So, after just completing lair of the mad dragon for tales of old, and discovering yet another boss that doesn't generate soul sparks, instead of raging and throwing my PC out the window I decided to fall back on the old "how to make warlocks better" ideas.
Some of these I have suggested before, some are new, and some are variations
first off, since it seems so hard for the devs to fix all these bosses/encounters/mobs to actually generate sparks correctly, just remove that entirely, and have it simply...
you gain 3 soul sparks per second when ever you enter combat and lose 3 sparks per second whenever you leave combat. problem solved.
Class mechanics
Soul Investiture - Decrease to 3 stacks instead of 5, lasting 30 seconds up from 20 seconds
Lesser Curse - Deals 20magnitude instantly and a further 20 magnitude every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, 100 magnitude total
Soul Scorch - Summons a soul puppet, or grants a stack of soul investiture if a puppet is already active
Curse consume/Curse synergy - Remove curse consume and replace with synergy
Soul puppet- now lasts 30seconds up from 20
At wills
Eldritch Blast - 30 magnitude the final hit deals 60 magnitude damage to all targets within 15", up from 10"
Dark Spiral Charge - 50 magnitude base damage plus 50 magnitude per charge, Max 200magnitude - you gain 1 charge each time you gain a stack of Soul Investiture
Hellish rebuke - 60 magnitude initial hit, 20 magnitude DoT, 2 per second , rebuke deals 30 magnitude to attackers
Hand of Blight Melee - Deals 35 magnitude to the main target and 15 magnitude to targets within 10"
Hand of Blight Ranged - Deals 50 magnitude
Encounters
Arms of Hadar - Deals 125 magnitude damage, 2 second knock down. 8 second Cooldown. Each use increases magnitude by 25 and cooldown by 2 seconds up to 5 times. maximum magnitude 250, maximum cooldown, 18seconds. stacks last for 10 seconds
Vampiric Embrace - Deals 300 magnitude damage, up from 250. Curse Consume is no replaced with Curse Synergy, Effect remains the same, Converts 50% of the damage done to temp hit points.
Blades of the Vanquished Armies - Deals 25 magnitude per blade, 11 hits( 275 total) Curse synergy throws an additional blade for 25 magnitude to cursed targets within 20" every 3 seconds
Hadars Grasp - Deals 300 magnitude (75every 0.5seconds). Curse Consume replaced with Curse Synergy. targets effected by lesser curse are held for a further 1 second and take an additional 75 per 0.5second held. 450 magnitude total. 20 second cooldown
Curse Bite - Requires Lesser Curse to activate - Deals 300 magnitude damage. 1 charge. 8 second CD. is now effected by CD reduction, Counts as a Curse Synergy
Fiery Bolt - Deals 200 magnitude to all enemies within 15" of primary target, up from 175.
Infernal Spheres - grants 6 spheres which surround the warlock. when taking damage, attacks take 75 magnitude damage. Can consume all remaining spheres causing them to explode for 275magnitude damage to all enemies within 15" regardless of how many spheres remain. As long as at least 1 Sphere remains, replenish 1 additional sphere every 5 seconds.
Killing Flames - 700 magnitude. No longer deals damage based on targets health.
Dreadtheft - Deals 400 magnitude, Curse Synergy. Each time an enemy effected by lesser curse takes damage from Dreadtheft the Cooldown of Dreadtheft is decreases by 0.5seconds
Hellfire Ring - Enemies who enter the ring after it has been placed are rooted for 2 seconds, Does not effect Bosses
Dailes
Accursed Souls - deals 900 magnitude. Summons a soul puppet and grants 3 stacks of Soul investiture
Brood of Hadar - not really sure about this one. As its very inconsistent right now and the tooltip doesn't full explain how it works. Sometimes the horrors deal additional melee or ranged damage, for totally different magnitudes, and do not even bite before they die.
