It was said in the October bugfix thread that Tyrannical Curse wasn't supposed to trigger it's curse consume effect, since you actually don't consume the curse.
So to solve this problem, what about making it a Curse Synergy instead ?
Spamming tab between each Soul Scorch is a really clunky mechanic and if you suffer a bit from lag, either you don' the see your curse on the enemy, either you cancel it by casting Soul Scorch.
So this one was a bit interesting. While I was fixing something with Soul Scorch, I actually thought it would cool to see it as a Curse Synergy (instead of a consume). I will say that it feels really good to just chain 5 Soul Scorches into an enemy, but it is also quite strong. Along with that, there is some gameplay around applying and removing curses, such as Parting Blasphemy and Deadly Curse. While these aren't currently the strongest parts of the Scourge Warlock kit, they do offer a more complex playstyle and I could see more interesting mechanics around curse consumption working well, if we were to change these.
To touch on the part about lag, I too have noticed some issues with cursing and then Soul Scorching on live (when you're doing it multiple times in a row). Something that helped me get used to the timing was holding a movement key, while casting Soul Scorch, and mashing tab until I was able to move. I believe Soul Scorch has a higher queue priority than Warlock's Curse, so you could technically interrupt your tab mechanic if you're hitting both keys quickly right when the previous Soul Scorch is ending its animation.
> @balanced#2849 said: > Then I wanted to talk about Soul Scorch. > > It was said in the October bugfix thread that Tyrannical Curse wasn't supposed to trigger it's curse consume effect, since you actually don't consume the curse. > > So to solve this problem, what about making it a Curse Synergy instead ? > > Spamming tab between each Soul Scorch is a really clunky mechanic and if you suffer a bit from lag, either you don' the see your curse on the enemy, either you cancel it by casting Soul Scorch. > > > So this one was a bit interesting. While I was fixing something with Soul Scorch, I actually thought it would cool to see it as a Curse Synergy (instead of a consume). I will say that it feels really good to just chain 5 Soul Scorches into an enemy, but it is also quite strong. Along with that, there is some gameplay around applying and removing curses, such as Parting Blasphemy and Deadly Curse. While these aren't currently the strongest parts of the Scourge Warlock kit, they do offer a more complex playstyle and I could see more interesting mechanics around curse consumption working well, if we were to change these. > > To touch on the part about lag, I too have noticed some issues with cursing and then Soul Scorching on live (when you're doing it multiple times in a row). Something that helped me get used to the timing was holding a movement key, while casting Soul Scorch, and mashing tab until I was able to move. I believe Soul Scorch has a higher queue priority than Warlock's Curse, so you could technically interrupt your tab mechanic if you're hitting both keys quickly right when the previous Soul Scorch is ending its animation.
If i remember correctly we were able to cancel the tab animation back in mod 9 which helped alot since i could tab and while the animation was playing u could go on with Soul scorce whereas now u dont get the curse on the enemy when u cancel it. It would be super cool if you could bring that back or maybe smth similar. This wouldnt be as fast as a curse synergy but still speed us up by like 25%
@balanced#2849 Like it was pointed out on other threads such as bugtober and here as well, the damage of Pillar of Power is extremely low, it deals sub at-will damage, any chance you can tweak it so each one of its fifteen (15) ticks deal the same damage as the first tick of Hellish Rebuke? That would be a very good change as PoP damage is not slightly underpowered, it is hardcore low.
Like it has been pointed out since the class got released, the cooldowns and casting times are very long, hopefully that can be addressed when possible.
To touch on the first point, I have seen a good amount of people wanting the damage of Pillar of Power buffed, but I've been hesitant to change it. I could see some small tweaks in the future, but Pillar of Power itself is already quite strong. To me, the damage it does is a bonus on top of the other effects that PoP gives, though I agree it's very low. This is something that I will keep an eye on for future changes (later than M13)!
As for animations and casting times, these are things that we would need some animation work on and it's a hefty task to redo a bunch of them. I do feel for the very long ones (like Gates of Hell) since the casting time feels sooooooo long. Unfortunately, if we were to end up changing them it would probably be for a rework-level pass, but I do recognize it can be a problem in our fast-paced, splat dodging, end-game.
So this one was a bit interesting. While I was fixing something with Soul Scorch, I actually thought it would cool to see it as a Curse Synergy (instead of a consume). I will say that it feels really good to just chain 5 Soul Scorches into an enemy, but it is also quite strong. Along with that, there is some gameplay around applying and removing curses, such as Parting Blasphemy and Deadly Curse. While these aren't currently the strongest parts of the Scourge Warlock kit, they do offer a more complex playstyle and I could see more interesting mechanics around curse consumption working well, if we were to change these.
To touch on the part about lag, I too have noticed some issues with cursing and then Soul Scorching on live (when you're doing it multiple times in a row). Something that helped me get used to the timing was holding a movement key, while casting Soul Scorch, and mashing tab until I was able to move. I believe Soul Scorch has a higher queue priority than Warlock's Curse, so you could technically interrupt your tab mechanic if you're hitting both keys quickly right when the previous Soul Scorch is ending its animation.
Glad to see that you are working on it in this way !
For the trick with the movement key, yes, that's what i tried to do but i realized that it is just not possible to play like this. By moving continuously, you take the risk of stepping into the red zones (like on ToNG / MSVA last boss) or falling (on the 2nd boss of FBI / MSp) so, if you're going to keep the Curse Consume effect, no problem but make the Warlock's Curse unable to be interrupted (except by dodging) please !
And then, if you're going to keep it because of Deadle Curse and Parting Blasphemy, you'll have to buff a lot these ones because they are really bad right now... Deadly Curse will be even worst than it is atm since we won't use Hadar's Grasp anymore (Feytouched won't be multi-proccing on it) and that was the only way it could've been played. For Parting Blasphemy, it's even more difficult because it is bugged and deal 0 damage half of the time. Actually, since mod 4, i always tought these ones needed a complete rework and i was even more convinced on mod 10 when you changed Dreadtheft Curse Consume into Curse synergy, to be honest.
Finally, i wrote all of this by thinking about single target content but making Soul Scorch impossible to spam will be an overall nerf in aoe. I don't mind at all if you give us counterparts ! (Shorter cast times / cooldowns, like every other SW is asking )
But no matter what you will make, i trust you and can't wait to test all of this !
> @balanced#2849 said: > @balanced#2849 > Like it was pointed out on other threads such as bugtober and here as well, the damage of Pillar of Power is extremely low, it deals sub at-will damage, any chance you can tweak it so each one of its fifteen (15) ticks deal the same damage as the first tick of Hellish Rebuke? That would be a very good change as PoP damage is not slightly underpowered, it is hardcore low. > > Like it has been pointed out since the class got released, the cooldowns and casting times are very long, hopefully that can be addressed when possible. > > To touch on the first point, I have seen a good amount of people wanting the damage of Pillar of Power buffed, but I've been hesitant to change it. I could see some small tweaks in the future, but Pillar of Power itself is already quite strong. To me, the damage it does is a bonus on top of the other effects that PoP gives, though I agree it's very low. This is something that I will keep an eye on for future changes (later than M13)! > > As for animations and casting times, these are things that we would need some animation work on and it's a hefty task to redo a bunch of them. I do feel for the very long ones (like Gates of Hell) since the casting time feels sooooooo long. Unfortunately, if we were to end up changing them it would probably be for a rework-level pass, but I do recognize it can be a problem in our fast-paced, splat dodging, end-game.
Or perhaps you could increase the dps boost from pillar for both the SW and allies? If you compare it to say longstrider's shot it's lower (especially if you consider that a good ranger in a good group can keep the bonus up very well) and the superior personal damage of HR (so HR > SW for a group) you'll see it is reasonable to ask for a tweak to it as it's so low, please, let Pillar of Power have damage on encounter power or Hellish Rebuke level
If SW dps was on par to that of other damage dealers I could see why you'd be hesitant on increasing PoP damage but that is not the case so PoP having its damage on encounter power or Hellish Rebuke level would help the class be a little less behind, please consider that Depending on classes one runs with, it is generally agreed SW dps is 20% - 40% lower than that of other damage dealer classes so increasing PoP damage is not overpowered or unreasonable but necessary
Cooldowns and casting times need to ve looked at indeed
> @balanced#2849 said: > @balanced#2849 > Like it was pointed out on other threads such as bugtober and here as well, the damage of Pillar of Power is extremely low, it deals sub at-will damage, any chance you can tweak it so each one of its fifteen (15) ticks deal the same damage as the first tick of Hellish Rebuke? That would be a very good change as PoP damage is not slightly underpowered, it is hardcore low. > > Like it has been pointed out since the class got released, the cooldowns and casting times are very long, hopefully that can be addressed when possible. > > To touch on the first point, I have seen a good amount of people wanting the damage of Pillar of Power buffed, but I've been hesitant to change it. I could see some small tweaks in the future, but Pillar of Power itself is already quite strong. To me, the damage it does is a bonus on top of the other effects that PoP gives, though I agree it's very low. This is something that I will keep an eye on for future changes (later than M13)! > > As for animations and casting times, these are things that we would need some animation work on and it's a hefty task to redo a bunch of them. I do feel for the very long ones (like Gates of Hell) since the casting time feels sooooooo long. Unfortunately, if we were to end up changing them it would probably be for a rework-level pass, but I do recognize it can be a problem in our fast-paced, splat dodging, end-game.
The buff to pillar of power that many people wanted was because of buffs like hidden daggers and icey terrain are very good self buffs that dont help others (our is a grp buff so doesnt help fury's but amazing for temptation) and deals good damage, as hellbringer its a must have power but deals very little damage, with the owlbear cub we had a very good source of aoe and more burst damage even then we werent overpowered just average in terms of dps, our animations our slow and we're a dot class for dps so buffing pillar of power would help our dps (plz note that with the dread and pop beginning to crit u might not want to buff the damage too much, but for an encounter to deal less than an at will isnt ideal, if i remember right our weapom damage is the same as a dc)
It was said in the October bugfix thread that Tyrannical Curse wasn't supposed to trigger it's curse consume effect, since you actually don't consume the curse.
