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Warlock Adjustments - Part 2
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Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 651Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Due to the length of the other thread, and there being additional changes over what was already being discussed, I've created this as a new thread for conversation about the additional changes. Any posts from the previous thread that you feel are still as relevant to this one, please feel free to repost here.
These changes will likely show up on preview this week.
Hellbringer:
Soulweaver:
These changes will likely show up on preview this week.
Hellbringer:
- Dark Prayers now summons a soul puppet when an enemy cursed by you dies.
- Soul Investiture is now a 10% damage increase for the Soul Puppet per stack.
- Risky Investment now grants a 4% bonus to damage for each stack of Soul Investiture.
- Killing Flames and Dreadtheft have been moved into the Hellbringer paragon encounter selection.
- Arms of Hadar and Blades of Vanquished Armies moved into the Warlock general encounters.
- Hellfire Expertise no longer increases Fire and Necrotic Damage.
- Soul Sparks now increase Hellbringer damage by 0.25% per spark
- Warlock's Curse increased to a 12% damage boost.
- Eldritch Blast magnitude - 30
- Dark Spiral magnitude - 80-240
- Hellish Rebuke magnitude - 40 base, 10 DoT, 20 Rebuke
- Arms of Hadar magnitude - 55
- Vampiric Embrace magnitude - 250
- Curse Bite magnitude - 250
- Blades of Vanquished Armies magnitude - 20 per blade
- Hadars Grasp magnitude - 200
- Fiery Bolt magnitude - 175
- Infernal Spheres magnitude - 40
- Killing Flame magnitude - 500
- Dreadtheft magnitude - 340
- Hellfire Ring magnitude - 120, DoT 200
- Soul Scorch magnitude - 9 per spark used, Dot is 1.5 magnitude per spark
- Accursed Souls magnitude - 900
- Brood of Hadar tooltip changed to display damage done to the primary target and the magnitude was increased. 600 magnitude main target, 150 magnitude per brood attack.
- Tyrannical Curse magnitude - 900
- Gates of Hell magnitude - 750
- Flames of Phlegethos magnitude - 1000
Soulweaver:
- Lifebind reduced to taking 10% of damage dealt to allies. Switched from an increase in Defense to an increase in Damage Reduction
- Feat Transfusion Tactics changed to Mending Mastery and increases outgoing healing by 5%
- Prince of Hell is now 5000 Armor Penetration
- Dark Revelry now increases teammates Awareness and Critical Avoidance by 5000
- Soul Sparks should no longer deplete when in a downed state
- Wraith's Shadow Healing Magnitude increased to 100
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Comments
Hadar was a dying star, slowly burning into annihilation…
I'm trying to think of a situation when anyone would ever choose that over any other feat.
The change to the Buff Formula is going to hit us harder than most, and that damage needs to be clawed back somewhere.
The Curse Mechanic Could still do with a work over. Lesser Curse damage is virtually none existent. its 8 magnitude over 8 seconds. This is barely 0.5% of my total damage.
increasing its damage to 40 magnitude ( 10 magnitude per tick ) would be a very simple change.
Curse consume could be removed completely and leave only "curse synergy" so the secondary effects only need a curse present to work, lesser curse wouldn't be removed.
This would not only streamline the mechanic better, while keeping lesser curse damage. but greatly increase the effectiveness of Parting Blasphemy since it would now instead of procing from curse removable it would proc from all curse synergy effects.(Dread theft might actually be decent for a change)
Stacking soul investiture is a core mechanic no matter which feats you pick either Risky investment or Soul desecration and 75 seconds to get up to 5 stacks is just way too long. the change to Dark Prayers is useless, so for the most part is killing flames as it has no impact on boss fights
Soul Scorch is a perfect alternative to stacking this buff, since it did in Mod15. Its a Default ability so fits into any build, meaning you would not be forced to use hadars grasp all the time.
None of these are massive changes. and by themselves definitely wont close the damage gap but it all helps
> (Quote)
> I'm waiting to see the other class adjustments threads at this point. Comparing my warlock and wizard and rogue and ranger, mostly I see it less as the warlock's magnitudes and percentages need to go up, but some of the others simply need to come down.
If only we would see everybody go up to CWHRTR again, not "down" to sluggish & slow.
It already is too much so.
But you are right, what you said is the likely outcome anyway.
Figures that at this point it doesn't matter much anymore.
