Warlocks: A complete list of possible improvements in PvP and PvE

denvald · March 2015

It's no secret, everyone knows and everyone thinks Warlocks are the weakest class in pvp, there's a list of reasons why that is the case. While in PvE the impact is much less than in PvP, I can see a couple of improvements possible in this aspect too, especially with the damnation path tree. Cryptic has shown to be listening to player fedback about mod 6 with their patches so far. Let's hope they don't forget about us warlocks!

I know myself and many other friends play warlock mains and have been posting forums regularly about things that could improve the class overall, the goal of this thread is to put all that feedback into one thread. Since m6 was delayed there will be more time available to make changes before it happens so 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 tree
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

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. I think the temptation capstone should give a 200% damage increase to this power as it's meant to be used as a healing tool, we need more damage to make it viable.

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:

overdriver13 wrote: »

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 part of the reason I posted in here was to allow people to answer and discuss the matter, which is not permitted in official feedback threads.

Thanks for your time,
Warlock Zek

norcaine1990 · March 2015

That's pretty much everything we (SWs) have been fighting for/with for quite some time and I agree with everything here (PvE-wise at least, I'm not a PvP person) but I strongly recommend you to post this in the SW feedback thread ( here that is http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?831981-Official-Feedback-Thread-Scourge-Warlock-Cap-Raise ), where it have a higher chance of being actually seen.

Since posting in multiple places is considered spamming though, I'd at the same time ask any mod to close this thread.

It's just my opinion though, that this well rounded feedback may have better chances of seeing devs eyes in the actual feedback thread instead of here. In any event - splendid work you did there and I really do hope that devs WILL address these core issues with our class.

Cheers!.

overdriver13 · March 2015

Great post OP. 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.

That and faster casting time and I actually think the class would be good to go for pvp. The class only needs tweaked imo not overhauled, but it needs the RIGHT tweaks.

Undoing the creeping death nerf would go a long way as well.

denvald · March 2015

Overall PvE performance
As a PvE side note, I can safely tell you that what makes a good warlock in live is rarely what spec he's using, or what boons he chose, whatever. To perform very high numbers in PvE, warlocks need to have a very high skill cap at using tyranical threat, and must be using Accursed diabolist/MC fabled set. A warlock who does not use tyranical threat nor said set bonus will be VERY underperforming in comparison to other DPS classes, they're the fondation of our DPS.

This was recorded during a run of tiamat, I am using temptation soulbinder setup. The first was when I killed the white gem summoner and all it's minions in a couple seconds with tyranical threat, I used it once.

The second is the above mentionned phase + defending clerics and beating on tiamat heads for 2 minutes. I used tyranical threat twice.

Hellfire being the name of the accursed diabolist set bonus. We can add up that in the first picture TT + AC add up for 86% of my DPS, and in the second picture they add up to 57% of my DPS.

gentlemancrush wrote: »

RE: Set Bonuses

Set bonuses have perpetually been a problem and at this time we want them to be rarer and more interesting. We are currently looking at other options for how to handle set bonuses, but no top tier equipment will have set bonuses yet.

So we are not likely to get a set bonus in mod 6 (for now anyways) and that will reduce a really big aspect of our DPS in itself, the nerf to TT is the icing on the cake. I believe this makes the class unidimensional because to perform well as a warlock you only need two things.
1. Spam tyranical threat
2. Wear the correct armor

And I believe The difference between fury and the other trees in terms of DPS to be very small (even smaller with the nerf to the capstone). I will post later when I have time to show comparison with CW storm spell and maybe fury DPS vs temptation if I have time to prove my point with numbers. Because I know Storm Spell and chilling presence contributes enormously to DPS much like our TT and AC but Storm spell and Chilling presence are ok and ours are not, I don't understand your decision cryptic. (If I can I'll try to post numbers as well, or if someone nice can do it for me that'd be appreciated...)

I didn't realize there was a maximum number of letters for the primary post, so when I wanted to add more details at a later date i wasn't able to, so I added them here, I'll reserve the next couple posts next time, sorry about that.
//////////...

Thanks for the support

I will be adding your idea for ITC effects to sprint section overdriver.