So to solve this problem, what about making it a Curse Synergy instead ?
Spamming tab between each Soul Scorch is a really clunky mechanic and if you suffer a bit from lag, either you don' the see your curse on the enemy, either you cancel it by casting Soul Scorch.
To touch on the part about lag, I too have noticed some issues with cursing and then Soul Scorching on live (when you're doing it multiple times in a row). Something that helped me get used to the timing was holding a movement key, while casting Soul Scorch, and mashing tab until I was able to move. I believe Soul Scorch has a higher queue priority than Warlock's Curse, so you could technically interrupt your tab mechanic if you're hitting both keys quickly right when the previous Soul Scorch is ending its animation.
I don't really see lag as a major issue, unless there is packet loss involved. Regardless of your latency, the order of your actions is still the same. Curse, soul scorch, curse, soul scorch, curse, soul scorch. Lag does not inherently make this impossible. Yes, it can make it a little more difficult, which is why I watch the enemy buff bar instead of the curse icon above their head, but lag does not make your curse not take effect, unless you're losing packets, at least, not in my experience. As lag is a problem not unique to class, I don't feel that removing a skill based aspect of a class to accommodate lag is the right move to do. As with anything in an MMO, the players learn to adapt. How well you adapt is a true measure of your skill. I, for one, can count on one hand the number of times I have died on second boss in mSP due to having to animation cancel with movement. With proper planning and timing, as well as arena awareness, this should not be an issue. The times I do fall off are when I'm not paying attention, or the (exceedingly rare) times the lag is so bad that I see the hazard circle after the boss jumps. Even so this is where skill comes in. Players should learn to watch boss animations, not rely on the game to telegraph where and when enemies attack. Bosses, especially, tend to follow a very specific rotation that a practiced player can learn and adapt to, without relying on the splats. In times of bad lag, I preemptively dodge, a skill that has taken many, many runs to master, but it is just that, a skill. SW are not the only ones that have to animation cancel by dodging or moving, so SW should not be tweaked to make them easier to play.
SW as a whole community have a problem, and I'm probably going to get a lot of hate from this. SW are indeed the lowest DPS at endgame, lower even than TR and GF. Yeah, that sucks, I will be the first to admit that. However I do not expect the game to be made easier for me just because I can't get the numbers I want. Scourge Warlock got made a harder class to play with the damnation fix, and that's when the negativity in the SW community started. Sure, our DPS took a hit, but you know what? I was still higher DPS than 95% of the people I ran with. The same story is still true. I can comfortably solo DPS ToNG with your standard buff party, or even just one DC. I'm not trying to boast about my own DPS because I know there are others who can do more than me, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it is very, very possible to deal massive, and, indeed, competitive DPS as an SW. Sure, are you going to beat a BiS GWF or HR? Of course not, but you can certainly put a large number of the average player to shame.
SW has always been, in my experience, the class with the least amount of community knowledge and support to back it up, and that has given rise to myriad problems, massive dissatisfaction for the class, and proposed "fixes" that remove the skill it takes to play the class. The best example I can give regarding the utter lack of information regarding SW, was back when the Lostmauth set was so good. It was the general consensus that Lostie was the best for SW, but it wasn't. A properly built SW running just the Black Ice Belt was better for SW than Lostmauth was.
Even so. The proposed changes for SW are good, and solid, and I for one would vastly prefer the Devs to tackle the issue of SW DPS slowly, rather than make a large, sweeping change. It is far better to make these changes will small steps, as the Lostmauth nerf would attest. I also would much rather the Devs make small improvements to our DPS, and keep the large degree of skill required to play SW, than for them to make it easy to play and be amazing DPS. If I wanted an easy class to play, I'd play a GWF or a paladin.
It was said in the October bugfix thread that Tyrannical Curse wasn't supposed to trigger it's curse consume effect, since you actually don't consume the curse.
So to solve this problem, what about making it a Curse Synergy instead ?
Spamming tab between each Soul Scorch is a really clunky mechanic and if you suffer a bit from lag, either you don' the see your curse on the enemy, either you cancel it by casting Soul Scorch.
So this one was a bit interesting. While I was fixing something with Soul Scorch, I actually thought it would cool to see it as a Curse Synergy (instead of a consume). I will say that it feels really good to just chain 5 Soul Scorches into an enemy, but it is also quite strong. Along with that, there is some gameplay around applying and removing curses, such as Parting Blasphemy and Deadly Curse. While these aren't currently the strongest parts of the Scourge Warlock kit, they do offer a more complex playstyle and I could see more interesting mechanics around curse consumption working well, if we were to change these.
To touch on the part about lag, I too have noticed some issues with cursing and then Soul Scorching on live (when you're doing it multiple times in a row). Something that helped me get used to the timing was holding a movement key, while casting Soul Scorch, and mashing tab until I was able to move. I believe Soul Scorch has a higher queue priority than Warlock's Curse, so you could technically interrupt your tab mechanic if you're hitting both keys quickly right when the previous Soul Scorch is ending its animation.
About curse consume... That mechanic was nearly deleted since last reworks and I am not sad about it. Atm noone uses Parting Blasphemy in his build. The benefit is near zero because:
1. that damage seems to be unbuffed weapondamage ? leading to 0,0xy% overall dps, even before curse consume-effects were nearly extinguished the dps was near not measurable.
2. there are only few consuming powers like: a. vampiric embrance (not used, to weak) b. Wraith Shadow (not used, to weak and broken) and c. Hadar grasp (doesn´t multiproc Feytouched anymore?), I did not use it since... long in PVE, maybe from use in PVP, but it is inferior to Warlock Bargain and has an ultra long CD d. Soul Scorch, the only curse consuming power atm, wich is from interest.
Soul Scorch is the only viable Curse Consuming power. It is really hard to chain those "tab-SS-tab-SS-tab-tab-tab" .... "curse doesn´t show up, does it?", tbh it is a lackluster for that build and allways was. No clue if that WC was fixed in a negative way, but even in mod 4/5/6 I did not like that mechanic at all. WC is far too "unhandy" for a consume effect and to work arround it in a fast follow-up of "keyboard-commands".
When playing Soulbinder it is like that: pop ghosts, cast BoVa build your sparks, few swings of Essence defiler and than ... TAB- wait- SS- wait- Tab -wait- SS- wait... somehow like learning to type his name on the keyboard for the first time. You have to slow down to get that 80% Dot running. If it was a curse synergy effect it would be a relief, maybe strong, but hey it has to be strong because Soulbinder is our "max-dps-spec" , has no buffs and it is impossible to compete vs GWF atm. The benefit from Creeping Death 75% and procs of buffed weapondamage will be aproximately 10-12 % dps-boost for a 100% critbuild, not more I estimate.
Parting Blasphemy - When a Curse is removed from a target, next attack will also gets 10/20/30/40/50% damage increase. Hows about such suggestion? Would be sufficient @schietindebux ,
As for Vampiric embrace, - I proposed that it would have extra effect, which would provide temp Dmg increase buff for short time duration.
Current VE is good as healing tool, until you build enough of life steal chance. Then warlock bargain become main healing tool. And with @balanced, done WB and soul Bonding feat interaction. Means VE become totally useless. So without providing extra effect it's simply irrelevant to keep it.. (same as curse bite ).
So damage increase buff would be big yet small.. For solo gameplay, you pick either dps power or VE. You have hp restoring option plus dmg buff, but trade off is that VE dealt dmg is too low to be called killer power. So full dmg build warlocks not gona use it so offten. HB case, PoP + VE would be big boost, but trade off is that warlock remain with single high dps power. SB case - well VE + SS encounter would be big win.
For templock - well due Soul Bonding you could spread buff for all allies around you.. (thats would finally give ability to rival DC/OP).
Wraith shadows - I suggested to rework as Spider web mechanic. Which is drop AoE web on ground and slowing down enemies within it's effect area, + applying current Debuff effect. Instant aoe CC is good thing. Plus effect to drop power at pointed area give tactical advantage within field pve and pvp wise.
Current WS not only broken, but it's way how you apply is HAMSTER. It's require too long ceremony for ~2s immobility...
But all powers problems looks small compared to one of bigger problems. Which is out powers interactions with weapon enchantments. Seems warlocks powers have worst interactions with WE compared to other classes.
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
@balanced#2849 Just to be absolutely clear. You said you took everything Po9H currently gives and stacked it onto PoP. So that would include keeping the buff for 5 seconds after leaving the pillar and the new Po9H is an extra 5 seconds, making it a total of 10 seconds if you take 5 ranks?
While this isn't a complete rework (or really anything close), we thought Scourge Warlocks needed a small boost in effectiveness, especially for Temptation.
you now see how the community is displeased with the sw, but read again as there are good ideas to improve the scourge warlock such as the client below, in all D & D games the more defense less damage, the more damage less defense, even with the actuality of making hybrids, this detail can not cease to exist since it is the basis of any cleverly written game, resuscitate sw as damage, and improve tempation but not to be main class since wizards are not healers,
Interesting changes, here's some feedback as, even though it is good to see a few tweaks are being made, SW will most likely continue to be the little sibling of the bigger damage dealers.
The stapple powers of Hellbringer and Soulbinder need a few buffs to bring the SW closer to the other damage dealers regardless of paragon, here are a few suggestions, hopefully you'll consider them:
Edit: Given the state of the class and that it will most likely continue to underperform with your proposed tweaks for mod 13, I believe you should set Critical Promise back at 50% of weapon damage and let it benefit from the things you already explained, if SW was overperforming or one of the top damage dealers it would be understandable that you needed to lower that to 20% however that's not the case, it is the weakest class in the game so that Critical Promise is a tier 1 paragon feat shouldn't matter, it should benefit from buffs etc based on 50% weapon damage so the class stops being left behind by the other damage dealers and supports, everything SW does other classes do much better, consider that, please.
