thats more or less my point, they has us testing for them, reporting bugs for them, but right now how many people are legitimately testing for he sake of bug hunting? what % of peopel on test server are actually there in order to truly Test the new content, and report game breaking issues?
i get the feelign that less than half of the players are on Test server for reasons other than trying to play a max level toon cus its frikkin fun, and testing builds in IWD for personal knowledge and a leg up in PvP when it goes live.
Now how many of those actual Testers are testing at actual lvl 70? How many of those are Paladins? How many of those stopped testing all together thanks to the black hole issue?
People like to be optimistic, but this is pretty freakin bad... we KNOW FOR A FACT that updates are largely untested internally by Cryptic (there is an amazing # of Patch Notes where users mention that the "changes" never worked, broke other things, caused new issues etc) and that it is the players who are doing all the testing for them.
I am goign to keep playing, I still enjoy the active combat system in this game above others ive tried, and I find it hard to enjoy the old Traditional MMO style where you have 15 Hot bars filled with abilities that for the life of you cant remember what half of them do, but your screwed if you remove them lol.
My worry is that this goes live in 7 days.. and 7 more days everyone will be lvl 70, and complaining that the game isnt working lol
Agree...as much as I hate to say it...I have to agree...it is part of the reason I took an extended break. I just could not bring myself to test this mod, not due to the devs, so I figured I would take a break, go do something else and come back when I felt it was time.
So the wording of Temptation's cap is correct and your allies lifesteal instead of being healed? Am I understanding correctly?
The new "wording" of the Tamptation's Cap is a lil bit hard so i have to bring up an example;
You are a Temptation SW with 15% Life Steal -> the Temp SW is activate its Powers -> then your allies are heald by 15% of THEIR damage.
As you can see that doesnt matter how hard you hit with Temp-lock, at this point you need to focus on Life Steal only, and hope that your allies has high damage output to use your Life Steal.
Eldritch Blast's biggest advantage is that the third strike hits in a small AoE. Seeing how lifesteal will work much less effectively in the new mod, Eldritch Blast might become obsolete or even a liability. I therefore suggest to increase the damage of Eldritch Blast by a reasonable amount.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
Eldritch Blast's biggest advantage is that the third strike hits in a small AoE. Seeing how lifesteal will work much less effectively in the new mod, Eldritch Blast might become obsolete or even a liability. I therefore suggest to increase the damage of Eldritch Blast by a reasonable amount.
DC's lance of faith deals 50% more damage, sounds only fair.
A Scourge Warlock needs a overhaul for it's powers/feats. Yes, despite the class was released just recently.
Especially damnation path, because it truly feels like you're damned if you ingorantly chose this path. Basically, what is PvE Warlock atm? No CC TT spamming machine isn't it? Relying on Lifesteal? And so TT got nerfed and LS was reworked, basically leaving the core empty. No damage, no CC, no lifesteal. Take away our TT and try to call the class competitive after that. Even our curse + WB + DT massive single DoT combo is considered to be a bugged one. The class totally is lacking of an opportunities. I am happy temptation is gonna work in some other way now though.
As for PvP, I won't even touch this part. It makes me wanna cry sometimes. SW is so easily counterable and heavily punished for being a DoT DPS by multiprocs of dmg deflecting powers/enchantments feats. Makes me wanna cry really, I wish I never rolled a SW for pvp especially after I played on preview yesterday. Period.
A Scourge Warlock needs a overhaul for it's powers/feats. Yes, despite the class was released just recently.
Especially damnation path, because it truly feels like you're damned if you ingorantly chose this path. Basically, what is PvE Warlock atm? No CC TT spamming machine isn't it? Relying on Lifesteal? And so TT got nerfed and LS was reworked, basically leaving the core empty. No damage, no CC, no lifesteal. Take away our TT and try to call the class competitive after that. Even our curse + WB + DT massive single DoT combo is considered to be a bugged one. The class totally is lacking of an opportunities. I am happy temptation is gonna work in some other way now though.
As for PvP, I won't even touch this part. It makes me wanna cry sometimes. SW is so easily counterable and heavily punished for being a DoT DPS by multiprocs of dmg deflecting powers/enchantments feats. Makes me wanna cry really, I wish I never rolled a SW for pvp especially after I played on preview yesterday. Period.
You (more than me though me to) put many months of effort into something, investing in A LOT of entertainment finances and time, choosing NWO over other options and in the end what you have been working on is gutted by the company you have supporting all along. Yes it does make you want to cry.
And people say, "stop whining play a different game". When it gets so bad that uninstall is the only viable option it goes beyond "quit playing", and into the area of "quit playing and trash the game as much as possible (via purely honest posting of ones experience with the game) in the dozens of gaming forums you post on regularly, in the multi-mmo guilds you are a part of, and to the dozens and dozens of gamer friends that you regularly interact with. Such pure honesty having been previously restrained due to still playing the game and hoping it changes, hoping more of your friends play it.
In the end what comes around goes around.
This isn't a matter of a game not giving some players of a class "what they want"...you can't please all the people all the time. It is a matter of SW players getting screwed hard to the point of their class being utterly worthless.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited March 2015
SW needs an overhaul like the DC got. There's absolutely no unique dynamics. You just curse for extra damage and use a small selection of BiS powers. Powers should be better rewarded for cursing as many targets as you can. Fiery bolt just does a little extra damage, still lousy compared to chains of blazing light. What if each cursed target hit created another explosion, or if harrowstorm doubled in size for each curse target caught in the effect. Then it would feel a little more rewarding. But the class still lacks serious burst damage.
The SW is alongside the GWF at the very bottom of the barrel of reliable party contribution. Worst burst than TR/CW, both of which have better survivability and CC along with their damage. SW can deal more than a trapper, but you can't root mobs in place and have a staring contest with them until they drop dead so who would you rather have?
A Scourge Warlock needs a overhaul for it's powers/feats. Yes, despite the class was released just recently.
Especially damnation path, because it truly feels like you're damned if you ingorantly chose this path. Basically, what is PvE Warlock atm? No CC TT spamming machine isn't it? Relying on Lifesteal? And so TT got nerfed and LS was reworked, basically leaving the core empty. No damage, no CC, no lifesteal. Take away our TT and try to call the class competitive after that. Even our curse + WB + DT massive single DoT combo is considered to be a bugged one. The class totally is lacking of an opportunities. I am happy temptation is gonna work in some other way now though.
As for PvP, I won't even touch this part. It makes me wanna cry sometimes. SW is so easily counterable and heavily punished for being a DoT DPS by multiprocs of dmg deflecting powers/enchantments feats. Makes me wanna cry really, I wish I never rolled a SW for pvp especially after I played on preview yesterday. Period.
I know how you feel. I think you were the most courageous warlock among us who kept trying even with such obvious handicaps.
Bug: SpiritFire
This feat does not deal the intended damage.
I am the monk, martial skill transcends the battlefield
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
The more testing I do in WoD/IWD, the more it seems if you want to be able to do daily content you'll need to be Soulbinder for the healing ability it brings to you. With a Transcendent Negation, and a Transcendent Lifedrinker (also tested out Terror), I'm able to survive and I even solo'd Cult Prison with no problem whatsoever. It requires more work then on live, and fights take longer because you cannot put out the damage as you could before w/o dying...
I was also not using lvl 70 Armor, just Level 60 T2 sets (alternated between a few, and I was able to beat it with different sets, no issue really), as the survivbility is amazing comparatively in the new content and level 73 mobs.
Need to see if the survivability is needed in the parties since you'll be bringing less damage to the table, I'm not sure of SW Fury Spec's will be wanted, though you should be able to spam TT (even if nerfed) faster if you utilize the AP builds, so maybe that will make up for the loss of Flames of Empowerments 17% Damage increase with the feat in the Fury Tree.
If you run with a party with a good Cleric/OP, can you go pure class cannon and just nuke things... That's the question.
posted by kolatmaster
The more testing I do in WoD/IWD, the more it seems if you want to be able to do daily content you'll need to be Soulbinder for the healing ability it brings to you. With a Transcendent Negation, and a Transcendent Lifedrinker (also tested out Terror), I'm able to survive and I even solo'd Cult Prison with no problem whatsoever. It requires more work then on live, and fights take longer because you cannot put out the damage as you could before w/o dying...
I was also not using lvl 70 Armor, just Level 60 T2 sets (alternated between a few, and I was able to beat it with different sets, no issue really), as the survivbility is amazing comparatively in the new content and level 73 mobs.