Also note, the reason I wanted to post here is to allow people to comment and discuss the issue, which is not permitted in the official feedback threads.

However I will PM a mod to know what I should do with this content and if yes or no I should add this to the official feedback thread anyways.

kolatmaster · March 2015

A lot of interesting, and good, ideas in the original post...

Devs, take a read and please consider some/all of these! :cool:

ghoulz66 · March 2015

That new class feature renders infernal spheres even more useless. It's still a good encounter in your opinion?

vasdamas · March 2015

Good post, I hope at least some $HAMSTER@s will be given.

denvald wrote: »

CWs have control powers

They also got shield on tab, chaotic growth that heals them to full way better than warlock's sparks, autopush and DODGES. Any class got a dodge but a SW. Literally makes me shake in anger when I see typical PvP CW ****ling-procling crying he can't kill a rogue.

denvald wrote: »

Damnation tree

Honestly, I think Damnation's puppet should be granted some sort of CC and CC immunity. For example chance to interrupt/root it's target on hit, it would make damnation kind of really annoying and somewhat more useful for PvE too.

denvald wrote: »

Casting Speed

Take two equally skilled players, one CW and another is a SW. SW - 1 encounter, CW - full rotation within the same period of time. Entaggle force > push > icy rays > Ice knife, storm spell procs GG, go kiss the mud SW. Entaggled force takes as much time for CW to cast as curse for us lol And if they don't entaggle force you first, they just nuke you and then dodge. And if they miss half of those dodges shield will make smoothen anything, everything you send at them. Is it needles to say at this stage casting WB would be equal suicide? One of the powers that actually allows us to kill a CW.

denvald wrote: »

Encounter powers

Wraith's shadow and Blades of Vanquished Armies could use some love too since they both get canceled at some circumstancies. For Wraith Shadow those are: 1) The target hides behind a obstacle 2)Target runs too far 3) Target enters stealth. BoVA is canceled once you're CC'd.
Also recently I've noticed that WB's duration can be deflected,noted while playing against some high deflection HRs/TRs. Fox cunning is not the problem, it just goes off in like 2 seconds sometimes.

denvald wrote: »

Shift mechanic

This one, makes me wanna cry most of the time. With it I just gather all possible debuffs, which often eliminates extra DR I have from it. Also, there are two huge problems besides being useless (lol) that shadow slip has:
1) Terrible Hitbox, by that I mean we are getting hit by close combat power/at-will even if we shadow slip 10 feets away. Feels like if a warlock is not in the location we see him/her at the moment but somewhere we were at 1-2 seconds. And it's not latency problem, otherwise the others in my party would see that I was actually standing near enough to get hit. Gave me a lot of laughs in CN too, when I was knocked by Red Wizards fireball despite I was on the other end of Dracolich circle lol
2) It takes 0.5 second for shadow slip to start, and some space to start shadowslipping too. Meaning it does not instantly lets you avoid getting CC'd like dodge of the other classes. To see what I am trying to say just try to step back-forward a bit while pressing shift. So my suggestion would be to make it something similar and INSTANT to rogue's stealth. You hit it > you enter shadows > your stamina meter drains > you hit Shift again and it stops when you like, allowing us to float on one place too. That's BESIDES the major adjustments the shadow slip needs. Or just rework it to a simple dodge, if any ideas the community provides are too hard to implement. <.<
I guess GWFs have the same problems with their sprint.

mehguy138 · March 2015

Awesome post, signed.

matthiasthehun76 · March 2015

Brilliant work!

If i may i give my sign too.

My problem with my Warlock is, that i don't see her exact role in Mod 6. Hope that they will fix it, cause the life steal changes will affect this class the most.

Fury is only good for me as a mostly PUG PVE player, if i know i got a strong healer by my side. Now some DCs state, that the healing OP will make the DC kinda obsolete, which i personally don't think, but let's see, don't know yet.

Damnation was for me the typical fingers away tree and while Temptation combined with SB has good survivability and decent heals, but low DPS.

Temptation is decent in healing, but PUGs want a pure DC or a DPS machine.

