[Dev Attention Please] Warlock Ceiling Issues

Discussion in 'Mages' started by Mogrim, Mar 21, 2016.

  1. Vorvon Member

    It's hard to feel bad, an it kinda undercuts the argument that there is a NEED to address issues, when your necro makes posts like these (unless the warlock is not you, then my bad):

    (05:34) Captain Graybeard: 1220245713 Liight-Temporal Mimicry-807345292
    Necromancer | 135088144
    Warlock | 118293656
    Brigand | 109978053
    Beastlord | 107436102
    Wizard | 86589974
    Sin | 71587202
    Warlock | 69434265

    (06:46) The Forge Golem: 1535027868 Vibbb-Divine Light-1368485579
    Warlock | 160123542
    Beastlord | 150141603
    Necromancer | 147787105
    Brigand | 134390512
    Wizard | 113244309
    Warlock | 107936125
    Assassin | 100275571

    (02:58) Omzzem the Enchanter: 2955008343 Liight-Temporal Mimicry-627050134
    Warlock | 434522270
    Necromancer | 289855198
    Ranger | 271275523
    Brigand | 197046965
    Beastlord | 192344115
    Illusionist | 159901096
    Fury | 134670664
    Assassin | 133275674
    Illusionist | 120730745
    Dirge | 106568096
    Coercer | 101251047

    (05:51) The Forge Golem: 1564330915 Liight-Temporal Mimicry-1147447740
    Warlock | 160803553
    Ranger | 159352466
    Necromancer | 156505139
    Beastlord | 153868803
    Brigand | 138024642
    Assassin | 117624291

    (02:54) Crohp the Mighty: 987037318 Falkboom-Fiery Blast-1017318172
    Warlock | 121947750
    Necromancer | 118558671
    Ranger | 93349993
    Illusionist | 79785589
    Warlock | 77748882
    Wizard | 74684346
    Assassin | 64228388

    (00:50) Wedge Tinderton: 1546149548 Wizard-Fiery Blast-637374875
    Necromancer | 152649832
    Warlock | 149744306
    Ranger | 136900567
    Warlock | 116513681
    Wizard | 116336292
    Brigand | 109370836
    Karsa likes this.
  2. Entropy Well-Known Member

    His primary issue is not "Warlocks vs. Other T1 Archetypes" (although he did touch lightly on some aspects of it, and that should always be in some kind of balance.) Go back to the first post and read his explanation of why Focused Casting is borked now. It shouldn't be a big surprise that this was coming - capping CB at 3k leaves almost no room for gear scaling. The fact that well-geared toons are able to cap this half an xpac after it was introduced leaves me kind of miffed. Even raising the hard cap a bit with every xpac isn't going to help - top end raiding warlocks are just going to run right into the cap again, and Focused Casting is still going to be borked for them when that happens. They should have corrected any perceived CB excesses through itemization and ability controls, not the lazy-dev method of blindly hard capping a stat because the other fix is "too hard."

    Anyway, I mentioned earlier in this thread that I decided to fix the problem last week by betraying to wizard. Here's my first controlled parse (non-chaotic fight) as the class. My gear/infusing is good, but worse than Mogrim's (in particular, I don't have either of the ridiculously high POT ring/earring, ethereal wand, and no deathtouch charm), and my group and raid are not as well geared as Fatality, so I'm not getting as much help (relatively speaking) from VCs/procs/etc there.

    (07:17) The Forge Golem: 1391516k | Entropy-Fiery Blast-1423882252
    Wizard | 189770k
    Necro | 154156k
    Illy | 121656k
    Conj | 108821k
    Ranger | 95915k

    We were missing some key DPS (incuding our beast assassin), or we'd have killed it on par with Fatality's kill time. The main point, however, is that I pulled 190mil as a wizard, against his two consistent ~160mil parses on same mob. As reference, I get bolster/EV, our fury has no Cloak of Overpoweredness yet (sadface), and my avg VC hit for that fight was 50mil and made up only 4mil of my EncDPS. I'm sure Mogrim gets all of that goodness and more. I can go back and check my parses as a warlock on same encounter, but I can tell you now they were consistently back in the 140-160mil range.

    Wizards scale better than Warlocks at endgame.
    Hiza, DoomDrake and Mogrim like this.
  3. kluxor Well-Known Member

    Gearing is integral to the game. Just leveling up and getting your aa's is only a part of it. Lets face it, if the gear didn't make you parse better, would you be as inclined to run zones to get said gear?
  4. Regolas Well-Known Member

    Good. I'm glad wizards actually get some glory vs warlocks as it's been a while. Shame so few will actually see it.

    What Mogrim needs to understand is that he can't be comparing his parse to a potential he could reach with different abilities and cry that Warlocks need help.

