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Adding PvP Viability to Warlocks
harnel
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
So, it's no secret that at the moment, warlocks are basically completely boned in pvp. They have no way to escape control, very close to no control outside of a single daily that only affects one guy, and almost no way to mitigate damage as there's a distinct lack of deflect and defense on armor.
This is a thread aiming to fix that. Throughout this post you'll see me use the abbreviation "AC". This refers to Attack Cancellation. AC is done either aggressively (control effects), defensively (Dodging or healing oneself), or passively (defensive stats meant to mitigate incoming strikes) but attack cancellation is extremely essential to the survival of a character.
Now, here's the thing; the wizard is fine in PvP because while it's just as squishy as the warlock (if not more so) it has the ability to employ ACs. Warlocks lack all of these. As I stated above, only one power (and a daily at that) has any form of control. The shift mechanic has no ability to even hinder ranged attacks outside of minorly reducing the damage; a hit that would do 35k damage will instead do about 25K. That's still very, very likely to end the fight. And finally, our prime defensive stat is lifesteal; that's good enough for PvE, but when players won't let you do the damage you need to heal yourself, that's simply not enough.
Even rogues have more control than warlocks, folks, and that's a pretty low bar to set.
So, let's examine this; what do we have?
-Control Wizards get away with two ACs; their control (Aggressive), and their dodging (Defensive).
-Rogues manage their ACs with stealth and lifesteal (defensive) and with deflection (passive).
-Guardian Fighters manage ACs with huge tanking stats (passive) and a combination of active defense abilities and control (an amount of both aggressive and defensive).
-Rangers AC through their stats and passive abilities (passive) and a huge number of control and damage abilities (aggressive).
-Clerics are unique in that they, for the most part, only have self healing and dodging to rely on (defensive) and some defensive stats (passive) but if they have a teammate they can eliminate that teammate's need to manage themselves defensively as well.
-Great Weapon Fighters Have a lot of control in the form of takedown, frontline surge, and others (aggressive), a huge level of defensive stats and armor enchantment (passive), and defensive options that essentially render most forms of incoming aggressive AC null (Defensive)
Do you see a pattern here? Every class in the game thus far has at least two forms of AC, and the best classes for PvP have more. But let's sit down and examine what the Warlock has going for it, shall we? Warlocks have Lifesteal (Defensive). That's it. There's no aggressive AC. There's only a single form of defensive AC when most classes can manage two or more. There's no passive AC. This is why the warlock is basically going to be a free kill in pvp, even to clerics (assuming they're properly built) and guardian fighters.
So, what can we do? There's a few things. We only need to make it so that it has enough defensive AC to survive, and give it a bit more aggressive AC.
The first change I'd recommend is changing out the Shift Sprint ability for a dodge or a phase-out. Yes, this being one of the only two classes to have a sprint mechanic makes it unique but it's unhelpful in the extreme. GWFs can make use of it because they have no less than three ACs, one of which essentially nullifies incoming aggressive ACs. This is fine for them; it's a great mechanic for someone who can take the damage, but Warlocks simply cannot. We don't have the passive AC to deal with that sort of thing, and so we get mulched. This also works along fluff reasons, as a short range teleport is well within the bounds of what a warlock in the source material is capable of. There have been many suggestions thus far on the forums for style considerations, but this in my opinion needs to happen mechanically. Another choice would be to have them fade into the shadowfell. Imagine it; you hold it down and for as long as your stamina holds out, you're immune to damage. It's certainly not a dodge, but it's unique and powerful all the same. EDIT: Rustlord had an excellent suggestion of turning it into a sort of block/heal mechanic; in phasing into shadows you negate the damage and turn it into (possibly) minor healing, which is what the class seems to be based around. unique, flavorful, and fits the class mechanically what with all the lifesteal buffing.
Now, we have two choices here, and while neither is more viable than the other, there's considerations for style we have to take into account. As such, I'll explain the less stylish first.
Option 1 is to provide defense, deflection, and regeneration to more warlock sets. This would, of course, require the taking away of other stats in order to compensate, which would lower Warlock's overall damage, which I don't believe many will enjoy. Add on that a warlock is a very outwardly focused archetype ("I'll turn you to ash!") and defensive stats just don't sit well with me.
Option 2 makes more sense; rather than adding passive AC, add aggressive AC in the form of control being added to several encounter powers, and potentially an at-will. Here's a list of ideas:
- Hand Of Blight is cool. Great animation, good damage, deals necrotic damage to favor the Fury path capstone. if you want to take it a bit further, though, you could have the "Blight" stacks reduce enemy speed as well, possibly up to 10% per stack if you choose feats for it. I don't know if I'd recommend this though; this is already a good power, and encounter control is more important.
