.
Hellbringer: 150k power 123k CA, CS 144.5%
multiplier->5%, 3%, 2x3%, 2.5%,10% WC, 4,5% 30x SS = 31% (no RI stacks no Executioners gift), Hellfire Expertise not mentioned.
1. HoBx12, HR 1x in between (ACC+DC) -> 50k dps, 58% LC, 34% HoB, 8% HR
2. HoB12x, HR 1x (ACC+DtD) -> 21k dps 81% HoB, 16% HR, 2% LC ..less than 50% as before
Hands up, who run ACC+DC at bosses all time?
Fighters-Dreadnaught : 113k power 92k CA, CS 87%,
multiplier ->5%+2x3%+ 20% Vengeance+5% EV+ 5% HS, 4.5% Bronzewood=44,5%
3. Brazen Slash 12x/ Heavy Slash 1x refreshing (Momentum, End Vengeance) ->20,3k dps
BS 88%, HS 12%
Arcanist: 120k power, 125k CA, CS 89.5%
multiplier-> 5%+3%+2,5%+15% AMx10, 4,5% Feytouched= 30% buffs
4. Ray of frost+Storm Pillar to keep 10xAM stacks (Arcane Presence+ Storm Spell)->32k dps
29% SS, 37% RoF, 15%Chill, 9% Storm Pillar
If you go one step further and use Jannes damagecalculator to equalize the numbers by deviding with the applied damagemultiplier, you end up this, effectively some of those multiplier above are not additive for warlock and Wizard:
1. 50/6.8=7.35 (not of usage in general)
2. 21/6.8=3.08 (normal way to run At Wills)
3. 20,3/4.6=4.41
4. 32/5.38= 5.95
At max buffs (in theory) RI 25%/Executionres Gift average 10%)
1. 50x1.35/6.8=9.9 (the more valid number is like 50x1.2/6.8=8.8, since you run 2xRI average..if at all)
2. 21x1.35/6.8=4.17 (look above, 3.7)
3. 20,3/4.6=4.41
4. 32/5.38=5.95
I know this is not 100% exact, but that's how it may look like approximately.
End of the line:
Hellbringer is top dps with At Wills, if you use ACC+DC* on bosses.
Hellbringer is at the bottom if you run DtD (5%dps) plus NPNM/ACC, wich is quite more common since you benefit from encounter more than from AT Will usage not only due to encounter having lower CD and you need to cast 4 of them in between.
If the upcoming changes switch from multiplicative to additive and Hellbringer expertise is deleted -> 3.7/1.25 (-HExp)= 2.96
You end up dealing about half of what a CW will deal with his best At Wills slotted (if at all), comparing the output on a dummy.
In the end I don't think At Wills are from much impact on a Hellbringer anyway (actually it's <10% as far as I remember, where your dps is generated by encounter since you have less usage compared to other classes with longer CD's.
I consider AT Wills in terms of dps pretty pointless for a Hellbringer atm, though being needed tools to generate sparks or to Curse by running ACC.
Not that I would disagree about a needed buff same way.. but this won't change a thing, where a better spark generation and faster buffs would.
The path needs options to buff up faster and lacks in terms of synergies between powers and feats/features. But these core problems will obviously stay untouched for the upcoming changes, fiddeling about magnitudes for and back, wich leads to the same bad setup of the class in the end, released in mod 16 i an unfinished sad state imo.
Firstly, your stats are not the same. not even close, this is going to totally throw of those results. power is very different on all 3 classes.
Secondly, the combat dummy in Chult has exceptionally high defence. more than 80k, ( I used 82.7k and this gave me full effectiveness), so unless all your classes have exactly the same Armour penetration as each other, OR at least 82k or more, this is going to totally change the result.=, they all have different weapon enchants, where's the weapon procs/effects?
Thirdly, Deadly curse isn't an at will buff, it has no impact at all on the amount of damage done by any at wills so isn't relevant as your test without it clearly puts it behind the wizard, and only slightly above the fighter ( who are also in a pretty HAMSTER state for dps right now)
and finally, the max buffs section.... Risky Investment is an encounter buff, so again, this will have zero impact on the dps of at wills.
so lets tackle the stats problem. im going to assume armour penetration is the same on all classes ( though I suspect its not)
the warlock is getting a (x2.5) power modifier. The Fighter is getting a (x2.13) power modifier, and the wizard is getting a (x2.2) power modifier
SO lets work backwards.