    He needs to look at his fellow guild T1 dps classes, and compare against them, as in theory they should be similarly geared and skilled as him. If he's usually at the top of the parse or very close, then his class is doing ok! And he is! Has he ever experienced playing a class that's bottom of the pile compared to their piers?!

    I've only been playing since 2009, but I've experienced bad times as a ranger, beserker, bruiser and inquisitor, when they were the least desirable of their archtype for valid reasons.

    Crying that warlocks need help yet being at the top of your top end raid guilds parses is ridiculous and certainly shouldn't be top of the devs to do list. All classes can give you examples of how to make their class better by changing what an ability does. But if those classes are currently on a par with their pier classes, then it will unbalance them if that change happens.

    TL: DR you do enough dps :p
    Billyrayy likes this.
  5. Entropy Well-Known Member


    Progression raiders will always (well, usually) try to min/max their personal and raid performance. With that being said, and as mechanics/itemization stand now, you can make an argument that if you want to be "mage DPS in a raid guild", then you roll a sorcerer, specifically a warlock, and once you are ultra-geared, you betray to wizard to experience the continued scaling at endgame. When the next xpac hits, you probably want to betray back to warlock again, with a repeat of the betrayal pattern back to wizard when you're properly geared again.

    So hey, I'm willing to keep doing this, but the question is, does that make sense from a game design and balance perspective? Or, do we want to continue to try to plead the case to devs that specific spells/abilities may need to be tweaked over time to ensure they fit smoothly into appropriate balance plans?

    Look at most good MOBA's... the hero abilities are being constantly tweaked by small amounts to try to reach the ultimate goal of a "fully balanced meta". They'll never get there, but they at least give it a good effort. You don't see that in EQ2. (note: yes, I realize that MOBA and MMORPG are different genres, and MMOs require investment into a specific class, whereas you can just dump a favorite hero for another one in a MOBA, but that doesn't invalidate my point)
  6. Mogrim Well-Known Member

    This is just absolutely moronic logic. I'm not attacking you, Regolas, just the absolute idiocy of these words.

    By your logic, all players in the same raid force are automatically roughly equal in skill and gear, and therefore how you do compared to YOUR guild is the best barometer of class power.

    Now, I'm pretty sure we all know that sort of statement is completely ridiculous. The fact that Entropy could switch from Warlock to Wizard and immediately do 20-30% more dps is a good idea of where the class is. The fact that a bunch of T1 scouts in significantly WORSE guilds/raid situations absolutely destroy the T1 scout parses that my guild has ought to speak volumes. That isn't me trashing our scouts, but merely stating - there are scouts in worse guild/raid situations that absolutely dumpster what I can do and what other scouts can do.

    I've played Warlock for longer than you've played the game, and let me tell you something: Warlocks "time in the sun" has been a very peculiar thing. Pretty much, we've almost never been better than Wizards, especially not "at the end game". There have been a few glimpses of it, but what people are still relying on is bad data and bad samples. People posting a 30 second parse and trying to suggest that a 30 second parse is an adequate and sufficient picture of class strength is just absolutely silly.

    That's like if I were to post a fight where mobs take 50% more physical damage because of some odd mechanic, and using the entire parse to justify massive nerfs to scouts. The problem is... you and I can see how clearly foolish that would be... and yet you're all guilty of doing such to Warlocks, by cutting and pasting outliers as if they're the rule and not the exception.
  7. Regolas Well-Known Member

    I'll give you the benefit of the doubt Mogrim, but I've never seen scouts regularly have higher parses than warlocks. I've not gone looking for it, and I'm not in a top tier raid guild, but I've not seen the parses on here or anywhere else.

    What I have seing is scouts requiring Ravaging and phelony eths to keep up with warlocks without them. Except the odd BL parse where BLs have basically been over-tweaked this xpac.

    And yes, I do assume that your guild has a certain standard level of player. If you're way above average, then fair enough. I thought usually the bigger guilds have competition for spots and the poorer players get replaced.

    I still stand by my opinion that warlocks are ok (compared to some classes and should not be a priority). Wizards may be a little better at the summit, but they have a harder time getting there.

    Every single class can give you outdated or just plain poor abilities or AAs and ask for them to be different with massive consequences. Can you imagine what kind of numbers you'd pull if FC didn't have a cap and you could get close to 6k CB?! And you could do it every 30s?!

