It would be fantastic to get further dev feedback at some point. I know the sky is falling down in chunks in the TR thread, but there's a lot of quality feedback here and at least a few important things about the upcoming tweaks that appear to be broken, still....
Hadar's Grasp: Activation time slightly increased@tenetomb did you read this
Did you had the time to test it ? Sure, the cast time is longer but now, you can cut the rest of the animation (with just your WC) as soon as the target begins to lift up. In the end, it doesn't feel longer than before in your rotation. (Hopefully !) You still can't cast it in the middle of your burst phase (under buff of the Crystal) due to Soul Scorch being tooooooo long to cast but it's already good !
And i don't know. I'm not so disappointed by the changes you seems to be. I think there aren't many things left to do to have a well balanced SW. Every class has its useless powers/feats but overall, performances don't seem so far from others strikers anymore.
It would be just good if we could have a dev answering this thread just to say what they think about our feedback...
Hadar's Grasp: Activation time slightly increased@tenetomb did you read this
Did you had the time to test it ? Sure, the cast time is longer but now, you can cut the rest of the animation (with just your WC) as soon as the target begins to lift up. In the end, it doesn't feel longer than before in your rotation. (Hopefully !) You still can't cast it in the middle of your burst phase (under buff of the Crystal) due to Soul Scorch being tooooooo long to cast but it's already good !
And i don't know. I'm not so disappointed by the changes you seems to be. I think there aren't many things left to do to have a well balanced SW. Every class has its useless powers/feats but overall, performances don't seem so far from others strikers anymore.
It would be just good if we could have a dev answering this thread just to say what they think about our feedback...
I'm specifically curious to see what they have to say about their somewhat self-defeating changes to Hadar's Grasp and Dreadtheft where they buff base damage while simultaneously decreasing the number of ticks, hence clawing back said increase and then some (in Dreadtheft's case it's an even bigger nerf since fast-activating encounters and At-Wills are supposedly actually locked out during the animation now).
Damage aside, it's important from a Spark generation standpoint for SB. Sure, we tend to be at full sparks in a well-buffed party, but it's a definite step back in QoL (and ultimately a damage nerf) for lower-buff situations.
The Soul Investiture stack issue is also a hot button; not only does it take several seconds to ramp up (while using a good, "normal" rotation), the stacks not being allowed to refresh once at max capacity seems unnecessary and hopefully unintended.
Judging by @noworries#8859 comments in the TR thread (because we can hear crickets over here in the SW one), the devs are trying to be more conservative with player damage, but their overly conservative approach to SW and CW damage is kind of funny when you look over at, say, DPS GF and the ridiculous burst potential that the majority of the dedicated DPS classes can't even approach without relying on bugs and/or the most coordinated and strongest party buffs and debuffs.
Can I say sir your SW's name is the most flavourful I've ever seen. The abilities of the SW, using demonic power to smite foes, is quite literally the definition of sacrilegious.
Where can i become a learned character name-maker like you?
Can I say sir your SW's name is the most flavourful I've ever seen. The abilities of the SW, using demonic power to smite foes, is quite literally the definition of sacrilegious.
Where can i become a learned character name-maker like you?
Oh, thank you
You can accidentally develop a taste for a theme-naming where you find yourself choosing actual nouns for character names. At some point I realized that every character I actually played in this game needed to have a noun name.
I think this particular fetish started with Testament (my first main, named in homage to Guilty Gear's Testament), then Contagion (my dark elf healer main from Lineage II). Now all my mains follow suit.
I started this class when it first came out as a HB Fury and still play that way today. During all the fixes and lose of DPS I always held out hope that this would one day get fixed. Of late however I have come to realize that "Hope" is a four letter word. And of the four letter words it is the least accurate to describe this class.
I remember reading a year or so ago an article that was from a Cryptic developer on changes to the game and classes. The thing is almost none of the original team that made Neverwinter are working on it anymore. It went on to say that they may make a change to 1 power, and have unintended issues with other classes powers, so they have to go slow. I know we are all dedicated to this game, but try and be somewhat sympathetic to the Devs in the job they have to do. I myself am guilty of being angry at changes made to the game along with outstanding bugs. If you have even done programming you should know that a change in code sometimes has catastrophic issues in another part of the code. Please go easy on them, we have already lost Balanced so the new person has alot on their plate.
