Warlock Issues GU66 and beyond...

Discussion in 'Mages' started by Mogrim, May 7, 2013.

  1. slippery Well-Known Member

    That was a mother of a run on sentence.
  2. Cleaner Active Member

    yeah well im on a phone so don't expect me to correct this crap when im hitting buttons on a 10 min smoke break at work :p
  3. Cleaner Active Member

  4. Cleaner Active Member

    k im done, several updates no promise of any changes to fix the class imbalance. At least we tried to have our voice heard.
  5. Silzin Active Member

    from what i have seen with several small things with the next GU, it all may come together to help yall. between the Dagon AA's that we have seen and the itemisation and Spell Double Cast chance changes should help. dont give up hope.
  6. Lempo Well-Known Member

    Those changes are going to all mages, they are going to do nothing but offset each other, only the numbers difference is going to grow even more without taking into account the other things that are 'broken' for locks.
    A large portion of the problem is because of the content, there are some needed tweaks but the lack of linked encounters, which has said to be causing some server performance issues sucks for us.
    Then some of the enhancements that are being done enhance specific damage types of which we have fewer than other mage classes because we have heat, cold, poison, disease a hodge podge of stuff that doesn't meld that well, wizzies will benefit more than us from Improved Sorcery adding 15% to their magic based professional spells, as will necros.
    Rift, Flames of velious neither of these will be enhanced by that, not like Rift is very usable anyway except on certain encounters.

    Hopefully they will address some issues already pointed out, but they haven't gotten a public acknowledgement though some of the people that posted said they have had ongoing PM's with devs.

    Nothing wrong with you saying don't give up hope, but you must understand that when you say itemization and SDA changes will bridge the gap they won't even begin to, because everyone else will be getting them too. Then the remove warlock dependency on UT via an endline that if we take we lose the benefits UT, where UT will go to someone else, or we keep UT and another takes that endline, it isn't going to balance.

    A lot more than the several small changes you have saw and what you mentioned will have to happen to keep the gap from widening even more. Hell even other mage classes agree that we need tweked, and that just usually doesn't happen between 'rival' archtypes. /shrug We'll just have to wait and see, but I'm betting that the meat of all the changes are already in and if we are not fixed it will be "We'll look into it for next GU", which would be less discouraging if what EQNext looks like it will be to me, but I digress.
    SlowDeepNhard likes this.
  7. Chronus Active Member

    The doublecast changes HURT warlocks, the only doublecast changes that would help warlocks would be to either reduce the amount available to all classes or to uncap it. This will be the case for as long as Focused Casting remains 100% doublecast as opposed to pre-mod damage.

    Also the dragon aas as they were on beta benefit Wizard the most, then warlock, then summoners. Poor old summoners don't even get Spellbind shared with their pet so it doesn't affect a lot of their dps at all. Wizards benefit more due to fiery blast and the chaining that can go on with that (Imagine Sanguine + clickies + Spellbind into fiery blast chain with 150 increments ready).

    The only thing that may change is with the additional trigger to all spells given in the Trakanon tab (2nd choice in the 3rd line with 10 points) is Eternal Damnation will improve vastly and right side could become viable on certain aoe heavy fights. Note viability depends on how long adds last and quantity (I think it will be just about viable on Talan HM, could be close though).

    All in all at least scorpions will be a lot easier.

    My Expac warlock wish list in order of most likely to least likely to happen:
    - An explanation as to why Dark Aggravation and Overflow can no longer double, even though no change was put in patch notes
    - Dark Aggravation and Overflow able to double again
    - Gift maintained
    - Rift/Absolution/Netheralm/ED/CoD cast times reduced
    - Focused casting changed to pre-mod damage modifier, somewhere between 75 and 90%
  8. Thalador Active Member

    After playing a warlock for 2 years, then shelving him due to the many, many issues not addressed in this thread I betrayed to wiz last night. This pained me because I love the class and the idea of what it should be. The problem is with the lack of linked encounters and other mage classes getting move lovin warlocks have become obsolete. Yes, they can still put out good numbers but on typical raid boss fights they will get over done by wizards and summoners 99% of the time (all things being equal). Come on SOE, you asked for the whats wrong with your class thread and we have seen very little from you. It was actually mentioned at SOE live (the feedback threads) so if you take them seriously please look at locks.Many people, Mogrim, Chronus and a few others have spent crazy amounts of time crunching numbers. At least address it here.
  9. Chronus Active Member

    We rarely if ever get beat out by summoners unless we're being bad in a fight (which I admit to before anybody comes in here bashing me). Summoners have much bigger issues than us, particularly necromancer, the thing is with ours they will progressively get worse as they itemize