All in all, much better updates. Some magnitudes are still lower than they are on Live but the buff to soulscorch and cursebite are pretty great
The hellfire ring DoT is bugged, and only does 140 magnitude not 200, and its bugged on live too
Tyrannical Curse still isn't scaling with armour penetration and accuracy. split damage is only doing 3.74-7.5% damage instead of 15%
The Soul puppet nerf still has me worried though
How it currently works on live (whether intended to or not), it attacks for 45 magnitude every 1.25 seconds, and each stack of SI increases this by 68% per stack (not 20%) to a total of 197magnitude per attack. which looks great on paper, in fact its nearly 40% of our Magnitude output per second. or to put it a different way, if we had only 50% crit sev and 0 Combat advantage it would be doing about 40% of our damage. But because it doesnt deal CA damage and is limited to only 50% in reality it only does 13-16%.
Ive tested it on Preview and it works exactly the same way, except the damage is just over half. about 100 magnitude per attack. or about 8% total.
So is it actually supposed to work this way? or Should it work like....... 45magnitude Base, + 9mag per stack for a total of 90 (20% per stack) or with the nerf, 4.5 per stack (10%) for a total of 67.5magnitude at 5 stacks
If this is the case and its been bugged all this time then the puppet would be a very small portion of our damage which makes the Soul Desecration FEAT really bad ( its bad on live )
BUT if it is bugged id rather it be working correctly, easy for balance, then you can make it scale with the players combat advantage and Crit Severity instead and its damage will work out about the same as Live again.
Either way i dont want it to suddenly go from doing 13-16% of my damage to about 5% not without it being compensated elsewhere.
- Part 2 sounds way better, looks all of useful skills have been increased by 25% or above, in line with the purpose of the post
- Bugs:
1. Brood of Hadar has a quite interesting behaviour, here's the log with a naked char, 1000 weapon:
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2915 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2875 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2904 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2759 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2789 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 1387 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Brood of Hadar's Bite deals 1634 Necrotic Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 1361 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Brood of Hadar's Bite deals 1634 Necrotic Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 1401 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 1423 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2982 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2894 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2933 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 392 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 2935 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
fist hit is 600mag, I see only two bites for 150mag (total WAI magnitude = 900), the other ranged/melee attacks are bringing total magnitude above 4000.
Here's another hit while was using d2d to check if scaling with buffs, were i see 4 bites
[Combat (Self)] Your Brood of Hadar's Bite deals 3353 Necrotic Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 6050 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 6059 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Brood of Hadar's Bite deals 3353 Necrotic Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 2725 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 2836 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Brood of Hadar's Bite deals 3353 Necrotic Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 5687 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Brood of Hadar's Bite deals 3353 Necrotic Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 2825 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Melee Attack deals 5912 Physical Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 2725 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
[Combat (Self)] Your Ranged Attack deals 805 Fire Damage to Target Dummy.
Scaling is working properly (dust to dust is not, as affected by the "1" bug) and with 4 bites total magnitude bumps to a nice 1200mag.
The melee/ranged log is clearly a bug, I'm still not sure on what is supposed number of bites, I guess 4 as dots is 4 seconds, with the wrong hits overlapping the bites.
2. Entity: would be highly appreciated a word concerning how entities are supposed to scale, as I stated in part 1 post, having so many of them (puppet, immolation spirits, hellfire ring's dot) not scaling with warlock's multiplier (stats/buffs/CA) is skewing balance at different levels of gear/content.
3. Dots: would be highly appreciated as well a word concerning how dots are supposed to work since m16 release. Checking their behaviour on some of them, I'm getting persuaded that, for server performance reasons, is WAI they are not stacking and refreshing on every hit. Assuming that, could you please considering changing creeping death into something else (any fast copy&paste solution is welcome) in order to stop this flow of HAMSTER posts invoking for its fix? It's an useless feat, face with that please.
- At last, in case this post will be considered for future balances, here's some QoL/design suggestion:
1. Soul Scorch should summon puppet or stack soul investiture on cast (would love it as #1 priority pls).
2. Soul investiture stacks shouldn't be linked with puppet life, but to warlock's (in other workds, puppet's deaths shouldn't deplete stacks).
Ty for patience and have a nice day
For me, as others have mentioned, we're facing bugs that negatively impact the DPS of the class.