I am a bit confused now.

denvald · March 2015

Thanks for supporting my ideas everyone

I really hope it'll catch a dev's eye and we get some attention, especially since we have no more class advocate.

vasdamas · March 2015

denvald wrote: »

Thanks for supporting my ideas everyone

I really hope it'll catch a dev's eye and we get some attention, especially since we have no more class advocate.

Previous one just gave up since he/she said had no time. Yet I suspect it was devs-advocates communication failure though. Noone wants to gather info they don't even read. Sisyphean task no less

destinyknight · March 2015

I've said for a long time and will keep saying. Curse Synergies should provide stamina to the Warlock when the effects that cause those curse synergies are successful. All successful curse synergies give 20% stamina immediately. No matter what skill triggered the curse synergy, all curse synergies globally will grant this stamina if the ability that triggered it is successful. This should also apply to skills that trigger curse synergies on more than one target, giving the stamina refund back per target hit if its an aoe ability that triggered the curse synergy and refunds based on all targets that were hit by the initial hit of the ability when the curse was consumed.

Ex: A dodged harrowstorm curse synergy refunds nothing.

Ex: A fiery bolt launched on a single cursed target grants the warlock 20% stamina

Ex: Cursing three targets and all three of those targets get hit with the initial hit of dreadtheft refund 60% stamina. (even if the other targets move out of alignment, as long as they got hit with the initial hit when the curse is consumed, they all refund stamina)

Not too much, and not too little. If you successfully use your encounters and trigger the curse synergy for each. thats 60% stamina refunded total in normal circumstances. This gives Warlocks a chance to position in the fray or gives some much needed extra DR or CC immunity at the expense of requiring the Warlock to have to actively engage in battle to get that refunded stamina.

This is a general idea that can help go a long way in the long run for the class. If we're going to keep the longer cast time of spells, the least we can do is be compensated for successfully getting them off.

Also curse durations should be extended by double. Having only three seconds to target what you want with a curse to trigger a specific effect is not nearly as long enough.

schietindebux · March 2015

I've said for a long time and will keep saying. Curse Synergies should provide stamina to the Warlock when the effects that cause those curse synergies are successful. All successful curse synergies give 20% stamina immediately. No matter what skill triggered the curse synergy, all curse synergies globally will grant this stamina if the ability that triggered it is successful. This should also apply to skills that trigger curse synergies on more than one target, giving the stamina refund back per target hit if its an aoe ability that triggered the curse synergy and refunds based on all targets that were hit by the initial hit of the ability when the curse was consumed.

Ex: A dodged harrowstorm curse synergy refunds nothing.

Ex: A fiery bolt launched on a single cursed target grants the warlock 20% stamina

Ex: Cursing three targets and all three of those targets get hit with the initial hit of dreadtheft refund 60% stamina. (even if the other targets move out of alignment, as long as they got hit with the initial hit when the curse is consumed, they all refund stamina)

Not too much, and not too little. If you successfully use your encounters and trigger the curse synergy for each. thats 60% stamina refunded total in normal circumstances. This gives Warlocks a chance to position in the fray or gives some much needed extra DR or CC immunity at the expense of requiring the Warlock to have to actively engage in battle to get that refunded stamina.

This is a general idea that can help go a long way in the long run for the class. If we're going to keep the longer cast time of spells, the least we can do is be compensated for successfully getting them off.

Also curse durations should be extended by double. Having only three seconds to target what you want with a curse to trigger a specific effect is not nearly as long enough

ending your stamina bar will never be empty, no good idea, but since permastealth is very common, give us e less powerfull perma ability to slip arround for ever

destinyknight · March 2015

With how much warlocks use stamina. Not really. the only way you will never have empty stamina is if you smartly pace your attacks, and not actually being engaged by anything.

And given that most synergy heavy encounters have long cooldowns. You'd probably have used that little 20% stamina before you can get the next one.

And using all your encounters at once, blows your chances as increased utility from the stamina return. Its a risk and reward thing which pretty much defines a warlock.

Will you burst and do a ton of damage all at once, or will you pace your self to always have a spell to use its synergy incase you need it? Also it requires for your synergy to actually successfully hit. Not to mention the long cast times of our spells. If we stop to cast something, we're exposed you might not even get off your curse synergy in time. So you have to acutely use it smartly.

We're exposed all the time, and we dont have any method of dodging what so ever. So having the capability to sap energy from your target(s) to extend inhuman movement and gain some resistance to things longer is what a warlock should be able to do.

vasdamas · March 2015

destinyknight wrote: »

With how much warlocks use stamina. Not really. the only way you will never have empty stamina is if you smartly pace your attacks, and not actually being engaged by anything.

And given that most synergy heavy encounters have long cooldowns. You'd probably have used that little 20% stamina before you can get the next one.

And using all your encounters at once, blows your chances as increased utility from the stamina return. Its a risk and reward thing which pretty much defines a warlock.

Will you burst and do a ton of damage all at once, or will you pace your self to always have a spell to use its synergy incase you need it? Also it requires for your synergy to actually successfully hit.

Your synergy ideas is useless with the current cast time, sorry for being straight. Most of the time it is SW - 1 encounter, CW - whole rotation.

destinyknight · March 2015

I've successfully fought CW's fine. the problem with CW's currently is that they just deal way too much damage all in one go, cause the devs constantly keeps increasing thier damage. (more than the dedicated magic damage dealer which is the SW at times, ironically). It requires you to know they're there for. if they attack when you're unaware, you're pretty much screwed there.

The key to fighting a CW is that very thing. Shadow Slip. Make them waste thier control powers ( since they always start with Entangling or Icy rays) and with my curse synergy idea you have some way of countering them, if you manage to hit them correctly.

the real threat to a SW would still be HR's however, which I dont mind too much. You can sort of kind of fight them off.

schietindebux · March 2015

all in all i would be very happy if at least DR is lifted up to 50% by shadow slip, or deflection base level is lifted, or any fead you can chose like
and encounter respect DR and tenacity like they should

that would be my first choice in case of having nothing compareable to other classes like dodge, ITC, block, invisible, shield etc
i predict if Warlock will get an improvement in mod 6 associated with the delay, it will be any kind of resistance, because all other classes have these bonusses already implemented, warlock has nothing (and 30% is nothing) and sparks building is too slow, and in case of dealing with invisible targets impossible (mod 6 is gonna be the permastealth, superdaze, oneshot-season)

matthiasthehun76 · March 2015

overdriver13 wrote: »

Great post OP. 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.

That and faster casting time and I actually think the class would be good to go for pvp. The class only needs tweaked imo not overhauled, but it needs the RIGHT tweaks.

Undoing the creeping death nerf would go a long way as well.

ITC kinda thing sounds excellent! Nerfing this class is a hurtful thing even to read, one who ever played a Warlock knows, that it would need a huge bottle of Red Bull, not nerf.

I was thinking about those soulsparks too and i would like to see a same mechanic as my GWF has with Unstoppable.

Sorry my poor GWF, you are weak know too, but that think i like this on him.

When he has his Unstoppable up, combined with a recent amount of recovery i can stand with him long in the red zone. Unstoppable isn't fading away immediately, i can use it as a strategic tool. If i go from one enemy to the other and still have some in the tank i trigger Unstoppable or i can save it up for the next red zone.

I wish my Warlock could play a bit more with those sparks in that fashion.

denvald · March 2015

I don't know about the stamina regeneration, but the more ideas we have open the merrier.

I definitly think however, an ITC-like shadow slip would solve some problems about the current shadow slip.

vasdamas · March 2015

destinyknight wrote: »

I've successfully fought CW's fine. the problem with CW's currently is that they just deal way too much damage all in one go, cause the devs constantly keeps increasing thier damage. (more than the dedicated magic damage dealer which is the SW at times, ironically). It requires you to know they're there for. if they attack when you're unaware, you're pretty much screwed there.

The key to fighting a CW is that very thing. Shadow Slip. Make them waste thier control powers ( since they always start with Entangling or Icy rays) and with my curse synergy idea you have some way of countering them, if you manage to hit them correctly.

the real threat to a SW would still be HR's however, which I dont mind too much. You can sort of kind of fight them off.

Honestly, never had too much of a problem with any well geared HR, it's just I need to Shadow slip their rotation and time WB right so it does not get dodged. And have the daily up in most cases. Unlike with equally geared CWs using SS feature because If I don't get melted through shift, all I have by the time I manage to avoid getting CCd is like 20-30% of my hit points. And I have 45k hp in domination, combined with 1.1k tenacity, 3.4k defense and 1.8k deflection.
So after all those matches I had and I had a lot, HRs probably on the bottom of Overpowered list, which they are honestly not. And that video somebody posted on "Why can't I dodge ranger's roots" thread...oh my, does he even see that HR times his dodge and lands an arrow right in the time CW's dodge ends?

Unknown · March 2015

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overdriver13 · March 2015

destinyknight wrote: »

I've successfully fought CW's fine. the problem with CW's currently is that they just deal way too much damage all in one go, cause the devs constantly keeps increasing thier damage. (more than the dedicated magic damage dealer which is the SW at times, ironically). It requires you to know they're there for. if they attack when you're unaware, you're pretty much screwed there.

The key to fighting a CW is that very thing. Shadow Slip. Make them waste thier control powers ( since they always start with Entangling or Icy rays) and with my curse synergy idea you have some way of countering them, if you manage to hit them correctly.

the real threat to a SW would still be HR's however, which I dont mind too much. You can sort of kind of fight them off.

This is in no way a flame, maybe you are a spastically skilled sw that somehow has escaped any real notice. Your concept seem grossly misinformed though. The primary issue vs cw is casting time. Casting time is everything. Synergy does not matter a lick if you are hit with a spell from a cw while your character is still casting his spell. Casting time for CWs is much much faster and that is a fact that cannot be ignored. When everything else is equal, it comes down to who's spell lands first and fractions of a second (or whole seconds in terms of sw casting time) mean a lot.

overdriver13 · March 2015

After doing a lot of reading, it appears that CWs will have to gravitate to being more cc focused than damage focused. This seems to leave SW as THE damage dealing class. However, the CW focus will shift due to 1. Mobs that hit much much harder and 2. The life steal nerf. Damage will not be a survival tool for CWs in mod 6 simply because it will be impossible to generate more incoming health from LS than outgoing health from being hit by mobs. Pulling out most CW damage there is a gap that can really only be filled by SW.

The problem is that SW will be the damage provider because the class has no other option, it has no viable cc tree. It looks like even in pve then, SW will not be viable. It would take an incredible amount of team work just to keep it alive in a party.

If a CW will almost need help to even complete a campaign daily, I am sure a SW would not be able to solo it at all.

So we are facing SW not being viable in PVE as well as not being viable in PVP.

If they want to keep the class viable at all, they are going to have to give SW a more defensive shift mechanic + seriously buff lifesteal for the class.

A suggestion is to beef way up, the lifesteal synergy of the class. Some ideas:

*Feats/powers which progressively increase the chance of LS proc, together providing a base 30% LS proc chance;

-Soulbinder, each soulspark could provide a +1% chance to proc LS, for a total of 30%. Soulsparks would not all disappear at once, "healing" the character, but rather dissipate one per second the SW is not in combat. This could be either a feat or a passive.

-Hellbringer, lifesteal% increases with sustained damage output. This could be a combinations of feats, such as one that increases LS proc chance by %5 for 5 seconds for each crit, capable to stacking 6 times.

So, major LS buffs (as above) + improved defensive shift mechanic (like making it itc on shift) and I think we are close to being good to go.

These suggestions do not change the paradigm for SW at all, they simply would increase the viability of SW in pve and pvp within its current paradigm.

denvald · March 2015

overdriver13 wrote: »

After doing a lot of reading, it appears that CWs will have to gravitate to being more cc focused than damage focused. This seems to leave SW as THE damage dealing class. However, the CW focus will shift due to 1. Mobs that hit much much harder and 2. The life steal nerf. Damage will not be a survival tool for CWs in mod 6 simply because it will be impossible to generate more incoming health from LS than outgoing health from being hit by mobs. Pulling out most CW damage there is a gap that can really only be filled by SW.

The problem is that SW will be the damage provider because the class has no other option, it has no viable cc tree. It looks like even in pve then, SW will not be viable. It would take an incredible amount of team work just to keep it alive in a party.

If a CW will almost need help to even complete a campaign daily, I am sure a SW would not be able to solo it at all.

So we are facing SW not being viable in PVE as well as not being viable in PVP.

If they want to keep the class viable at all, they are going to have to give SW a more defensive shift mechanic + seriously buff lifesteal for the class.

A suggestion is to beef way up, the lifesteal synergy of the class. Some ideas:

*Feats/powers which progressively increase the chance of LS proc, together providing a base 30% LS proc chance;

-Soulbinder, each soulspark could provide a +1% chance to proc LS, for a total of 30%. Soulsparks would not all disappear at once, "healing" the character, but rather dissipate one per second the SW is not in combat. This could be either a feat or a passive.

-Hellbringer, lifesteal% increases with sustained damage output. This could be a combinations of feats, such as one that increases LS proc chance by %5 for 5 seconds for each crit, capable to stacking 6 times.

So, major LS buffs (as above) + improved defensive shift mechanic (like making it itc on shift) and I think we are close to being good to go.

These suggestions do not change the paradigm for SW at all, they simply would increase the viability of SW in pve and pvp within its current paradigm.

Increasing the life steal per spark sounds like a good idea, not bad for Hellbringer either.

Either that or a completely new defensive system for the class itself, that SW can rely on, unlike life steal.

hadestemplar · March 2015

I would stick with my own old Idea for Warlocks shift mechanic.

There are 2 options..

1) add extra effect during shadow slip time, Warlock become invisible..

or my favorite
2) add ghost effect to shadow slip mechanic. It simply make user like ghost, animation remain same as current one,, just during time become invulnerable, can't catch with CC. However, run speed should be decreased from current one.. But for that actually need to see how this idea would work in action not by theory..

matthiasthehun76 · March 2015

overdriver13 wrote: »

If a CW will almost need help to even complete a campaign daily, I am sure a SW would not be able to solo it at all.

It is the logical conclusion yes.

I hate this thing actually, i lived this through with my DC back, when she was made a HAMSTER, with my GF, when he was kinda useless (still full of bugs), now my GWF and SW poor things.

Jesus i am so afraid of every Mod and every big patch, what will be ruined again.

I really can't see, what Cryptic had in mind with this, forcing people to do a simple daily together.

Multiple this with more toons and you will bore and frustrate yourself out of life.

Releasing Warlock back without any proper CC powers was a disaster for me, but now nerfing the only viable option this class has, namely life steal is a huge nail into poor classes coffin.

I mean i wish to play a class for many months or yeas, not just between two Mods and i hate to beg for help on a simply daily, which means for me, abandoning her, which is hard.

Why is every now Mod a coffin for some of the other classes, why can't they all be great and fairly equal.

3 things are elemental, mobility increase, real CC immunity, be it like ITC for rogues or stealth or anything and life steal.

Without all these who really wants a warlock in his team, for what purpose? Weak or mediocre DPS at best, zero survivability without life steal. What advantages will bring Warlocks to a team run. No PUG team will chose it, cause all they like is to rush through a dungeon as fast as possible and the weak classes aren't needed. This reminds me to the old days, when a dungeon party was 3 CWs and 2 GWFs. Speak about diversity.:p

overdriver13 · March 2015

matthiasthehun76 wrote: »

It is the logical conclusion yes.

I hate this thing actually, i lived this through with my DC back, when she was made a HAMSTER, with my GF, when he was kinda useless (still full of bugs), now my GWF and SW poor things.

Jesus i am so afraid of every Mod and every big patch, what will be ruined again.

I really can't see, what Cryptic had in mind with this, forcing people to do a simple daily together.

Multiple this with more toons and you will bore and frustrate yourself out of life.

Releasing Warlock back without any proper CC powers was a disaster for me, but now nerfing the only viable option this class has, namely life steal is a huge nail into poor classes coffin.