    Also I don't crunch numbers pretty much ever. Nune is the main source of numbers for warlocks. though a few underrated ones as well as Mogrim do put in a lot of time.
  10. Magic Missiles Active Member

    Are you serious? We almost always get beat by summoners unless they are dead. I have a conjy and a warlock, and the conjuror beats the pants off my warlock even though the warlock has much better gear.
  11. Magic Missiles Active Member

    This thread began on May 7th and still not a single dev has posted.
    This is atrocious.
  12. Cleaner Active Member

    Im guessing the warlock Dev got laid off 3 years ago....Temp Quik Fix?
    1. Make ability mod affect every tic
    2. Make the Aura SPells trigger more and make them maintained group buffs
    3. make all spells target based aoe's attuned with negative void.

    This will put us back up there Close to where we need to be. not in the gutter where we are.
  13. Cleaner Active Member


    I will say this the summoners you beat out must be AFK , exstreamly under geared compared to you, or just have no idea what they are doing. as the system is set up now and the offsets from the last expansion droped us a good 30-40% behind summoners. Equally geared in full steward gear on same mob fight no buffs you will see a HUGE difference. tested with troub buff and EV, both summoners out perform a good 15% in most cases way higher. I have tried this several ways and still cannot even come close to the statement you have made.
  14. Chronus Active Member

    See, theres your problem, steward gear. The raids I'm talking about are in effectively best in slot in every slot, resulting in EV, Sanguine and bolster having a much larger effect as they work off int. Summoners never get EV as it doesn't work on their pets also, so it will yield more group/raid wide on a sorcerer. It is also likely you are doing this over very short duration fights typical of heroic zones, where things like timewarped EB/Communion/Undead horde will spike higher than warlocks will and not allow a warlock to get a full FC chain in along with TW chain.

    But atm it's really ranger/wiz at the top and then warlock under that, I'm also sure that the summoners are also very proficient but just can't reach them. I'm fine with that but they should provide more utility. But that's not our issues particularly, the same lack of scaling summoners receive though does somewhat apply in lock vs wiz (see wiz myth buff giving more with gear and FC giving less).
  15. Chronus Active Member

    That would mean they cap really early and actually NERF the class, due to the following.
    Courtesy of Nune's sticky thread which you really should read, laid out clearly and explains everything brilliantly:
    For our damage over time spells (DoTs) it counts the total damage including all the ticks to determine the cap, and then applies the ability mod to the initial hit (this is why you always see seperate damage values in the tooltip for the initial hit and the following ticks.)
  16. Cleaner Active Member


    well the use of the stewards gear was just to run the tests with as that way its comparable, same stats / effects ect unbuffed. yes most test runs was done with dual accounts on heroics, but i have noticed with epic mobs is pretty close to the same results.
  17. Cleaner Active Member


    I understand the mechanics, but what i was suggesting was a total change in the mechanics. As none of it matters now with the upcoming xpac changes. Gear re-itemization is in question on stat availability. I don't see myself capping out on ability mod the way ..they where talking about Blue stats being removed from jewelry pieces.
  18. Mogrim Well-Known Member

    I've been advocating hard for this. Kander and I did bounce a couple messages back and forth and I was assured things would be looked into... but alas I'm not in BETA so I've got no idea if things are getting addressed or not. I really hope for 3 main things, still.

    1) Fix Focused Casting to play nicely with other buffs and growing Spell Double Stats
    2) Make Gift of Bert maintained
    3) Cut the cast time of CoD and Netherreal/Eternal Damnation in half.

    These 3 fixes would be great.

    The 4th fix is just a huge pain in our side.
    The damage order from Dark Aggravation should be reversed. Currently the AOE does NOT explode if the initial hit kills the target. In addition, the way the spell is set up doesn't allow it to spell double. The way to fix this is to have Dark Aggravation not clear the warlock's maintaining of Dark Incubation until 1 second after casting, allowing for the chance at a spell double.

    Also, though I'm not in Beta when I did get a peak at the Dragon AA, the one thing that stood out was that the potency temp buff. If that is still there, it needs to be both instant cast and zero recovery time, or else let it be cast simultaneous with other abilities like Ambidextrous Casting.
    SlowDeepNhard likes this.
  19. Chronus Active Member

    If you understood the mechanics when making the point about amod applying to each dot you were asking for warlocks to get nerfed (or at best break even), not buffed.

    Also@Mogrim - Dark Aggravtion and Overflow not doubling does also massively frustrate me as it used to double and now doesn't and we rely so much on the crutch Focused Casting.
  20. Le Clown Active Member

    tell me moar about how having 15.5s(possibly 22s) of 100% SDA is frustrating.


    jk, friendly bump to these on-going issues :(