Need to see if the survivability is needed in the parties since you'll be bringing less damage to the table, I'm not sure of SW Fury Spec's will be wanted, though you should be able to spam TT (even if nerfed) faster if you utilize the AP builds, so maybe that will make up for the loss of Flames of Empowerments 17% Damage increase with the feat in the Fury Tree.
If you run with a party with a good Cleric/OP, can you go pure class cannon and just nuke things... That's the question.
in case of using T2 armor and doing the new lev 70 dungeon with lev 73 mobs (right?) it gives me some hope that it can´t be such a big challenge to go there with lev 70 armor tons of HP and better much stats
in case of using T2 armor and doing the new lev 70 dungeon with lev 73 mobs (right?) it gives me some hope that it can´t be such a big challenge to go there with lev 70 armor tons of HP and better much stats
Yes sir... I did a few 2-3 man HEs in IWD and WoD, along with Biggrins Tomb and the Cult Prison respectively, in Level 60 armor against level 73 mobs while I was Level 70.
Now, I'm not saying this is great/perfect as I prefer Hellbringer Fury currently, but I'll say even with this you are NOT able to rest on your laurels and it was still challenging/fun. :cool:
The more testing I do in WoD/IWD, the more it seems if you want to be able to do daily content you'll need to be Soulbinder for the healing ability it brings to you. With a Transcendent Negation, and a Transcendent Lifedrinker (also tested out Terror), I'm able to survive and I even solo'd Cult Prison with no problem whatsoever. It requires more work then on live, and fights take longer because you cannot put out the damage as you could before w/o dying...
I was also not using lvl 70 Armor, just Level 60 T2 sets (alternated between a few, and I was able to beat it with different sets, no issue really), as the survivbility is amazing comparatively in the new content and level 73 mobs.
Need to see if the survivability is needed in the parties since you'll be bringing less damage to the table, I'm not sure of SW Fury Spec's will be wanted, though you should be able to spam TT (even if nerfed) faster if you utilize the AP builds, so maybe that will make up for the loss of Flames of Empowerments 17% Damage increase with the feat in the Fury Tree.
If you run with a party with a good Cleric/OP, can you go pure class cannon and just nuke things... That's the question.
Woot...anyhow you know I am working on changing my to an AP build to test...but doing it on live...right now my AP regen is just well it is just. Enuf said. Too many bad changes already happened.
But currently my build is also based a very high crit and p vorp. Sometime this weekend we can test the enchant on preview on the ap build.
Ap build requires a a couple of significant build choices from the normal we were so used to.
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schweifer1982Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,662Arc User
edited March 2015
Feedback:
With all respect i want to ask the developer team to make some changes on the defensive mechanism on the following class:
Buff&change the damage resistance bonus on the Scouge Warlock's Shadow Slip up to 50% and let it calculated like the Block of the Guardian Fighter or the Shield Spell on the Control Wizard.
My suggestion should fix the promblems caused by the Piercing mechanism, this way it would be completly acceptable and it also would be able to balance out both the PvP and the PvE part of this game. It would solve the one hit kill problems in the game further more it would balance out the Life Steal and Regeneration loss .
I come up with this idea based on the feedback of the other players.
With all respect i want to ask the developer team to make some changes on the defensive mechanism on the following classes:
Buff&change the damage resistance bonus on the Scouge Warlock's Shadow Slip up to 50% and let it calculated like the Block of the Guardian Fighter or the Shield Spell on the Control Wizard.
Change the damage resistane on the Unstoppable in the case of Destroyer/Instigator Great Weapon Fighters to 15-30% but it is also should work like the Shield Spell on the Control Wizard or the Block of the Guardian Fighter, further more give the same mechanism to the Sprint with 30% damage resistance.
Do not change the numbers on the Great Weapon Fighter Sentinel but give it the same mechanism like the Shield on the CW or the Block on the Guardian Fighter. This way the Sentinel would be able to tank as it was intented in the 1st place
The Paladin's Sanctuary supposed to work like the Block of the Guardian Fighter or Shield Spell on the Control Wizard .
My suggestion should fix the promblems caused by the Piercing mechanism, this way it would be completly acceptable and it also would be able to balance out both the PvP and the PvE part of this game. It would solve the one hit kill problems in the game further more it would balance out the Life Steal and Regeneration loss .
I come up with this idea based on the feedback of the other players.
Thnx for reading this .
I think this is a good idea. I would really love if shadow slip went as far as to be itc. You shadow slip and it gives you exactly the same benefits that impossible to catch gives. If this were even the only change to sw I think it would be just enough without being op. It would essentially be ITC as a defensive encounter.
I think this is a good idea. I would really love if shadow slip went as far as to be itc. You shadow slip and it gives you exactly the same benefits that impossible to catch gives. If this were even the only change to sw I think it would be just enough without being op. It would essentially be ITC as a defensive encounter.
ITC: You break free from most control effects, and for several seconds you Deflect all incoming attacks and are immune to further control effects.
Stealth:You become completely untouchable to your enemies, dodging their attacks and receiving no damage.
giving this to SW it is possibel to be all time immune as temptation-butterfly-WL --> Due to temptation having Eldritch momentum to regenerate 5% stamina being hurt
would have to change that too
ITC: You break free from most control effects, and for several seconds you Deflect all incoming attacks and are immune to further control effects.
Stealth:You become completely untouchable to your enemies, dodging their attacks and receiving no damage.
giving this to SW it is possibel to be all time immune as temptation-butterfly-WL --> Due to temptation having Eldritch momentum to regenerate 5% stamina being hurt
would have to change that too
Yahhhh that would certainly make Temptation tempting in PvP hahah!!!
As of right now that whole unklimited run speed thing is pretty pointless, people used to think they were cool with that ability but a standard every day HellFury can kill them while barely trying
hP Bonus from CON needs to scale better with new lvl 70 Gear and higher HP pool in general
Gaining only 5k HP from CON in current Mod 5 content is acceptable when the average SW is only at 35k HP or less, gaining 5k HP however, is NOT Acceptable when Every single Class regardless of CON stat, will be at 100k + HP.
HP in game is being more than Doubled as each class is getting HUGE aqmount of HP from gear, HP Gained from Con Stat needs to also be trippled in order keep usefulness.. otherwise everyone will drop COn and go full Int or Full Cha
Feedback: Reinforcement Slots on Armor and Jewlery
These Reinforcements Need to be removable liek they were in Mod 4 on Test server before Live release - I think its only fair that we can do so. I spent good money putting reinforcements in my gear, which is goign to be replaced rather quickly with the new content..
I would liek to be able to reuse my Reinforcements or Sell them.. But I also wouldnt mind if you made them strictly BoA after removing from Armor/jewlersey, just someway to be able to make use of them since its unlikely I will be holding onto my T2 Gear sets for long after 70...
This will also Make all those Dragon Born's happy, sicne you gave them a reinforment item but then took away the ability to remove the reinforcement, effectively making players completely waste th ereinforment item on Lower lvl gear without realizing that you took that removal option away.
and who the f is our class representative btw???
How come none of our issues are ever heard or listened too, never addressed and completely ignored??
Why are you so Desperate to remove HellFury spec's from the top PainGiver position??
darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
edited March 2015
Feedback: Temptation Capstone
The new temptation capstone is as follows:
Soul Bonding: Your powers now heal your allies for a percentage of their damage equal to your lifesteal chance. This effect is 30% as effective on Area of Effect powers. The healing component of your Vampiric Embrace now also heals nearby allies for 100% of its value.
This means you effectively grant old-school lifesteal to your party members, at your LS rating.
Let's try an example. In a party, a CW does 50,000 damage with a power, you do 30.000 and the tanking GF/OP does 5,000 damage. You have 15% lifesteal.
With this capstone, that means the CW is healed for 7500, the GF is healed for 750, and you are healed for either 4500 or 15% chance at 30,000 and an 85% chance at nothing - depending on if the capstone applies to the SW. Even if the GF/OP had invested in 8000 regen, they would only get healed for 900.
So the low-dps tanking class will get much less healing than the high-dps classes in your party - and if everyone knows how to play, the tank should be taking way more damage than the dps.
My suggestion: for the Temptation Warlock, you have to return to the old style of lifesteal, but based on the SW's damage. So:
Soul Bonding: Your powers now heal your allies for a percentage of your damage equal to your lifesteal chance. This effect is 30% as effective on Area of Effect powers. The healing component of your Vampiric Embrace now also heals nearby allies for 100% of its value.