Executioner's gift is far too underpowered, please take a look at this and keep in mind fury SW is mostly DoT damage, setting EG at 30%+ bonus damage as target's health diminishes would help a lot. I was suprised to see you left this feat, Hellish Rebuke and Soulscorch untouched as they're so important for any fury spec, they need tweaks as well.
Pillar of Power:
It deals sub at-will damage, it should either get a substantial base damage increase so it is on encounter level or get its personal and group dps boost improved by around 10% for each, this means that, taking power of the nine hells damantion feat, PoP should buff the caster's damage by 34% and teammates' by 28%
Hellish Rebuke:
Let its dot be able to be stacked or increase damage by around 25%
Soulscorch:
Increase its damage by around 30%
That covers stapple powers, now let's move on to stuff common for both paragons
Executioner's gift:
Increase its damage bonus from 15% to 25% or 30% as target's health diminishes. Current value of 15% is way too low.
Murderous Flames: - Extra hit procced off 50% of Killing Flames buffed damage. This would partially address Killing Flames issue of having a huge disparity in min and max damage on top of slow casting time.
Brutal Curse: - The damage bonus from this feat should be changed to 20%. Creeping Death: - As a massive chunck of our damage comes from dots and we don't have the burst of other classes, please make it so our DoT damage will get bosses so scared of us they will defeat themselves out of panic. Joking aside, please consider buffing Creeping Death to 80% or 100% of damage dealt, it will still be a dot so it will be meh at best for trash clearing but it would be a noticeable QoL change for both HB and SB fury warlocks, if we are meh at mobs we should be crazy good at boss killing Being a dot-heavy spec, fury would never match the trash killing capacity of other class so why not making it better at boss killing? It is balanced, there's a tradeoff there, meh mobs killing for good boss killing
Damnation:
Double the damage dealt by the Soulpuppet or let it benefit from party buffs and debuffs. As the glitch that made it benefit from buffs tomdungeon enemies is supposed to have been fixed already, this change shouldn't make it broken overpowered but still a force to be reckoned.
Gastly commander:
Damage increased to 20% or 30%
The reason these 2 things are suggested to be buffed by that much is damnation has weak feats overall, puppet is reported to not even benefit properly from combat advantage.
- Universal. Hadar's Grasp cooldown and damage ratio:
So an encounter power that has a very long cooldown doesn't even deal that much damage, cd should be reduced by about 5 seconds and damage increased by 30% - 50% Or keeping the long cooldown and making it hit lulz brain dead super duper hard would be a fair thing as well (as a dot with such a long cooldown, its damage both at median and max damage should wipe the floor with that of killing flames, like, not even close)
Opinion on temptation:
The changes you are trying are welcome but templocks will continue to be inferior to other specs and classes, this path (and the class in general) desperately needs some love in mod 13 or 13.5 in the form of making SW able to buff damage of teammates by good amount, for this a rework is needed.
Passive powers (both universal and paragon-exclusive)
They are horribly underpowered at best or flat out worthless, once you have time for a complete rework, this, casting speed and cooldown times (good grief, Hadar's Grasp cooldown is off the charts for the meh damage it does) should be priority.
As for bugs, already reported on october bug fix thread but with no answer so far:
TC is broken in chult, please try using it vs either t-rex variant and see how it doesn't work, people have reported it doesn't work against King of Spines and a presumably a few of T9G bosses.
Gates of Hell not benefitting properly from SW debuffs on target, given same debuffs and as @etelgrin proved with ACT logs on the bug thread, GoH barely reached 120% effectiveness whereas other powers hit 150%. It wouldn't be asurprise if it is not benefitting properly from DR debuffs of other classes as well.
Blades of the Vanquished Armies gets toggled off if you are stunned or dazed. This shouldn't be happening anymore since mod 10 rework but it just keeps happening, very easy to test, activate BoVA and let a stun/daze power hit you and say bye bye to BoVA as it gets toggled off and goes on cooldown.
@balanced#2849 Just to be absolutely clear. You said you took everything Po9H currently gives and stacked it onto PoP. So that would include keeping the buff for 5 seconds after leaving the pillar and the new Po9H is an extra 5 seconds, making it a total of 10 seconds if you take 5 ranks?
no, he only took those buffs 12+2% per point and buffed PoP with it fix. PoP will allways spend that buff towards allies 18% dps, 24% towards you. The feat Power of the nine has to be feated to gain that 5 second lasting buff out of Pillar, wich remains a good investement imo, if it works correctly.
@strykr75601 If you don't have any problem with lag, it's nice for you but i do so don't be selfish and think about the others. Maybe you live in a well deserved region but i don't and i saw problems like this since i began to play. I don't know what occurs when the game starts to lag but i can tell you that when it's the most insane, my actions aren't all registered by the server and so, sometimes, WC and SS don't cast in the right order.
You say that every class suffers from this lag and it's true but you contradict yourself when you say they are easiest classes to play. I play CW and OP too and i can tell you they don't have to be this strict with their rotations. So we have a gap between the classes caused by server fragility as SW suffers more from lag than CW, OP or GWF, for example.
Then, you talk about learning to play a class that "requires skill" (to be honest, nothing in this game is awfully hard). It's been a long time since i started my SW and i think that i got to be really strong with it. It's true that SW has the hardest gameplay to master and it's what i liked in this class but you aren't going to say that Tab - SS - Tab - SS ... requires skill ? Changing it would just result in a little dps boost, which is really needed.
Finally, as you mentionned before, having the weakest class didn't prevent me for being top dps or even speedrun while being the only dps but when you see a gwf (a guildie that has mastered his character, i admit) dealing 2x your dps on MSVA even if he had no enchants except his lightning on him... Yeah, you start to be a little bit deceived. After all i have invested in this character to max him out, i expect to have a dps that competes with other dps classes and not being penalized just because it's too slow. If it must be done by doing simple changes/fixes, it's fine for me. And if i have to adapt, i'll do it. Testing is what i like the most in this game, anyway.
Last point of this too long wall of text : i actually would really like to see the Curse consume mechanic and the Damnation path to be completely reworked (Consume being replaced with synergies and Deadly Curse / Blasphemy being reworked). They're forcing you to play too slowly (replace your WC between each power or waiting for your puppet) and so penalize the SW. I'm curious to see what Cryptic will do about this.
@tenetomb I must admit my wording was a bit harsh, and that is my fault for how I came across. I fully admit there are major DPS differences between SW and the highest DPS classes, and those need to be addressed, either by putting the SW into more of a support/buff focused role, or amplifying their DPS output. I guess the best way to say what I was trying to get across is making the SW easier to play is not the right solution to the issue of their DPS. SW is a class that takes time and deliberation to set up for massive burns, and that is how I believe it should stay. And yes, to some degree, the discipline to pause and tab before each soul scorch, or to know when to not cast WC, yes, that does take practice in the class to master. Our most powerful attack as a Soulbinder, or in my mind, of any class, should not be a simple fire and forget power.
I apologize for how I came across in my original posts, but my opinion still stands that I do not want to see the SW turned into another class that is just mindless button mashing, with little regard for tactics or adaptive playstyle. Honestly, what would make SW vastly more competitive is a WE rollback, but we know that won't happen, so perhaps a buff to Dread and Vorpal would put us back on a more level playing field, or perhaps allow multiproccing from WE from our powers.
I am pleased that this thread has become so constructive by this vast exchange of ideas and opinions. I would like to add my own opinion on the matter of SW improvement. I believe that skill trees should be specialized by removing the "all around skills" that make them jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none and add skills that help in the direction of the appointed role. With the introduction of loadouts, it is easy to adapt to different situations and one doesn't need to use 1 tree for all situations. The way I see these roles is the following: -Fury should be for party play with a pure DPS role. -Damnation could be turned into a pure solo play tree. -Temptation should be for party with emphasis on the support role.
Fury skills should provide skills for direct DPS (raw direct damage) that can bring the warlock in par with other DPS classes. We will have to see how the changes to weapon damage skills buffing will work. Damnation should have more synergies between you and your pupet (like Ghastly Commander and Wrathful Souls). I would like to add here the addition of transfering damage from owner to pet (for example Warding Spirits could be changed so a percentage of damage that hits owner is "deflected" to pupet). Pupet damage could also be further buffed (through Wrathful souls maybe). Temptation could be more DoT based (not direct damage like Fury) with skills that greatly help party. Buffs that reflect damage to the attacker, increase Temporary HP, mitigate incoming damage, DoT heals etc. that will make them desired in parties (or at least not rejected from them).
Having to balance 2 paragons and 3 skill trees among them is hard enough. Then all of that to other classes is almost impossible. Specialization can be the answer to all this.
I don't think the gain would be this big. Applying a curse is not so long. Yeah, you could cast some at-wills more and then 1 or 2 Soul Scorch but it would bring maybe ~5% more dps ? This is not broken.
And until now, i was only speaking about single target. If you make TC unable to proc curse consume effect, in aoe, were we are already too slow, we can say bye to our dps in instances like FBI or MSVA.
The curse IS too long, in typical T1-T2 epic dungeon group mobs die before three curses are applied if GWF or CW are in group. Also while cursig SW is role-playing a target dummy (any action cancels curse), that is very bad in boss fights and PvP. Curse should be instant, or at least have optional animation that is cancellable with keeping curse.
Maybe a change to murderous flames? I personally think it should work with all fire based powers, could help alot but idk if it would be overpowered in single target boss fights maybe reduce the bonus damage to 20% but i think that could really help with our aoe a bit if u dont like the idea of pillar of power, also making flames of empowerment stacks on urself rather than a debuff on our enemies would help us in terms of set up since its basically the same damage buff but just reduces our set up to get into our dots.
> @tom#6998 said: > @diloul#3484 > > if you dont want to see the buffs thats not my problem lol. > > i wrote my suggestions down on what i want to see for the sw, maybe u should do that too instead of flaming and disrespecting the dev that took extra time to read our post and listen to us.