- If you increase the time infernal spheres takes to strike someone (up to .5 seconds or possibly as high as back to .75 seconds) then you can have them provide a CC effect, or even simply interrupt the enemy. A .1 second stun would interrupt skills while leaving bosses immune to the effect, allowing Infernal spheres to be much more viable as a pvp counter tool.
- Accursed Souls is a cool power; suck their souls out and heal from it. however, what it lacks is any sense that you're doing more than damage to the enemy. They aren't slowed, stunned, dazed, nothing. I don't know about you, but having my soul forcibly ripped from my body would leave me feeling slightly under the weather. because of how fast the casting animation is, I'd recommend tying a CC effect to the after effect, so that when you send the corrupted souls back, they have a negative efect on the host body. A daze would work well for this.
- Fiery Bolt is rather lackluster at the moment. While it's one of our only encounter powers that has an AoE, it lacks in damage something fierce; there's next to no reason to use it over, say, killing flames, which can do up to four times the damage that fiery Bolt can dish out. How to make it viable then? Apply a short stun or prone to the individual hit, and if a curse is consumed, stun those that take the extra damage. Simple, easy, effective, and gives the warlock a pvp viable attack that can be used in a pinch to save their rears.
- Pillar of Power lacks a place on my rotation for the rather solid reason of "it simply doesn't do enough". The fact that it has a massive casting time and it takes 2 seconds to charge before it can explode on an enemy entirely kills the viability of the power for PvP, or, hell, even most PvE, as it's a tiny area and any boss, ranger, rogue, or wizard can give you a serious amount of area denial. The control it does is fine, but it needs to be capable of actually hitting things. My recommendation is to take off the chargeup before it can explode, and then it'd be fine.
- Wraith's Shadow is another one of those powers that'd be great if it wasn't bogged down by chargeup. The fact that, to get any control out of it, you need to cast it twice is a dealbreaker; that'd be fine if it was multi-target, but it isn't. it's a long casting time with subpar damage that immobilizes for entirely too shot a duration. There's two ways to fix this; make the entire shebang a single casting, or give the immobilize effect an AoE, to root more enemies than just the one.
- Curse bite is a power I want to like, but it buckles under the weight of its own effect. Not only does it remove curses (necessitating you to apply them again) but the damage it deals is minor, and can be beaten out by something as simple as an at-will attack. If you added a stun to it, it'd still not be worthwhile because of how long it'd take to set up and re-set up all those curses. I really don't know how to fix this one, but I very much doubt it'll see any great amount of use.
None of these would be particularly hard to implement, and would likely go a long way to making the Warlock better. Now, I'm not going to claim that one should use all of these suggested changes but a few of them would at least make the situation more tenable. If I had to choose three, the change to Accursed Souls, Fiery Bolt, and Pillar of Power are what I'd go for.
This is a thread aiming to fix that. Throughout this post you'll see me use the abbreviation "AC". This refers to Attack Cancellation. AC is done either aggressively (control effects), defensively (Dodging or healing oneself), or passively (defensive stats meant to mitigate incoming strikes) but attack cancellation is extremely essential to the survival of a character.
Now, here's the thing; the wizard is fine in PvP because while it's just as squishy as the warlock (if not more so) it has the ability to employ ACs. Warlocks lack all of these. As I stated above, only one power (and a daily at that) has any form of control. The shift mechanic has no ability to even hinder ranged attacks outside of minorly reducing the damage; a hit that would do 35k damage will instead do about 25K. That's still very, very likely to end the fight. And finally, our prime defensive stat is lifesteal; that's good enough for PvE, but when players won't let you do the damage you need to heal yourself, that's simply not enough.
Even rogues have more control than warlocks, folks, and that's a pretty low bar to set.
So, let's examine this; what do we have?
-Control Wizards get away with two ACs; their control (Aggressive), and their dodging (Defensive).
-Rogues manage their ACs with stealth and lifesteal (defensive) and with deflection (passive).
-Guardian Fighters manage ACs with huge tanking stats (passive) and a combination of active defense abilities and control (an amount of both aggressive and defensive).
-Rangers AC through their stats and passive abilities (passive) and a huge number of control and damage abilities (aggressive).
-Clerics are unique in that they, for the most part, only have self healing and dodging to rely on (defensive) and some defensive stats (passive) but if they have a teammate they can eliminate that teammate's need to manage themselves defensively as well.