The most impactful of these are :
HfR DoT : Doesn't use the correct magnitude
T.Curse : Not being affected by our self-buffs/scaling
SI stacks : Shouldn't be applied to a puppet that we cannot control and cannot survive most attacks; they should be applied to the Warlock. Take way, way, way too long to stack and fall off far too quickly. This causes the Warlock to be at a big DPS disadvantage compared to the other classes. Warlock's need more than one way to apply SI against bosses; against Halaster, the Warlock only has 1 power and takes well over 1 minute to reach full stacks provided the puppet is allive and the boss hasn't become target immune.
Creeping Death DoT : As DoTs deal X% of Y time without these stacking and being overwritten the class only gains X / Y unless the Warlock doesn't attack. Just make this "deals 10% additional damage as a separate hit over 1 tick", it's quick and easy and like @ramesh84 indicated, will help the class immensly.
Address these four and you'll find the class much easier to rebalance after the community has a play-test with it and can provide further feedback.
The time it takes to build stacks SI is indeed the biggest problem.... on a boss fight with no adds the only option is Hadars grasp to build stacks and that has a 15 second cool down..
It also means that on phased fights (2nd boss in lomm for example) we are fortunate if we ever get to 5 stacks before the next phase. In phase 1 of that fight with a descent group you will manage 1 stack the worm goes down the buff is gone.
In AOE situations we you have to run effectively single target spells to get an SI stack (and even then you going to be lucky if you manage to get 2 stacks for more than a few seconds.
Its all fine and well saying "We don't want to overcook the adjustments now, because we don't want to upset you by scaling back later". The problem is it takes 6 months to a year to adjust when our classes are underperforming, which to most people I'm sure is more frustrating and liable to make them quit.
Note Right now, this feature comes nearly to be useless in bosses fight.
So give us an option similar to the shield in wizard, where this power => Covers the caster in an infernal sphere, protecting him from harm; Base cooldown 22 secs, effect is Blocks 10% of all incoming damage, duration 8 secs.
And last but not least, since the change to the old mechanic of the warlocks curse from module 16, lesser curse is a bad mechanic many peeps and I have agreed, we even have thought of a different way for this mechanic to work; lesser curse should go back to warlocks curse and function in the following way:
At will powers apply warlocks curse to enemies and while they are affected they take 5% more damage from your encounter and daily powers; last for 8 secs and no longer itself deal damage over time. This, of course, would rework the way synergy and curse consume apply and be unified with powers, also features and feats that synergy with these curse have to be reworked:
- All consuming curse: at will powers now deal 3% damage to cursed enemies.
- deadly curse: cursed enemies now take 20 magnitude damage every sec.
- Warlocks curse: change the name and damage increased for an additional 5% (Dropped from the last update).
- Dark one's blessing: Hitting a cursed enemy recovers 1% of your current hit points once per second.
Thanks for keeping an eye on our concernsCurrently any scenario where no stacks are possible or very minimal due to short phases, stuns, interruption of combat, or puppet death it's extremely lacking and will never work well compared to any burst class.
A feat with proportionate burst damage is better in most situations vs taking 50 to 140+ seconds to stack an additional 20% damage. Especially in endgame groups.
I entered the preview and has no such changes, where you are testing these new changes from part 2
And yep, forgot in previous post about TC damage link, gj reminding it. We got to wait for next patch, they said no ETA atm.
1. Soul Scorch should summon puppet or stack soul investiture on cast (would love it as #1 priority pls).
could not agree with this more!!!!
Wraiths shadow in live is currently terrible. I will say that i love harrowstorm while i would like to see the healing magnitude increased a bit to get it closer to healing word on the cleric. It is a nice spamable HOT that also adds damage done which also increases your heals. I sue it quit often in MOB situations and spread it all around I use it in boss situations with the tank. but of course shatter spark is the main heal of the soulweaver I do enjoy harrowstorm a lot.
Arms of Hadar - increasing knockdown by ~ 0.5 second
Soul Spark Recovery - increase the duration of Blades by one second while they're active
Infernal Spheres - I'd greatly prefer damage resistance instead of deflection too - same with Infernal Spheres.
For me, a big part of the problem with Spheres is exploding them just doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe increasing the radius would help? Or maybe adding some kind of control effect along with individual spheres' damage: a daze or paralysis or something. I enjoy control builds, and the warlock's a bit lacking in that department.
The problem is definitely the range. you can just about hit 2 target dummies if you stand perfectly in the middle, so for mobs, they practically have to be stood on top of you, which is pretty rubbish for any form of AoE, and the magnitude isn't high enough for single target only. 10" just isn't enough, same with eldritch blast really.