First of all i have zero problem with Balanced or any other dev, i just hate the way devs do things, even more when it concerns SW tweaks. (more about that below.) The bugoctober thing was really nice but again it will be ingame too late but this sw little rework isn't enought to be even be called "it's a start" on the dps side.
"Devs who took extra time" . Is this a joke ? Isn't part of a dev job to listen to its community or i should feel honored to see a dev answering us... Omg.. Here i thought we were all humans sorry i did not thought talking to a dev was such a privilege oO" Many of us paid some decent money in this game, i think we have every right to be pissed off sometime. Or we are all here to "like" and stfu if we disagree ?
Let's not play the white knight here, devs are grown ups enought to speak for themselves, they have mods they don't need you to "qualify" me. Trust me this isnt me direspecting the devs... Knowing in what state our class is and focusing on templocks and little fury scale fixs that are NOT buffs isn't very respectful inmho. If it was a little patch during maintenance like 4.20 i would say bravo but mod 13 just for this, not thrilled at all... It's like giving an apple to someone who didn't eat since a month and then let the guy starve again for months, it's nice but useless so it make you wonder why even bother ?
Where did you read "we buffed" a power ? Or do you imply that it was normal that some of our feats add 500 necrotic damage ? You call a pathetic useless feat fixed a buff, i call it a fix, we'll both live with it i think.
I consider you one of the sw with the most knowlege with the class but weirdly i never saw you asking for crit promise "buff" (lol)
We all wrote what we want for sw since years and if what they just announced if what you desired then good for you, i consider it a joke and it's my right.
Such a few tweaks for fury and for mod 13 after all these years ? So what for a full revamp, mod 14 or 15 ? Again, allow me to not be thrilled and call this eye powder.
How about decrease encounters cd or too slow casting animations interrupted ? How about instead of spamming and fail for curse, one push of a button and the 3 more resistant foes get insta curse ? How about TC auto hit straight the boss or biggest ennemi. Instead we are still cursing while ennemi are already half dead.
You can buff 200% if you want, it will still be useless if we can't hit ennemi before they are half dead. So yeah before even consider to buff, we need to be able to land hits at the same time as our fellows gwf or tr or whatever... Devs know that and their only response is "it takes time". But we have been waiting for so many years, how much time and mods they need ?
@stryker247 You did not play with goods dcs and tanks then and maybe you don't know much about virtous dc path and some powers that heals just by being close to us... If the tank do its job and the dc too, i don't need your heals sorry and i will not invit a templock in my grouo just in case the tank slipp aggro.
No one use healer virtous because like i said it is completely useless and that is why no dc use it. When i run mspc or to9g my main focus is prevent deaths so i focus heal in dangerous situations. With divine glow and bastion by anticipating dangerous situations the templock is absolutely useless and what do you do about about lifesteal ? At some point people will realise in this game you are either death or alive there is almost nothing between. So i ask you my friend, how is healing helping when you are dead ?
Seriously it's like we are not playing the same game. I have been playing on ps4 since release and i have play with a templock only 2 or 3 times.
What does this say ? it says that the hundreds of others runs i did were without templocks and we did not miss them... That's why focusing this "rework" on templocks make me mad. I understand that some of you apreciated the templock but you have to admit this wasnt the priority at all when looking at sw class.
That said, in a near future, devs intend to ruin actual 2dc meta indeed along with the nerf to bondings.
So the next meta will be 1 dc buff/ 1 templock, this is where what you are all saying about templocks will be true and you will be usefull. But for the moment, nope.
I "like" when something "not intended" like 2 dc in a group will be replaced by something else not intented like 1 dc/1 temp new meta. I can't wait to read from devs "the new meta 1dc/1temp was not our intention" and nerf it somehow.
You can all dislike as you want, what you call flaming, i call it truth and only the truth hurts.
Let's say it ina more simple way, on ps4 i will loose again around 20% of my dps when obc is nerfed and pop crit mod 12.5 Do you really think the changes announced will cover the dps loss and even they did we will be at the same spot, so again where is the buff ?
So devs just kill again our dps with pop crit and obc nerf BEFORE anything to compensate the change like always. They could have left obc until the fixs announced kick in but no they had to nerf us again, i don't see any form of respect from devs when they do that. (But hey it's just free dev flaming right ?) To show some respect would have been to fix obc WHEN the others tweaks were in too. Not cut 20% dps and then : " yh well we are working on some stuff... For the templock or in the years to come. On ps4 octobugfix in game and sw "buffs" will not hit ps4 before mod 13 so... I'm looking to mid 2018 to see a part of my huge dps nerf back ? And i should be happy with that ?!... So if simple fixs take 6 months to be implented ingame, a full sw rework is for what 2 or 3 years ?
@balanced#2849 It will sound like an echo, but I agree that soul scorch could benefit from Curse synergy (instead of a consume). I already wrote that it was difficult/long to "overwrite" with a regular curse when another curse is ongoing : I was thinking to this power and to hadar's grasp. Considering that fury soulbinders offer no utility for the party and are 100% pure dps (except one feat, and this lack of party utillity made me go hellbringer/pillar of power a few months ago), it will not harm if there is slight change to the mechanism, or if the tab could be prioritized--> no loss of time, more dps and happy SW
As for slow animations, I did not want at the beginning to be too much specific because I know you don't have the ressources to do a full rework now... but if you have some little spare time, you should focus on dailies: -TC: high priority to make it quicker to apply (in good groups, the target you aim is already >50% dead when you manage to apply TC -gates of hells as you already figured -flames of Phlegestos: it takes FOREVER to raise and lower the arms; the daily is canceled if we do something else before the arms are down, or if we get pushed or whatever.
Also, sorry to insist, but the threshold to get the maximum damage for killing flame encounter should be reduced drastically (50%?).
> if you dont want to see the buffs thats not my problem lol.
>
> i wrote my suggestions down on what i want to see for the sw, maybe u should do that too instead of flaming and disrespecting the dev that took extra time to read our post and listen to us.
"Devs who took extra time" .
Is this a joke ? Isn't part of a dev job to listen to its community or i should feel honored to see a dev answering us...
Omg.. Here i thought we were all humans sorry i did not thought talking to a dev was such a privilege oO"
Let's not play the white knight here, devs are grown ups enought to speak for themselves, they have mods they don't need you to "qualify" me.
Trust me this isnt me direspecting the devs...
Knowing in what state our class is and focusing on templocks and little fury scale fixs that are NOT buffs isn't very respectful and in mod 13 ?
It's like giving an apple to someone who didn't eat since a month, it's nice but useless so it make you wonder why even bother ?
Where did you read "we buffed"a power ?
Or do you imply that it was normal that some of our feats add 500 necrotic damage ? Are you serious ?
You call a pathetic useless power fixed a buff, i call it a fix, we'll both live with it i think.
I consider you one of the sw with the most knowlege with the class.
I never saw you asking for crit promise "buff" (lol)
We all wrote what we want for sw since years and if what they just announced if what you desired then good for you.
I consider it a joke and it's my right.
Such a few tweaks for fury and for mod 13 after all these years ?
So what for a full revamp, mod 14 or 15 ?
Allow me to not be thrilled.
How about decrease encounters cd or too slow casting animations interrupted ?
How about instead of spamming and fail for curse, one push of a button and the 3 more resistant foes get insta curse ?
You did not play with goods dcs and tanks then and maybe you don't know much about virtous dc path and some powers that heals just by being close to us...
If the tank do its job and the dc too, i don't need your heals sorry and i will not invit a templock in my grouo just in case the tank slipp aggro.
No one use healer virtous because like i said it is completely useless and that is why no dc use it.
When i run mspc or to9g my main focus is prevent deaths so i focus heal in dangerous situations.
With divine glow and bastion by anticipating dangerous situations the templock is absolutely useless and what do you do about about lifesteal ?
At some point people will realise in this game ypuvare either death or alive there is almost nothing between.
So i ask you my friend, how is healing helping when you are dead ?
Seriously it's like we are not playing the same game.
I have been playing on ps4 since release and i have play with a templock only 2 or 3 times.
What does this say ? it says that the hundreds of others runs i did were without templocks and we did not miss them...
That's why focusing this "rework" on templocks make me mad.
I understand that some of you apreciated the templock but you have to admit this wasnt the priority at all when looking at sw class.
That said, in a near future, devs intend to ruin actual 2dc meta indeed along with the nerf to bondings.
So the next meta will be 1 dc buff/ 1 templock, this is where what you are all saying about templocks will be true and you will be usefull.
But for the moment, nope.
I "like" when something "not intended" like 2 dc in a group will be replaced by something else not intented like 1 dc/1 temp new meta.
I can't wait to read from devs "the new meta 1dc/1temp was not our intention" and nerf it somehow.
You can all dislike as you want, what you call flaming, i call it truth and only the truth hurts.
Let's say it ina more simple way, on ps4 i will loose again around 20% of my dps when obc is nerfed and pop crit mod 12.5
Do you really think the changes announced will cover the dps loss and even they did we will be at the same spot, so again where is the buff ?
So devs just kill again our dps with pop crit and obc nerf BEFORE anything to compensate the change like always.
They could have left obc until the fixs announced kick in but no they had to nerf us again, i don't see any form of respect from devs when they do that.
(But hey it's just free dev flaming right ?)
To show some respect would have been to fix obc WHEN the others tweaks were in too.
Not cut 20% dps and then : " yh well we are working on some stuff... For the templock or in the years to come.
On ps4 octobugfix in game and sw "buffs" will not hit ps4 before mod 13 so...
I'm looking to mid 2018 to see a part of my huge dps nerf back ?
And i should be happy with that ?!...
So if simple fixs take 6 months to be implented ingame, a full sw rework is for what 2 or 3 years ?
First of all, please take time to proofread your posts so you tag the correct user, not someone who has never been active on the forums. Secondly, I do run with DCs that I would call more than competent, and there are a few important things to remember:
1: Any good DC runs Righteous path for the buff, which means very few passive heals. 2: The less a DC has to worry about healing, the easier you can do a run with 1 DC, or lower level of 2 DC. 3: Perhaps the most important point There are more people that just BiS endgame groups that run ToNG.