Added note by Percemer: please remain focused on the main topic with constructive feedbacks.
espasbadfistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 39Arc User
I fully agree that bug fixing and refactoring comes first. You don't want to maintain a project with an increasing amount of "technical debt" in it. Those bugs tend to pile up like a big wave of failure chasing you. If you look on non-gaming software you probably find a lot of tools that can help you in automizing the test process. I am not sure if this is possible for games also because afaik there are other concerns that may prevent this like performance optimizations standing in the front.
On the other side i have to agree that several things would be not too hard to make use of to "balance" the damage output for the warlock without having to rework a whole set of powers and feats. Think of "Bloodpact of Cania" or "Devastating Critical" or maybe even "Scornful Curse". There are more that also works quite linear and i have no idea why the developers don't focus on these.
If you have the numbers (statistics) you should get a good grasp of the proportions of dps between the different classes. And after "barovian hunts" i am sure that the developers could get the answers if they want. Seems that there is data galore. Adjust one of those feats incrementally until your numbers say that in the mean SW does same damage as GWF. Case closed. You probably won't even need to wait for this until a new mod is released. Check it all 4 weeks or so and you be set.
This reasoning leaves the bitter taste that the SW people do not face technical problems. As @bellkazi said a lot of things comes down to some constants in code or even better some configuration files. I really can't believe that a project of such a size could be messed up like putting all constants as literals in the code.
- Some interesting changes overall with some quicker animations and tiny buffs here and there but... - Damnation: the changes are appreciated to make this path viable again, but there is a big issue with the capstone that is underperforming in real conditions : Soul Investiture stacks are both too long to build and cannot be refreshed. It is not viable in a medium-high level group with *say* other equally-skilled dps because the SW will not contribute (3 dps is what a dungeon requires, isn't it?). Nobody will want a SW with this build, except for the fun. - The class mechanic of SW "lesser curse" has not been modified while it deserves a real utility/buff. It is still a mediocre % in ACT log (like 1%). Suggestion: possibility of having an effect of damage buff when curses stacks. It would give an aim at this class mechanic and should help SW dps that is already not the greatest of the game ; I think it is the easy answer to the lack of self-buff of our class. I remember that @balanced#2849 had some plans for the improvement of this class mechanic. @noworries#8859 , it is up to you to finish the job
I chose the SW to play a DPS class and not to be a supporter for other classes. It's nice that you have the choice. But should also be a choice. I do not understand how it can be so difficult to match the SW to other dps classes. He is the worst DPS class :-( Is this all on purpose?
Great, that we are allowed to run around with a puppet as a pet soon. But not to be taken seriously by the other classes.
Pity about the great SW. :-( If nothing changes, then they should give me a class change and the items for the new class, but so that I have not been four years free.
I fully agree that bug fixing and refactoring comes first. You don't want to maintain a project with an increasing amount of "technical debt" in it. Those bugs tend to pile up like a big wave of failure chasing you. If you look on non-gaming software you probably find a lot of tools that can help you in automizing the test process. I am not sure if this is possible for games also because afaik there are other concerns that may prevent this like performance optimizations standing in the front.
On the other side i have to agree that several things would be not too hard to make use of to "balance" the damage output for the warlock without having to rework a whole set of powers and feats. Think of "Bloodpact of Cania" or "Devastating Critical" or maybe even "Scornful Curse". There are more that also works quite linear and i have no idea why the developers don't focus on these.
If you have the numbers (statistics) you should get a good grasp of the proportions of dps between the different classes. And after "barovian hunts" i am sure that the developers could get the answers if they want. Seems that there is data galore. Adjust one of those feats incrementally until your numbers say that in the mean SW does same damage as GWF. Case closed. You probably won't even need to wait for this until a new mod is released. Check it all 4 weeks or so and you be set.