Now let's go back to our example. Everyone does the same damage, but now you heal the CW and the GF/OP for 4500. I would prefer if you also heal yourself for 4500, rather than worrying about your HPs yoyoing up and down, but I'd live with the RNG if necessary.
This means the temp lock needs to maximize both personal damage and lifesteal, which is much more rewarding than just focusing on lifesteal.
ITC: You break free from most control effects, and for several seconds you Deflect all incoming attacks and are immune to further control effects.
Stealth:You become completely untouchable to your enemies, dodging their attacks and receiving no damage.
giving this to SW it is possibel to be all time immune as temptation-butterfly-WL --> Due to temptation having Eldritch momentum to regenerate 5% stamina being hurt
would have to change that too
I play TR A LOT also, and I actually like ITC better than stealth. For me on TR stealth is for attack, itc for defense. All attacks are not deflected, just most. It is a really really sweet set of defensive bufffs. Also it does not get you out of prones once you are proned though it will prevent being proned in the first place.
So what I am saying is that it is not as powerful as a true dodge, but it is powerful enough to fit the bill for what shadow sprint was originally meant to do.
The class is weak in so many other ways (loooong casting times, severe lack of cc, no dodge, so on) that this one little thing would hardly even be a buff, just a little tool to help it survive and allow skilled sw players to compete with the other classes.
Another option is for shadow sprint to simply stealth the player for the duration of the sprint. Haven't put as much thought into that one, could be too much lol.
so you do heal the allies by dealing damage in correlation to your lifestealchance, same mechanic as before?
otherwise it wouldn´t make sense healing the DD more than the tank
but cryptic is not known for logical decisions, more devellopping off the cuff
Another option is for shadow sprint to simply stealth the player for the duration of the sprint. Haven't put as much thought into that one, could be too much lol.
could work its an old idea month ago, but getting invisible by shifting i will instanly go temp lock beeing the first perma stealth SB-temp lock, only visible during casting a DOTs, and wuuuush invisible again, lol would be funny
or go max HP/livesteal and slot tenebrough (if they only worked like mod 5) so beeing all time invisible and dealing passiv damage to everyone
so you do heal the allies by dealing damage in correlation to your lifestealchance, same mechanic as before?
otherwise it wouldn´t make sense healing the DD more than the tank
but cryptic is not known for logical decisions, more devellopping off the cuff
could work its an old idea month ago, but getting invisible by shifting i will instanly go temp lock beeing the first perma stealth SB-temp lock, only visible during casting a DOTs, and wuuuush invisible again, lol would be funny
or go max HP/livesteal and slot tenebrough (if they only worked like mod 5) so beeing all time invisible and dealing passiv damage to everyone
I think as soon as the sw came out of stealth it would be heavily focused by any enemy team nearby. Bad idea anyways lol...I'll stick with pushing for itc effects on sprint.
This is a really big post I invested alot of time writing and thinking about, it works with things coming with m6 and things that are hanging from m4 and m5. This whole post is a feedback that's exisiting as a seperate thread on the forums right now, if you wish to discuss what I posted here, do so in my other thread please. It concerns everything wrong and bad about warlocks and improvement potential for mod 6 to make the class more balanced. This feedback is coming from a high GS warlock player who's played this class since it was out, the release of the warlock class was the reason I started playing Neverwinter in early mod 4. Anyways, let's get down to it!
All things PvE
Let's be blunt, in live, our dps and survival for PvE is trough the roof. Any good warlock player with DC sigil will put out massive amounts of damage in every dungeon he does, even if he's not the DPS tree. So let's analyze what makes us good in PvE, and I will tackle them and other issues in order:
-DoTs / Fury Capstone
-Acursed diabolist set bonus/ glyphs
-Tyranical threat (Cleric artifact)
-Life Steal
-Class Features compared to other classes
-Damnation tree
Curse mechanics All right, so one of the improvements I can see to the core mechanics of the class itself is the 'curse consume' aspect. I suggest to replace it with 'Curse Synergy'. For example, a SW gets 20% bonus damage when damaging cursed opponents, but alot of powers cannot benefit from this because casting them consumes the curse. So if you curse your target then cast dreadtheft, you will lose your curse damage bonus. This is also true for the fury capstone, powers that consume the curse requires you to recast a curse more often than should be necessary simply to benefit from your capstone, and powers that are channel-type like dreadtheft you simply cannot cancel to recurse because you lose the power by the same time. Some of you experienced warlocks probably know by now that using Warlock's bargain puts a curse on the target which is not consumed by powers, so if you warlock's bargain + curse + dreadtheft you still get your curse damage bonus and fury capstone. I don't think it should be this way, I think improving the mechanic to 'if the target is cursed when casting - gain x benefits' aka curse synergy and not remove the curse from the target would avoid curse spamming and problems like not being able to benefit from curse damage bonus when using curse consume channel powers like dreadtheft.
Accursed diabolist set bonus/Glyphs. This was a huge thing in our DPS arsenal, the reason is many of the warlock powers are Damage over Time effects and each 'tick' of those powers count as an encounter power of it's own. As a rule of thumb the set bonus is 3% hp(max 2k) for every encounter cast. Now that would be an ordinary(I mean not OP) set if not for the fact that each tick of DoT powers count for an encounter power of their own. Let me just mention that dreadtheft ticks 24 total times (4/sec) and if you're using this set bonus for each dreadtheft cast you stack 24x the damage bonus. On a high HP monster like tiamat your dreadtheft will literally proc 48k damage before debuffs and buffs every time you cast dreadtheft, and it goes higher if you use more DoT powers like Warlock's bargain etc. Arguably this can be a good or a bad thing depending on the viewer, it's a big factor in why warlocks are so high in the damage chart (along with tyranical threat). a Typical dreadtheft can do 15k damage on it's own + 40k per target you hit consistently with it, damage racks up really fast. This is why removing our set bonus will hurt the class really badly, because it depends on it to perform, and when you compare this class to others for balance, people factor in this enormous DPS boost. If you take the same warlock but not using this armor bonus it will perform significantly less, making armor choice practicly non existant, because everyone will wear this over draconic or even black ice for PvE. The same concept applies to glyphs even if I didn't really cover it up.While there is no immediate improvement for this situation, when making changes to the warlock class you must take this factor into account. Removing the set bonus would probably hurt the class more than it should be while making every other armor set bonus as good as this one is probably not the answer. Without changing the underlying mechanics of multi encounter procs there's little we can do about this specific matter right now. And if it was indeed changed, then we would need something to compensate for the loss otherwise the class will lose alot of it's performance in comparison to other classes
Tyranical Threat This power is the only daily any warlock will ever use in PvE. It's ridiculously powerful, it's completely out of line with every other daily in the game except opressive force and a couple oddballs. While having a powerful daily is well and all that, the difference between us warlocks and wizards is we're very dependant on these features to score that DPS. What does that mean in practical terms? To be a good warlock you need to SPAM Tyranical threat as much as humanly possible in every good encounter. Remove that and the set bonus mentionned above(or glyphs + encounter multi ticks) and the class becomes very mediocre at DPS. And that's bad because the class doesn't do much other than DPS. Unlike CWs, if you nerf their damage they still got their CC to fall back on, roll a opressor and CC everything to death. Nerf the damage of a warlock and you have... nothing, life steal which is the core mechanic for defence on a SW is dependant on damage, even temptation tree's healing is dependant on damage. A warlock that doesn't deal damage is a weight in the group that's got no uses. So it is to be expected of a class whose primary role is DPS that it would deal alot of it. It would be cool to tone down Tyranical threat only if it was replaced by something else, not only would that add diversity from the old TT spamming but it would also solve the gap between this daily and other dailies available. Another really important point is that applying curses with tyranical threat is a slow animation, it can take 3 to 5 seconds simply applying curses to ennemies, effectively cutting down the time by 1/4 of its duration, being 20s currently, and that's if your targets don't die and you have to recast your curses again then you pretty much wasted your daily power. I think a way to solve this problem would be that casting curses with tyranical threat active be sped up by the same amount of time it takes to cast normal curses(instantaneous) and increase it's total duration but lower it's damage link %. The daily power would be easier to use and it would also be easier to re link new targets with it after initial targets died. Because of the fact players do not generate AP while using Tyranical threat it would not threaten balance to increase it's duration and speeding up animation for a lower damage link trade off.
