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Should I Return? - Scourge Warlock

emogamer26emogamer26 Member Posts: 6 Arc User
TLDR At Bottom. So I posted a very similar discussion thread about 6 months ago and I was told given an inumerable amount of "No"s, but among the lot, there were a few people who gave light as to some hope for Warlock in the future. I played Warlock for 6 years up until the atrocity that was Mod 16 - Undermountain. I was excited to be able to queue as healer finally as I had mained Templock for a majourity of guild related events, but could only queue as dps. However, when the mod released, almost all of my friends, as well as I, were quite upset by the changes done to every class. My friend who mained Oath of Protection Paladin was quite displeased as he was still leveling his character because he was new, was no longer able to deal with basic creeps. I was upset because Dread Ring, a campaign I personally enjoyed just roaming around and doing the dailies, was now unplayable. So I queued up for dungeons a healer, and tanks couldn't even pull more aggro than me from my healing.

As previously stated, I played Warlock for 6 years. I started on the class and fell in love with it's design, the playstyle, and being able to opt into heal/debuff spec if I wanted. Getting to talk with other warlocks on what abilities were best and what setups to run was always a fun time. The Warlock's Curse mechanic was removed which saddened me, but only to be replaced with, what I can only describe as, a very lackluster beam for dps and a drain for healing. This saddened me as managing your curse was always a bit of a fun minigame to me, getting to play around with curse synergies and curse consuming abilities.

Secondly, soul sparks are tedious. They take a long time to build up, and they granted more stats based on how many you had. This part I did not mind. After the Undermountain update, they became a necessary part of the class, which wasn't the worst thing in the world, but I wasn't a fan of having to sacrifice them in order to use your tab ability, (Soul Scorch if I remember correctly?) for dps. Whereas the drain for the healing spec feels a lot more intuitive, but it drains health.

Lastly, I'd like to talk about ability pages and campaign rewards. Why? One of the things I found quite neat being a warlock player was the background for the ability page, being able to select feats that I could slowly feel the impact of building up as I level, unlocking buffs and passives based on campaign rewards, and picking paradigms and paragons that defined the playstyle you wanted. To start on this list, the very look of the ability page was cool to me, and actually felt like the people/person who designed it actually gave a damn about the small things. Now we just have a black background page with all your Encounter, At Will, Passive, Daily, and Feat powers on one screen. That felt superbly lazy on the developers part and combined with the "We were too busy being focused on 'Real Development'" comment on Reddit from Thomas Foss, felt like they just kinda abandoned the small things that made the game seem interesting, the small eye popping stuff that every artist knows is just as important as the main focus of their piece. The rework of feats was also something that just didn't make sense to me in any way. Making it so you could only pick one of the two feats on that section felt pretty bad as the new "Risky Investiture" (I believe) and it's counterpart, I felt like they should have been on separate feat selections because of their potential to synergize with each other. And although these new feats were supposed to feel like jumps in power, they were barely noticeable compared to the previous setup.

For my last point, I wanted to dedicate it's own paragraph to it. Diversity in playstyles between warlocks has come to almost nothing as it just feels like now more than ever, there's a meta to it. I remember when I started playing, there was a huge following behind the Soulbinder Damnation playstyle, building up soul sparks to keep your soul puppet strong and it became a very strong presence in fights. However this didn't eliminate Hellbringer Fury warlocks in terms of dpsing. The only thing we all agreed on for what was "meta" was that Pillar Of Power was kind of a crutch. Which I didn't mind. It was still a fun spell and gave defense, spell damage, and debuffed enemies who walked into it. Temptation you could run with either Hellbringer or Soulbinder and it was still fun and viable. I'm not quite sure how to heal in this current setup, but when talking to plenty of players, it seemed like everyone just defaulted to one setup that revolved around Curse Bite, a previously overlooked and unused spell. Now I'm not upset at an unused spell suddenly becoming viable, but that seemed to be the only thing that people used. And if you didn't, you were "griefing" as my former guildmates put it.

