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Mod 19 Hellbringer changes
tempus86
Member Posts: 165 Arc User
Firstly, thankyou to the Devs, for making some, on the whole very welcome changes. Its clear that, while you may not of been very vocal or active in the warlock forums, at least you have been listening/reading and have addressed some of major issues with Hellbringer in the round of changes.
Without a proper set of patch notes I am not sure I have caught all the updates, but having spent several hours on preview these are the ones I have noticed.
At Wills
Eldritch blast - updated tooltip, and the 3rd hit has finally been fixed to deal double damage ( 70 magnitude), Great
Dark Spiral - updated tooltip, no functional change
Hellish Rebuke - no change
Hand of Blight - Hand of Blight Ranged attack no longer generates soulsparks, Not Good
Encounters
Arms of Hadar - no change
Vampiric Embrace - Updated Tooltip, Rework of the Curse Consume, doubles the amount healed instead of giving Temp Hitpoints, Great Change
Blades of the Vanquished - Totally reworked, and moved back to shared powers.
Now Deals damage instantly, and again every 3 seconds, lasts 6 seconds for a total of 3 ticks, 100 magnitude each
Curse Synergy reworked, now deals 50% more damage to targets effected with Curse - 450 Magnitude total
Can now be cast on party members
5000 deflect has been replaced with 5% damage reduction
Instantly goes on CD, instead of having a 6second "channel time", so much easier to reduce its CD via feats
CD increased by 6 seconds.
REALLY GOOD CHANGE
Hadars Grasp - no change
Dread Theft - no change
Fiery Bolt - no change
Curse Bite - Moved to Hellbringer powers, otherwise no change
Infernal Spheres - Totally reworked
Magnitude per sphere increased to 50 each
5000 defence changed to a 5% damage increase while active, lasts 10 seconds, or until 2nd cast is activated
Spheres no longer explode in a tiny 10' radius, instead the Seek out targets in a Cone in front of the caster dealing 350magnitude, split evenly between each target hit
Coooldown increased to 24seconds base ( im guessing), I have 18,4sec CD with 30% reduction)
Interesting rework, no opinion on it yet
Killing flames - no change
Hellfire Ring - no change
Dailies
Accursed Souls - no change
Brood of Hadar - reverted back to the original summoned monsters, 6 shadow imps/worm things, they attack once quickly and disappear, 150 magnitude each, total 1500 magnitude, Good change, dunno why it was messed with in the first place, the devil imps were rubbish.
Flames of Phlegethos - Moved to shared powers, - updated tooltip, otherwise no change, still rubbish
Gate of Hell - No change
Tyrannical Curse - moved to Hellbringer powers - No change,
I initially thought the split damage had been fixed, since I was attacking the dummies in PE, but when I moved to Chult, it was clear the split damage is still being deflected and is not scaling with armour penetration...…………...COME ON, this has been broken since Mod16 preview that's 16 months ago.
Mechanics
No changes I can tell, other than Soul Sparks now only give 0.15% bonus damage instead of 0.25%.
Don't really care about it personally, I think it should be removed entirely and put somewhere else, since its such an unstable buff.
Class Features
Dark Prayers and ACC moved to Hellbringer powers
Dust to dust and Flames of Empowerment moved to shared powers
Deadly curse doesn't double proc anymore
Dark Ones Blessing, slightly reworked, enemies Killed with curse grant 6 sparks and heal for 5% max hitpoints
Class Feats
Double scorch - Now increases double scorch initial hit by 9magnitude per spark spent, Amazing change, effectively doubles the damage of Soul scorch
Power of the Nine Hells - totally reworked, Encounter powers with no Curse Consume/Synergy now summon a Soul puppet, ( doesn't include Soul scorch). on the surface this is a really great change, getting stacks of soul investiture is certainly a lot quicker, but I have my doubts, (see below)
Creeping Death - can now deal Critical damage, great change
everything else is the same.
So, my Initial thoughts
The double scorch change is AMAZING, this alone effectively increases our overall damage by about 10%, Great change, leave it as it is or I will find you Liam Neeson style.....
Power of the Nine Hells - a decent enough change, its clear you are finally trying to address how poor soul investiture is to stack up, and it certainly makes it a lot easier to build up stacks quickly IF you use specific encounters, HOWEVER, it still doesn't address the fact that stacks drop off far too quickly in the first place, and phase transition longer than 15 seconds and they still fall off, ( which is pretty much all of them) Coupled with the fact that this doesn't actually increase our maximum output at all, and its counterpart Feat, is now REAAAAALLY good, I still cant see anyone seriously using the Feat in its current state.