People seem to forget in this community that the game is not just 14-16k players. I'm 16.7k now, and I can tell you I vastly prefer, and have much more fun running with people who aren't just focused on speedrunning content. We need to remember the "endgame meta" is such a ridiculously small segment of the community. If all you choose to run with is classes you know will outdps you, and let that ruin your experience, then that's on you. If you did not reasonably assume that OBC would get nerfed (which anyone could see would happen) and did not plan for that, that's on you. This is a free to play game, and with that comes change, that you have little control over. What you can do, is plan for the likely changes. I still have not swapped to any new weapon enchants from my Dread, and I will not be using a Fey, because I expect that to be nerfed as well, or Dread buffed, once the devs realize they have created a single enchant that is BiS for most classes.
Please i'm not that stupid,I can see when something will be nerfed...
I always used dread when all "pro sws " said to use vorpal as a HB and dread as SB. I don't use others players rotations or full builds copy/paste and i found myself doing way more dps as a sw than many of my fellow sws on PS4.
If you check others threads you'll see that i also say that even if sw need some love, a lot, too many players don't know how to play as a sw and how to maximize what few tools we have at our disposal.
But concerning obc, knowing that something someday will be nerfed i should never use it and keep doing 20% less damage than what we could do even if based on something "broken" ? Almost nobody want us already and everyone use lightning creep and such but i should keep a mosquito dps and hope to find people who don't care to fast run to9g or whatever after 100th run ? Trust me if dunjeons were rewarding, players would take time. With such a low droprate they prefer to fast run with burn groups and it makes sense, a lot of sense actually.
An easy fix would be to make dunjeons more like a few runs per weeks with some kind of limitations in returns but rewarding. Instead we have unilimited farm runs not rewarding... But don't worry you have been eard, you will have to run random dunjeon groups, so you will be able to experience very long runs not rewarding
Fact : We all agree, devs included that sw dps is in a very bad place. Concerning obc even Balanced said it would affect templock even more ( wich i disagree) I quote Balanced : "Before M12b, it started to pick up in usage due to the Owlbear Cub's ACB. But, after the Owlbear was given a 1 second ICD, there were a lot of concerns for this playstyle. While we don't want a class relying on a single companion ACB, we think that this one was hit especially hard by that change"
So my question is very simple : Why while they know our class lack dps, they don't wait for the the tweaks to kick BEFORE removing from us a huge part of our dps, why ?
I'm not saying "Don't fix obc or whatever broken overpowered power" I'm just saying : Do it in a fair way, fix our problems first, give us back some dps and in the same time you can fix obc or whatever. Don't nerf us again and fix us months or year later ! After all even with the obc, sw dps still fall way behind other dps class so it wasn't that bad or cheated like the puppet was 2 mods ago, nope ? So why now, why not wait to fix it AND our class/dps ?
Is is that flaming or mad or disrespect ?
I said what i have to say, hopefully the devs read my part, if others players hate me for that so be it.
1: Any good DC runs Righteous path for the buff, which means very few passive heals.
True, no matter if AC or DO you do good. Holllowed Ground outperforms Annoited Army in most aspects imo, except your unbuffed power is like 50k+, so DO might be in front. If you run with a Devotion-OP the AP buff from his side and from my side together is that huge, that my DC can double spam dailies HG-AA-HG-AA, so AC is preferable at some encounter (my DC is not endgeared), especially at 2. boss to spamm AA and prevent from being stunned all time.
2: The less a DC has to worry about healing, the easier you can do a run with 1 DC, or lower level of 2 DC.
Right, I can do my job better if I can focus on buffs, problem is every OP or 2. DC will do better than a templock as co-partner. One of many reasons are mentioned at point 1 above. Some more to mention (I play no OP): Astral Shield, POD, Forgemaster Flame, Devine Glow, Hallowed Ground, Gift of Haste, Terrifying Insight, Astral Seal, Breaking the Spirit, Hastening light, Bear your sins, Condemning Gaze
3: Perhaps the most important point There are more people that just BiS endgame groups that run ToNG.
Yep, those are the groups that can´t afford the luxory to pull a "weak class" through Tong and have to think 3 times about their setup, ending in a DC-DC-OP-GF/CWmof buffer group.
I'm 16.7k now, and I can tell you I vastly prefer, and have much more fun running with people who aren't just focused on speedrunning content.
Because you allready did speedruns through content 100 times, and are bored of that dungeon like lot´s of player I talk with? Lot´s of palyer are allready bored of that dungeon and the fact that those marks have an underwhelming droprate. If not I assume you bought 90 marks for 90 mio AD to gear up your enchants from 13 to 14? Or do you prefer the other way, by running through content with an GF/OP/DC and spend the marks for your main (warlock)?
If all you choose to run with is classes you know will outdps you, and let that ruin your experience, then that's on you.
So wich class do you pick (except warlock) to not get outperformed? As if you did not play this game enough 16,7k IL? If you pop up your guildwindow or your friendlist, what do you see? I see a lot of DC-DC-OP-GF-etc. and not to forget GWF-GWF-GWF, those are the classes that are geared in no time, like I did myself. Pugging in PW-chat with your lock is useless, except for running T1 or T2.
Atm chat is spammed with "lfm DC, OP". When I check friendlist I see buffer/supporter everywhere. I witnessed several chats like that: "Good by my warlock, love you". I took the time to ask the player with endgeared warlock about his reasons. "I leveled a DC lately and I can´t see a reason to run my warlock any more"
If you did not reasonably assume that OBC would get nerfed (which anyone could see would happen) and did not plan for that, that's on you.
Imo this issue is overestmated and only an issue for powerbased builds, and I agree about the fact, that these palyers should by sure be warned and had to assume, that a companion wich deals 30-50% of their dps would be adressed. I also think a powerbuild should be viable but saidly devs didn´t pull that option during WE-rework... A critbuild will not suffer and the buff from PoP will be a dps-win (critseverity 180), wich will egalize the effect of OBC or simply beat it, if you replace that OBC with an siegemaster on top. PoP 5%, Infantile Compensation 7% (after CD nerf), before IC was about 12% (maybe less). At 180% critseverity 5% becones ?% (at least more). If you count a 75% Creeping Death proc on top and switch towards siegemaster (+4% overall dps) you will outperform that OBC with a critbuild significant I think. https://i.imgur.com/ET8nHoA.png
Sorry for that wall (esp towards @balanced#2849 who reads all trhough these lines). My resume actually from Tong pugruns and Warlock inside Tong looks like this. We have to measure the performance of warlock at endcontent. I pug a lot and all my succesfull runs so far ended more or less in combos like: OP-DC-DC(me)-CWmof-mainDPS or OP-OP-DC(me)-GF-main striker or GF-DC-DC(me)-OP-main striker or OP-DC-DC-2xdps (my lock)
Setups like OP-DC-templock(me)-CWmof-mainDPS struggled and we only succeded because some of those player obviuosly had too much scrolls of resurrection . I started that pugrun as Templock but due to the "meh overall performace" of the group it took pretty long and I switched to DC several times and back. I did one pugrun 10min later with my AC/DC (OP-OP-GF-TR-DC) and we melted through the content. Sure this is only subjective because one "rotten apple" in the group and you fail, and pugging for Tong is a hrad task. But that´s what it looks like. When I write in chat: "15k+ warlock lfg Tong" I get no respond, zero, minus, laughter... Only option to run the lock is as main-dps atm, due to cryptics weared concept of buffs, sadly we can´t hold against other striker by that. I really hope the buffs from Temp capstone and tier 4/5 will be sufficient, atm I think templock is unneeded.
Post edited by schietindebux on
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treesclimberMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,161Arc User
@balanced#2849 Taking a look at the changes there is still the same problems:
-Gear scaling, while a fury upgrading equipment will increase their damage output, getting more crit severity for example will not affect puppets because puppets can't crit and a build for power (specially after owlbear cub nerf) is a weak build, when it comes to temptation there is the same problem as tatician GF, in a weak group 5% damage increase from inspiring leader does not compensate tatician path, in a strong group if the GF is also strong it won't compensate either so there needs to be more benefit from gear than there is now to make temptation and damnation viable. -Vampiric embrace definitively needs a buff, it was useless so far, it will still be WB is not going to replace it because it wasn't used so far. -There is still no point in Soulbinder either damnation or temptation, there is no damage enough provided to justify loosing POP.
How i would change things:
Eldritch Momentum: When you or an ally get hit you will receive 10% of your stamina and all nearby allies half of this amount, 2 seconds cooldown (it's true that right now it can be overly powerful but the changes hit stamina really hard and stamina rapid gain is one of the fun playstyles of temptation that i would hate to see gone). Eldritch Momentum: Dailies now give you, and nearby allies, Combat Advantage for 4/5/6/7/8 seconds, this buff can be refreshed by the same daily (IS soulbinder synergy).
Vampiric embrace: 50% damage buff.
Soul Breaker: Give 10% AP to a random ally whenever you consume your warlock curse or an enemy dies (SS synergy and put some more utility when used in single target).
Soulbonding changes: No more curse buff; Permanent damage buff to all team members equal to 30% of SW life steal.
So will one bo forced to run Blades/Harrowstorm to proc "Darkness"? If that's the case, could you consider to just make Darkness increase damage the SW inflicts to enemies by 10% regardless of what powers are being used? Perhaps it could benefit allies too? What about tweaking Dark Revelry to be a 20% damage buff?
treesclimberMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,161Arc User
I just remembered one thing, how about stop this OP+SW prism madness synergy and make soul bonding proc Healing Warmth, burning guidance and Engine inspiration with a reasonable cooldown? After all temptation warlocks are healers.