This reasoning leaves the bitter taste that the SW people do not face technical problems. As @bellkazi said a lot of things comes down to some constants in code or even better some configuration files. I really can't believe that a project of such a size could be messed up like putting all constants as literals in the code.
Maybe balance is so awfull now, because there are so much "spaghetti" code in it, that it is impossible to understand how it works and fix it XD
Enable Creeping Death to proc from Aura of Courage, BloodyDeath, Wheel of Elements: Fire, Critical Promise and Killing Curse; the current version only works with daylies, encounter powers and at-wills and as a result it's fairly underpowered, other thing you could is to keep those 3 types of powers as the only that proc Creeping Death but significantly increase the (painfully slow) damage, like from current 75% to 150% or so otherwise SW will continue to be a buff slave templock, most of us made our characters to be damage dealers that are on par ot better than other striker classes
@chimerax no, one of the devs himself on that AMA thing stated they play the game just quite occassionally, so, with that being the case, they should listen to the playerbase who plays at high level (like @bellkazi, @tom#6998 , @nabu#1603@schietindebux , Arthur, @mirajanesitri , @slyef#6396, @werdandi#8366 , @strykr75601 myself and others) because players who run the class are the ones who actually know what it needs, plenty of feeback was given and all that came from it was... a patch for a glyph bug... that was a quite an insulting thing to us SW community.
Having done some quick testing I'm happy with the changes to Damnation for HB, its back to being a playable spec on par with my Templock (for solo play at least, I wouldn't take it over Templock for group content it just does nothing for a group).
In comparison I found the SB version of the build to be nigh useless. Now I admit I'm out of touch with SB builds, but the character (15k on preview) shouldn't go from soloing eToS acceptably to struggling with the first three encounters in the dungeon if the 2 versions are remotely comparable.
So given that I can only conclude that the far more detailed feedback others are offering should be heeded for the continuing state of the class.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
We realize that this thread lacks the amount of hysterics, threats to leave the game, threats of violence, accusations that you killed our puppies, irrational demands, whining, whinging, assurances that the sky is falling, protestations of being singled out as a class, cursing (or should I say hamstering?), threats of lawsuits, money-grabbing accusations, hyperbole, unfavorable personal character comparisons and other insults, than you can find in the TR reaction thread or the ongoing reactions of the CW community regarding the changes (i.e. nerfs) made to them recently.
We are sorry.
We play warlocks and thus are out of most of those reactions. We have spent them over the past several years as we screamed into the void without being heard. And sure, recent changes may have, for a fleeting moment given us the idea that we could be heard in the future, but that didn't last. You have, for a large part, succeeded in turning the entire SW community into fatalists...congrats.
So, again, we're sorry about not being able to muster the amount of righteous wrath that the TRs and CWs can, but could you please stop prioritizing purely based on who screams the loudest?
(Oh and I guess that fixes the lack of hyperbole in this thread )
("Damnation is now a viable featpath..." Stop, it's not helpful. Having 2 featpaths that both don't compete VS other HDPS Classes doesn't help any more than having 1.)
After reading that the TR has just had a 5% damage increase across all of their At-Wills, Encounters and Dailies, I do believe it has become 'who screams the loudest' gets the attention. As SWs have been systematically debuffed/nerfed over and over and again, and SW players have quit or moved onto other classes, there just isn't enough of an SW player base to scream and shout anymore.
A lot of newer players are happily playing their templocks oblivious to what the class is actually meant for and that seems to be enough. Those of us that are not happy about being the weakest DPS class in the game do not have a voice. Not loud enough to be taken notice of.
And as some idiot stated earlier in the thread, we should probably be happy that we have at least one build that gets invited into endgame content.
However, I am not happy with the state of the class or the lack of attention to setting it right. I'm not happy that a GF can destroy a boss in one rotation or that a GWF can use an at will that does as much damage as an SWs hardest hitting encounter. Or that a GFs Jagged blades can tick for more than 1mil per tick. While an SWs Lesser Curse ticks for 10-20k.
So after looking at another mod with next to no positive changes to the DPS 'balancing' of the SW and the ignoring of other classes that are genuinely overpowered I too have also moved on to other games.