Life Steal Now this issue has been created with the changes to life steal with mod 6. When we look at it, every class has means of defending themselves. For example, rangers use roots and dodges as defence, CWs have control powers, GFs block and GWFs determination among others, ETC. What about SW? Our main defence is shift and life steal. The thing with life steal is every class can have it, not just warlock. While only wizards have real control powers, everyone has life steal, including said wizards. That is why I feel like life steal is a seperate case when we look at warlocks, because it is at the core of our class defensive mechanism, unlike other classes. If you removed Life steal from the game completely, Wizards would still have control powers, GFs would still block, while we would only have shift left. By putting our main defense mechanics as a 'chance' to happen the problem is that we cannot rely on our main defence system. It's the same as saying to a wizard you control powers have a 15% chance of actually working, you can stack up control bonus and it increases your chance to succeed at controlling powers. What if he's low HP and casts that power to disable mobs and save time until that cleric hits him with a heal and it so turns out that he rolled the wrong numbers and he's left defenceless because his control powers didn't work. Nobody wants that right?This is how warlocks feel about life steal chance. Because it's at the core of our defense system, there's two ways things should go- 1. make adjusments to the old system to make it reliable again for warlocks at a lower rate % if necessary. 2- Give a new defensive mechanism to the class, whatever that might be. One cannot make the main defensive aspect of a class work only in x% of situations, it hurts the class really badly, in this case warlock. A GF doesn't block x% of attacks, a GWF doesn't have a random proc chance on his determination, it's only fair that our main defence is not random either. This change for life steal should only affect warlocks because unlike other classes, I say it again, it's at the core of our class. If it cannot be done we need something else to replace that defensive system to even things out with other classes.
Class features So class features, our feats are weaker in comparison to other classes features.
Dark one's blessing 1k hp restored for killing a target that is cursed, the problem is that a majority of powers consume curse, how often do you actually kill a cursed target? Not often, not only that but the healing done by it is too low to be useful. If it offered something like increased life steal or another benefit and increased healing(3/6/9/12% total hp?) (+changes to curse consume not consuming curse but rather synergizing with it) ...then yes!
Deadly Curse 1k ish damage on cursing target. The idea of curses doing damage is not bad, however it's very limited in usefulness because of it's really low damage. Especially if curses were changed to curse synergy instead of curse consume, then this might need to be changed to something else entirely. How about increasing damage done by x% on targets afflicted with Warlock's Curse. That seems like a much better feat already.
Warding Curse 10% less damage from cursed targets.. that's not a bad feat in itself, but as mentionned earlier the curse consuming aspect of powers has a terrible synergy with it, changing that to my first suggestion would definitly improve this feat at the same time.
Prince of Hell - This feat was useless before but I can see it becoming good in mod 6.. somewhat. I still think this feat should be a % increase of ArP not a stat increase.
Dust to Dust, this feat doesn't generate AP when your borrowed time ticks, I think it should. The description says when your soul sparks heal you, borrowed time makes my spark heal me, so why not? As of now, I don't see much of a reason to slot this on my bar.
Snuff out. A single spark out of 30 for one target dying.. with an internal cooldown. That is definitly an underwhelming feat. I can see this reworked in two ways. 1: Same ability but instead of generating 1 soul spark per kill, you generate a full bar (6 sparks). 2: Remove the cooldown and rework the ability that each kill grants a single spark, and ranks up grant more sparks per kill. For example, rank 1 = 1 spark, rank 2= 2 sparks, etc.
Shadow Walk. GWF gets the same thing but 30% run and 3% deflection chance we get.. 30% run and.. nothing, why not add 3% life steal along with it? Rogue master infiltrator - 15% run speed, 3% crit, 3% deflect, why don't we get something cool like that too? Between that and Snuff out my choice would be obvious. I could see dark one's blessing becoming this % life steal, 3% crit,15% run speed. Why not? Rogues got the same thing :P
Soul reaping and hope stealer give a 'stat bonus' like 1k life steal, which gets outdated very quickly in most cases because as time goes gear gets stronger and devalues those feats. Why don't we move them to a percentage chance and be done with it? you won't need to change it everytime you change the cap or everytime the gear gap gets too big for what you orginally developped it for. The biggest majority of feats are designed in percentages, which is good. These two deserve the same treatment IMO.
Constitution and HP contributions In mod 4 and 5 one of the advantages of warlock over classes was that constitution is an important stat for the class. Meaning that the average warlock invests alot of points into constitution returns with better damage and more HP. In mod 6 however, this changes (this affects all classes not just warlock) Tankier classes have lost an edge because constitution plays a role on your character base hit points, HP from gear is not factored in, and gear HP bonuses is the same for every class. Meaning the difference between total HP for a non tanky, and a tanky class is not as noticeable as before. I made some preview testing with a control wizard for constitution contribution, here's the results.
The First two pictures are lv 70 mod 6 and two pieces of elemental fire (so there's another 20k missing from gear + enchants I don't have yet.)
These two are mod 5 (Live) at level 60 at 17.5k GS
67k vs 64k and 30.5k vs 33k
In the first case I was missing 2 pieces of gear from elemental fire gear, which is roughly 20k more HP, so for testing's sake let's make it 87k and 84k because that's what it'll be when you gear up at 70. So that means 8 point of con contribute to about 3% of my total HP. For 8 points of Con the stat shows +16% because it's 2% per Con points, we're actually getting 3% of our HP from these 8 points of Con.
In the second scenario we're talking more of 8-10% for 6 points of Con, which is two less than the first example. The game stats simply note +12% HP, this is vaguely more true here than it is for the second one. This is what I mean by underwhelming, constitution on preview feels useless, and I dont think it should be this way. Adjusting gear hp to tanky/non tanky classes will not fix these issues because someone who decides to raise con on a character that doesn't have it as a primary or secondary stat will still be penalized in both aspects instead of losing DPS but gaining more HP you get losing DPS and mediocre HP. That would force people to roll out DPS stats for characters and kill the idea of spreading the stats as you wish them to be. In any case, the warlock's advantage of higher con over his brother casters will vanish if something is not done about this and tip the balance more towards other casters in mod 6. Pair this with the loss of life steal as our main mechanic for survival and warlock's uniqueness starts to fade away in face of CWs
Damnation This tree path is viewed as everyone as inferior to the other two by every warlock for one simple reason: the soul puppet dies too frequently. Our feats depend on the puppet to be alive for us to benefit from most of the damnation feats and since the puppet dies so easily it takes away the strenght from this path. If the puppet was made much harder to kill this path would improve tenfolds. The synergy between the puppet drawing agro with mocking spirit is bad because it kills your puppet fast, and then you don't benefit from your feats anymore. If you intended damnation to rely soul puppet to do some agro management you also need to give it proportional HP so it won't get two hit KO'd by random mobs in WoD.
All things PvP
All right here's a list of the things I will cover in this section.
-Encounter powers and casting speed/times
-Soul Sparks
-Shift/shadow slip
Casting Speed Most of the warlock spells are too slow casting, the biggest loser in that category being Harrowstorm at first place, then soul scorch, curse bite, Blades of vanquished armies, wraith shadow. So warlocks get some very slow spells and the rest are medium-slow, there really is only a very few fast casting warlock spell. Unlike rangers fast casting roots or wizards fast casting stuns, the problem is that on even grounds the warlock needs to cast 1 second before the wizard to actually hit him with spells. Especially when you pit up Harrowstorm VS entangling Force, increasing casting times to be on par with other classes would solve many problems the SW face in pvp.
Encounter powers Curse bite: I could see this power becoming an instant cast spell. To add some niche to it and make it really interesting you could go as far that it damages your cursed targets even if you don't maintain line of sight with them, that means it damages your cursed targets, period, no matter where they are. Remembering there's a timer to how long curses last it would balance it to not be unbalanced, or simply after x uses the curse disapears to prevent people from abusing it. It would give a very nice application when fighting rogues for example, curse - stealth - curse bite, still takes damage.
Harrowstorm: casting 2x faster is a big improvement, the spell is extremely slow and hard to land, sometimes you will notice that when you start casting your targets will run the opposite direction or go stealth while you cast and it will cancel your poor power and do nothing. I think this power should be the same casting speed as chill spike from the wizards list to be on par.