@balanced#2849 Just to be absolutely clear. You said you took everything Po9H currently gives and stacked it onto PoP. So that would include keeping the buff for 5 seconds after leaving the pillar and the new Po9H is an extra 5 seconds, making it a total of 10 seconds if you take 5 ranks?
no, he only took those buffs 12+2% per point and buffed PoP with it fix. PoP will allways spend that buff towards allies 18% dps, 24% towards you. The feat Power of the nine has to be feated to gain that 5 second lasting buff out of Pillar, wich remains a good investement imo, if it works correctly.
If it's that way then it's not an absolute improvement, since spending points on Po9H to not instantly lose the buff will be almost mandatory in most situations specially for temptation. I was hoping that with temptation I would be able to save some Po9H points to use instead on the improved critical promise and get a little damage boost.
Fury might let go of Po9H, but people will have to get used to standing at one small spot. Perhaps making the radius slightly larger would make it less of a nuisance. Then just let your party know before hand if you have Po9H or not so they know how fast they need to move back to the PoP.
Comments
To touch on the part about lag, I too have noticed some issues with cursing and then Soul Scorching on live (when you're doing it multiple times in a row). Something that helped me get used to the timing was holding a movement key, while casting Soul Scorch, and mashing tab until I was able to move. I believe Soul Scorch has a higher queue priority than Warlock's Curse, so you could technically interrupt your tab mechanic if you're hitting both keys quickly right when the previous Soul Scorch is ending its animation.
> Then I wanted to talk about Soul Scorch.
>
> It was said in the October bugfix thread that Tyrannical Curse wasn't supposed to trigger it's curse consume effect, since you actually don't consume the curse.
>
> So to solve this problem, what about making it a Curse Synergy instead ?
>
> Spamming tab between each Soul Scorch is a really clunky mechanic and if you suffer a bit from lag, either you don' the see your curse on the enemy, either you cancel it by casting Soul Scorch.
>
>
> So this one was a bit interesting. While I was fixing something with Soul Scorch, I actually thought it would cool to see it as a Curse Synergy (instead of a consume). I will say that it feels really good to just chain 5 Soul Scorches into an enemy, but it is also quite strong. Along with that, there is some gameplay around applying and removing curses, such as Parting Blasphemy and Deadly Curse. While these aren't currently the strongest parts of the Scourge Warlock kit, they do offer a more complex playstyle and I could see more interesting mechanics around curse consumption working well, if we were to change these.
>
> To touch on the part about lag, I too have noticed some issues with cursing and then Soul Scorching on live (when you're doing it multiple times in a row). Something that helped me get used to the timing was holding a movement key, while casting Soul Scorch, and mashing tab until I was able to move. I believe Soul Scorch has a higher queue priority than Warlock's Curse, so you could technically interrupt your tab mechanic if you're hitting both keys quickly right when the previous Soul Scorch is ending its animation.
If i remember correctly we were able to cancel the tab animation back in mod 9 which helped alot since i could tab and while the animation was playing u could go on with Soul scorce whereas now u dont get the curse on the enemy when u cancel it. It would be super cool if you could bring that back or maybe smth similar. This wouldnt be as fast as a curse synergy but still speed us up by like 25%
As for animations and casting times, these are things that we would need some animation work on and it's a hefty task to redo a bunch of them. I do feel for the very long ones (like Gates of Hell) since the casting time feels sooooooo long. Unfortunately, if we were to end up changing them it would probably be for a rework-level pass, but I do recognize it can be a problem in our fast-paced, splat dodging, end-game.
For the trick with the movement key, yes, that's what i tried to do but i realized that it is just not possible to play like this.
By moving continuously, you take the risk of stepping into the red zones (like on ToNG / MSVA last boss) or falling (on the 2nd boss of FBI / MSp) so, if you're going to keep the Curse Consume effect, no problem but make the Warlock's Curse unable to be interrupted (except by dodging) please !
And then, if you're going to keep it because of Deadle Curse and Parting Blasphemy, you'll have to buff a lot these ones because they are really bad right now... Deadly Curse will be even worst than it is atm since we won't use Hadar's Grasp anymore (Feytouched won't be multi-proccing on it) and that was the only way it could've been played.
For Parting Blasphemy, it's even more difficult because it is bugged and deal 0 damage half of the time.
Actually, since mod 4, i always tought these ones needed a complete rework and i was even more convinced on mod 10 when you changed Dreadtheft Curse Consume into Curse synergy, to be honest.
Finally, i wrote all of this by thinking about single target content but making Soul Scorch impossible to spam will be an overall nerf in aoe. I don't mind at all if you give us counterparts ! (Shorter cast times / cooldowns, like every other SW is asking
But no matter what you will make, i trust you and can't wait to test all of this !
> @balanced#2849
> Like it was pointed out on other threads such as bugtober and here as well, the damage of Pillar of Power is extremely low, it deals sub at-will damage, any chance you can tweak it so each one of its fifteen (15) ticks deal the same damage as the first tick of Hellish Rebuke? That would be a very good change as PoP damage is not slightly underpowered, it is hardcore low.
>
> Like it has been pointed out since the class got released, the cooldowns and casting times are very long, hopefully that can be addressed when possible.
>
> To touch on the first point, I have seen a good amount of people wanting the damage of Pillar of Power buffed, but I've been hesitant to change it. I could see some small tweaks in the future, but Pillar of Power itself is already quite strong. To me, the damage it does is a bonus on top of the other effects that PoP gives, though I agree it's very low. This is something that I will keep an eye on for future changes (later than M13)!
>
> As for animations and casting times, these are things that we would need some animation work on and it's a hefty task to redo a bunch of them. I do feel for the very long ones (like Gates of Hell) since the casting time feels sooooooo long. Unfortunately, if we were to end up changing them it would probably be for a rework-level pass, but I do recognize it can be a problem in our fast-paced, splat dodging, end-game.
Or perhaps you could increase the dps boost from pillar for both the SW and allies? If you compare it to say longstrider's shot it's lower (especially if you consider that a good ranger in a good group can keep the bonus up very well) and the superior personal damage of HR (so HR > SW for a group) you'll see it is reasonable to ask for a tweak to it as it's so low, please, let Pillar of Power have damage on encounter power or Hellish Rebuke level
If SW dps was on par to that of other damage dealers I could see why you'd be hesitant on increasing PoP damage but that is not the case so PoP having its damage on encounter power or Hellish Rebuke level would help the class be a little less behind, please consider that
Cooldowns and casting times need to ve looked at indeed
> @balanced#2849
> Like it was pointed out on other threads such as bugtober and here as well, the damage of Pillar of Power is extremely low, it deals sub at-will damage, any chance you can tweak it so each one of its fifteen (15) ticks deal the same damage as the first tick of Hellish Rebuke? That would be a very good change as PoP damage is not slightly underpowered, it is hardcore low.
>
> Like it has been pointed out since the class got released, the cooldowns and casting times are very long, hopefully that can be addressed when possible.
>
> To touch on the first point, I have seen a good amount of people wanting the damage of Pillar of Power buffed, but I've been hesitant to change it. I could see some small tweaks in the future, but Pillar of Power itself is already quite strong. To me, the damage it does is a bonus on top of the other effects that PoP gives, though I agree it's very low. This is something that I will keep an eye on for future changes (later than M13)!
>
> As for animations and casting times, these are things that we would need some animation work on and it's a hefty task to redo a bunch of them. I do feel for the very long ones (like Gates of Hell) since the casting time feels sooooooo long. Unfortunately, if we were to end up changing them it would probably be for a rework-level pass, but I do recognize it can be a problem in our fast-paced, splat dodging, end-game.
The buff to pillar of power that many people wanted was because of buffs like hidden daggers and icey terrain are very good self buffs that dont help others (our is a grp buff so doesnt help fury's but amazing for temptation) and deals good damage, as hellbringer its a must have power but deals very little damage, with the owlbear cub we had a very good source of aoe and more burst damage even then we werent overpowered just average in terms of dps, our animations our slow and we're a dot class for dps so buffing pillar of power would help our dps (plz note that with the dread and pop beginning to crit u might not want to buff the damage too much, but for an encounter to deal less than an at will isnt ideal, if i remember right our weapom damage is the same as a dc)
SW has always been, in my experience, the class with the least amount of community knowledge and support to back it up, and that has given rise to myriad problems, massive dissatisfaction for the class, and proposed "fixes" that remove the skill it takes to play the class. The best example I can give regarding the utter lack of information regarding SW, was back when the Lostmauth set was so good. It was the general consensus that Lostie was the best for SW, but it wasn't. A properly built SW running just the Black Ice Belt was better for SW than Lostmauth was.
Even so. The proposed changes for SW are good, and solid, and I for one would vastly prefer the Devs to tackle the issue of SW DPS slowly, rather than make a large, sweeping change. It is far better to make these changes will small steps, as the Lostmauth nerf would attest. I also would much rather the Devs make small improvements to our DPS, and keep the large degree of skill required to play SW, than for them to make it easy to play and be amazing DPS. If I wanted an easy class to play, I'd play a GWF or a paladin.
(Oh wait, I DO have a paladin)
Atm noone uses Parting Blasphemy in his build. The benefit is near zero because:
1. that damage seems to be unbuffed weapondamage ? leading to 0,0xy% overall dps, even before curse consume-effects were nearly extinguished the dps was near not measurable.
2. there are only few consuming powers like:
a. vampiric embrance (not used, to weak)
b. Wraith Shadow (not used, to weak and broken) and
c. Hadar grasp (doesn´t multiproc Feytouched anymore?), I did not use it since... long in PVE, maybe from use in PVP, but it is inferior to Warlock Bargain and has an ultra long CD
d. Soul Scorch, the only curse consuming power atm, wich is from interest.
Soul Scorch is the only viable Curse Consuming power. It is really hard to chain those "tab-SS-tab-SS-tab-tab-tab" .... "curse doesn´t show up, does it?", tbh it is a lackluster for that build and allways was. No clue if that WC was fixed in a negative way, but even in mod 4/5/6 I did not like that mechanic at all. WC is far too "unhandy" for a consume effect and to work arround it in a fast follow-up of "keyboard-commands".