    Apologies if my original post seemed like an attack, reading it back it does read like that. Appreciate you stating you're not attacking me, just what I said!
  8. Karsa Active Member



    Looks like 'Sky' is falling...again..:)
  9. Mogrim Well-Known Member

    Yeah. What you're seeing is that it takes a hammer to allow Warlocks to beat other T1s. Without a Hammer, I only win one of those parses... maybe not any.
  10. quisling Well-Known Member

    Not sure your point. Are all those other guys in scrub gear?
  11. Billyrayy Active Member

    Someone's got to be on top. Guess it can't always be a warlock. Sorry?
  12. Lithinor Member

    i'll quote a whining lock who was very butt hurt since the beginning of the xpac, "you guys just don't understand" everyone has taken the bat at some point because of all the crying people have done when their ego's were hurt. locks will be okay, roll an alt and wait till they are more inline like every other class that has had their johnson smacked. maybe in 5 years they'll get around to "balancing" class again and locks can be on top of the parse in every fight regardless of the situation again... btw your tears fuel my jet so keep em coming
    Yoube, Ilyriel-Jentara and Billyrayy like this.
  13. kluxor Well-Known Member

    02:58) Omzzem the Enchanter: 2955008343 Liight-Temporal Mimicry-627050134
    Warlock | 434522270
    Necromancer | 289855198
    Ranger | 271275523
    Brigand | 197046965
    Beastlord | 192344115
    Illusionist | 159901096
    Fury | 134670664
    Assassin | 133275674
    Illusionist | 120730745
    Dirge | 106568096
    Coercer | 101251047

    I'm sorry mogrim, but when you're pulling off 430m parses no one is going to feel bad for you. You cannot put out these stupid high numbers on AE encounters and expect to be able to double the next persons parse on single targets too. Try all you want to say your class is broken and needs fixing, but you really should be very happy where warlocks are right now.
  14. kluxor Well-Known Member

    (05:45) The Forge Golem: 1688953876 Coercer-Temporal Mimicry-1256664955
    Assassin| 226145
    Illy| 158536
    Lock| 147872
    Conj| 128363
    Necro| 122651
    Ranger| 105013

    Now see this parse....warlock is where he belongs. Single target, not on the top. You have your place, other classes have their place....and that's not even winning by a 200m+ margin. You win the king of AE encounters crown, but you don't get to wear the "king of every single encounter regardless of script, encounter type, etc crown."

    Nice job dogging on your scouts too, sure they appreciate hearing from you how they're not as good as other scouts in "worse" guilds.
  15. Jenkzz Member

    Pretty sure yards through down about 600 or 700 mil last night on the mages with no hammer..... Yea mogrim tell me more about how warlocks need more help...
    Gnik likes this.
  16. Jenkzz Member

    Mogrim-Yeah. What you're seeing is that it takes a hammer to allow Warlocks to beat other T1s. Without a Hammer, I only win one of those parses... maybe not any.

    Either you're bad Mogrim, or making a complete BS statement. This is most definitely untrue, as I see Yards on a nightly basis top the parse, and if not; consistently close as 2-4 on most encounters with no Hammer what so ever.. And unlike you, I won't trash the scouts here as they are all competitive, but we don't have scrubs like Homex in guild so IDK. Why do you continue to bleed this butthurtness all over these forums for improvements when your class is already at the top? If you were a conj, I would understand the tears, but sorcs most definitely don't need any love....
    kluxor and Gnik like this.
  17. Gnik Member

    I just love this post, try being a coercer who has no real utility anymore, a less damage bonus than any other mage, charm that does not work on anything anymore and your one big hitting spell you have to rely on another class to be parsing well to get a good parse. When these things are fixed then you can cry about how your not hitting the potential of your class with out fixes when your already topping the parse.
  18. DoomDrake Well-Known Member

    While I am most certainly feel you pain about charm because coercer was my first and still most beloved class to play - it never been intended as DPS class but with good mimic target coercer IS the DPS class and a good one. Warlock on other hand got twist and now more often then not more valued for power drain rather than for DPS. Mogrim pulling very high numbers because he top geared - warlock w/o reset (eth or hammer and better both) is most certainly not even close to be a top of food chain, but what Mogrim complaining and Entropy clear shown by betraying to wizard that in the end game if everyone get top end gear - warlock not scales anymore DPS wise and that is a problem
  19. kluxor Well-Known Member


    Really don't think we can use entropy's sole forge golem parse as a clear example of wizard scaling better than a warlock for one reason....forge golem is a single target fight, with some adds that die in seconds. You need to compare wizard vs warlock parses on numerous different encounters in numerous different scenarios. Also, its been supported by quite a few people that warlocks without a hammer are also putting out very respectable numbers.
  20. Arco Active Member

    The problem that often happens in these situations, is that it's hard to get fair comparisons.... there's going to be a variance of player skill, player gear, raid setup, raid efficiency, etc. There's a ton of stuff that drastically affects these parses, so in one guild a player will look OP, while in another they're just average.

    I remember seeing Sovin Naiz's ranger doing over 600m on the magicians fight in another thread... gear this expac makes such a massive difference on parses, but stuff like the hammer also require the skill to change your cast order to stay efficient.

    I don't think there's a problem with warlocks at this time... but I can forsee locks having a harder time staying competitive in the future, as they've relied so much on FC to compete. I think FC is fine the way it is, if they can balance locks in the future w/o needing them to rely on FC.