Despite my grief and distaste for the changes, I always find myself wanting to come back, as I did spend 6 years on a single toon for a reason. So I return to my title point, is it a good time to return to Warlock? If not, is there any hope for the class?

TLDR; Greatly unhappy with Warlock and overall game changes in Mod 16. Stopped playing since, but once in a while check the forums to see if I should return to playing warlock. Should I?
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Comments

  • smokebaileysmokebailey Member Posts: 43 Arc User
    Yea, my warlock seems rather.....lacking now. And it's my second longest used character.
  • zimxero#8085 zimxero Member Posts: 876 Arc User
    edited March 2020
    The standard top end damage of all classes are close now, within 10% of each other, based on my close experiential analysis.
    The exception to this lies with a few special builds from a few paragons that are able to "highly utilize" the Bilethorn weapon enchantment to achieve considerably higher DPS, by maximizing its proc count. Warlock is now as common in the game as other classes. Everyone in every class wants more powerful skills and someone is always complaining, but balance is the best its "EVER" been at this moment.
  • greywyndgreywynd Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 7,083 Arc User
    Log in, play, and see for yourself. Our opinions are simply that; OUR opinions. Whether or not you play should be based on your experiences.
    I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
  • emogamer26emogamer26 Member Posts: 6 Arc User
    You know Greywynd, people like you are the least helpful people on the forums. I post because I don't want to sit here and wait for it to download and just "try it for myself". The whole purpose of posting, is because I want to know other's reactions.
  • emogamer26emogamer26 Member Posts: 6 Arc User

    The standard top end damage of all classes are close now, within 10% of each other, based on my close experiential analysis.
    The exception to this lies with a few special builds from a few paragons that are able to "highly utilize" the Bilethorn weapon enchantment to achieve considerably higher DPS, by maximizing its proc count. Warlock is now as common in the game as other classes. Everyone in every class wants more powerful skills and someone is always complaining, but balance is the best its "EVER" been at this moment.

    This is amazing news to hear. I would pose one more question though, how is the healing spec? Is the healing charts just as balanced?
  • zerappuszerappus Member Posts: 138 Arc User
    To answer quite simply, is yes.

    But to elaborate, that Mod 16 "ruined gameplay" is a canard being fussed about by exploiters who can't accept that their multiplier spam builds are gone for good. To many who didn't use them, our character's classes got stronger.

    My Rogue went from a scrub Scoundrel Tree to a 'godly' Assassin Tree.
    My beloved Archers, with my new Lightning build (https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/comment/13116823) is no longer 'pathetic'. While it is still ways behind the cheesy Melee Warden (zzzzz, I wonder what happened to the equally cheesy old trappers), it's still way better than pre-mod 16 Archery ( I just had to let go of the old archery build and make completely new one).

    The real reason why many quit after Mod 16 and 17 is due to core problem of repetitive vertical progression feedback loop.
    This lead to progression and gameplay rut and eventually to the Developers themselves devaluing everything to 'reset' the game because everyone is essentially 'capped' so they took it out on maxed and high level players by nerfing everything from enchantments to boons to artifacts to companions and avoid hitting the newbies by raising the cap instead.

    We identified all these in the various CDPs.

    So they are doing passes on rewards, gearing, indiscriminate nerfing of items, scaling etc.
    and planning horizontal progression, new events, overhaul of events, and dungeons etc.

    I suggest watching the 2020 Roadmap Livestream: https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/11369073

    They published a general calender in there of their plans.

    And as someone has said, class balance - while not perfect by far - has never been this well hewed.
  • sagakaiyume#0847 sagakaiyume Member Posts: 402 Arc User
    People have used Warlock healing build in all content, including solo healing warlock in Tomm. The warlock is one of the harder classes to play right, but if you can get experienced warlock's help you can match if not come very close to others when equally geared on dps build. The healing build has very good single target healing, best in the game, decent aoe, good resource management, amazing buffs and so on.
  • wofulsnail171#1081 wofulsnail171 Member Posts: 10 Arc User
    Personally I enjoy healing as a soulweaver the most. It takes a lot of effort to learn and gear up to be viable in group content as a healer as we start with the least outgoing healing. We also have no shield effects like paladins and not a lot of magnitude like clerics. But we have some great utility powers and effects for the party (if people would finally learn to stand in our green cycle once in a while). Dont expect to be top on the healing chart in skirmishes, as our powers are very limited by range and number of people affected. That can be really frustrating sometimes when a 6k lower il cleric has double the healing in the end. But most people overlook the utility and great debuffs/buffs the class gives. It also has great potential to add some damage output to your party. With this class i was able to carry people though MSP as second in dps and still managed to keep everyone alive.