When playing Soulbinder it is like that: pop ghosts, cast BoVa build your sparks, few swings of Essence defiler and than ... TAB- wait- SS- wait- Tab -wait- SS- wait... somehow like learning to type his name on the keyboard for the first time. You have to slow down to get that 80% Dot running.
If it was a curse synergy effect it would be a relief, maybe strong, but hey it has to be strong because Soulbinder is our "max-dps-spec" , has no buffs and it is impossible to compete vs GWF atm.
The benefit from Creeping Death 75% and procs of buffed weapondamage will be aproximately 10-12 % dps-boost for a 100% critbuild, not more I estimate.
Hows about such suggestion? Would be sufficient @schietindebux ,
As for Vampiric embrace, - I proposed that it would have extra effect, which would provide temp Dmg increase buff for short time duration.
Current VE is good as healing tool, until you build enough of life steal chance. Then warlock bargain become main healing tool.
And with @balanced, done WB and soul Bonding feat interaction. Means VE become totally useless. So without providing extra effect it's simply irrelevant to keep it.. (same as curse bite ).
So damage increase buff would be big yet small.. For solo gameplay, you pick either dps power or VE. You have hp restoring option plus dmg buff, but trade off is that VE dealt dmg is too low to be called killer power. So full dmg build warlocks not gona use it so offten.
HB case, PoP + VE would be big boost, but trade off is that warlock remain with single high dps power.
SB case - well VE + SS encounter would be big win.
For templock - well due Soul Bonding you could spread buff for all allies around you.. (thats would finally give ability to rival DC/OP).
Wraith shadows - I suggested to rework as Spider web mechanic. Which is drop AoE web on ground and slowing down enemies within it's effect area, + applying current Debuff effect.
Instant aoe CC is good thing. Plus effect to drop power at pointed area give tactical advantage within field pve and pvp wise.
Current WS not only broken, but it's way how you apply is HAMSTER. It's require too long ceremony for ~2s immobility...
But all powers problems looks small compared to one of bigger problems. Which is out powers interactions with weapon enchantments. Seems warlocks powers have worst interactions with WE compared to other classes.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
==================================================
The feat Power of the nine has to be feated to gain that 5 second lasting buff out of Pillar, wich remains a good investement imo, if it works correctly.
Maybe you live in a well deserved region but i don't and i saw problems like this since i began to play.
I don't know what occurs when the game starts to lag but i can tell you that when it's the most insane, my actions aren't all registered by the server and so, sometimes, WC and SS don't cast in the right order.
You say that every class suffers from this lag and it's true but you contradict yourself when you say they are easiest classes to play. I play CW and OP too and i can tell you they don't have to be this strict with their rotations. So we have a gap between the classes caused by server fragility as SW suffers more from lag than CW, OP or GWF, for example.
Then, you talk about learning to play a class that "requires skill" (to be honest, nothing in this game is awfully hard). It's been a long time since i started my SW and i think that i got to be really strong with it. It's true that SW has the hardest gameplay to master and it's what i liked in this class but you aren't going to say that Tab - SS - Tab - SS ... requires skill ?
Changing it would just result in a little dps boost, which is really needed.
Finally, as you mentionned before, having the weakest class didn't prevent me for being top dps or even speedrun while being the only dps but when you see a gwf (a guildie that has mastered his character, i admit) dealing 2x your dps on MSVA even if he had no enchants except his lightning on him... Yeah, you start to be a little bit deceived.
After all i have invested in this character to max him out, i expect to have a dps that competes with other dps classes and not being penalized just because it's too slow.
If it must be done by doing simple changes/fixes, it's fine for me. And if i have to adapt, i'll do it. Testing is what i like the most in this game, anyway.
Last point of this too long wall of text : i actually would really like to see the Curse consume mechanic and the Damnation path to be completely reworked (Consume being replaced with synergies and Deadly Curse / Blasphemy being reworked). They're forcing you to play too slowly (replace your WC between each power or waiting for your puppet) and so penalize the SW.
I'm curious to see what Cryptic will do about this.
I apologize for how I came across in my original posts, but my opinion still stands that I do not want to see the SW turned into another class that is just mindless button mashing, with little regard for tactics or adaptive playstyle. Honestly, what would make SW vastly more competitive is a WE rollback, but we know that won't happen, so perhaps a buff to Dread and Vorpal would put us back on a more level playing field, or perhaps allow multiproccing from WE from our powers.
-Fury should be for party play with a pure DPS role.
-Damnation could be turned into a pure solo play tree.
-Temptation should be for party with emphasis on the support role.
Fury skills should provide skills for direct DPS (raw direct damage) that can bring the warlock in par with other DPS classes. We will have to see how the changes to weapon damage skills buffing will work. Damnation should have more synergies between you and your pupet (like Ghastly Commander and Wrathful Souls). I would like to add here the addition of transfering damage from owner to pet (for example Warding Spirits could be changed so a percentage of damage that hits owner is "deflected" to pupet). Pupet damage could also be further buffed (through Wrathful souls maybe). Temptation could be more DoT based (not direct damage like Fury) with skills that greatly help party. Buffs that reflect damage to the attacker, increase Temporary HP, mitigate incoming damage, DoT heals etc. that will make them desired in parties (or at least not rejected from them).
Having to balance 2 paragons and 3 skill trees among them is hard enough. Then all of that to other classes is almost impossible. Specialization can be the answer to all this.
Personally I would like to see in the temp tree a cleanse option, maybe within one of our auras working like the DC's does.
> @diloul#3484
>
> if you dont want to see the buffs thats not my problem lol.
>
> i wrote my suggestions down on what i want to see for the sw, maybe u should do that too instead of flaming and disrespecting the dev that took extra time to read our post and listen to us.
First of all i have zero problem with Balanced or any other dev, i just hate the way devs do things, even more when it concerns SW tweaks. (more about that below.)
The bugoctober thing was really nice but again it will be ingame too late but this sw little rework isn't enought to be even be called "it's a start" on the dps side.
"Devs who took extra time" .
Is this a joke ? Isn't part of a dev job to listen to its community or i should feel honored to see a dev answering us...
Omg.. Here i thought we were all humans sorry i did not thought talking to a dev was such a privilege oO"
Many of us paid some decent money in this game, i think we have every right to be pissed off sometime.
Or we are all here to "like" and stfu if we disagree ?
Let's not play the white knight here, devs are grown ups enought to speak for themselves, they have mods they don't need you to "qualify" me.
Trust me this isnt me direspecting the devs...
Knowing in what state our class is and focusing on templocks and little fury scale fixs that are NOT buffs isn't very respectful inmho.
If it was a little patch during maintenance like 4.20 i would say bravo but mod 13 just for this, not thrilled at all...
It's like giving an apple to someone who didn't eat since a month and then let the guy starve again for months, it's nice but useless so it make you wonder why even bother ?
Where did you read "we buffed" a power ?
Or do you imply that it was normal that some of our feats add 500 necrotic damage ?
You call a pathetic useless feat fixed a buff, i call it a fix, we'll both live with it i think.
I consider you one of the sw with the most knowlege with the class but weirdly i never saw you asking for crit promise "buff" (lol)
We all wrote what we want for sw since years and if what they just announced if what you desired then good for you, i consider it a joke and it's my right.
Such a few tweaks for fury and for mod 13 after all these years ?
So what for a full revamp, mod 14 or 15 ? Again, allow me to not be thrilled and call this eye powder.
How about decrease encounters cd or too slow casting animations interrupted ?
How about instead of spamming and fail for curse, one push of a button and the 3 more resistant foes get insta curse ?
How about TC auto hit straight the boss or biggest ennemi.
Instead we are still cursing while ennemi are already half dead.
You can buff 200% if you want, it will still be useless if we can't hit ennemi before they are half dead.
So yeah before even consider to buff, we need to be able to land hits at the same time as our fellows gwf or tr or whatever...
Devs know that and their only response is "it takes time".
But we have been waiting for so many years, how much time and mods they need ?
@stryker247
You did not play with goods dcs and tanks then and maybe you don't know much about virtous dc path and some powers that heals just by being close to us...
If the tank do its job and the dc too, i don't need your heals sorry and i will not invit a templock in my grouo just in case the tank slipp aggro.
No one use healer virtous because like i said it is completely useless and that is why no dc use it.
When i run mspc or to9g my main focus is prevent deaths so i focus heal in dangerous situations.
With divine glow and bastion by anticipating dangerous situations the templock is absolutely useless and what do you do about about lifesteal ?
At some point people will realise in this game you are either death or alive there is almost nothing between.
So i ask you my friend, how is healing helping when you are dead ?
Seriously it's like we are not playing the same game.
I have been playing on ps4 since release and i have play with a templock only 2 or 3 times.
What does this say ? it says that the hundreds of others runs i did were without templocks and we did not miss them...
That's why focusing this "rework" on templocks make me mad.
I understand that some of you apreciated the templock but you have to admit this wasnt the priority at all when looking at sw class.
That said, in a near future, devs intend to ruin actual 2dc meta indeed along with the nerf to bondings.
So the next meta will be 1 dc buff/ 1 templock, this is where what you are all saying about templocks will be true and you will be usefull.
But for the moment, nope.
I "like" when something "not intended" like 2 dc in a group will be replaced by something else not intented like 1 dc/1 temp new meta.
I can't wait to read from devs "the new meta 1dc/1temp was not our intention" and nerf it somehow.
You can all dislike as you want, what you call flaming, i call it truth and only the truth hurts.
Let's say it ina more simple way, on ps4 i will loose again around 20% of my dps when obc is nerfed and pop crit mod 12.5
Do you really think the changes announced will cover the dps loss and even they did we will be at the same spot, so again where is the buff ?
So devs just kill again our dps with pop crit and obc nerf BEFORE anything to compensate the change like always.
They could have left obc until the fixs announced kick in but no they had to nerf us again, i don't see any form of respect from devs when they do that.
(But hey it's just free dev flaming right ?)