Tyrannical Curse - Deals 1000 magnitude irresistible damage, grants you 15% increased damage to the target for the duration, and all damage you deal to the target Deals 20% damage to all enemies within 30", Lasts 20 seconds.
Gates of Hell - 750 magnitude damage. Enemies killed by the gate grant 100 action points each, to a maximum of 500.
Flames of Phlegethos - Deals 1500 magnitude over 5 seconds to primary target and 20% to all targets within 15"
Feats
Double Scorch - Soul scorch can now consume up to 30 soulsparks, dealing up to 270 magnitude damage, and an additional 270magnitude to all targets within 15" over 8 seconds. in Addition, using Soul scorch with 30 sparks Grants you a 5% damage buff which lasts 15 seconds.
Power of the Nine Hells - Your Daily powers now grant you 20% of your action points over 20 seconds
Parting Blasphemy - your Curse Synergies now Deal 80 magnitude damage each time they are triggered. in the case of Dreadtheft this can only happen once per target every 3 seconds
Warlocks Curse - you deal 15% more damage to targets effected by lesser Curse
Risky Investment - Soul investiture grants 5% damage to all attacks per stack, max 15%
Soul Desecration - Your puppet no longer disappears after 30 seconds. The puppets Base damage is increased by 100%, all enemies within 10" of the puppet take 15 magnitude damage every second
Creeping Death - Your encounter powers add Creeping Death to the target dealing 15 magnitude every second for 5 seconds. stacks up to 5 times, When reaching 5 stacks your next encounter consumes all 5 stacks to deal an additional 150 magnitude.
Executioners Gift - You Deal 20% more damage to targets below 50% health
Soul Spark Recovery - for every 6 soul sparks spent, reduce Encounter Cooldowns by 1 second. In addition you gain 1 soul spark per second when not in combat.
Wrathful Souls - Your Cooldowns are reduced by 0.5seconds each time your Soul Puppet attacks. In addition, if your soul puppet is killed, you gain 15% increased damage for 10 seconds
Class Features
Dark Prayers - When ever a target effected by lesser curse Dies you summon a soul puppet ( now works with curse bite)
Dark Ones Blessing - When a target effected by lesser curse dies, you are healed for 1% of maximum hit points and gain 5 action points.
Shadow walk - Increases movement speed by 10% and Stamina regeneration by 10%
All Consuming Curse - your at wills apply lesser curse to the target.
Deadly Curse - lesser curse Does 50% more damage
Flames of Empowerment - Killing Flames now deals an additional 70 magnitude to targets within 15" and applies lesser curse to all targets hit.
Dust to Dust - Increases AoE damage by 10%
No pity No Mercy - increases at will damage by 15%, Critical Hits grant combat advantage for 5 seconds.
Well that was fun, I doubt anything will change anytime soon, but a warlock can dream....
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Comments
Personally I'm really thankful for all the players that keeps posting, askin for fixes/rebuild, because the mechanic as warlocks working at moment is just plained wrong imo (sorry, not meant to be offensive this time!). My english is HAMSTER, so bear in mind that I cant explain clearly whats on my mind perfectly.
I'm not goin through and repeat myself and others who posted in this theme in the past 8 months (since mod 16 arrived), but I guess more then half of the warlock community agrees that this whole curse removing system should be reworked.
Our strongness is our weakness, the damage over time, which means that we need time (which we dont have many) and follow a rotation to build up our full damaging potential (no serious burst damage capability at all from the start of the fight, and as much I remember, we never really had that thou...), but in the current version of the game state there isnt much place where you could build up your damage cuz either the mobs are lvl 70 and die like flies from 1 encounter in unscaled content, or you getting scaled down heavily (worst is that the healing part struggles in scaled content even with 63% outgoing healing).
So maybe time is our outmost enemy? We should make Time into our friend.