("Damnation is now a viable featpath..." Stop, it's not helpful. Having 2 featpaths that both don't compete VS other HDPS Classes doesn't help any more than having 1.)
actually ther were some improvements, but ther are so minor that I don't even want to name them
Comments
waiting for a fair dialogue and feedback on companies side to solve open issues, until then no more support from my side.
waiting for a fair dialogue and feedback on companies side to solve open issues, until then no more support from my side.
waiting for a fair dialogue and feedback on companies side to solve open issues, until then no more support from my side.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
You still can't cast it in the middle of your burst phase (under buff of the Crystal) due to Soul Scorch being tooooooo long to cast but it's already good !
And i don't know. I'm not so disappointed by the changes you seems to be. I think there aren't many things left to do to have a well balanced SW. Every class has its useless powers/feats but overall, performances don't seem so far from others strikers anymore.
It would be just good if we could have a dev answering this thread just to say what they think about our feedback...
waiting for a fair dialogue and feedback on companies side to solve open issues, until then no more support from my side.
Damage aside, it's important from a Spark generation standpoint for SB. Sure, we tend to be at full sparks in a well-buffed party, but it's a definite step back in QoL (and ultimately a damage nerf) for lower-buff situations.
The Soul Investiture stack issue is also a hot button; not only does it take several seconds to ramp up (while using a good, "normal" rotation), the stacks not being allowed to refresh once at max capacity seems unnecessary and hopefully unintended.
Judging by @noworries#8859 comments in the TR thread (because we can hear crickets over here in the SW one), the devs are trying to be more conservative with player damage, but their overly conservative approach to SW and CW damage is kind of funny when you look over at, say, DPS GF and the ridiculous burst potential that the majority of the dedicated DPS classes can't even approach without relying on bugs and/or the most coordinated and strongest party buffs and debuffs.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Where can i become a learned character name-maker like you?
You can accidentally develop a taste for a theme-naming where you find yourself choosing actual nouns for character names. At some point I realized that every character I actually played in this game needed to have a noun name.
I think this particular fetish started with Testament (my first main, named in homage to Guilty Gear's Testament), then Contagion (my dark elf healer main from Lineage II). Now all my mains follow suit.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Added note by Percemer: please remain focused on the main topic with constructive feedbacks.
On the other side i have to agree that several things would be not too hard to make use of to "balance" the damage output for the warlock without having to rework a whole set of powers and feats. Think of "Bloodpact of Cania" or "Devastating Critical" or maybe even "Scornful Curse". There are more that also works quite linear and i have no idea why the developers don't focus on these.
If you have the numbers (statistics) you should get a good grasp of the proportions of dps between the different classes. And after "barovian hunts" i am sure that the developers could get the answers if they want. Seems that there is data galore. Adjust one of those feats incrementally until your numbers say that in the mean SW does same damage as GWF. Case closed. You probably won't even need to wait for this until a new mod is released. Check it all 4 weeks or so and you be set.
This reasoning leaves the bitter taste that the SW people do not face technical problems. As @bellkazi said a lot of things comes down to some constants in code or even better some configuration files. I really can't believe that a project of such a size could be messed up like putting all constants as literals in the code.
- Damnation: the changes are appreciated to make this path viable again, but there is a big issue with the capstone that is underperforming in real conditions : Soul Investiture stacks are both too long to build and cannot be refreshed. It is not viable in a medium-high level group with *say* other equally-skilled dps because the SW will not contribute (3 dps is what a dungeon requires, isn't it?). Nobody will want a SW with this build, except for the fun.
- The class mechanic of SW "lesser curse" has not been modified while it deserves a real utility/buff. It is still a mediocre % in ACT log (like 1%). Suggestion: possibility of having an effect of damage buff when curses stacks. It would give an aim at this class mechanic and should help SW dps that is already not the greatest of the game ; I think it is the easy answer to the lack of self-buff of our class. I remember that @balanced#2849 had some plans for the improvement of this class mechanic. @noworries#8859 , it is up to you to finish the job
I chose the SW to play a DPS class and not to be a supporter for other classes. It's nice that you have the choice. But should also be a choice. I do not understand how it can be so difficult to match the SW to other dps classes. He is the worst DPS class :-( Is this all on purpose?