warlock 21k divided by 2.5 is 8,400dps ( no power)
Fighter - 20.3k divided by 2.13 is 9,530dps ( no power)
Wizard 32k divided by 2.2 is 14,545dps ( no power)
Now we give them THE SAME power as the warlock
warlock - 8400 x 2.5 = 21,000 DPS
fighter - 9530 x 2.5 = 23,825 DPS
Wizard - 32k x 2.5 = 36,364 DPS
This now puts warlock at the bottom, colour me surprised. so ye testing is great, but please do it right or it just muddies the water with bad data
as for Deadly Curse, not only is this currently bugged anyway and is double proccing its only doing and extra 3% total damage ( if they fix it, it will be 1,5%) and it forces you to use ACC, meaning you cant use Dust to Dust. So simply swapping Deadly curse with Dust to Dust is a 2% overall dps increase, ( slightly more currently since it will multiply with other buffs)Edit nevermind. they changed it to deal crit+CA damage. good to know, its still double proccing though
I really hope some solution or progress is made to counter the fundamental class mechanics issues, but as is, magnitude adjustments just wont be enough.
The current largest buff from ri, Si stacking in it's current state by design will never perform well against a majority of combat mechanics, short phases, stuns, fast groups, anything that slaps a soul puppet insta dead, etc.
In endgame content like tomm, during a majority of combat, si stacking will be limited to build up and actually benefit from, or impossible to even attain from aoe puppet death, meaning a garanteed damage deficit.
I know about that dummy, my chars have similar stats concerning offence, same that I did run that Janne calculator to equalize the outcome a bit.
You fill in your offensive stats and under the line it tells you about the total buff of your damage. Deviding your damage by that number you can estimate the approximate performance, even running differents stats for power, crit and critseveritiy. About Weapon enchants I put that Fey at 4.5% same as Bronzewood, Vorpal is a 45%+ CS , it all runs into that bill more or less.
https://jannenw.info/pages/mechanics16/stats
In the sum it's about having low damageoutput with At Wills in a normal setup, but aside that you can deal top results with ACC+DC in case you have Combat Advantage all time.
Despite that I know that ACC and DC are not ment to be feature for a singel target outload, but they do give the best results out of all other options on a singel target (100% CA provided). You land at LC doing about 16% and At Wills at 10%, equalizing or even topping your outcome with Kiling Flame. You might check it.
That only works in theory where it is far more commmon to run NPNM+ xy in reality.
Chult dummie was giving me about 17% lesser curse as total
But the stronghold one was only 2% lesser cruse total.
I was expecting it to be lower but not this much, because of Demo set/executioners gift, but 15% difference?
So I looked at the breakdown
on the chult dummy , lesser curse hit 885 times
on the stronghold dummie, only 258 times
exactly the same stats buffs gear everything, rotation, and over a 5minute period
Very strange
Aside all that, the path will not improve by all the changes wich lead to a nerf in the end, many mentioned it allready. Hellbringer as now will be a nogo in upcoming mods at least if you look at actual numbers, valid testing missing atm.
its not as bad as I feared it would be, but even with the magnitude changes I was still doing about 5% less than I currently do on live
Hellfire ring is still bugged, which doesn't help, but that's only at best a 1% increase when it works fully
Hadars grasp is actually doing less magnitude, it does 300 magnitude on preview with the extra second from curse consume,
where as live its 262.5 + 25% from hellfire expertise, 319 magnitude, this doesn't help either, magnitudes shouldn't be less than live
The Soul Scorch buff is nice though, so is curse bite, thanks for that
Fiery bolt still kinda sucks, there's no need for that 50% aoe penalty
If they every actually fix creeping death, or rework it, it will overtake executioners gift for sure.
Ill do more testing later
First of all, dps cleric does use at-wills to generate divinity, that is one of the main ways you should regen div. if you do happen to see a dps cleric praying in the middle of combat for longer than 0.5sec, punch him for me plz. Secondly, we also use at-wills to do increased damage. So our at-wills are in the centre of build, without which we just can't function. But why do we then not use them as much? I'll explain later.
Second, we do not have CD's because we have divinity and so we are time gated by divinity instead of CD's. But let us jump to the point.
My simple point was that since other classes who presumably have much lower At-wills than cleric, but still happen to do most of their dps with their at-wills is as you said because of the buffs to their at-wills from their class paragon. A dps cleric does not have any such buff, but instead our class is full of buffs to divinity that indirectly increases our damage. So we just happen to benefit more from our encounters than at-wills.
Now i do not know anything about warlocks, but you guys work much similar to other classes than a dps cleric. If a 1min test doesnt work, do a 2min test but compare it with 2min test of another class. It's not the numbers that matter, it's the disparity in dps that matters and as i have been reiterating throughout my posts in here.
Great to see lock getting some attention.