The second problem is the functionality is very clunky and is prone to just flat out breaking if you try cast the explosion too quickly, leaving you with the Encounter stuck, it doesn't go on cooldown but it thinks you have used it, so you have to manually change it with another encounter power and swap it back again, Very impractical during combat, and just a pain in the HAMSTER generally.
1st problem is easy fix, increase the radius
2nd problem not so much, it just needs fixing somehow
Make soul investiture an independent buff tied to the warlock not the puppet itself. Have the curse synergy ( see previous post about removing Curse consume) of hadars grasp only stack SI, not summon a puppet and have Soul Scorch also stack SI.
This would mean Soul investiture will only drop off if the timer runs out, not if the puppet gets killed.
So if you take Risky Investment, it works only as a personal buff which we have more control over. to compensate for the loss of Puppet damage, change it to 4% to all damage per stack ( max 20%) not just encounters.
For Soul desecration, This stays basically the same. you get a soul puppet as default, and if the puppet dies it will respawn again within 10-15 seconds. Remove the 10% buff, and have each stack of soul Investiture make the soul puppets attack deal AoE damage equal to 10/20/30/40/50% in a 15ft radius, and each time you get a SI stack the pupped gets healed.
Damnation build of old kinda.
Puppet gains has 100% critical severity and deals 75magnitude per hit.
At least this would make Risky Investment VS Soul Desecration more of a valid choice, because right now Soul desecration is garbage. You have a more single target build with RI and not relying on puppet for damage, and a more AoE heavy option which does rely more on a puppet
Can also change Power of the Nine hells, which is even more worthless now to grant 5stacks of Soul Investiture when you use a daily.
12 sparks after daily used is terrible. 99% of the time you wont use a daily without full Sparks anyway so you gain nothing and with the spark buff being increased to 7.5% up from 4.5% this is going to be even more the case.
examples:
Heavy slash- 100magnitude - 1 second cast time 100m/s
Storm strike- 70 magnitude - 0.6 second cast time 116m/s
Arcane Missiles- 25magnitude (5attacks)- 0.35 sec cast time 119m/s
Lance of Faith- 80 magnitude - 0.6second cast time -133m/s
Brash Strike 8-5 magnitude - 0.8second cast time - - 106 m/s
Shielding Strike- 45 magnitude - 0.35second cast time - 128/s
Sly flourish - 30 magnitude - 0.26second cast time - 115m/s
Wanted to do Duelists flurry but was too much hassle to figure out the bleed effect, but sky flourish shows the point just as good,
Now Warlocks( with Hellfire expertise added on)
Eldritch Blast- 25 magnitude 0.38second cast time, (final hit does 40 but takes 0.76 secs) 48.4m/s
Dark spiral Charge -87.5 per soul, cast time 0.8seconds. takes 0.8seconds to get a soul. so 1.6sec cast time in reality 54.7m/s
Hellish rebuke 37.5 hit 9,4 dot(which doesn't stack) and 18.75 reflect damage. rebuke and the dot can virtually be ignored, but lets be generous and ad 5magnitude for the few times the dot ticks or you get a rebuke. so
42.5 magnitude - 0.7second cast time - 60m/s
Hand of blight - Melee - 31.25magnitude, 0.4sec cast time - 78 m/s
Hand of Blight - Ranged - 43.75 magnitude 0.65 second cast time - 65 m/s
Rebuke with NPNM - 47magnitude - 0.7sec cast time - 66m/s
So hand of blight melee is the best at will, but slower Spark gain than rebuke, and still much less damage than other classes have access to
Hand of blight ranged is bugged and only generates 1 spark per 4hit combo ( except for crits) and doesn't even scale with the melee hits. to match, magnitudes should be 31.25 melee and 50 ranged
So to match cast times to magnitudes should be more like
Eldritch Blast - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time
Hellish rebuke - 70 Magnitude - 0.7sec cast time 17.5magnitude dot 35 magnitude Rebuke
Hand of blight melee - 40magnitude - 0.4sec cast time
Hand of blight Ranged - 65magnitude - 0.65 second cast time
This gives us an average of 100 magnitude per second for each with Hellish rebuke possibly being abit higher with a few dot ticks/reflects and brings our At wills in line with everyone elses
Infact I am amazed there isn't some basic formula for at wills and encounters based on cast time and cooldown. maybe there is I dunno but its not obvious
Something like
Cast time + Cooldown x100 for at wills
Cast time +cooldown x 40 for encounters
Cast time + cooldown x20 for AoE encounters