Warlock's bargain, this spell sacrifices HP for life steal, usually a good choice in PvE, since it's considered life steal in PvP you get half the benefits, and in reality when you use this spell you barely break even in terms how much hp restored/sacrificed with it, and that's if your opponent doesn't deflect/dodge/block it, in which case you pretty much take your HP and throw it in the garbage can. I get the idea of some spells are better for PvE and some for PvP but I think it could do with some improvements for PvP. However if you are a DPS build, you will get more returns from this spell because it is one of the only high damage instant cast necrotic spells available. I think it should be modified to not be affected by healing depression, so that the rewards/sacrifice HP ratio is better than 1:1 or lower than 1:1.
Vampiric Embrace: This power has low damage, I think it deserves an increase in it, most powers will give better returns even if you're temptation warlock with capstone. The biggest problem is that there is healing depression on both the healing then on the temporary HP. Couple that with low damage and you get a not so useful power.
Soul Sparks The speed at which you lose your soul sparks is overwhelming, you stop combat for a second and you're out, all your buffs and stacks are gone. As a Soulbinder's strength compared to a Hellbringer is the added survival, if you remove our stacks of soul sparks instantly as soon as combat ends that means that 95% of the time there's no benefit to not running an hellbringer in PvP.
What I suggest is the once combat ends, you lose soul sparks based of a rate of x per second. For example, if you managed to get all your sparks up in combat, once it ends you would lose 1 spark per seconds, or 1 spark per two seconds. That gives you 30seconds/1 minute to re enter combat before it's gone and you have to build up again. I don't mind the aspect of building stacks up, what I don't like is how fast you lose those stacks. I honestly believe it would be very beneficial for warlocks to remove the HP healed from consuming sparks when combat end and inputing a system that makes you lose sparks overtime instead. A good compromise would be that your sparks heal you progressively as you lose them after the combat end, that would likely be ideal.
Or if anything, give Soulbinders the potential to reach 30 stacks quickly via daily uses or some other method. Like a wizard have feats to get instantly 5 stacks of arcane mastery when casting the lightning daily, I don't see why we couldn't get something similar too.
Shift mechanic Alot of warlocks feel like they shouldn't have shadow slip but it be replaced by a dodge, while this could help with alot of the problems we face about damage mitigation, by simply dodging a big hit. currently you cannot help but taking the big hit, and some classes can do it alot.Where a wizard or cleric can dodge the rogue's shocking execution, you can only look at it coming in your face. I understand GWF are in the same situation, however GWFs have determination, and we do not. I'm not going to get started on GWF though that's for another thread, so back to SW, there's alot of optimization that needs attention IMO for warlocks to be able to survive spike damage. Because currently rogues simply run up to you, SE, you're dead, that's it, one hit KO, nothing you can do about it, at least other classes can dodge it, we can't. Removing the shadow slip would take away the flavor of the class and I don't think that's what we need. I only have a vague idea bout this, but I think having an ability or method of mitigating a single high spike damage would be an enormous help to our class. Something similar to wizard's shield would be extremely helpful for warlocks because they cannot avoid the damage, just mitigate it, I think the shield belongs better on warlocks than wizards. But it could be something new entirely I'm sure we could come up with some smart idea about it.We have a suggestion made by overdriver that sounds really interesting to me, here is the quote:
For shadow sprint, I would love to see it have an effect identical to Impossible to Catch that is only in effect for the duration of the sprint. It currently does not resist all control effects as indicated in the tooltip.
Making it identical to ITC would give the SW the ability to break free from non-prone cc, and would help deflect spike damage without making the shift ability a true dodge. This would be far more wai (in my opinion) than the way shadow slip works now.
PvP armor set bonus As you may be aware, alot of people think that the warlock set bonus for the pvp armor is useless. ''Grants 9% damage increase to enemies below 20% HP''. Seeing as the majority of warlocks use Killing Flames at this moment, and the fact that the set bonus grants no synergy to any warlock abilities, I understand that alot of us warlocks would like a different set bonus. What I suggest is something that will synergize with warlock abilities or use class mechanic curses in the set bonus. Here's a couple example:
1. Cursed targets take 10% more damage from all sources.
2. Cursed targets move 25% slower.
3. Warlock's curse roots enemies for 2sec.
4. Shadow slipping grants 50% DR instead of 30%.
5. Shadow slip costs 20% less stamina.
6. Or any current existing set bonus that is better than the one we have, such as accursed diabolists' for example, which fits in well with our DoT DPS caster role.
Conclusion So that sums it up, it's a very big thread but there's alot to say about warlocks right now, because on preview they're in pretty bad shape, this is why i took so much of my time (many hours) to dedicate to this massive thread that goes about every thing good and bad about warlocks and what changes can be made to return it to good shape. With the delay of mod 6, I hope this extra time will be used to consider our suggestions. Also note that if you wish to discuss this post, do so in my other thread on the preview forum, because it is not permitted in official feedback threads.
Side note: I don't think we have a new class advocate since kitten left the role a while back. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks for your time,
Warlock Zek
I am the monk, martial skill transcends the battlefield
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
Bug: Dark Revelry gives to allies 20% of the warlock's Power, not of their own
0
schweifer1982Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,662Arc User
edited March 2015
Feedback: SW (temp)
I find it really usefull but if some mobs hit me i die almost instant cuz i am lack of DR and deflection the party do not benefit from my LS if i am all time on the floor pls take my feedback to change shadow sprint and increase the dr to at least 50% + this DR shoud work like CWs shild encounter or GF block.
Hey all, wanted to drop in and let you all know we are monitoring the PVP performance.
To clarify some things, we are generally fairly happy with where GWFs are in PVE. They are competitive, and do very solid damage for the risks they take being in melee range (where there are more consistent threats to worry about).
Very nice, they're monitoring pvp performance and the weakest class on pvp got more nerfs, nice work panderus
Comments
Agree...as much as I hate to say it...I have to agree...it is part of the reason I took an extended break. I just could not bring myself to test this mod, not due to the devs, so I figured I would take a break, go do something else and come back when I felt it was time.
The new "wording" of the Tamptation's Cap is a lil bit hard so i have to bring up an example;
You are a Temptation SW with 15% Life Steal -> the Temp SW is activate its Powers -> then your allies are heald by 15% of THEIR damage.
As you can see that doesnt matter how hard you hit with Temp-lock, at this point you need to focus on Life Steal only, and hope that your allies has high damage output to use your Life Steal.
DC's lance of faith deals 50% more damage, sounds only fair.
A Scourge Warlock needs a overhaul for it's powers/feats. Yes, despite the class was released just recently.
Especially damnation path, because it truly feels like you're damned if you ingorantly chose this path. Basically, what is PvE Warlock atm? No CC TT spamming machine isn't it? Relying on Lifesteal? And so TT got nerfed and LS was reworked, basically leaving the core empty. No damage, no CC, no lifesteal. Take away our TT and try to call the class competitive after that. Even our curse + WB + DT massive single DoT combo is considered to be a bugged one. The class totally is lacking of an opportunities. I am happy temptation is gonna work in some other way now though.
As for PvP, I won't even touch this part. It makes me wanna cry sometimes. SW is so easily counterable and heavily punished for being a DoT DPS by multiprocs of dmg deflecting powers/enchantments feats. Makes me wanna cry really, I wish I never rolled a SW for pvp especially after I played on preview yesterday. Period.
WTB Class Reroll please
You (more than me though me to) put many months of effort into something, investing in A LOT of entertainment finances and time, choosing NWO over other options and in the end what you have been working on is gutted by the company you have supporting all along. Yes it does make you want to cry.
And people say, "stop whining play a different game". When it gets so bad that uninstall is the only viable option it goes beyond "quit playing", and into the area of "quit playing and trash the game as much as possible (via purely honest posting of ones experience with the game) in the dozens of gaming forums you post on regularly, in the multi-mmo guilds you are a part of, and to the dozens and dozens of gamer friends that you regularly interact with. Such pure honesty having been previously restrained due to still playing the game and hoping it changes, hoping more of your friends play it.
In the end what comes around goes around.
This isn't a matter of a game not giving some players of a class "what they want"...you can't please all the people all the time. It is a matter of SW players getting screwed hard to the point of their class being utterly worthless.
The SW is alongside the GWF at the very bottom of the barrel of reliable party contribution. Worst burst than TR/CW, both of which have better survivability and CC along with their damage. SW can deal more than a trapper, but you can't root mobs in place and have a staring contest with them until they drop dead so who would you rather have?
I know how you feel. I think you were the most courageous warlock among us who kept trying even with such obvious handicaps.
Bug: SpiritFire
This feat does not deal the intended damage.