Great, that we are allowed to run around with a puppet as a pet soon. But not to be taken seriously by the other classes.
Pity about the great SW. :-( If nothing changes, then they should give me a class change and the items for the new class, but so that I have not been four years free.
Enable Creeping Death to proc from Aura of Courage, BloodyDeath, Wheel of Elements: Fire, Critical Promise and Killing Curse; the current version only works with daylies, encounter powers and at-wills and as a result it's fairly underpowered, other thing you could is to keep those 3 types of powers as the only that proc Creeping Death but significantly increase the (painfully slow) damage, like from current 75% to 150% or so otherwise SW will continue to be a buff slave templock, most of us made our characters to be damage dealers that are on par ot better than other striker classes
@chimerax no, one of the devs himself on that AMA thing stated they play the game just quite occassionally, so, with that being the case, they should listen to the playerbase who plays at high level (like @bellkazi, @tom#6998 , @nabu#1603 @schietindebux , Arthur, @mirajanesitri , @slyef#6396, @werdandi#8366 , @strykr75601 myself and others) because players who run the class are the ones who actually know what it needs, plenty of feeback was given and all that came from it was... a patch for a glyph bug... that was a quite an insulting thing to us SW community.
*yawns* another day without dev response.
Having done some quick testing I'm happy with the changes to Damnation for HB, its back to being a playable spec on par with my Templock (for solo play at least, I wouldn't take it over Templock for group content it just does nothing for a group).
In comparison I found the SB version of the build to be nigh useless. Now I admit I'm out of touch with SB builds, but the character (15k on preview) shouldn't go from soloing eToS acceptably to struggling with the first three encounters in the dungeon if the 2 versions are remotely comparable.
So given that I can only conclude that the far more detailed feedback others are offering should be heeded for the continuing state of the class.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
We realize that this thread lacks the amount of hysterics, threats to leave the game, threats of violence, accusations that you killed our puppies, irrational demands, whining, whinging, assurances that the sky is falling, protestations of being singled out as a class, cursing (or should I say hamstering?), threats of lawsuits, money-grabbing accusations, hyperbole, unfavorable personal character comparisons and other insults, than you can find in the TR reaction thread or the ongoing reactions of the CW community regarding the changes (i.e. nerfs) made to them recently.
We are sorry.
We play warlocks and thus are out of most of those reactions. We have spent them over the past several years as we screamed into the void without being heard. And sure, recent changes may have, for a fleeting moment given us the idea that we could be heard in the future, but that didn't last. You have, for a large part, succeeded in turning the entire SW community into fatalists...congrats.
So, again, we're sorry about not being able to muster the amount of righteous wrath that the TRs and CWs can, but could you please stop prioritizing purely based on who screams the loudest?
(Oh and I guess that fixes the lack of hyperbole in this thread
"SW has not been buffed in MOD15"
("Damnation is now a viable featpath..." Stop, it's not helpful. Having 2 featpaths that both don't compete VS other HDPS Classes doesn't help any more than having 1.)
A lot of newer players are happily playing their templocks oblivious to what the class is actually meant for and that seems to be enough. Those of us that are not happy about being the weakest DPS class in the game do not have a voice. Not loud enough to be taken notice of.
And as some idiot stated earlier in the thread, we should probably be happy that we have at least one build that gets invited into endgame content.
However, I am not happy with the state of the class or the lack of attention to setting it right. I'm not happy that a GF can destroy a boss in one rotation or that a GWF can use an at will that does as much damage as an SWs hardest hitting encounter. Or that a GFs Jagged blades can tick for more than 1mil per tick. While an SWs Lesser Curse ticks for 10-20k.
So after looking at another mod with next to no positive changes to the DPS 'balancing' of the SW and the ignoring of other classes that are genuinely overpowered I too have also moved on to other games.
Guild: Ruathym Corsairs
For anyone curious it is this icon over here: