The complete Warlock thread. Suggestions, Bugs, Feedback, Considerations and more.

denvald · April 2015

Hello everyone! Today we’re looking at the warlock, how does it perform in pvp? how does it perform in pve? How does it compare to other classes ? What improvements can be done to the class as a whole?

I know myself and many others 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. Including my own ideas and the ideas of others. This thread and ideas suggested are coming from a high gear warlock that has mained the class since the beginning of mod 4. Note that not all suggestions are coherent with each other, it’s so that whatever changes feels attractive to the devs may be taken on it’s own and not have to necessarily bring the whole package.

This thread is MASSIVE. Be warned, of course you are not required to read all of it but I will try to keep it organized so it’s easier to read and comment on the aspects you relate to the most. And if you do I hope you appreciate my ideas or contribute some constructive feedback!

Note: Use control + F for faster thread navigation

Edit: 2015/06/10 Massive thread overhaul. Made parts more comprehensive, edited guide to be more complete, added parts and links to other guides, and more.

1. Links to other guides and useful resources
2. New concept idea for the warlock class rework
2.1 Paragon Paths changes
2.2 Powers changed for that design
2.3 The general idea of what each tree should do
2.4 Conclusion
3. Class Improvements Section
3.1 Class mechanics
3.2 Class Features
3.3 Powers
3.4 Gears Set bonuses and Stats
3.5 Heroic and Paragon Feats
4. Bugs Section
5. Conclusion

denvald · April 2015

1. Links to other guides and useful resources

Vasdamas' guide on PvP warlocks in general, more specifically soulbinders but also general PvP advice can be found here

Kolat's Daigotsu Hellbringer guide for PvE mostly (updates for mod 6 on page 33) is here. While Soulbinder is vastly more popular at the moment, if you wish to play hellbringer this is your guide to read.

///Outdated

2. New concept idea for the warlock class rework

2.1 Paragon Path changes

First and foremost, what IS the difference between hellbringer and soulbinder? There really isn’t a big one, except hellbringers get no pity no mercy and soulbinders get sparks and borrowed time. So slightly more dps or slightly more survival. My idea is to make the Soulbinder into a healer paragon path, and hellbringer to be focused on enhanced DPS.

Why the change? Because Warlocks can only start healing at lv 55 with their capstone. This is a very high level to start doing your ‘role’. And it should not be higher than 30. Like paladins, warlocks should get access to their healing starting at level 30, not 55.

So fair enough, Hellbringer brings a focus to DPS and soulbinder to ..healing, how does that work? I hear you asking. Changing powers curse effects for each paragon path.

(see lower for curse synergy). Unless noted otherwise, it is taken for granted that each power mentionned below's effect is triggered for using it on a cursed target.

2.2 Powers changed for that design

Here’s a couple ideas I’ve had thinking throughout the days recently, about how to make my earlier suggestion work. To shorten the text HB will be used for Hellbringer, and SB for Soulbinder. For powers, The target must be cursed for the additional effect to trigger. All these numbers are for demonstration only - if this concept was actually applied, the numbers would be balanced by cryptic and their team. I also suggest that life steal severity multiplies the following numbers: so if you have 120% LS severity, then a 50% healing power becomes 60%, a 100% healing power becomes 120, etc.

Warlock’s curse
HB: The target of a lesser or warlock’s curse takes 20% damage from the warlock.
SB: Allies striking the target of a warlock’s curse heals 5% of their damage dealt on each hit.

Vampiric Embrace
HB: Target’s armor is reduced by 5% for 6 seconds.
SB: 100% of the damage converts into healing for nearby allies.

Infernal Spheres
HB: Applies a lesser curse on every target hit by the orbs.
SB: Increases your life steal chance by 1% per target hit for 10 seconds. This effect is refreshed when an orb hits a target.

Killing Flames
HB: When Killing Flames kills the target, It does not go on cooldown. This can only happen once before going on cooldown.
SB:
1) Killing Flames heals 50% of it’s damage to allies.
2) When Killing Flames kills a cursed target, allies 50 ft near the warlock gain some (x%) Temporary hit points

Dreadtheft
HB: When you reach 5 stacks with dreadtheft the power’s AoE beam becomes twice as large.
SB: Dreadtheft’s self buff also applies to nearby allies for it’s duration.

Fiery Bolt
This spell would become a target area similar to cleric’s divine glow. The below effect activates if one of the targets were cursed within the AoE effect.
HB: Deals 35% more damage. Ennemy targets within the AoE loses 10% DR.
SB: The damage of this ability heals allies for 100% of it's damage and increases allies in the AoE DR by 10% and grants them 10% of the warlock's HP in temporary hit points.

Harrowstorm
HB: Dealing damage with harrowstorm leaves a curse on the target, this curse lasts for 6 seconds and if the warlock surges the storm within that time every target affected by this curse are knocked prone, not only the main target.
SB: Surging the storm heals allies for 100% of it’s damage and halves the target's movement for 6 seconds afterwards.

Curse Bite
HB: Curse Bite now damages all targets who are currently cursed when casting. If the warlock hits 3 targets with Curse Bite, gain Replenishing curse, it lasts for 6 seconds and increases damage by 5% per rank in curse bite. Lesser curses contribute to this effect, if there are 5 targets cursed when casting this bonus is doubled to 10% per rank and lasts 15 seconds.
SB: Curse Bite now damages all targets who are currently cursed when casting. If the warlock hits 3 targets with Curse Bite, gain Dark Boon, which increases all outgoing healing by 5% per rank in curse bite for 6 seconds. Lesser curses contribute to this effect, if there are 5 targets cursed when casting this bonus is doubled to 10% per rank and lasts 15 seconds.

Warlock’s Bargain
HB: The damage link is shared with your allies. 15% of the damage they take is also redirected to the target of warlock’s bargain.
SB: The health steal from this power is shared to your allies and bolsters their defence by 15% for 6 seconds.

Anyways, work in progress, give me your ideas on this part if you got any suggestions that would fit well, and make this class feel more unique. Some of these suggestions could need to have their numbers looked at, of course Cryptic can handle the balancing, the numbers seemed fair to me but of course it would require some internal testing first.

2.3 What each tree should do

So now with powers doing healing for allies instead of the capstone for soulbinders, what happens with temptation? Well my idea is that Temptation should be a support oriented tree (it pretty much is aside from the capstone which makes it a healer tree). So most of the powers would require no changes. What about the capstone? Well I could see it as an ‘increased’ healing not the only thing that can heal allies. When your Life Steal procs, the healing is shared to your allies. It wouldn’t be a problematic with Hellbringer because as the only feat that grants healing in temptation is the capstone - it isn’t reliable and does not make you a healer. It only helps you support your party. This goes for both trees, even if the capstone is still healing.

I think that Fury and damnation are as they should be - DPS oriented necrotic damage, Damnation - Soul Puppet oriented Survival/DPS.

2.4 Conclusion about the Paragon Path changes idea

I think this would definitely make the gameplay for warlocks more interesting and allow them to be able to fill the healer role at lower level, such as the paladin can. It would give more distinction between the two paragon paths and give them more definite roles. These changes would be along some of the changes suggested below, such as curse synergies, feats for example.

What do you think?

denvald · April 2015

3. Class Improvements Section

One of the many things we can do to improve the warlock's ability to deal damage is to increase it's weapon damage, such as the GF and GWF had. However keep in mind that as I suggest things troughout the thread to increase the damage of warlocks I also consider it to be essential to nerf tyranical threat, read further for more information.

3.1 Class mechanics

Curse Mechanics
This improvement goes to the core mechanics of the class itself, 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.

Warlock's 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 warlocks a bonus to life steal inherent to a stat ability. Cha/Int/Con(I think it should be INT, because it's the least used stat, otherwise either could make sense as well) now gives 1% bonus life steal per point over 10. This specific thing could be implemented as an inherent bonus for the warlock, and I think it would be fair, the reason is that the life steal is the main defensive system of the class, wizards get control bonus from wisdom, guardiants get DR from Con, rogues get defelction from cha and dex. Warlocks should get Life steal from a main stat as well.

Another thing to consider for warlocks would be to give the class means to gain life steal severity bonuses, it's new to mod 6 and the feats are from mod 4 some obviously this stat didn't exist beore. I think it would be worthwhile to consider this as a game play element for the warlock class.

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,the rate at which you lose soul spark is important.

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.

Soul Puppet and Immolation Spirits summon
The total hit points for both the soul puppet and Immolation spirits (Daily power summon) should be increased accordingly with the new mod Total HP. The current situation being that they can get one shot by bigger monsters or simply die within 3 seconds of combat.

Here is recorded the total HP of my soul puppet, being roughly 25k. The weakest monster deals 3k-10k damage per hit in dread ring dailies. That means if the puppet gets hit by all 3 at once he's dead in 1 second. And we're speaking of the weakest monsters in dread ring, not the big ones. Case being the 'Thayan Servitors' that scream Neverwinter Fools

Here is the soul puppet total HP.

I've also managed to estimate the HP of Immolation spirits summon, it should be 20-25k too. In this picture the spirit was close to death with 16k damage.

Another major problematic with soul puppets is when you warp into a boss fight, the puppet stays outside the whole fight and does not help you, Resummoning it to your side like companions after a while should be added to it. Currently Warlocks lose alot of damage potential because of this bug.

Now unto the soul puppet exploit... This has happened to me in every dungeon so far so let me give my theory, I am thinking there's one of two things that makes this happen:
1) The soul puppet deals damage proportional to the player stats. Buffs given to the warlock will affect the soul puppet, and buff given to the soul puppet will (add? Multiply..?) With the buffs offering twice the potency of buffs it could benefit from. So this could explain why in dungeons my soul puppet can hit up to 50-100k damage. However I do not think any damage beyond that is 'normal'

In tier 2 dungeons, there's a problem with the soul puppet, not only are all the feats based upon the soul puppet and weapon damage completely bugged and not working as intended, I have a feeling there's also a weird interaction with them in tier 2. I am not sure if there's an 'area buff' that gives monsters more potency, I do not know how cryptic coded this, however the soul puppet deals enormous damage. I have recorded a max hit of 2.8million by my soul puppet in a tier 2. This has never happened in solo content, nor tier 1s (I've run about 50 of them and I never saw my puppet hitting for more than 100k in a tier 1, which I can understand as normal damage considering the above mention) even with the same exact group I had just run the tier 2 with. The interaction really seems to be only in tier 2 dungeons. Also, the soul puppet never had damage bugs in solo play.

If anyone has experienced damage spikes from their soul puppet in a tier 1 let me know

Shadow Slip

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.

As a side note, the shift responsiveness suffers from the same issue that GFs had before, it's too slow to activate. (Try shifting forward and backwards in rapid succession you'll see what I mean). GF's block was improved and polished, I hope to see the same with the SW shifting - Thanks to Vasdamas for reminding me about this issue, it escaped me somehow.

Thanks to Zeusom for those great ideas posted in the other thread going around. I hadn't thought about it myself - they say two heads better than one, and they're right.

zeusom wrote: »

Shadow slip reduces incoming damage taken by 75% (up from 30%). Use of shadow slip while under control effects reduces their duration by 150% (consumes stamina to work as a built in Elven battle). Regeneration (from stat) is active while shadow slipping even while in-combat.

Would this above version of shadow slip make SW as survivable as a CW? What are your ideas for shadow slip, what do you tihnk?

Bloodyspammer has also a very nice idea IMO, which I will detail

bloodyspamer wrote: »

The idea is to rework Shift mechanic and it have 2 ways,

1) Add: Rogues stealth effect. (invisibility, immunity and ect). U can't hurt what u can't see.
or
2) Add: ghost effect; caster using shadow slip become ghost, and get total immunity from incoming hits/CC and etc.
Stamina consume mechanic remain same as current one, also animation can stay same.
The idea came from, Matrix Reloaded, where Morpheus fight against Twins . If anyone watched move understand my idea.

My understanding is that the first one is not ideal because it increases CC vulnerability. The second one is too powerful. However I would see the second reworked in this way:

Add the ability to consume stamina while standing and keeping the ability to attack. You can either stand or move, both consume as much stamina, with a full bar you'd get about 5 seconds of time to attack while being immune. At the price of stamina and movement you get a temporary weaker version of Impossible to catch.

3.2 Class Features
So class features, our feats are weaker in comparison to other classes’ features. For defensive feats, considering the new stat, life steal severity would be a good thing to add for the class. Not only that but it would fit in perfectly with how the class was designed to defend itself around life steal.

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). Another thing to consider with this feat could be the potential Life Steal severity bonuses.

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 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
GWFs 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: 3% life steal, 3% crit,15% run speed. Why not? Rogues got the same thing :P

3.3 Powers

The biggest plague to this class, especially in pvp, is casting times. The majority of spells are slow, or medium slow casting. The reality is when you cast powers to stun your ennemy such as harrowstorm, you must cast it way before the wizard starts casting entangling force, because even if you start casting first, they will hit you first because the power casts faster.

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. My idea mentionned previously could be introduced without the full class rework as well. As such, Curse Bite now damages all targets who are currently cursed when casting. If the warlock hits 3 targets with Curse Bite, gain Replenishing curse, it lasts for 6 seconds and increases damage by 5% per rank in curse bite. Lesser curses contribute to this effect, if there are 5 targets cursed when casting this bonus is doubled to 10% per rank and lasts 15 seconds.

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. I think a nice niche to consider is to add a debuff to targets who took damage from harrowstorm, and when the pillar is surged of the same cast, every target who took damage from harrowstorm goes prone.

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. And giving temporary HP to allies would help greatly as well.

Wraith Shadow
This power should activate and root instantly, and go on cooldown immediately. If an enemy moves out of range or sight, or goes to the stealth the power stops ticking.

Pillar of power
Casting this power automaticly places it under your feet and it lasts 10 seconds and goes on high cooldown immediately. (Refreshed sooner if the player has a lower cooldown than 10s). Every enemy stepping on it takes damage every second. Additionally, the warlock gains increased damage for standing over it (5% per rank). This power has a wider AoE and lower Damage to reflect it’s changes. If the target steps over it while being cursed, the target is rooted for 1 second per rank (half on players) and cannot be affected again by this rooting effect for the same cast of Pillar of Power.

Tyrannical Threat (TT)
This power is the reason warlocks deal good damage. The class is balanced around TT, rather than TT being balanced around the class. This power needs a change, or be removed completely. It's breaking the class, for having played the warlock over the course of 3 mods, the two biggest issues with the class was the synergy between MC and AD sets,TT and DC sigils. TT on it's own being the elephant in the room. And then people seeing the enormous damage the warlocks that were good at using the daily and synergizing it with the set bonuses, obviously have 5 times the DPS as everyone else was a bad thing. So the class got nerfed - but at the wrong place.

Tyrannical threat 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. While having a powerful daily like that, the difference between us warlocks and other classes 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 (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. Because we rely on TT, the class is very undimensional. Which means if you're not using TT all the time you are far behind the other players in 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 there's a couple ways this power could go
1. Lower the damage link further(5% per rank, 20% at rank 4 for example) + Speed up the animation to instantaneous. The daily becomes more smooth to use and has some nice AoE potential but the low damage link makes it reasonable in comparison to what we have now.
2. Leave the damage link as it is and the animation time too, but limit the power to a single target. Allow users to be able to gain Action points during the daily (IMO, thats just an opinion though). Limiting to one target will remove the multi amplification effect that deals enormous damage and that alone would likely put the daily back in line with the other stronger ones. It'll still be a very powerful daily though.
3. Rework it into a different effect completely. Even if TT was nerfed in mod 6, people don't realize the power itself is still too strong because the warlock class itself is behind the others right now. So because of that it's harder to notice, but the daily is still too strong - and the warlock class itself needs to be stronger instead. This power will continue causing balance issues until something is done about it.

I personally like number 1 the most, because it keeps the feeling of the daily power, makes it more smooth and fun to use (sure I'm good at using it as it is now but smoother is usually more fun especially if you're using it every 60 seconds.) Currently, using this power feels like a chore, and you MUST do it otherwise your dps will be meh at best.

denvald · April 2015

3.4 Set bonuses and Gear Stats

While these are gone, it was a considerable aspect of the DPS performance of warlocks in mod 4 and 5. They were so good that I used to run these armours, even in pvp, because the set bonus was better than having high tenacity. They were so strong, that even as a temptation soulbinder with average gear I was able to triple the DPS of any strong BiS character with the following:
1. Accursed Diabolist / Fabled Ilyanbruen set bonuses
2. Tyranical Threat
3. Sigil of the Devoted
Pair the 3 above and you will have enormous DPS, and by enormous I mean gigantic. So there is the problem, the class was balanced around those 3 OP things rather than the 3 things being balanced around the class. You take away set bonuses and the two others and you have terrible DPS. Set bonuses are no more, TT was rightfully nerfed, and well.. nothing was done for the class to perform well as a class, rather than having 3 things performing well and the rest not to matter.

As for the current end game gear, it's a healthier end game to not have any set bonuses. The problem is the class relied on it to score DPS, so without it the performance is too low. Stat wise, I am left wondering.. why is there no life steal on the gear for warlocks? The whole defensive system of this class depends on life steal and there is NO life steal whatsoever on the end game gear. Why? I just can't understand this.

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.

When I'm talking about feats, I'm talking about Toughness, the HP feat you get on the first row as every class.
I was not able to test out metallic dragonborn bonus to HP because it's not a race I own, if someone could provide data that would be appreciated.
22 con to 29 is 14% difference to bonus HP (according to hovering your mouse on the stat)
Toughness is 9%.
All tests were made at lv 70
Boons were left out to speed up the process

HP With lv 70 armor on
84,585 with 21 con/no feat
87,880 with 28 con/no feat
92,950 with 21 con/with feat
96,572 with 28 con/with feat

HP Without lv 70 armor pieces on but all the rest of my gear on
36,726 with 21 con/no feat
40,021 with 28 con/no feat
40,358 with 21 con/with feat
43,980 with 28 con/with feat

HP without ANY gear on (nakey)
27,306 with 18 con/no feat
30,602 with 25 con/no feat
30,007 with 18 con/with feat
33,629 with 25 con/with feat

Analysis: As you can see, the HP from constitution is always roughly the same no matter what gear you're using, it increases by about 3.3k everytime. Whereas the feat goes from giving 2.7k without gear, to 3.6k with gear but no armor, to 8.3k with lv 70 armor and gear. The toughness feats scales the HP bonus with your gear and gives the appropriate amount of HP that it should. Consitution does not scale with gear, it stays the same. And for 7 points of constitution (which is 14% HP increase) you get 3k HP, no matter what your HP is, instead of an actual 14% increase. And I think it should scale with Gear the same way that the feat does, because it feels useless otherwise.

Constitution 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 vanished. They have the same HP as every other class in the game now, including squishier classes. 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 other classes.

3.5 Heroic and Paragon Feats

Many of the feats the warlock has are very weak, so weak the bonuses are barely or not noticeable at all. And on the other hand some are so good you cannot run a warlock without having them. I think some balance would be great, this section will give ideas and suggestions on how to improve the feats to help make the class more interesting, fun and increase it's potential - giving choice rather than having only one obvious way of spec'ing because everything else is just too bad to use.

Heroic Feats

Soul Reaping and Hope Stealer: They 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.[/COLOR]

Scornful Curse: 30% more damage on lesser curses. This could be good if lesser curse was applied by more powers, or if lesser curses has interesting damage to begin with. The reality is most warlocks don't have means to reliably get a lesser curse on, and even if you do, the good powers that people actually use consume curse, negating the damage lesser curses do. Making this useless. I suggest changing it to something else, such as 10/20/30% chance to proc a lesser curse on ennemy with every powers for example. Or something else completely not related to curses, like Cha/Int/Con(Whichever really) now gives 1% bonus life steal per point over 10. This specific thing could be implemented as an inherent bonus for the warlock, and I think it would be fair, the reason is that the life steal is the main defensive system of the class, wizards get control bonus from wisdom, guardiants get DR from Con, rogues get deflection from cha and dex. Warlocks should get Life steal from a main stat as well.

Fury Feats

Daughters promises: When a cursed target dies, deals weapon damage to nearby ennemy. So 2kish damage extra for each target dying... IF there is a target around, and IF the target was cursed. Pretty situational, in practical terms this feat will return with no noticeable damage at all. If it was something like all targets within 50 ft of the warlock that dies deals an AoE of 20 FT for 100% weapon damage, that's already slightly better. But I think this feat could be changed to something else as well.

Critical Promises: 10% weapon damage after a critical hit. 10% seems very low, in Best in Slot levels we're talking about 200 extra damage per crit, and we're comparing to high ladders next to GWFs. I think 50-100% weapon damage is more appropriate. This is the damage focused tree after all.

Offering to the prisoner: Cursed Target is killed 5% extra damage for 15s. Sounds good in theory, however with the above mentionned problems of curse consuming doing counter synergy with this feat changing the curse consume to curse synergy would improve this feat at the same time, making it more reliable and easier to use.

Burning Soul: 0.3% per spark more damage. This feat is excellent, it's only limited by the rate at which warlocks lose their sparks. The Hellbringer's aspect of flames (I think it's called is also very good)

Helltouched: 10% more damage to foes who hit you. Decent, not very useful when you die in one hit though.

Infernal Wrath: Having a lesser curse causes target to lose 5% DR. Good feat, only limited by the fact that most powers will remove the lesser curse when you do get one, nulling this feat in the majority of a dungeon run.

Killing curse: When you attack a cursed target, you deal 5% weapon damage to it. 125 more damage when attacking a cursed target, which is not all the time thanks to curse consuming. It would be alot better if it were something like a stacking self buff that lasts a couple seconds that you can use to do more damage, or lower your ennemies DR for a short time.

Executioner's Gift: 15% more damage to ennemies as their HP diminishes. When I have more time I'll try to run some ACT logs to figure out exactly how much damage this feat does.

Brutal Curse and Murderous flame are extremely useful, it's hard to imagine running a Fury warlock without them.

Creeping Death: 60% of the necrotic damage to cursed targets over 8 seconds. This feat has been nerfed because of the triangle mentionned above (Set bonus + TT + dc sigil). While creeping death on it's own is not OP, creeping death + the 3 mentionned things earlier becomes a problem. How do I see Creeping Death in the future? I think Creeping Death should be a stacking buff that increases your damage by x% with every stack and these stacks are built with encounter powers. For example, for each encounter power cast you gain 5% stacking damage buff up to 50%. This effect refreshes every time you cast a new encounter power. I think the limitation to only using necrotic damage is misplaced with the Fury tree, and this tree should be able to use fire powers without counter effectiveness. It does not make sense to me that this tree should be limited to only half the powers because the fire powers have absolutely no interaction with the capstone. This would be a solution to it. If anything and this is not considered the capstone at least deserves to have the DoT condensed to 4 seconds, that would improve it a little bit as well.

Damnation Feats

Parting Blasphemy: When a curse is removed, deal 6% weapon damage to that target. So let's analyze quickly, you get a curse consume every 2 encounters more or less cause the majority of people use Warlock's bargain (rightfully) so let's say twice every 12 seconds you get an underwhelming extra 300 damage. That's 10 times less than what my at will does in a single cast. 1) Removing the curse consume would force this power a change, something like encounter powers used on cursed targets now trigger 100% weapon damage. That's looking better already. If the curse consume aspect is not taken on, then the weapon damage needs to be increased to something like 100%-200% to be worthwhile.

Relentless Curse: 100% chance to affect a target with lesser curse after cursed target dies. The idea is good, however very limited by the lesser curse limitations, low damage + removed systematicly after being put on by encounter powers make this feat little to no damage increase.

Sparkbinder: 5s longer Immo spirits. That's actually a pretty solid feat. The only problem lies with Immolation Spirits itself, the spirits stand there idle for 5 seconds before they start attacking, wasting 1/4 of the time the daily has in uptime.

Syphoning curse: Cursed Target killed 100% weapon damage heal to the target's killer. This should be in the Temptation tree, support feats does not belong in the damnation tree, also, the concept is okay-ish but has the same limitations as mentionned above - killing cursed targets doesn't happen that often with encounter powers consuming them. And 2kish healing isn't very noticeable either. Perhaps increasing it to 300% weapon damage would make it look better.

Mocking Spirit 1000% more threat to soul puppet. This feat has no reason to be. Why would anyone choose to kill their puppet faster knowing the puppet has 25k HP and will likely die in one hit? As things stand it should be the exact opposite. Reduces Soul puppet aggro by 1k%. If the puppet was meant to be tanky it needs ALOT more HP to do that, and by alot I mean alot. And not just that, it would also need means to heal itself with his damage. Like sharing your life steal score or something awesome like that.

SpiritFire: Aoe 50% weapon damage every second to targets around the puppet. This feat is GREAT on paper, but it doesn't work, the actual value was tested to be 5% not 50%.

Burning Puppets: 25% chance apply lesser curse to target soul puppet attacks, interesting feat, limited by the puppet attacking only one target at a time and as mentionned above shares the same lesser curse limitations. Synergyzing this with Spirit Fire making it able to trigger this feat would make it 10 times better.

Warding spirits: 10% more DR with SP, excellent feat, no word less.

Wrathful Souls: SP deals 2x damage and heals 15% of it's damage to you. This feat is something you can't pass up as a damnation warlock. Only downside is Wrathful souls' life steal aspect does not work, the values are lower than intended. The Doubled damage does work however.

Ghastly commander: 10% more damage and 2% more life steal. Another excellent feat, hard to do a damnation warlock passing this one out.

Soul desecration: Soul puppet permanent. Cursed target dies spawns a puppet. Spawns a puppet every 15 seconds on attacking. This is the reason you took damnation. This power needs a small tweak however. The buff re-appears on you every 15 seconds and is wasted even if your puppet is out and you attack a target. I suggest the buff remains on you until the puppet dies and when you attack again after the puppet has died (if it has been 15 seconds and the buff is back) the puppet spawns immediately. Currently warlocks can have a dying puppet with them, start the fight, trigger the buff and waste it, then immediately after the puppet dies and you're left without a puppet for 15 seconds. Changing this feat would optimize it, make it smoother and more efficient.

Temptation Feats

Aside from the capstone, Temptation feats are the best of the 3 trees IMO.

Vengeful curse: 10% chance to leser curse attacker. Feat's good, aside from lesser curse limitations it's an OKish feat.

Hope Stealer: 10 points per char level life steal bonus points for a critical strike for 4 seconds. This feat is alright, I think it should be a percentage increase instead of a value increase but that's just me.

Compounded soul: Striking cursed foes has a chance to grant 5% of warlock's max hp to targets around him. I haven't tested the percentage exactly, but for having played temptation I remember the chance to proc this is very low, perhaps a little more would be good.

Vampiric sparks: 0.05%(0.08% base so .13 together) increased LS per spark. My opinion, this is a good feat. No changes to it.

Soul breaker: when a foe dies within 30 ft of the warlock, ally gains 10% ap, an OK feat, depends on your playstyle.

Dark Revelry: When you life steal, chance to gain dark revelry, 20% more power and speed for 5 seconds. Excellent feat, fury locks should splash this feat in temptation after taking the capstone.

Aura of despair: ennmies 20ft around deal 5% less damage. Good debuff, range is too short. Warlock is a ranged class, you don't stand around your party very much, especially since you die in one hit and you have no means to mitigate the one shot kills. Make it a 50 ft range.

Aura of cruelty, allies 20 ft gain 5% more life steal chance(It uses the old spelling). Same range problem, 50 ft is alot better for the same reasons as above. As for functionality the thing with life steal is that 0% or 5% there isn't no difference since 5% chance is 1 out of 20 hits improvement to life steal, doesn't really help any survival. To make this feat worthwhile I would change this 5% old life steal rules, Allies 50 ft around the warlock life steal 5% of all their damage. The warlock himself still only gets 5% life steal chance, only allies benefits from this buff.

Eldritch momemtum: 5% stamina on each hit. A must have for PvP, but not very useful for PvE. Overall it's an excellent feat.

Darkness: ennemies damaged by blades of armies deal 10% less damage to you. Why only the warlock? this is a support tree it should outright debuff 10% damage on ennemies hit by it, not just the warlock.

Soul bonding: Allies receive a percentage of your life steal chance as healing from the damage you deal. AoE damage powers receive 30% less effectiveness. Vampiric Embrace now heals 100% of it's damage to your allies.
There's much to be said about temptation capstone. So let's make a list:

1. The healing is too low to be considered useful. Temptation damage is very low, and only a fraction of this damage is transfered to healing. Overall the effectiveness of this feat is very low.
2. The AoE cap really reduces it's ability beyond necessary. It should really be removed.
3. The capstone was balanced around Tyranical threat burst DPS, which made everyone invincible. So the problem was Tyranical threat not temptation capstone. I'm not sure why the capstone was nerfed. It was 125% of your life steal chance before, now it's 100% of your life steal chance. Why was it nerfed further?
4. The tree lacks capability in terms of utility group wise. Compare this tree with the paladin tree Justice you'll see what I mean. All the warlock can accomplish is some HP healing for the most part the HP healing is not sufficient to keep any party alive. As things stand, the lack of buffing abilities and the low HP healed makes this non viable even for an off-healer, secondary healer. Main healing is completely impossible right now.
5. The class DPS is very low with temptation, and with low DPS comes low healing. Playing around with the overall damage of the class would fix this, and is the way to go IMO.
6. The capstone has no interaction with life steal severity, and it should. Life steal severity should be accounted with the capstone as such: multiply the life steal chance % that goes into healing by the percentage of life steal severity.

For example: if the player has 120% life steal severity and 50% life steal. 60% of his damage would heal his allies. He would still have 50% chance to life steal for himself but the potency of his heals is 60% of his damage instead of 50%.

7. Give some means to increase life steal severity for the warlock - either with class features such as dark one's blessing, or with heroic/paragon feats.
8. Vampiric Embrace deals very low damage, and such has very low healing, if this power was intended as a footstool for the temptation tree it needs to deal more damage or have it's value increased to 200-300% of it's damage dealt instead, or a combination of the both.

That was a beefy section, but that's it for class improvements.

denvald · April 2015

4. Bugs Section

For many of those bugs I have recorded ACT, see next page for reference. I am limited to 4 pictures per post and to keep the text lighter I chose to post them in another post. Find it here and here

Wrathful Souls
Wrathful souls does not grant the correct amount of hit points stolen from the target when my soul puppet deals damage. 'Wraith Claw' is my puppet attacking.
According to the 38k damage done by the puppet I should have been healed for 5800 (15%). The actual amount was 725.

SpiritFire
This power does not follow the tooltip. I'm using an epic artifact weapon which has 2000-2500 weapon damage and here is the damage min/max dealt by the SpiritFire ability 99/137. It should be 1000-1250 (50%)

Soul Puppet Crits
The soul puppet never crits, it's damage is always roughly the same. I'm not sure if this is Working as intended or not, so posting it here.

Lesser Curses interactions
Lesser curses interacts with powers properly as a curse. However it does not allow Curse related feats to proc. (Example: Creeping Death does not trigger on lesser cursed targets)

TT and soul puppet
The soul puppet does not redirect damage to other targets when attacking a target who's cursed with tyranical threat. As shown in the picture I should have redirected 50% of the soul puppet's damage and the numbers would have been much higher. However I used Essence Defiler to show you that the numbers were off, the damage from tyranical threat roughly equals to 50%(25%x2 targets) of Essence Defiler, and does not include the damage from wraith claw, my soul puppet damage.
I am using the 25% tyranical threat curse with two targets to redirect damage on, this was tested on training dummies in dread ring. If this change is made, it would be nice if the puppet focused on the targets cursed first hand as well.

Infernal Orbs
This is new to mod 6, it doesn't crit anymore (It used to work fine) I don't know what happened to it. Rank 4 of this rank does not give an extra dart as stated by the power - Thanks to Glarty for this information.

HarrowStorm
Surging the storm does not prone anymore, it was broken in one of the recent patches

Arms of Hadar
This spell's AoE is broken - it's impossible to aim it because the hit box is not always the same and it's neither the one that shows. When you move before casting it's even worse like shadow slip - cast - shadow slip. AoE is somewhere but nobody knows where. When you stand without moving it 'seems better' but even there it's not always accurate.

Soul puppet damage infinite stacking
The problem is the Soul Puppet has issues in some cases where it's damage goes wild. I've recorded my soul puppet doing 3.5million damage per hit. That's every 2 seconds.

I think this is how it works. The capstone of the damnation tree and the basic SW power. When you generate a new soul puppet if there is one active, the soul puppet damage increases by 20%. Every 15 seconds the damnation capstone procs and increases your puppet damage. If you add in good party buffs, and your puppet has been alive for a while, I think this is how it happens. This would explain why it doesn't happen in solo content, the puppet dies frequently in it, resetting the counter.

If not, might want to look how the soul puppet manages weapon damage interactions, that might also be the problem with spirit Fire.

Avalanche and creeping death
At wills don't build up stacks of avalanche, but creeping death does, which inevitably causes death of you and your party when you hit someone who has the boon with alot of DoTs. I've actually had this happen to me frequently in pvp, I definitely got called out for killing my own team lol.

Soul Scorch
It does not make you gain any action point when you cast it.

5. Conclusion

So that sums it up, it's a very big thread but there's alot to say about warlocks right now, because 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.

Thanks for reading

denvald · April 2015

Saved for later use, will likely post some guides here later on, work in progress.

denvald · April 2015

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kevinevolution · April 2015

Nice thread. Hope the devs read this. Keep up the good work.

kolatmaster · April 2015

Super read, I'll comment a bit more once Mod 6 goes live and we see how it goes, but beautiful and detailed work!

*slow clap* :cool:

animalust · April 2015

we are at the final hour ladies and gentlemen

It has been a good run being Gods in PvE, and though Mod 5 made it infinitely more difficult to be relevant in PvP, I was still able to enjoy some monster kills in GG before Mod 6.

I should have farmed Tiamat some more before the new release, but oh well... Time to start the march to 70, and hten hopefully fine toon my character and hopefully find away to get back to my Current Live Server awesomeness..

Thats the plan atleast :rolleyes:

kolatmaster · April 2015

Oh I still plan on being a PvE G.O.D., don't you worry about that...

animalust · April 2015

Gully of Dwarf?

lol just playin

I have no idea what to expect for the SW, i abandoned the test server after they black hole ruined my 70 Pally...

One thing that looks to be true is that spending point into CON is nto worth it in the long run, not for health at least, and I bet I get more damage bonus form higher crit CHA or INT than I would CON

denvald · April 2015

Wrathful Souls Damage dealt

Wrathful Souls Damage Healed

SpiritFire Damage

Soul puppet crits

kolatmaster · April 2015

denvald wrote: »

Thanks for your replies dudes,

You're welcome bud... :cool:

denvald wrote: »

I'm going to add a section for temptation when I get the time...

Look forward to it! Even if Temptation isn't my cup'o'tea, it's always good to read more on SWs!

denvald · April 2015

Redirecting damage with TT and soul puppet damage.

Infernal Orb never crits anymore

mjytresz · April 2015

I've leveled a Soulbinder Damnation SW to 70 on the Live Servers. Below are my observations, and stats, on the leveling process and grinding through most of the T1 Skirmishes/Dungeons:

2064 iLvl
7588 Power
38.3% Crit
42% Resists Ignored

Wearing the Alliance Assault Blue Set with Rare Mainhand/Offhand Artifacts and Black Ice Cloak/Belt.

Encounters
As far as Encounters go, practically nothing has changed. Below are a few highlights.

Static Choices
SW in Mod 6 is still crippled by a surprising lack of choices as far as Encounters go. Dreadtheft and Warlock's Bargain are still the two most useful PvE Encounters as far as group-play. The third Encounter slot is the only one that really changes. From my experience, Soul Scorch for SBs is still the best choice. No other Encounter has the sheer power of SS. With how Life Steal has changed, a LS proc on SS is still the highest amount you'd get.

Vampiric Embrace
This Encounter still has pretty low damage, although it did prove somewhat useful while leveling when extra survivability was needed. I haven't had a use for this in any of the T1's so far.

Infernal Spheres
Personally, I dislike this Encounter for one simple reason: You don't pick your target. Although it does gravitate towards Cursed enemies more often, it's still a bit random and the damage is still low. Thankfully it's a very mobile skill. Still haven't used this.

Curse Bite
This skill is still useless

Harrowstorm
Still did what it did before but the animation is still too **** long

Wraith's Shadow
Animation still too **** long. Had moderate usefulness out of this in PvP. No use for it in PvE.

Hadar's Grasp
For a blatant ripoff of Entangling Force, this skill doesn't have the usefulness that EF has. The duration is augmented by Curse which is somewhat nifty but the damage is too low. The animation is also too **** long on this one too.

Arms of Hadar
I used this religiously while leveling because it's a somewhat spammable prone and slightly AoE. However, like most other SW skills, this Encounter suffers from the same two problems: Low Damage and Animation.
The Animation is so long, most mobs can simply walk out of the AoE while it's casting. The damage is so low that while leveling, it wasn't even really good for killing weak map trash. I've only slotted this in MC runs for the extra CC. It's not that great.

Class Features
From the perspective of a SB Damnation build, I've opted to change my Class Features for better choices. However, they still don't seem incredibly useful.

Shadow Walk
This CF never left my bar while leveling. Being mobile was very important pre-60 and it's even more important pre-70. While running T1's, being mobile is the difference between life and death. With Rank 7 Darks in Utility slots and Shadow Walk, you can clear a lot of ground in a short amount of time. This has saved a lot of parties during VT runs

Dark One's Blessing
Which how much HP we have at 70, this doesn't seem to restore enough.

Dearly Curse
This doesn't do enough damage to justify slotting it.

Warding Curse
This one adds up to 10% reduced damage at Level 4. This can be useful but with how hard mobs hit, I'm not sure whether 10% is enough.

Borrowed Time
Before Mod 6, this never left my slot. After hitting 70, I ran the numbers. At 30 Soul Sparks, and 84k max HP, this is only healing about ~1k+ HP every 2 seconds. That's pitiful and it's not compensating for anything.

Dust to Dust
I used this for a variety of reasons. First off, my Artifacts are still Blue so my AP Generation is a bit stifled. Secondly, Soul Scorch doesn't generate AP. At all. I'd use this again, however, the utility of All-Consuming Curse and Shadow Walk far outweigh what this CF provides. Still good, there are just better options for that I need right now.

Snuff Out
At Rank 4, this CF's cooldown is reduced to 2 seconds. That's 1 Soul Spark every 2 seconds. Considering you still lose ALL of your Sparks after combat ends, this isn't doing enough. It might be useful but the cooldown is still too high, mobs take much more to kill, and I honestly just can't see the usefulness of this.

Dark Prayers
12.5% Damage Resistance and 4% Life Steal, at Rank 4, when your HP dips below 50%. I have yet to fully test this out but it may prove useful. Hovering around the 50% mark makes me a bit uneasy but I can see the practicality of this.

All-Consuming Curse
This CF captures my heart. At Rank 3, you have a 100% Chance to apply Lesser Curse when you crit. This means you can Curse Consume multiple times in a single Dreadtheft. It also means you don't have to keep reapplying Curse between Soul Scorchs if they crit. This CF is pretty amazing. At Rank 4, it also increases the damage of Lesser Curse by 50%. My Lesser Curse ticks for practically nothing so I'll keep this at 3. Overall, very nice CF.

Daily Powers
For PvE, SW didn't have a lot of options for Daily Powers. TT was the de facto standard because it decimated packs of mobs. For single target, Immolation Spirits were pretty awesome. Right now, the only thing that's changed is TT. It's hard to find a reason to use it because the damage is lower and you risk pulling aggro in a dungeon. Pulling aggro is pretty much instant death at this point.

At-Wills
Let's be honest, Soulbinder doesn't have an option with At-Wills. Essence Defiler is what you use for damage because it builds Sparks and Dark Spiral Charge is what you use for AP gain.
Essence Defiler's animation is still clunky and could use a fix. I also feel that DSC could use some kind of passive benefit for having balls floating around you. (Something like 0.5-1% increased AP gain per ball or something)

Class Mechanics
Curse
I have no real problems with Curse. My only complain is that half of the animation is wasted. The first half is mandatory to apply the curse, the last half isn't. I almost always cancel the last half with Soul Scorch for the sake of DPS and sanity. A nice QoL change would be to increase the animation or touch it up a bit.

Soul Puppet
As I mentioned, I'm a Damnation build and I've literally invested every point into the Damnation tree. With that said...
The Soul Puppet is pretty **** great. The big problem I saw on Preview was the survivability of the Soul Puppet. On Live, there really aren't a lot of problems. Even attacks that would 1-shot me aren't much of a problem for the Puppet. A portion of his damage is leeched back to me as life, which helps me out, and he does pretty decent damage. If I wasn't Damnation while leveling, I probably would've quit. He tanks, he DPS's, he applies Lesser Curse, he's incredibly useful.
However, there's still a massive problem in dungeons: The Puppet gets stuck outside of Boss rooms. For instance: If you have a Puppet summoned in VT before entering the boss fight, the Puppet is locked outside of the boss fight until the fight ends or you die. This is a massive hit to DPS and utility and it still hasn't been fixed.

Shadow Slip
We're not GWFs. We don't have a cool Tab skill that makes us into monster tanks. We have no such ability to increase our own survivability. Shadow Slip is pretty much just a utility tool at this point. We have no true dodge and we can barely decrease our damage taken without compromising our damage output. CW has a dodge. And a Shield. And Repel. SW has CC skills that anyone can dodge/move out of and pretty crippled sustain. This needs a serious overhaul.

ghoulz66 · April 2015

Thought the puppet was super squishy? They buff it?

zaaraki · April 2015

U are wrong with calculation on borrowed time i think. Its more like (0.32/100 * 30) * your hp 84000 = 8064 hp healed every 2 sec. Thats awesome imo and since its % based it gets better with more hp u have. This with all consuming curse never left my bar. One surviability one offense.

Also encounters. My choise is dreadtheft, SS and blades of vanquished armies (its a fast soul spark generator). I dont see the benefit of warlocks bargain that much but maybe i am wrong here.

The soul puppet part when he gets stucked behinde walls is rly sad but there is a way to teleport him to u. I did wolf den last boss he was stuck but somehow dunno how yet he was in a boss room with me and i didnt spawn him he was alive before. Maybe if u run far away he will teleport to u.

twilightwatchman · April 2015

zaaraki wrote: »

Also encounters. My choise is dreadtheft, SS and blades of vanquished armies (its a fast soul spark generator). I dont see the benefit of warlocks bargain that much but maybe i am wrong here.

Warlock's Bargain gives you a non-consumable curse so you can stack SS/DT/CD. However, All-Consuming Curse may make this unnecessary.

zaaraki wrote: »

The soul puppet part when he gets stucked behinde walls is rly sad but there is a way to teleport him to u. I did wolf den last boss he was stuck but somehow dunno how yet he was in a boss room with me and i didnt spawn him he was alive before. Maybe if u run far away he will teleport to u.

I've also experienced the puppet randomly teleporting into Boss zones but it happens VERY rarely and I could never find a repeatable way to trigger it. This really needs a fix as IMO it makes the Damnation tree strictly non-viable for PVE.

denvald · April 2015

mjytresz wrote: »

/snip

Thanks for your input man,

I think we agree on most the things you said. Although I want to point out incoming heal affects borrowed time, you might to retest this one out.I was not aware they did changes to the damnation tree, I had reported alot of those bugs in preview but I didn't see them anywhere in patch notes so I thought they put it under the rug or something. In preview the puppet had 25k HP.

I can't afford a respec right now, so I went testing on preview, and in preview the abilities are still bugged, I didn't have time to test the soul puppet HP though. Perhaps it's different in live? Only you can tell me right now.

mjytresz · April 2015

denvald wrote: »

Thanks for your input man,

I think we agree on most the things you said. Although I want to point out incoming heal affects borrowed time, you might to retest this one out.I was not aware they did changes to the damnation tree, I had reported alot of those bugs in preview but I didn't see them anywhere in patch notes so I thought they put it under the rug or something. In preview the puppet had 25k HP.

I can't afford a respec right now, so I went testing on preview, and in preview the abilities are still bugged, I didn't have time to test the soul puppet HP though. Perhaps it's different in live? Only you can tell me right now.

I'll have to test out Borrowed Time again.
As for the Puppet, I don't have any concrete evidence right now, only my experience on Preview and Live. Simply questing through Drowning Shores on Preview was painful because the **** thing kept getting 1-2-shotted. Questing up until Spinward Rise was a breeze on Live because it tanked so much.
Maybe someone else can take a look into this, I'm a bit pre-occupied with a few other things.

vaelynx · April 2015

I'm kinda irritated with Arms of Hadar. Great on paper, but it doesn't seem to actually hit particularly often, despite being fired bloody straight at someone - which might be partly due to the way that graphics is screwed up for me currently, making me not really see where it lands, but is still derp.

azli82 · April 2015

Improve Class features :

Shadow Walk
- Warlock should have ability to survive . On shifting , the warlock will totally become invisible drag to another location without any trouble. Stamina will consume like usual . As long stamina is there , Walock can push the panic button to skip the battle

this is suit for HB/SB basic build .

vaelynx · April 2015

azli82 wrote: »

Improve Class features :

Shadow Walk
- Warlock should have ability to survive . On shifting , the warlock will totally become invisible drag to another location without any trouble. Stamina will consume like usual . As long stamina is there , Walock can push the panic button to skip the battle

this is suit for HB/SB basic build .

I'd be fine with it even as it is, with one condition - slipping does not interrupt BotVA and Dreadtheft.
Other than that, shorter casting animations are a need

animalust · April 2015

vaelynx wrote: »

I'd be fine with it even as it is, with one condition - slipping does not interrupt BotVA and Dreadtheft.
Other than that, shorter casting animations are a need

shifting should ABSOLUTELY DISRUPT Dread Theft, what ar eyou nuts?

but i agree with BoVA, it needs to be 100 % not interruptable, just like Path of hte Blade for TR (which has an amazingly long duration)

denvald · April 2015

azli82 wrote: »

Improve Class features :

Shadow Walk
- Warlock should have ability to survive . On shifting , the warlock will totally become invisible drag to another location without any trouble. Stamina will consume like usual . As long stamina is there , Walock can push the panic button to skip the battle

this is suit for HB/SB basic build .

Making you invisible during shifting increases your vulnerability to CC. If you are invisible they cannot hit you with control powers. When you go visible again you'll be hit by them - all of them, at the same time. Since you cannot attack during shift this is a lose/lose.

cseneca85 · April 2015

New to the game wanting advice on which are good professions for this class.

denvald · April 2015

cseneca85 wrote: »

New to the game wanting advice on which are good professions for this class.

1. Leadership
2. Jewelcrafting
3. Artificing/Leatherworking/Alchemy

In this order

The complete Warlock thread. Suggestions, Bugs, Feedback, Considerations and more.

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