Possible extra changes would be to
have dailies add 5 stacks of investiture,
increase Soul investment stacks to 10 maximum
and increase the duration of soulpuppet by 10 seconds ( 30sec total)
The BoVA change, on the whole is very cool, whoever came up with the idea of being able to cast it on party members is a genius. quite a significant damage increase as well, 450 maximum VS 325 on live. The fact that it instantly goes on CD now more than makes up for the fact the CD has been increased by 6 seconds, as its much easier to reduce this via soul scorch, no longer having to delay scorches is great.
My only real criticism is
that the tick damage intervals are very different, 0.5seconds per tick on LIVE vs 3second ticks on Preview, while I think 0.5seconds is too fast, and the damage per tick would be too low, I think a compromise at 1 second intervals would be better, ( 75magnitude per tick on curse targets) overall damage would stay the same.
The Infernal Spheres change is interesting, its pretty good damage when facing a single target, and the range is pretty big from what I can tell, but you do need to be targeting something to trigger it.
I am really not sold on the damage being evenly spilt between targets though, its really poor as an AoE attack.
The 5% damage buff, is kinda cool, since the CD does start straight away, ( its just hidden) so delaying the secondary attack for as long as possible to maintain the buff is interesting since it doesn't make the CD any longer, but because the CD is so long, I am not sure this is a decent option yet. needs more testing, but I think the split damage needs to be removed, otherwise its just a gimmicky single target power or a poor AOE. the 5% damage buff doesn't make up the difference.
Tyrannical Curse - please please please, can you fix this already?! its been nearly a year and a half, if fixing the split damage is really that much of a problem, then just remove it, and make it a better single target daily to compensate, maybe 1250 magnitude initial hit.
At wills on the whole, are in a good place, the only change I would like is to up the DoT damage on hellish rebuke increase from 10, to 15magnitude, as well as the No Pity No Mercy class feature changed to increase initial hit increased from 25% to 33% to match. very minor change, but would be great, ( pretty please with a cherry on top)
So on the whole, a pretty decent update, still with quite a lot of problems, Still some useless feats etc, but M19 warlock is definitely in a better spot than M18
Without a proper set of patch notes I am not sure I have caught all the updates, but having spent several hours on preview these are the ones I have noticed.
At Wills
Eldritch blast - updated tooltip, and the 3rd hit has finally been fixed to deal double damage ( 70 magnitude), Great
Dark Spiral - updated tooltip, no functional change
Hellish Rebuke - no change
Hand of Blight - Hand of Blight Ranged attack no longer generates soulsparks, Not Good
Encounters
Arms of Hadar - no change
Vampiric Embrace - Updated Tooltip, Rework of the Curse Consume, doubles the amount healed instead of giving Temp Hitpoints, Great Change
Blades of the Vanquished - Totally reworked, and moved back to shared powers.
Now Deals damage instantly, and again every 3 seconds, lasts 6 seconds for a total of 3 ticks, 100 magnitude each
Curse Synergy reworked, now deals 50% more damage to targets effected with Curse - 450 Magnitude total
Can now be cast on party members
5000 deflect has been replaced with 5% damage reduction
Instantly goes on CD, instead of having a 6second "channel time", so much easier to reduce its CD via feats
CD increased by 6 seconds.
REALLY GOOD CHANGE
Hadars Grasp - no change
Dread Theft - no change
Fiery Bolt - no change
Curse Bite - Moved to Hellbringer powers, otherwise no change
Infernal Spheres - Totally reworked
Magnitude per sphere increased to 50 each
5000 defence changed to a 5% damage increase while active, lasts 10 seconds, or until 2nd cast is activated
Spheres no longer explode in a tiny 10' radius, instead the Seek out targets in a Cone in front of the caster dealing 350magnitude, split evenly between each target hit
Coooldown increased to 24seconds base ( im guessing), I have 18,4sec CD with 30% reduction)
Interesting rework, no opinion on it yet
Killing flames - no change
Hellfire Ring - no change
Dailies
Accursed Souls - no change
Brood of Hadar - reverted back to the original summoned monsters, 6 shadow imps/worm things, they attack once quickly and disappear, 150 magnitude each, total 1500 magnitude, Good change, dunno why it was messed with in the first place, the devil imps were rubbish.
Flames of Phlegethos - Moved to shared powers, - updated tooltip, otherwise no change, still rubbish
Gate of Hell - No change
Tyrannical Curse - moved to Hellbringer powers - No change,
I initially thought the split damage had been fixed, since I was attacking the dummies in PE, but when I moved to Chult, it was clear the split damage is still being deflected and is not scaling with armour penetration...…………...COME ON, this has been broken since Mod16 preview that's 16 months ago.