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
I was also not using lvl 70 Armor, just Level 60 T2 sets (alternated between a few, and I was able to beat it with different sets, no issue really), as the survivbility is amazing comparatively in the new content and level 73 mobs.
Need to see if the survivability is needed in the parties since you'll be bringing less damage to the table, I'm not sure of SW Fury Spec's will be wanted, though you should be able to spam TT (even if nerfed) faster if you utilize the AP builds, so maybe that will make up for the loss of Flames of Empowerments 17% Damage increase with the feat in the Fury Tree.
If you run with a party with a good Cleric/OP, can you go pure class cannon and just nuke things... That's the question.
in case of using T2 armor and doing the new lev 70 dungeon with lev 73 mobs (right?) it gives me some hope that it can´t be such a big challenge to go there with lev 70 armor tons of HP and better much stats
Now, I'm not saying this is great/perfect as I prefer Hellbringer Fury currently, but I'll say even with this you are NOT able to rest on your laurels and it was still challenging/fun. :cool:
Woot...anyhow you know I am working on changing my to an AP build to test...but doing it on live...right now my AP regen is just well it is just. Enuf said. Too many bad changes already happened.
But currently my build is also based a very high crit and p vorp. Sometime this weekend we can test the enchant on preview on the ap build.
Ap build requires a a couple of significant build choices from the normal we were so used to.
With all respect i want to ask the developer team to make some changes on the defensive mechanism on the following class:
Buff&change the damage resistance bonus on the Scouge Warlock's Shadow Slip up to 50% and let it calculated like the Block of the Guardian Fighter or the Shield Spell on the Control Wizard.
My suggestion should fix the promblems caused by the Piercing mechanism, this way it would be completly acceptable and it also would be able to balance out both the PvP and the PvE part of this game. It would solve the one hit kill problems in the game further more it would balance out the Life Steal and Regeneration loss .
I come up with this idea based on the feedback of the other players.
Thnx for reading this .
I think this is a good idea. I would really love if shadow slip went as far as to be itc. You shadow slip and it gives you exactly the same benefits that impossible to catch gives. If this were even the only change to sw I think it would be just enough without being op. It would essentially be ITC as a defensive encounter.
At least not yet, at 55k HPs, the guy just one shots me 50% of the time (per throw!) with his lance/spear throw... Fun fun! :cool:
ITC: You break free from most control effects, and for several seconds you Deflect all incoming attacks and are immune to further control effects.
Stealth:You become completely untouchable to your enemies, dodging their attacks and receiving no damage.
giving this to SW it is possibel to be all time immune as temptation-butterfly-WL --> Due to temptation having Eldritch momentum to regenerate 5% stamina being hurt
would have to change that too
Yahhhh that would certainly make Temptation tempting in PvP hahah!!!
As of right now that whole unklimited run speed thing is pretty pointless, people used to think they were cool with that ability but a standard every day HellFury can kill them while barely trying
hP Bonus from CON needs to scale better with new lvl 70 Gear and higher HP pool in general
Gaining only 5k HP from CON in current Mod 5 content is acceptable when the average SW is only at 35k HP or less, gaining 5k HP however, is NOT Acceptable when Every single Class regardless of CON stat, will be at 100k + HP.
HP in game is being more than Doubled as each class is getting HUGE aqmount of HP from gear, HP Gained from Con Stat needs to also be trippled in order keep usefulness.. otherwise everyone will drop COn and go full Int or Full Cha
Feedback: Reinforcement Slots on Armor and Jewlery
These Reinforcements Need to be removable liek they were in Mod 4 on Test server before Live release - I think its only fair that we can do so. I spent good money putting reinforcements in my gear, which is goign to be replaced rather quickly with the new content..
I would liek to be able to reuse my Reinforcements or Sell them.. But I also wouldnt mind if you made them strictly BoA after removing from Armor/jewlersey, just someway to be able to make use of them since its unlikely I will be holding onto my T2 Gear sets for long after 70...
This will also Make all those Dragon Born's happy, sicne you gave them a reinforment item but then took away the ability to remove the reinforcement, effectively making players completely waste th ereinforment item on Lower lvl gear without realizing that you took that removal option away.
and who the f is our class representative btw???
How come none of our issues are ever heard or listened too, never addressed and completely ignored??
Why are you so Desperate to remove HellFury spec's from the top PainGiver position??
WTB Class Reroll please
The new temptation capstone is as follows:
This means you effectively grant old-school lifesteal to your party members, at your LS rating.
Let's try an example. In a party, a CW does 50,000 damage with a power, you do 30.000 and the tanking GF/OP does 5,000 damage. You have 15% lifesteal.
With this capstone, that means the CW is healed for 7500, the GF is healed for 750, and you are healed for either 4500 or 15% chance at 30,000 and an 85% chance at nothing - depending on if the capstone applies to the SW. Even if the GF/OP had invested in 8000 regen, they would only get healed for 900.
So the low-dps tanking class will get much less healing than the high-dps classes in your party - and if everyone knows how to play, the tank should be taking way more damage than the dps.
My suggestion: for the Temptation Warlock, you have to return to the old style of lifesteal, but based on the SW's damage. So:
Now let's go back to our example. Everyone does the same damage, but now you heal the CW and the GF/OP for 4500. I would prefer if you also heal yourself for 4500, rather than worrying about your HPs yoyoing up and down, but I'd live with the RNG if necessary.
This means the temp lock needs to maximize both personal damage and lifesteal, which is much more rewarding than just focusing on lifesteal.
I haven't been able to test my SW in a group setting, so I was reading the capstone wrong, apparently. Phew!
I play TR A LOT also, and I actually like ITC better than stealth. For me on TR stealth is for attack, itc for defense. All attacks are not deflected, just most. It is a really really sweet set of defensive bufffs. Also it does not get you out of prones once you are proned though it will prevent being proned in the first place.
So what I am saying is that it is not as powerful as a true dodge, but it is powerful enough to fit the bill for what shadow sprint was originally meant to do.
The class is weak in so many other ways (loooong casting times, severe lack of cc, no dodge, so on) that this one little thing would hardly even be a buff, just a little tool to help it survive and allow skilled sw players to compete with the other classes.
Another option is for shadow sprint to simply stealth the player for the duration of the sprint. Haven't put as much thought into that one, could be too much lol.
otherwise it wouldn´t make sense healing the DD more than the tank
but cryptic is not known for logical decisions, more devellopping off the cuff
could work its an old idea month ago, but getting invisible by shifting i will instanly go temp lock beeing the first perma stealth SB-temp lock, only visible during casting a DOTs, and wuuuush invisible again, lol would be funny
or go max HP/livesteal and slot tenebrough (if they only worked like mod 5) so beeing all time invisible and dealing passiv damage to everyone
I think as soon as the sw came out of stealth it would be heavily focused by any enemy team nearby. Bad idea anyways lol...I'll stick with pushing for itc effects on sprint.
All things PvE
Let's be blunt, in live, our dps and survival for PvE is trough the roof. Any good warlock player with DC sigil will put out massive amounts of damage in every dungeon he does, even if he's not the DPS tree. So let's analyze what makes us good in PvE, and I will tackle them and other issues in order:
-DoTs / Fury Capstone
-Acursed diabolist set bonus/ glyphs
-Tyranical threat (Cleric artifact)
-Life Steal
-Class Features compared to other classes
-Damnation tree
Curse mechanics
All right, so one of the improvements I can see to the core mechanics of the class itself is the 'curse consume' aspect. I suggest to replace it with 'Curse Synergy'. For example, a SW gets 20% bonus damage when damaging cursed opponents, but alot of powers cannot benefit from this because casting them consumes the curse. So if you curse your target then cast dreadtheft, you will lose your curse damage bonus. This is also true for the fury capstone, powers that consume the curse requires you to recast a curse more often than should be necessary simply to benefit from your capstone, and powers that are channel-type like dreadtheft you simply cannot cancel to recurse because you lose the power by the same time. Some of you experienced warlocks probably know by now that using Warlock's bargain puts a curse on the target which is not consumed by powers, so if you warlock's bargain + curse + dreadtheft you still get your curse damage bonus and fury capstone. I don't think it should be this way, I think improving the mechanic to 'if the target is cursed when casting - gain x benefits' aka curse synergy and not remove the curse from the target would avoid curse spamming and problems like not being able to benefit from curse damage bonus when using curse consume channel powers like dreadtheft.