    As for the dps part, I can only say its not the same it was before mod 16. Its a complete different playstyle than before. I gave up on maining dps shortly after mod 16 droped because it was way too frustrating to play for me. I never could get into a good rotation that felt fun to play and deals good damage. Since then they changed a few things, but i am not geared as dps anymore and therefore i am not able to compare my damage to other classes. Just the fact that they are not able to fix the ap gain for warlocks over two mods is still a mystery to me. In my opinion hellbringer falls very short in terms of game design compared to other classes. It had great potential to be a fun class with different playstyles. Maybe you will have more luck with the dps path then I had, but it still takes a lot to change to get me back into dps.

    I see no problems with running old content at the moment. I woud actually say its way easier to get through it now than it was before mod 16.

    In the end its up to you to decide if you'll have fun with this class again, but i would at least give it a try.
  • shogun#3014 shogun Member Posts: 1 New User
    How can I log in the game using my username? Typing shogun or shogun#xxxx doesn t work. Sorry for posting here but this forum is not friendly at all for new users.
  • wofulsnail171#1081 wofulsnail171 Member Posts: 10 Arc User
    I never got that to work. Still dont know if thats a bug or intended, but i have to use my email for the launcher as well as for everthing else with arc.
  • plasticbatplasticbat Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 12,182 Arc User
    edited March 2020

    How can I log in the game using my username? Typing shogun or shogun#xxxx doesn t work. Sorry for posting here but this forum is not friendly at all for new users.

    I don't think this works for "new" user in the past few years. It worked when I joined and it is still working for me.
    In a nutshell, it does not work.
    If I have to guess, it is probably a security measure to avoid people to find out what a valid username is.
    By the way, even in my era, I could not use my user name to login. I had to make another name to login.
    i.e. my user name is plasticbat. My login could not be plasticbat. It was just not forced to use an email address.
    Post edited by plasticbat on
    *** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
  • pitshadepitshade Member Posts: 5,665 Arc User
    Every class has a viable build, but also has a lot of non-functional stuff as well. The devs have indicated that the next step is to help the less used paths. I hope they will stick with that and also fix the bad feats and powers across the board.

    Beyond that, you can complete the content without some meta group but many players will insist on it anyway. Warlock has a bad reputation but this is more a people problem than a class problem. Not saying all is rosy, but there are a lot of detractors and they are what pulls the class down more than anything.

    For both paths, there are some issues. Hellbringer isn't the top dps (nor the bottom) and isn't the most intuitive. I've recently switched from a Curse Consume build to one that uses low cooldowns and the Soul Scorch cooldown feat. It seems to do pretty well but I haven't run any harder content with it yet.

    Big issue with healers right now is that players prefer Paladin's blue HP shields for the safety margin. Massive temp HP bars let people play sloppy, and Warlock can't compete on that front. (Neither can cleric FWIW) The massive damage spikes in current endgame make it hard on traditional reactive healers.

    IMO, the biggest issue in the game is a lack of worthwhile content, especially for groups. People run their RQs and then may just log out or go to run solo content (of which there are a lot of viable options to run). People who want to run queued content don't have a lot of choices that will actually reward them materially. TOMM is out of most people's reach. Infernal Citadel doesn't have good loot, LOMM gives mostly the same rewards and isn't as demanding. Cradle's ES6 drops are worth less than the ES5s from Dread Ring lairs... A lot of old content is buggy and scaling is still trash.
    "We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
  • greywyndgreywynd Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 7,083 Arc User

    You know Greywynd, people like you are the least helpful people on the forums. I post because I don't want to sit here and wait for it to download and just "try it for myself". The whole purpose of posting, is because I want to know other's reactions.