Mechanics
No changes I can tell, other than Soul Sparks now only give 0.15% bonus damage instead of 0.25%.
Don't really care about it personally, I think it should be removed entirely and put somewhere else, since its such an unstable buff.
Class Features
Dark Prayers and ACC moved to Hellbringer powers
Dust to dust and Flames of Empowerment moved to shared powers
Deadly curse doesn't double proc anymore
Dark Ones Blessing, slightly reworked, enemies Killed with curse grant 6 sparks and heal for 5% max hitpoints
Class Feats
Double scorch - Now increases double scorch initial hit by 9magnitude per spark spent, Amazing change, effectively doubles the damage of Soul scorch
Power of the Nine Hells - totally reworked, Encounter powers with no Curse Consume/Synergy now summon a Soul puppet, ( doesn't include Soul scorch). on the surface this is a really great change, getting stacks of soul investiture is certainly a lot quicker, but I have my doubts, (see below)
Creeping Death - can now deal Critical damage, great change
everything else is the same.
So, my Initial thoughts
The double scorch change is AMAZING, this alone effectively increases our overall damage by about 10%, Great change, leave it as it is or I will find you Liam Neeson style.....
Power of the Nine Hells - a decent enough change, its clear you are finally trying to address how poor soul investiture is to stack up, and it certainly makes it a lot easier to build up stacks quickly IF you use specific encounters, HOWEVER, it still doesn't address the fact that stacks drop off far too quickly in the first place, and phase transition longer than 15 seconds and they still fall off, ( which is pretty much all of them) Coupled with the fact that this doesn't actually increase our maximum output at all, and its counterpart Feat, is now REAAAAALLY good, I still cant see anyone seriously using the Feat in its current state.
Possible extra changes would be to
have dailies add 5 stacks of investiture,
increase Soul investment stacks to 10 maximum
and increase the duration of soulpuppet by 10 seconds ( 30sec total)
The BoVA change, on the whole is very cool, whoever came up with the idea of being able to cast it on party members is a genius. quite a significant damage increase as well, 450 maximum VS 325 on live. The fact that it instantly goes on CD now more than makes up for the fact the CD has been increased by 6 seconds, as its much easier to reduce this via soul scorch, no longer having to delay scorches is great.
My only real criticism is
that the tick damage intervals are very different, 0.5seconds per tick on LIVE vs 3second ticks on Preview, while I think 0.5seconds is too fast, and the damage per tick would be too low, I think a compromise at 1 second intervals would be better, ( 75magnitude per tick on curse targets) overall damage would stay the same.
The Infernal Spheres change is interesting, its pretty good damage when facing a single target, and the range is pretty big from what I can tell, but you do need to be targeting something to trigger it.
I am really not sold on the damage being evenly spilt between targets though, its really poor as an AoE attack.
The 5% damage buff, is kinda cool, since the CD does start straight away, ( its just hidden) so delaying the secondary attack for as long as possible to maintain the buff is interesting since it doesn't make the CD any longer, but because the CD is so long, I am not sure this is a decent option yet. needs more testing, but I think the split damage needs to be removed, otherwise its just a gimmicky single target power or a poor AOE. the 5% damage buff doesn't make up the difference.
Tyrannical Curse - please please please, can you fix this already?! its been nearly a year and a half, if fixing the split damage is really that much of a problem, then just remove it, and make it a better single target daily to compensate, maybe 1250 magnitude initial hit.
At wills on the whole, are in a good place, the only change I would like is to up the DoT damage on hellish rebuke increase from 10, to 15magnitude, as well as the No Pity No Mercy class feature changed to increase initial hit increased from 25% to 33% to match. very minor change, but would be great, ( pretty please with a cherry on top)
So on the whole, a pretty decent update, still with quite a lot of problems, Still some useless feats etc, but M19 warlock is definitely in a better spot than M18
2
Comments
Some of the difference is can be attributed to the Lion Heart set being upgraded, but its still noticeably better than what I can currently do on live.
up it to, 270 base magnitude (405 with curse consume) and that should bring it more inline with other encounters
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
However.....
The Current build will not be changing at all, we will still be locked into using very specific feats/encounters etc, for best performance.
In essence, the only changes worth mentioning are,
Blade of vanquished armies
Double Scorch Feat
Creeping death now being able to Crit.
Everything else is just fluff, and has virtually zero impact at all.
So while the damage increase to the current build is a good thing, and could even do with some more tweaks, ( Hadars Grasp cough cough ) the changes offer nothing for build variety at all, in fact it just makes the gap even bigger, as currently on live at least hellfire ring is a decent alternative to blades, but is falling well behind now on preview
it continues to genarate a lot of soul sparks in preview ?