-Great Weapon Fighters Have a lot of control in the form of takedown, frontline surge, and others (aggressive), a huge level of defensive stats and armor enchantment (passive), and defensive options that essentially render most forms of incoming aggressive AC null (Defensive)
Do you see a pattern here? Every class in the game thus far has at least two forms of AC, and the best classes for PvP have more. But let's sit down and examine what the Warlock has going for it, shall we? Warlocks have Lifesteal (Defensive). That's it. There's no aggressive AC. There's only a single form of defensive AC when most classes can manage two or more. There's no passive AC. This is why the warlock is basically going to be a free kill in pvp, even to clerics (assuming they're properly built) and guardian fighters.
So, what can we do? There's a few things. We only need to make it so that it has enough defensive AC to survive, and give it a bit more aggressive AC.
The first change I'd recommend is changing out the Shift Sprint ability for a dodge or a phase-out. Yes, this being one of the only two classes to have a sprint mechanic makes it unique but it's unhelpful in the extreme. GWFs can make use of it because they have no less than three ACs, one of which essentially nullifies incoming aggressive ACs. This is fine for them; it's a great mechanic for someone who can take the damage, but Warlocks simply cannot. We don't have the passive AC to deal with that sort of thing, and so we get mulched. This also works along fluff reasons, as a short range teleport is well within the bounds of what a warlock in the source material is capable of. There have been many suggestions thus far on the forums for style considerations, but this in my opinion needs to happen mechanically. Another choice would be to have them fade into the shadowfell. Imagine it; you hold it down and for as long as your stamina holds out, you're immune to damage. It's certainly not a dodge, but it's unique and powerful all the same. EDIT: Rustlord had an excellent suggestion of turning it into a sort of block/heal mechanic; in phasing into shadows you negate the damage and turn it into (possibly) minor healing, which is what the class seems to be based around. unique, flavorful, and fits the class mechanically what with all the lifesteal buffing.
Now, we have two choices here, and while neither is more viable than the other, there's considerations for style we have to take into account. As such, I'll explain the less stylish first.
Option 1 is to provide defense, deflection, and regeneration to more warlock sets. This would, of course, require the taking away of other stats in order to compensate, which would lower Warlock's overall damage, which I don't believe many will enjoy. Add on that a warlock is a very outwardly focused archetype ("I'll turn you to ash!") and defensive stats just don't sit well with me.
Option 2 makes more sense; rather than adding passive AC, add aggressive AC in the form of control being added to several encounter powers, and potentially an at-will. Here's a list of ideas:
- Hand Of Blight is cool. Great animation, good damage, deals necrotic damage to favor the Fury path capstone. if you want to take it a bit further, though, you could have the "Blight" stacks reduce enemy speed as well, possibly up to 10% per stack if you choose feats for it. I don't know if I'd recommend this though; this is already a good power, and encounter control is more important.
- If you increase the time infernal spheres takes to strike someone (up to .5 seconds or possibly as high as back to .75 seconds) then you can have them provide a CC effect, or even simply interrupt the enemy. A .1 second stun would interrupt skills while leaving bosses immune to the effect, allowing Infernal spheres to be much more viable as a pvp counter tool.
- Accursed Souls is a cool power; suck their souls out and heal from it. however, what it lacks is any sense that you're doing more than damage to the enemy. They aren't slowed, stunned, dazed, nothing. I don't know about you, but having my soul forcibly ripped from my body would leave me feeling slightly under the weather. because of how fast the casting animation is, I'd recommend tying a CC effect to the after effect, so that when you send the corrupted souls back, they have a negative efect on the host body. A daze would work well for this.
- Fiery Bolt is rather lackluster at the moment. While it's one of our only encounter powers that has an AoE, it lacks in damage something fierce; there's next to no reason to use it over, say, killing flames, which can do up to four times the damage that fiery Bolt can dish out. How to make it viable then? Apply a short stun or prone to the individual hit, and if a curse is consumed, stun those that take the extra damage. Simple, easy, effective, and gives the warlock a pvp viable attack that can be used in a pinch to save their rears.
- Pillar of Power lacks a place on my rotation for the rather solid reason of "it simply doesn't do enough". The fact that it has a massive casting time and it takes 2 seconds to charge before it can explode on an enemy entirely kills the viability of the power for PvP, or, hell, even most PvE, as it's a tiny area and any boss, ranger, rogue, or wizard can give you a serious amount of area denial. The control it does is fine, but it needs to be capable of actually hitting things. My recommendation is to take off the chargeup before it can explode, and then it'd be fine.
- Wraith's Shadow is another one of those powers that'd be great if it wasn't bogged down by chargeup. The fact that, to get any control out of it, you need to cast it twice is a dealbreaker; that'd be fine if it was multi-target, but it isn't. it's a long casting time with subpar damage that immobilizes for entirely too shot a duration. There's two ways to fix this; make the entire shebang a single casting, or give the immobilize effect an AoE, to root more enemies than just the one.