To show some respect would have been to fix obc WHEN the others tweaks were in too.
Not cut 20% dps and then : " yh well we are working on some stuff... For the templock or in the years to come.
On ps4 octobugfix in game and sw "buffs" will not hit ps4 before mod 13 so...
I'm looking to mid 2018 to see a part of my huge dps nerf back ?
And i should be happy with that ?!...
So if simple fixs take 6 months to be implented ingame, a full sw rework is for what 2 or 3 years ?
It will sound like an echo, but I agree that soul scorch could benefit from Curse synergy (instead of a consume). I already wrote that it was difficult/long to "overwrite" with a regular curse when another curse is ongoing : I was thinking to this power and to hadar's grasp.
Considering that fury soulbinders offer no utility for the party and are 100% pure dps (except one feat, and this lack of party utillity made me go hellbringer/pillar of power a few months ago), it will not harm if there is slight change to the mechanism, or if the tab could be prioritized--> no loss of time, more dps and happy SW
As for slow animations, I did not want at the beginning to be too much specific because I know you don't have the ressources to do a full rework now... but if you have some little spare time, you should focus on dailies:
-TC: high priority to make it quicker to apply (in good groups, the target you aim is already >50% dead when you manage to apply TC
-gates of hells as you already figured
-flames of Phlegestos: it takes FOREVER to raise and lower the arms; the daily is canceled if we do something else before the arms are down, or if we get pushed or whatever.
Also, sorry to insist, but the threshold to get the maximum damage for killing flame encounter should be reduced drastically (50%?).
First of all, please take time to proofread your posts so you tag the correct user, not someone who has never been active on the forums. Secondly, I do run with DCs that I would call more than competent, and there are a few important things to remember:
1: Any good DC runs Righteous path for the buff, which means very few passive heals.
2: The less a DC has to worry about healing, the easier you can do a run with 1 DC, or lower level of 2 DC.
3: Perhaps the most important point There are more people that just BiS endgame groups that run ToNG.
People seem to forget in this community that the game is not just 14-16k players. I'm 16.7k now, and I can tell you I vastly prefer, and have much more fun running with people who aren't just focused on speedrunning content. We need to remember the "endgame meta" is such a ridiculously small segment of the community. If all you choose to run with is classes you know will outdps you, and let that ruin your experience, then that's on you. If you did not reasonably assume that OBC would get nerfed (which anyone could see would happen) and did not plan for that, that's on you. This is a free to play game, and with that comes change, that you have little control over. What you can do, is plan for the likely changes. I still have not swapped to any new weapon enchants from my Dread, and I will not be using a Fey, because I expect that to be nerfed as well, or Dread buffed, once the devs realize they have created a single enchant that is BiS for most classes.
Please i'm not that stupid,I can see when something will be nerfed...
I always used dread when all "pro sws " said to use vorpal as a HB and dread as SB.
I don't use others players rotations or full builds copy/paste and i found myself doing way more dps as a sw than many of my fellow sws on PS4.
If you check others threads you'll see that i also say that even if sw need some love, a lot, too many players don't know how to play as a sw and how to maximize what few tools we have at our disposal.
But concerning obc, knowing that something someday will be nerfed i should never use it and keep doing 20% less damage than what we could do even if based on something "broken" ?
Almost nobody want us already and everyone use lightning creep and such but i should keep a mosquito dps and hope to find people who don't care to fast run to9g or whatever after 100th run ?
Trust me if dunjeons were rewarding, players would take time.
With such a low droprate they prefer to fast run with burn groups and it makes sense, a lot of sense actually.
An easy fix would be to make dunjeons more like a few runs per weeks with some kind of limitations in returns but rewarding.
Instead we have unilimited farm runs not rewarding...
But don't worry you have been eard, you will have to run random dunjeon groups, so you will be able to experience very long runs not rewarding
Fact : We all agree, devs included that sw dps is in a very bad place.
Concerning obc even Balanced said it would affect templock even more ( wich i disagree)
I quote Balanced :
"Before M12b, it started to pick up in usage due to the Owlbear Cub's ACB. But, after the Owlbear was given a 1 second ICD, there were a lot of concerns for this playstyle. While we don't want a class relying on a single companion ACB, we think that this one was hit especially hard by that change"
So my question is very simple : Why while they know our class lack dps, they don't wait for the the tweaks to kick BEFORE removing from us a huge part of our dps, why ?
I'm not saying "Don't fix obc or whatever broken overpowered power"
I'm just saying : Do it in a fair way, fix our problems first, give us back some dps and in the same time you can fix obc or whatever.
Don't nerf us again and fix us months or year later !
After all even with the obc, sw dps still fall way behind other dps class so it wasn't that bad or cheated like the puppet was 2 mods ago, nope ? So why now, why not wait to fix it AND our class/dps ?
Is is that flaming or mad or disrespect ?
I said what i have to say, hopefully the devs read my part, if others players hate me for that so be it.
Lot´s of palyer are allready bored of that dungeon and the fact that those marks have an underwhelming droprate. If not I assume you bought 90 marks for 90 mio AD to gear up your enchants from 13 to 14?
Or do you prefer the other way, by running through content with an GF/OP/DC and spend the marks for your main (warlock)? If you follow the chat in PW it is 50% of this game atm... it´s by sure not the majority So wich class do you pick (except warlock) to not get outperformed? As if you did not play this game enough 16,7k IL?
If you pop up your guildwindow or your friendlist, what do you see?
I see a lot of DC-DC-OP-GF-etc. and not to forget GWF-GWF-GWF, those are the classes that are geared in no time, like I did myself.
Pugging in PW-chat with your lock is useless, except for running T1 or T2.
Atm chat is spammed with "lfm DC, OP". When I check friendlist I see buffer/supporter everywhere.
I witnessed several chats like that: "Good by my warlock, love you". I took the time to ask the player with endgeared warlock about his reasons.
"I leveled a DC lately and I can´t see a reason to run my warlock any more" Imo this issue is overestmated and only an issue for powerbased builds, and I agree about the fact, that these palyers should by sure be warned and had to assume, that a companion wich deals 30-50% of their dps would be adressed. I also think a powerbuild should be viable but saidly devs didn´t pull that option during WE-rework...
A critbuild will not suffer and the buff from PoP will be a dps-win (critseverity 180), wich will egalize the effect of OBC or simply beat it, if you replace that OBC with an siegemaster on top.
PoP 5%, Infantile Compensation 7% (after CD nerf), before IC was about 12% (maybe less). At 180% critseverity 5% becones ?% (at least more). If you count a 75% Creeping Death proc on top and switch towards siegemaster (+4% overall dps) you will outperform that OBC with a critbuild significant I think.
https://i.imgur.com/ET8nHoA.png
Sorry for that wall (esp towards @balanced#2849 who reads all trhough these lines). My resume actually from Tong pugruns and Warlock inside Tong looks like this.
We have to measure the performance of warlock at endcontent.
I pug a lot and all my succesfull runs so far ended more or less in combos like:
OP-DC-DC(me)-CWmof-mainDPS or
OP-OP-DC(me)-GF-main striker or
GF-DC-DC(me)-OP-main striker or
OP-DC-DC-2xdps (my lock)
Setups like OP-DC-templock(me)-CWmof-mainDPS struggled and we only succeded because some of those player obviuosly had too much scrolls of resurrection
I started that pugrun as Templock but due to the "meh overall performace" of the group it took pretty long and I switched to DC several times and back.
I did one pugrun 10min later with my AC/DC (OP-OP-GF-TR-DC) and we melted through the content.
Sure this is only subjective because one "rotten apple" in the group and you fail, and pugging for Tong is a hrad task. But that´s what it looks like.
When I write in chat: "15k+ warlock lfg Tong" I get no respond, zero, minus, laughter...
Only option to run the lock is as main-dps atm, due to cryptics weared concept of buffs, sadly we can´t hold against other striker by that.
I really hope the buffs from Temp capstone and tier 4/5 will be sufficient, atm I think templock is unneeded.
Taking a look at the changes there is still the same problems:
-Gear scaling, while a fury upgrading equipment will increase their damage output, getting more crit severity for example will not affect puppets because puppets can't crit and a build for power (specially after owlbear cub nerf) is a weak build, when it comes to temptation there is the same problem as tatician GF, in a weak group 5% damage increase from inspiring leader does not compensate tatician path, in a strong group if the GF is also strong it won't compensate either so there needs to be more benefit from gear than there is now to make temptation and damnation viable.
-Vampiric embrace definitively needs a buff, it was useless so far, it will still be WB is not going to replace it because it wasn't used so far.
-There is still no point in Soulbinder either damnation or temptation, there is no damage enough provided to justify loosing POP.
How i would change things:
Eldritch Momentum: When you or an ally get hit you will receive 10% of your stamina and all nearby allies half of this amount, 2 seconds cooldown (it's true that right now it can be overly powerful but the changes hit stamina really hard and stamina rapid gain is one of the fun playstyles of temptation that i would hate to see gone).
Eldritch Momentum: Dailies now give you, and nearby allies, Combat Advantage for 4/5/6/7/8 seconds, this buff can be refreshed by the same daily (IS soulbinder synergy).
Vampiric embrace: 50% damage buff.
Soul Breaker: Give 10% AP to a random ally whenever you consume your warlock curse or an enemy dies (SS synergy and put some more utility when used in single target).
Soulbonding changes: No more curse buff;
Permanent damage buff to all team members equal to 30% of SW life steal.
So will one bo forced to run Blades/Harrowstorm to proc "Darkness"? If that's the case, could you consider to just make Darkness increase damage the SW inflicts to enemies by 10% regardless of what powers are being used? Perhaps it could benefit allies too? What about tweaking Dark Revelry to be a 20% damage buff?
Fury might let go of Po9H, but people will have to get used to standing at one small spot. Perhaps making the radius slightly larger would make it less of a nuisance. Then just let your party know before hand if you have Po9H or not so they know how fast they need to move back to the PoP.