Soulspark generating still doesn't work properly, many-many things (Dragons in Well of Dragons, Manticore in ME's, and maybe the Crabs too, etc, etc) doesn't give any sparks while hitting them with Essence Defiler. Soul spark consumption should be decreased, magnitude increase on heals and hots should be considered and finding the place of a souldweaver warlock in the line.
Paladins givin hundreds of thousands of temp hp as shield, Im okay with that.
Clerics burst heal is nearly double the amount and can be spammed for a lil time if its in the right hands, Im okay with that.
Now what has a "Warlock healer"? No temp hp, no high burst heal, we have Heals over Time. Where is that handy, in which content? Icewind dale? 2-3k hots in unscaled content? Now I know that many warlocks doesn't like and doesn't even use the healing part at all - which can be also accepted -, so I'll stop it here and brainstorm a bit about the dps path.
Since the team decided that Warlock is gonna be a hybrid class (heal and dps, and not a pure double dps class), the dps path feat table came out with a tweaked mix of the previous fury and damnation tree. In this current form its not okay. We have a bit of this, a bit of that, which arent in sync and shading the other.
Either you decide to build the dps character to keep the summoned Soul Puppet (having Soul Desecration) all the time, but then u miss Risky investment (20% damage buff at most) feat, or u build your char around the always slotted Dark Prayers class feature. Problem is with them, that all of the above requires you to kill 5-6 mobs while lesser curse is active and wont get consumed before they die to get max damage buff out the situation.
I was thinking on a feat table (which of course can/will be argued, sure, nobody can create a perfect option), but I think it could be made (with whatever small dev team) and would be acceptable for more players. I risk to say that it would maybe bring some players back to abbandoned the class and switched to something other.
1st line of the feat table:
Which focuses on using an always active, soul puppet (which defensive stats should be equal with the summoners stats!), which should get back via feats the old spiritfire aura (does weapon damage every x sec for enemies around it). The puppet should split curse with his aura on the damaged enemies, reduce incomming damage (by 5% not more) while summoned for party members, and add a little controll (increased threat generation, draws aggro, interrupts, knockdowns, paralyzes for a short time on non controll immun mobs), and increase the warlocks damage by 5-10% on capstone. Guess I mentioned enough options to fill up 5 feats for a "Puppetmaster Warlock". With these feats we could get rid of the timeframe in which you have to build up the entire % damage bonus via soul investiture and no need to kill x mobs with active lesser curse to reach full damage potential for x secs (which is gone before you would reach the next encounter), you have it right there with the active and a bit tankier soul puppet.
2nd line:
Which focuses on curses and dont relies on active Puppet (more like a single targeter, or a "glass cannon"). Curse should not be consumed, curse should be applied by all spells (at wills, encounters, dailies), using any of the powers on enemies spreads the curse on creatures around the main target within a certain distance, adds combat advantage for x second vs cursed enemies, curse should refresh the previous curse in time duration and stack and by the 2nd stacks it should auto apply creeping death for additional damage, which lasts for 8 secs. (Cursed enemies should take more damage and as target's health diminishes as you deal more damage is already implemented and working!) On capstone something which helps a bit with burst damage, like wizards capstone with smolder or the next hit of your x, y spell does more damage while creeping death active. This build up would spare us time aswell and could bring Warlocks more in line with other dps classes.
As it stands now we all have to agree that warlocks are with atleast one step behind of every other dps classes. We need to apply lesser curse to debuff enemies, then need it active to reach further damage buffs, plus we need to kill things with active curses to reach the highest damage buffs. We have this prerequisite, to apply curse, which should go smoother, faster. Maybe thats not one step now, rather 2... And buffs wont last long enough to get into the next encounter while they active.
So my opinion in short (even if nobody asked for it), with all respect to Tempus and the other fellow Warlocks out there, before touching the magnitues (IF it should be at all), magnitude increase should only happen on dps parth after the feat table has been brought more in sync/line with each other and cleared out.
In those cases I'd be totally content if we got sparks by consuming the health of our teammates instead - or heck, just the wizards in the group.