    And if 5 people tell you the warlock is awesome and 5 people tell you that it sucks, exactly how does that help you?

    Personally, the warlock, both pre- and post-changes, is one of my least favorite classes to play. So, how does that help you?
    I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
  • emogamer26emogamer26 Member Posts: 6 Arc User
    greywynd said:

    You know Greywynd, people like you are the least helpful people on the forums. I post because I don't want to sit here and wait for it to download and just "try it for myself". The whole purpose of posting, is because I want to know other's reactions.

    And if 5 people tell you the warlock is awesome and 5 people tell you that it sucks, exactly how does that help you?

    Personally, the warlock, both pre- and post-changes, is one of my least favorite classes to play. So, how does that help you?
    It helps me because if everyone says "no" like the last time I posted, I know not to waste my time. If people say yes, I'm inspired to try it again. Everyone else has been great at giving me responses with their detailed opinions, which is something I appreciate. When you comment something that's unrelated to my question, it wastes both of our time.
  • jimmypdtjimmypdt Member Posts: 121 Arc User

    How can I log in the game using my username? Typing shogun or shogun#xxxx doesn t work. Sorry for posting here but this forum is not friendly at all for new users.

    You can use your email address for the username.

    Hope this helped
  • mwkmwk Member Posts: 401 Arc User
    edited March 2020
    I really don't know why there is complaining with the scourge warlock? I'm playing hellbringer paragon just fine. I think it's because the ones that are complaining don't pay attention to class features and feats. Warlock's curse and some class feature that makes all at wills do more damage with curse; something like that. 20% damage feat as enemy health diminishes is better than 10 magnitude every 4 seconds, which is weak for creeping death! Take this advice and play happy again. Other paragon, I can't help you there.
  • perambulator#2965 perambulator Member Posts: 1 New User
    I don't know about you but I'm returning since I'm now stuck here at home with nothing else to do.
    ..
  • sandukutupusandukutupu Member Posts: 2,285 Arc User

    How can I log in the game using my username? Typing shogun or shogun#xxxx doesn t work. Sorry for posting here but this forum is not friendly at all for new users.

    Your screen name (shogun#3014) is not your User ID and you should never post the User ID or your email address in public. Whatever you used to sign into this forum is your User ID. This is done as a layer of security.
    wb-cenders.gif
  • mongol69mongol69 Member Posts: 447 Arc User
    edited March 2020
    The biggest issue with hellbringer is that at maxed endgame it's still about 150 magnitude per second lower than wizard ranger or rogue defintely not within 10% at all still closer to 30%.

    As far as aoe it's on par with a tr if not better being ranged. Problem being trash killing makes the damage look closer within 10% with lots of adds...untill you run tomm. To match a wizards single target damage output in tomm you need 4 warlocks stacking cd and foe to be on par at maxed endgame if there are 2 wizards using roe.

    So in the end, warlocks are king of clearing trash mobs, but that's about it...unless you run with a pack of warlocls.
  • krumple01krumple01 Member Posts: 755 Arc User
    The Warlock isn't performing as well as rogue in dps build and it should be however; with the right gear it does alright. Healing in some runs is doable but not ideal. I have ran long with an alliance healing warlock that did okay but I wouldn't go with just anyone running heals on warlock. Should you come back, no no point right now so come back only to store up and that's it..
  • dspeic43#8473 dspeic43 Member Posts: 11 Arc User
    If you loved Neverwinter pre mod 16 and left because of mod 16 then keep checking back to see if the game eventually rights the wrongs of mod 16.