- Curse bite is a power I want to like, but it buckles under the weight of its own effect. Not only does it remove curses (necessitating you to apply them again) but the damage it deals is minor, and can be beaten out by something as simple as an at-will attack. If you added a stun to it, it'd still not be worthwhile because of how long it'd take to set up and re-set up all those curses. I really don't know how to fix this one, but I very much doubt it'll see any great amount of use.
None of these would be particularly hard to implement, and would likely go a long way to making the Warlock better. Now, I'm not going to claim that one should use all of these suggested changes but a few of them would at least make the situation more tenable. If I had to choose three, the change to Accursed Souls, Fiery Bolt, and Pillar of Power are what I'd go for.
Post edited by harnel on
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Comments
So do please give them more CC offensive effects and CC/burstdmg mitigation effects to make them worthwhile within PvP. Life Steal is useless if you're too busy being Controlled or Dead to deal damage.
I like the idea of giving fiery bolt a stun.
This seems like it could be a decent buff. Each rank is +4% damage right? So 12% and if you get the feat in the damnation tree, it gives other players half?
Curse Bite doesn't remove curses (unless they plan on changing it)* Plus, it does its damage to every creature that's cursed. So it doesn't seem like it's meant to be a single target DPS ability. It's a lot of setup of for a just ok aoe damage if the stars align and you have lots of cursed enemies. If we had a way to mass curse easily, then Curse Bite would be a lot better for what I think it's intended to do (especially with deadly curses). But that still isn't pvp friendly.
*Edit: But things do need to live long enough to take advantage of that fact. Heh.
However, I feel that going to such lengths will make Warlock more of a Control Wizard. I believe the point of CW control buffs/damage nerfs is to better distinguish between the two magic-weilding classes. One deals damage, the other controls.
This is a more acceptable solution, and in fact you can omit everything. Damage immunity is big in PvP, and if a shift mechanic provided this, this won't only make the class unique, but it will add a great diversity to PvP gameplay. An alternate mechanic that I would propose is: damage absorption.
Turn incoming damage to necrotic, healing yourself for that amount. This damage depletes your stamina.
GWFs and TRs and GFs and HRs all have forms of CC, aka "Control" without being "Control Wizards." Every class needs some CC and DPS or damage avoidance to be highly competitive in PvP. Warlock, lacking CC and damage avoidance, thus fails to be competitive by design.
That's actually an amazing suggestion. Six thumbs up.
This I love. Edited the opening post to include it. It's less likely than just phasing everything out though.
I'm sold. I do hope improvements to the shift mechanic heads in this direction.
Yeah I haven't leveled my out of the teens on preview at the moment, but what I've seen does not make me like the class from reading the powers and feats. Which honestly makes me really sad I've been looking forward to this class since I heard someone datamined files for it back in open beta.
Test and do feedback in the proper channels so they can hopefully get buffed and modified in the proper direction.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
BUT SW is a fail in all other part of the game CC/DPS single/DPS AOE/DPS DOT/Tank/Support Buffer /Support Debuffer/Summoner.
WTB Class Reroll please
If it's a pillow, you're supposed to hug it.
Well i have lvl 60 SW and lvling it from 1-60 quest dungeons.
Now all my gear is epic and have on it full set rank 9 enchants .
And i can say my 11 k DC no stone or P.V or armor enchants can survive better then my 14 k SW P vorpal cat + purple pets .
He is weak and from 100 tester 99 say this class viable only if you go healer tree and your team mates protect y in PVE ofc.
Nah, I just like cutting it into pieces ^^ *uses gloaming cut and lands 6k crits*
I am sure they will think up something to make the class viable. They are interested in doing so after all...
I fail to see what was the reason behind not giving them the same dodge CWs have though. Variety? An attempt to create something that feels new? Then just give them one big gap closer(well...widener? xD)-dodge that would drain full stamina bar per one use but break SW from all CC effects.
WTB Class Reroll please
Cuz in D&D SW have (active)Fiendish Resilience the warlock gains fast healing & (passive)Energy resistance&Damage Reduction this is why he dont need any controll or teleport .
Cuz her base skin (pact with daemon)is soo tough not even a Greatsword can beat her DR after lvl20+he can chose 1 tipe of elemental dmg he is immune (fire/ice/ligthning/acid).
Ofc based on 3.5 ed D&D.
Also the Hellbringer can wear chain mail not leather.
SW passive ability in NW are lack of survive.