Most of the attention is on HB but SW needs a little love too.
So far the soulweaver changes have been pretty nice but I think some things could be improved still.
Soul defiler - 1% of dmg dealt is returned as healing half of that to the team. ----- this should be increased to something more meaningful. As of now, it's often returning 1-9 hp per tick except on some bigger hit encounters or dailies, then im seeing 200 to maybe a few thousand. When players have 250k-700k hp it quickly becomes clear why this hardly makes a difference. On top of that, soulweavers aren't exactly topping DPS charts, especially since killing flames was moved to HB only. Maybe get rid of the "half of that to the team" bit and just make it 30% of dmg returned as healing to yourself AND the team. **changing it like this would also require adjustment to thief of life to prevent it from becoming overpowered.**
Fixing soul defiler would really give soulweaver an identity other than "warlock cleric" as it would allow a strong warlock to use more damaging abilities without sacrificing too much healing power. It would also make up for the warlock's lack of a serious panic heal.
Harrowstorm - Increase heal mag to 300 per tick, increase dmg mag to 150 per tick, increase soul spark cost from 3 to 5.
Consuming action - I think this just needs a complete rework or replacement
Soul sparks - increase total amount to 40.
nb4 anyone says "you just have to build properly" or "learn to play the class", I play a 25k+ soulweaver built for healing and have done all the content in the game. The class is very capable in the right hands and even is better than pally or cleric in some specific situations due to the fluidity of the soul spark meter. But there are still some really weak points.
(in ToMM)
Natsu and Ramesh were Warlocks.
-
My sw would make good use of updated at-wills too. I spend even more time with at-wills as an sw than an hb.
This conversation has really made me appreciate how smoothly both paragon classes integrate at-wills. Furthermore, HB might be the only class where I actually have to choose between at-wills 'cause most of the time I can find a reason for using any of them. With the rest of the classes, it's a no-brainer.
Right now, I throw my Hellbringer gear onto my Soulweaver and burn trash with Harrowstorm/Curse Bite and a Lostmauth set in anything less than LOMM or Ravenloft, and so long as I don't mess with my comps, I'm *still* over-healing.
At full output with class buffs ( no gear ) and feats and CD reduction, so 5 stacks SI basically the average magnitude output. so to be clear, just Magnitudes warlocks do about 21,000 magnitude per minute. arcanist about the same 20,800 + Chaos magic, bit hard to give that an average since the buff is random. and ranger warden is a bit behind doing about 20,000
So on the surface that looks fine, nice and close together, and the warlock seems to be in a good state. BUT crit severity and Combat advantage, totally throw that out the window.
that average 21000 magnitude, 11,400 is coming from at wills dailies and encounters, 9600 of that is coming from the soul puppet, which does not get combat advantage and old Crit severity. so if you ignore Crit severity for the moment, and just add the x2 combat advantage multiplier we get and assuming 100% uptime
41600 magnitude for the wizard, 40,000 for the ranger, and now only 32,400 magnitude for the warlock (11,400 x2+9600)
now we add in some crit severity, so, lets give everyone a base of 100%, warlock gets 10% more and ranger gets 130%. and assuming 50% crit that's gonna be roughly
Crit +CA hits+ CA only Hits
(21000 x 2 x 2) + (21000 x 2) , 126,000 magnitude for the wizard + chaos Magic
(20000 x 2 x 2.3) +(20000 x 2) 132.000 magnitude for the Ranger
(11600 x 2 x 2.1) +11600 x 2) + ( 9600 x1.5) = 86,320 magnitude for the warlock
Now these are not exact figures by any means, and Combat advantage is rarely 100% uptime, and Crits are never a perfect 50% split, but I think it highlights very well the problem we have. Too much BASE damage is dependant on soul puppet, and not enough BASE damage from at wills encounters etc, so I think its contribution to over all damage is being vastly over estimated.
Personally, I kinda welcome the puppet nerf currently on preview, so its less detrimental if it dies or does something stupid, BUT ONLY if the BASE damage its lost is transferred into encounters dailies at wills or class buffs, so they scale with CA and Crit SEV
And yes I know fighters and Barbs are in an equally bad position but I play warlock and this is a warlock thread
Since, as has been repeatedly stated by @noworries#8859, this is NOT a Warlock rebalancing, but instead just adjustments, I would be happy if we just do not lose any DPS as Hellbringer...
Does not seem like we are hitting that mark yet though, so I will request again that at the very very least we retain parity with the current DPS status on live. Quite a few classes look to gain significant amounts of damage from the formula changes due to the increased impact of crit severity. Is it really too much to ask Warlocks at least not lose any?