I mean i wish to play a class for many months or yeas, not just between two Mods and i hate to beg for help on a simply daily, which means for me, abandoning her, which is hard.

Why is every now Mod a coffin for some of the other classes, why can't they all be great and fairly equal.

3 things are elemental, mobility increase, real CC immunity, be it like ITC for rogues or stealth or anything and life steal.

Without all these who really wants a warlock in his team, for what purpose? Weak or mediocre DPS at best, zero survivability without life steal. What advantages will bring Warlocks to a team run. No PUG team will chose it, cause all they like is to rush through a dungeon as fast as possible and the weak classes aren't needed. This reminds me to the old days, when a dungeon party was 3 CWs and 2 GWFs. Speak about diversity.:p

I agree with you but one thing sticks out to me: I do not think there will be any "rushing through" the new versions of the dungeons. On live right now you can run a team through (say PK), just dragging massive herds of ads while running between mini bosses, then the final glitch to the main boss. I can't see a team doing that in the new version of pk. Ads that hit so much harder and which require a decent amount of actual arpen...it will be a slog and heavy damage will be needed.

So there is where SW could shine. But without the buffs we are asking for, it won't shine, will not be able to fill the role that will really need filling. Come mod6 there will be a lot of qq on the forums about how hard the dungeons are. If we are smart we shape that discussion before it starts: buff SWs so parties can have the damage dealer they need to get through dungeons. So the discussion becomes less about how impossible the dungeons are and more abut how there is a missing dps role in parties that can only really be filled by sw as viable class.

caexar · March 2015

Here we go again with the calls for overpowering class abilities like Shadow Slip. It is fine aside fromm needing a response improvement and possibly an unavoidable resistance improvement so that piercing damage can not penetrate it.
Making it break CC like ITC is just stupid overpowered and shouldn't even be considered. It's not meant to be a reactive save your HAMSTER ability. If you get caught slipping(pun intended) then you should have to eat it like most of the other classes have to.

The changes to lifesteal were absolutely necessary to reel in the players. Lifesteal trivialized content and made the entire defensive and healing genres of classes obsolete. Now you will have to have them and this is a good thing.

About the only thing so far that I agree with is the call for damage and casting time improvements with the nerfs and gear change dynamics taking effect.

denvald · March 2015

caexar wrote: »

Here we go again with the calls for overpowering class abilities like Shadow Slip. It is fine aside fromm needing a response improvement and possibly an unavoidable resistance improvement so that piercing damage can not penetrate it.
Making it break CC like ITC is just stupid overpowered and shouldn't even be considered. It's not meant to be a reactive save your HAMSTER ability. If you get caught slipping(pun intended) then you should have to eat it like most of the other classes have to.

The changes to lifesteal were absolutely necessary to reel in the players. Lifesteal trivialized content and made the entire defensive and healing genres of classes obsolete. Now you will have to have them and this is a good thing.

About the only thing so far that I agree with is the call for damage and casting time improvements with the nerfs and gear change dynamics taking effect.

About life steal, as I mentionned earlier, if devs wish to keep life steal as it is then I believe SW deserves a new defensive mechanic of some sort to make up for it.
GF- blocking
GWF- Unstoppable + sprint
HR- Dodge/Roots
CW - Shield Dodge Control
TR- Stealth Dodges ITC
DC - Dodges Heals AS + others
SW- Shift, nothing else. Before now SWs mains defence was shift + LS. Now only shift.
As always, this is just my opinion and people are to agree or disagree with me, but I invite you to play a SW on preview server in IWD or WoD and tell me if you feel the class is good enough survival wise.

The goal of this thread is also to submit a bunch of ideas that cryptic may or may not use later on, as they wish and see fit. ITC-like shadow slip does sound too strong, but leaving it as is isn't enough. One way or another the more ideas we give the better chances someone will think of something good and make it happen.

denvald · March 2015

If I recall correctly panderus mentionned new gear 'should be out' next friday in the preview patch.

This might be a really big boon for warlocks, if we get a strong set bonus like Accursed diabolist + overload slots it'll be a strong combo...

Unknown · March 2015

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Warlocks: A complete list of possible improvements in PvP and PvE

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