    I log in every so often and then log out and check in like you. Very disheartening what has happened. Just my 0.02.
  • giz#2086 giz Member Posts: 190 Arc User
    Don't. The class is underperforming as DPS. If you like healing it's ok, because groups always need a heal-bot, no matter the class. But some groups prefer Paladin Oathkeeper just for their shields. This game isn't for DPS Warlock.
  • alanea#4230 alanea Member Posts: 48 Arc User
    i would say sadly no not really because warlock itself but as you mentioned..

    diversity = m16 removed most choices from game 90% people of same paragon use same feats and same spells
    m17 = added recycled content from m16 and one top 2% trial
    m18 = added map where you grind gear for +- week also farm new boons by doing few quests per week
    and nothing else except dungeon
    events = mostly same 1 new but it wasnt around for months
    professions = masterwork is ruined they added stuff thats better and easier to craft than anything MW offers legendary tools are obsolete to new 10k ad ones as well but honestly consumables are only thing people bother to craft

    infernal citadel - basically second tomm 99% randomly queued groups is absolutely slaughtered at first boss
    you basically need 85k caps and 300 -350k hp to stand a chance if you reach this point you are doomed anyway because you spend more time assembling group from top 2-5% than in dungeon itself

    warlock isnt top tier dps ... and its far behind as healer = OP(massive temp hp on top of max making people survive 1 hits) dc ( heals on completely different level) for example main aoe heal spell for sw have 400 magnitude dc 750 similar pattern exist in damage reduction yes you can heal but dc or OP will do it with half work / gear

    overall no they dont see any m16+ stuff as mistake they pretend to hear .. make stuff like cdp to talk with community but int he end they ignore 100% of it and continue in same steps
    if you talk around a bit ..majority of old players is bored/pissed by the lack of content/choices and hanging around only because they struggle to abandon characters and all that time spent on them so they just waiting for change or just clearly appear once per week/month to see nothing changed and go away again
    but yeah many old guilds remind ghost town

    and iam afraid change is highly unlikely as they have no reason to really care as long as theres influx of new players that fill the holes in income before they reach the dull endgame with 0 diversity

    sooo... if you want return it might be fun for few weeks until you learn the new stuff but i definitely dont recommend warlock for that its currently second grade citizen by having 2 underpowered paragons .. most classes have atleast one that works and one

    or you can wait and see if they wake up or ruin neverwinter even more before you decide
    but basically if you didnt like m16 then dont bother .. they continue in same tracks
  • shipman#4544 shipman Member Posts: 2 Arc User
    SW is playable of course but doesn't worth to invest a time or funds into it. I've switched to the Ranger and have fun. Today there are two classes beyond the game scope SW and GF because others overlap all their abilities and run better. SW and GF exist nominally. NW doesn't need them both. Sounds weird, right? What I see currently is a presence of SW in the game is miserable.
  • neuroticnekoneuroticneko Member Posts: 85 Arc User
    I actually love playing my Hellbringer Warlock, my friends love having me in their group and I'm very much valued by my friends and some of my fellow guildies I have played with. I am still working on improving her all the time, but I like how she can solo most areas on her own including high level areas. :)
    Jadis 25K Level 80 Warlock; Cassandra.. Wizard; work in progress.
  • durugudesudurugudesu Member Posts: 555 Arc User

    SW is playable of course but doesn't worth to invest a time or funds into it. I've switched to the Ranger and have fun. Today there are two classes beyond the game scope SW and GF because others overlap all their abilities and run better. SW and GF exist nominally. NW doesn't need them both. Sounds weird, right? What I see currently is a presence of SW in the game is miserable.

    Any class you devote and invest time to knowing how to play is fully viable.
  • gleichgewichtnwgleichgewichtnw Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 147 Arc User

    SW is playable of course but doesn't worth to invest a time or funds into it. I've switched to the Ranger and have fun. Today there are two classes beyond the game scope SW and GF because others overlap all their abilities and run better. SW and GF exist nominally. NW doesn't need them both. Sounds weird, right? What I see currently is a presence of SW in the game is miserable.

    Who plays better than GF? OP?

    I play only my Main GF since Alpha and was thinking about getting back into the game with that special situation out there. But since they removed the tactician GF Buff machine I was always afraid, that tank gf is useless.

    To start a new character, play all campaigns again and farm them up with good stuff again is nothing I would like to do in this game again.

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