Accursed diabolist set bonus/Glyphs.
This was a huge thing in our DPS arsenal, the reason is many of the warlock powers are Damage over Time effects and each 'tick' of those powers count as an encounter power of it's own. As a rule of thumb the set bonus is 3% hp(max 2k) for every encounter cast. Now that would be an ordinary(I mean not OP) set if not for the fact that each tick of DoT powers count for an encounter power of their own. Let me just mention that dreadtheft ticks 24 total times (4/sec) and if you're using this set bonus for each dreadtheft cast you stack 24x the damage bonus. On a high HP monster like tiamat your dreadtheft will literally proc 48k damage before debuffs and buffs every time you cast dreadtheft, and it goes higher if you use more DoT powers like Warlock's bargain etc. Arguably this can be a good or a bad thing depending on the viewer, it's a big factor in why warlocks are so high in the damage chart (along with tyranical threat). a Typical dreadtheft can do 15k damage on it's own + 40k per target you hit consistently with it, damage racks up really fast. This is why removing our set bonus will hurt the class really badly, because it depends on it to perform, and when you compare this class to others for balance, people factor in this enormous DPS boost. If you take the same warlock but not using this armor bonus it will perform significantly less, making armor choice practicly non existant, because everyone will wear this over draconic or even black ice for PvE. The same concept applies to glyphs even if I didn't really cover it up.While there is no immediate improvement for this situation, when making changes to the warlock class you must take this factor into account. Removing the set bonus would probably hurt the class more than it should be while making every other armor set bonus as good as this one is probably not the answer. Without changing the underlying mechanics of multi encounter procs there's little we can do about this specific matter right now. And if it was indeed changed, then we would need something to compensate for the loss otherwise the class will lose alot of it's performance in comparison to other classes
Tyranical Threat
This power is the only daily any warlock will ever use in PvE. It's ridiculously powerful, it's completely out of line with every other daily in the game except opressive force and a couple oddballs. While having a powerful daily is well and all that, the difference between us warlocks and wizards is we're very dependant on these features to score that DPS. What does that mean in practical terms? To be a good warlock you need to SPAM Tyranical threat as much as humanly possible in every good encounter. Remove that and the set bonus mentionned above(or glyphs + encounter multi ticks) and the class becomes very mediocre at DPS. And that's bad because the class doesn't do much other than DPS. Unlike CWs, if you nerf their damage they still got their CC to fall back on, roll a opressor and CC everything to death. Nerf the damage of a warlock and you have... nothing, life steal which is the core mechanic for defence on a SW is dependant on damage, even temptation tree's healing is dependant on damage. A warlock that doesn't deal damage is a weight in the group that's got no uses. So it is to be expected of a class whose primary role is DPS that it would deal alot of it. It would be cool to tone down Tyranical threat only if it was replaced by something else, not only would that add diversity from the old TT spamming but it would also solve the gap between this daily and other dailies available. Another really important point is that applying curses with tyranical threat is a slow animation, it can take 3 to 5 seconds simply applying curses to ennemies, effectively cutting down the time by 1/4 of its duration, being 20s currently, and that's if your targets don't die and you have to recast your curses again then you pretty much wasted your daily power. I think a way to solve this problem would be that casting curses with tyranical threat active be sped up by the same amount of time it takes to cast normal curses(instantaneous) and increase it's total duration but lower it's damage link %. The daily power would be easier to use and it would also be easier to re link new targets with it after initial targets died. Because of the fact players do not generate AP while using Tyranical threat it would not threaten balance to increase it's duration and speeding up animation for a lower damage link trade off.
Life Steal
Now this issue has been created with the changes to life steal with mod 6. When we look at it, every class has means of defending themselves. For example, rangers use roots and dodges as defence, CWs have control powers, GFs block and GWFs determination among others, ETC. What about SW? Our main defence is shift and life steal. The thing with life steal is every class can have it, not just warlock. While only wizards have real control powers, everyone has life steal, including said wizards. That is why I feel like life steal is a seperate case when we look at warlocks, because it is at the core of our class defensive mechanism, unlike other classes. If you removed Life steal from the game completely, Wizards would still have control powers, GFs would still block, while we would only have shift left. By putting our main defense mechanics as a 'chance' to happen the problem is that we cannot rely on our main defence system. It's the same as saying to a wizard you control powers have a 15% chance of actually working, you can stack up control bonus and it increases your chance to succeed at controlling powers. What if he's low HP and casts that power to disable mobs and save time until that cleric hits him with a heal and it so turns out that he rolled the wrong numbers and he's left defenceless because his control powers didn't work. Nobody wants that right?This is how warlocks feel about life steal chance. Because it's at the core of our defense system, there's two ways things should go- 1. make adjusments to the old system to make it reliable again for warlocks at a lower rate % if necessary. 2- Give a new defensive mechanism to the class, whatever that might be. One cannot make the main defensive aspect of a class work only in x% of situations, it hurts the class really badly, in this case warlock. A GF doesn't block x% of attacks, a GWF doesn't have a random proc chance on his determination, it's only fair that our main defence is not random either. This change for life steal should only affect warlocks because unlike other classes, I say it again, it's at the core of our class. If it cannot be done we need something else to replace that defensive system to even things out with other classes.
Class features
So class features, our feats are weaker in comparison to other classes features.
Dark one's blessing 1k hp restored for killing a target that is cursed, the problem is that a majority of powers consume curse, how often do you actually kill a cursed target? Not often, not only that but the healing done by it is too low to be useful. If it offered something like increased life steal or another benefit and increased healing(3/6/9/12% total hp?) (+changes to curse consume not consuming curse but rather synergizing with it) ...then yes!
Deadly Curse 1k ish damage on cursing target. The idea of curses doing damage is not bad, however it's very limited in usefulness because of it's really low damage. Especially if curses were changed to curse synergy instead of curse consume, then this might need to be changed to something else entirely. How about increasing damage done by x% on targets afflicted with Warlock's Curse. That seems like a much better feat already.
Warding Curse 10% less damage from cursed targets.. that's not a bad feat in itself, but as mentionned earlier the curse consuming aspect of powers has a terrible synergy with it, changing that to my first suggestion would definitly improve this feat at the same time.
Prince of Hell - This feat was useless before but I can see it becoming good in mod 6.. somewhat. I still think this feat should be a % increase of ArP not a stat increase.
Dust to Dust, this feat doesn't generate AP when your borrowed time ticks, I think it should. The description says when your soul sparks heal you, borrowed time makes my spark heal me, so why not? As of now, I don't see much of a reason to slot this on my bar.
Snuff out. A single spark out of 30 for one target dying.. with an internal cooldown. That is definitly an underwhelming feat. I can see this reworked in two ways. 1: Same ability but instead of generating 1 soul spark per kill, you generate a full bar (6 sparks). 2: Remove the cooldown and rework the ability that each kill grants a single spark, and ranks up grant more sparks per kill. For example, rank 1 = 1 spark, rank 2= 2 sparks, etc.
Shadow Walk. GWF gets the same thing but 30% run and 3% deflection chance we get.. 30% run and.. nothing, why not add 3% life steal along with it? Rogue master infiltrator - 15% run speed, 3% crit, 3% deflect, why don't we get something cool like that too? Between that and Snuff out my choice would be obvious. I could see dark one's blessing becoming this
Soul reaping and hope stealer give a 'stat bonus' like 1k life steal, which gets outdated very quickly in most cases because as time goes gear gets stronger and devalues those feats. Why don't we move them to a percentage chance and be done with it? you won't need to change it everytime you change the cap or everytime the gear gap gets too big for what you orginally developped it for. The biggest majority of feats are designed in percentages, which is good. These two deserve the same treatment IMO.
Constitution and HP contributions
In mod 4 and 5 one of the advantages of warlock over classes was that constitution is an important stat for the class. Meaning that the average warlock invests alot of points into constitution returns with better damage and more HP. In mod 6 however, this changes (this affects all classes not just warlock) Tankier classes have lost an edge because constitution plays a role on your character base hit points, HP from gear is not factored in, and gear HP bonuses is the same for every class. Meaning the difference between total HP for a non tanky, and a tanky class is not as noticeable as before. I made some preview testing with a control wizard for constitution contribution, here's the results.
The First two pictures are lv 70 mod 6 and two pieces of elemental fire (so there's another 20k missing from gear + enchants I don't have yet.)
These two are mod 5 (Live) at level 60 at 17.5k GS
67k vs 64k and 30.5k vs 33k
In the first case I was missing 2 pieces of gear from elemental fire gear, which is roughly 20k more HP, so for testing's sake let's make it 87k and 84k because that's what it'll be when you gear up at 70. So that means 8 point of con contribute to about 3% of my total HP. For 8 points of Con the stat shows +16% because it's 2% per Con points, we're actually getting 3% of our HP from these 8 points of Con.
In the second scenario we're talking more of 8-10% for 6 points of Con, which is two less than the first example. The game stats simply note +12% HP, this is vaguely more true here than it is for the second one. This is what I mean by underwhelming, constitution on preview feels useless, and I dont think it should be this way. Adjusting gear hp to tanky/non tanky classes will not fix these issues because someone who decides to raise con on a character that doesn't have it as a primary or secondary stat will still be penalized in both aspects instead of losing DPS but gaining more HP you get losing DPS and mediocre HP. That would force people to roll out DPS stats for characters and kill the idea of spreading the stats as you wish them to be. In any case, the warlock's advantage of higher con over his brother casters will vanish if something is not done about this and tip the balance more towards other casters in mod 6. Pair this with the loss of life steal as our main mechanic for survival and warlock's uniqueness starts to fade away in face of CWs
Damnation
This tree path is viewed as everyone as inferior to the other two by every warlock for one simple reason: the soul puppet dies too frequently. Our feats depend on the puppet to be alive for us to benefit from most of the damnation feats and since the puppet dies so easily it takes away the strenght from this path. If the puppet was made much harder to kill this path would improve tenfolds. The synergy between the puppet drawing agro with mocking spirit is bad because it kills your puppet fast, and then you don't benefit from your feats anymore. If you intended damnation to rely soul puppet to do some agro management you also need to give it proportional HP so it won't get two hit KO'd by random mobs in WoD.
All things PvP
All right here's a list of the things I will cover in this section.
-Encounter powers and casting speed/times
-Soul Sparks
-Shift/shadow slip
Casting Speed
Most of the warlock spells are too slow casting, the biggest loser in that category being Harrowstorm at first place, then soul scorch, curse bite, Blades of vanquished armies, wraith shadow. So warlocks get some very slow spells and the rest are medium-slow, there really is only a very few fast casting warlock spell. Unlike rangers fast casting roots or wizards fast casting stuns, the problem is that on even grounds the warlock needs to cast 1 second before the wizard to actually hit him with spells. Especially when you pit up Harrowstorm VS entangling Force, increasing casting times to be on par with other classes would solve many problems the SW face in pvp.
Encounter powers
Curse bite: I could see this power becoming an instant cast spell. To add some niche to it and make it really interesting you could go as far that it damages your cursed targets even if you don't maintain line of sight with them, that means it damages your cursed targets, period, no matter where they are. Remembering there's a timer to how long curses last it would balance it to not be unbalanced, or simply after x uses the curse disapears to prevent people from abusing it. It would give a very nice application when fighting rogues for example, curse - stealth - curse bite, still takes damage.
Harrowstorm: casting 2x faster is a big improvement, the spell is extremely slow and hard to land, sometimes you will notice that when you start casting your targets will run the opposite direction or go stealth while you cast and it will cancel your poor power and do nothing. I think this power should be the same casting speed as chill spike from the wizards list to be on par.
Warlock's bargain, this spell sacrifices HP for life steal, usually a good choice in PvE, since it's considered life steal in PvP you get half the benefits, and in reality when you use this spell you barely break even in terms how much hp restored/sacrificed with it, and that's if your opponent doesn't deflect/dodge/block it, in which case you pretty much take your HP and throw it in the garbage can. I get the idea of some spells are better for PvE and some for PvP but I think it could do with some improvements for PvP. However if you are a DPS build, you will get more returns from this spell because it is one of the only high damage instant cast necrotic spells available. I think it should be modified to not be affected by healing depression, so that the rewards/sacrifice HP ratio is better than 1:1 or lower than 1:1.
Vampiric Embrace: This power has low damage, I think it deserves an increase in it, most powers will give better returns even if you're temptation warlock with capstone. The biggest problem is that there is healing depression on both the healing then on the temporary HP. Couple that with low damage and you get a not so useful power.
Soul Sparks
The speed at which you lose your soul sparks is overwhelming, you stop combat for a second and you're out, all your buffs and stacks are gone. As a Soulbinder's strength compared to a Hellbringer is the added survival, if you remove our stacks of soul sparks instantly as soon as combat ends that means that 95% of the time there's no benefit to not running an hellbringer in PvP.
What I suggest is the once combat ends, you lose soul sparks based of a rate of x per second. For example, if you managed to get all your sparks up in combat, once it ends you would lose 1 spark per seconds, or 1 spark per two seconds. That gives you 30seconds/1 minute to re enter combat before it's gone and you have to build up again. I don't mind the aspect of building stacks up, what I don't like is how fast you lose those stacks. I honestly believe it would be very beneficial for warlocks to remove the HP healed from consuming sparks when combat end and inputing a system that makes you lose sparks overtime instead. A good compromise would be that your sparks heal you progressively as you lose them after the combat end, that would likely be ideal.
Or if anything, give Soulbinders the potential to reach 30 stacks quickly via daily uses or some other method. Like a wizard have feats to get instantly 5 stacks of arcane mastery when casting the lightning daily, I don't see why we couldn't get something similar too.
Shift mechanic
Alot of warlocks feel like they shouldn't have shadow slip but it be replaced by a dodge, while this could help with alot of the problems we face about damage mitigation, by simply dodging a big hit. currently you cannot help but taking the big hit, and some classes can do it alot.Where a wizard or cleric can dodge the rogue's shocking execution, you can only look at it coming in your face. I understand GWF are in the same situation, however GWFs have determination, and we do not. I'm not going to get started on GWF though that's for another thread, so back to SW, there's alot of optimization that needs attention IMO for warlocks to be able to survive spike damage. Because currently rogues simply run up to you, SE, you're dead, that's it, one hit KO, nothing you can do about it, at least other classes can dodge it, we can't. Removing the shadow slip would take away the flavor of the class and I don't think that's what we need. I only have a vague idea bout this, but I think having an ability or method of mitigating a single high spike damage would be an enormous help to our class. Something similar to wizard's shield would be extremely helpful for warlocks because they cannot avoid the damage, just mitigate it, I think the shield belongs better on warlocks than wizards. But it could be something new entirely I'm sure we could come up with some smart idea about it.We have a suggestion made by overdriver that sounds really interesting to me, here is the quote:
PvP armor set bonus
As you may be aware, alot of people think that the warlock set bonus for the pvp armor is useless. ''Grants 9% damage increase to enemies below 20% HP''. Seeing as the majority of warlocks use Killing Flames at this moment, and the fact that the set bonus grants no synergy to any warlock abilities, I understand that alot of us warlocks would like a different set bonus. What I suggest is something that will synergize with warlock abilities or use class mechanic curses in the set bonus. Here's a couple example:
1. Cursed targets take 10% more damage from all sources.
2. Cursed targets move 25% slower.
3. Warlock's curse roots enemies for 2sec.
4. Shadow slipping grants 50% DR instead of 30%.
5. Shadow slip costs 20% less stamina.
6. Or any current existing set bonus that is better than the one we have, such as accursed diabolists' for example, which fits in well with our DoT DPS caster role.
Conclusion
So that sums it up, it's a very big thread but there's alot to say about warlocks right now, because on preview they're in pretty bad shape, this is why i took so much of my time (many hours) to dedicate to this massive thread that goes about every thing good and bad about warlocks and what changes can be made to return it to good shape. With the delay of mod 6, I hope this extra time will be used to consider our suggestions. Also note that if you wish to discuss this post, do so in my other thread on the preview forum, because it is not permitted in official feedback threads.
Side note: I don't think we have a new class advocate since kitten left the role a while back. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks for your time,
Warlock Zek
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
SW (temp)
I find it really usefull but if some mobs hit me i die almost instant cuz i am lack of DR and deflection the party do not benefit from my LS if i am all time on the floor pls take my feedback to change shadow sprint and increase the dr to at least 50% + this DR shoud work like CWs shild encounter or GF block.
To clarify some things, we are generally fairly happy with where GWFs are in PVE. They are competitive, and do very solid damage for the risks they take being in melee range (where there are more consistent threats to worry about).
Very nice, they're monitoring pvp performance and the weakest class on pvp got more nerfs, nice work panderus