The NEW Warlock Issues and Concerns Thread

Ok, we need to get this going.
Here is what I see as some current issues that need to be looked into. They may not be totally in-line with what everyone else is seeing, please post additions/changes or anything else here.
Edit: I will try to update this top post with any additions people may have.

BROKEN SPELLS AND ABILITIES
- Enhance Devistation (AA Line)
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...99&#4782800

Dumbfires
- Once a source of really nice DPS for us, now seem to be nearly useless on most pulls. Raid mobs kill them instantly, and in instances the mobs die far too quickly for them to be effective.
Resists
- The fix for the Melee hit rates involved giving us more resists. The damage from our spells was not altered at the same time. The problem with this, is that our spells had been balanced knowing we had a 100% hit rate. Now that we don't have a 100% hit rate, our DPS has been lowered.
I don't think most of us would mind resists if our spells had some increased damage to offset those resists and leave us in line with the remaining T1 dps classes. On that note, as Warlocks I think most of us have accepted we won't have the same damage output on single target mobs VS multi-target mobs. Still, the seperation between us and single target DPS classes shouldn't be huge.

Multi-Mob encounters
- At one point this game was filled with zones containing multi-mob encounters. Much of the difficulty behind this game was in the balancing act we had to play when a multi-mob encounter was pulled. These encounters were also key in giving us higher zone-wide parses, and letting us shine as a class. Currently, there are a dismal amount of these in-game compared to previous expansions.
Group buffs
- The warlock has generally only ever had one real group buff that people enjoyed and looked for. The group buff from our propagations line was enjoyed by just about every class. When the ability for this line to buff proc %'s on items was removed (Without even giving us a patch note telling us it had), we basicly lost our only truely desired group utility.

Our "Activators"
- We require far more then any other class in the game to do good damage. - In a raid we require both a Troub AND Illusionist to keep up with many scouts who ONLY have a dirge. That's double the requirement. For most guilds, having the luck of the raid leader giving you both of these classes is remote. It's even more remote to have both of these classes show up together at the same raid. To compound this problem, Wizards are in the same boat.


What makes our class fun, and why it is currently lacking
- The very concept for most of us having chosen a cloth DPS class is having a class capable of insane-dps that has almost zero survivability. Well, you have the zero-survivability down .. but we aren't seeing the pay-off on the parse.

Truthfully, we should be capable of doing far more damage then our survivability will allow. Make us watch what we cast, make us need to be concious of our spellcasting .. or kill us!


Edit - Added stuff:

Epic
- The re-use timer to switch between single and multi-target damage should be removed or reduced.
- Clicky effect on the mythical. It should be a bit stronger, either by increasing the damage boost or lowering cast times on the affected spells. Why do spells with damage and cast times balanced against hitting 3+ mobs only get a 30% boost when condensed into single target spells.
Debuffs
- Namely the two debuffs that were used for Nil Crystal farming are now basicly useless. The Max Health debuff curse is absolutely useless. Absolutely anything would be better.
Buffs
- Grasp of Bertoxxulous not stacking with Ro's Blade. Currently both buffs show on the target, but ours will not proc while the wizard's is present.

Masters
- Armageddon M1, is this confirmed to be dropping? I have yet to see a single M1 copy of this level 80 spell since RoK was released. I see numerous mobs that should be dropping it, and even after farming them for months I just haven't seen it.

PVP(Added for the PVP folks)
- Make Manashield a clickable permanent spell that you can turn on and off as you please to avoid people running away at the sight of a warlock (Or wizard) using Manashield.
- Make DOTs usable in PVP, as of now they're useless due to the fact that fights lasts 4 seconds most of the time and 10 second tops.

- Increase the survivability of sorcerers in PVP against scouts.

Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.

I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.

The way I think about it is something like this:
A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.
A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.
I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.

As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.

Edit: Fixed the nasty color.

First off Id like to say, I love my warlock and very much enjoy the game.
I posted this in the other thread and would like to highlight it here.

Lots of classes put out dps, the really valuable dps classes are the one who bring utility to the table also, the ones groups dont want to live without.
Warlocks had that before propagations was fixed. Now with that and RoK focus on single targets we have to work alot harder to push the dps envelope when most other dps only classes can coast and blow us out the water if were not paying close attention.
It should be important that every mage brings some kind of valuable utility to the raids table and not just pure dps.

biggest issue right now is if you compair a equal wizzy to an equal lock and you only have 1 spot to fill, or one person to give TC to, the wizzy will win just about every single time. To me thats not right! that ratio should be more to 50% and not so one sided. Trash mobs die fast we dps slow.
Reasons it one sided in this expansion is
a) wizzy dps is naturaly single target focus, most all VP is single target focus
b) group buffs/utility in a mage group the wizzy buffs benifit the group more than the locks, our casting buff if defused by diminishing returns from the bard and illy. Also the wizzy velum gift line brings dps to the rest of the casters. Locks just dont have anything to compare to that. So its to easy to pick any wizzy in replace of a lock for buffs and a spot.
c) Zonewide parse contain a lot of trash, that trash dies quickly so quickly warlock barly have time to push the dps needed to compete.

Warlocks are a dot class SOE should have given warlocks a super ubar ability that affect our dots similer to the SK's. Why in the world give them the ability for there dots to tick more? That soo should have been us honestly.
On the other hand resist in VP are not a problem for me not at all, not anywhere in any zone, know why? My Disruption sits 500+ solo and i dont normally ever get 2 resist back to back unless its a debuff and that has nothing to do with my disruption so I know exactly why. My resist range from 1.5%-3% in raid it always seems worse exactly for the reason Ilucide listed because its so noticable on long cast that it really sticks out.
On a side not resist can kill a casters parse in no time flat this just isnt the case for mele.
In a 30sec fight if you wasted 5sec on 2 resist thats 1/6th or more dps lost where a scout just instanly cast soemtihng else and the dps is hardly effected. Casters dont have auto attack 100% of our damage comes from our cast.

Ilucide wrote:

"A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can't move. S/he can't do anything else. S/he's just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn't matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist."
and so with this game and its combat speed and anti-kiting rules and the misses and resists the same as you say....why can't casters move when casting ?

Ilucide wrote:

This is absolutely right. But at the same time, it needs to be noted that we require more in the way of group buffs to achieve the same numbers as the scouts.

So:

- We cast slower

- We hit less

- We take fewer hits

- We can't move while casting


Also, it *must* be noted that we have some spells that need to be landed before others to turn out proper DPS as well. We're heavily dependent on casting order.

This is why Wizards casting "Rays" really messes us up(If they don't warn first). This is also why the odd resist may have a greater impact to us then one might immediately think.

I think the root concern for me at least right now, is that we have all of these disadvantages playing paper-thin cloth .. yet the pay-off seems to be getting smaller and smaller by the patch.

At this point, why play a Warlock? Why not play a scout?


Edit: By the way, THANK YOU for responding. In one day you've done more for this class just by responding then we've seen in ages.

Honestly, the only disadvantage our class has is the nature of our spells (and we are far less a dot class than say, illies or necros). My resists rates also do not change much between 450skill and 520, and that is self buffed. For everyone thinking that order matters for mage dps, well it is the same, or more-so for melee, if their skills miss they need to wait the entire refresh time, we can keep to our order once we have it and go down to much dps, but melee also have a rotation and if everything lands they deal far more dps than for another order /shrug. As far as being able to deal dps in concert with our survivability I would have to say more items which can reduce our resistability would probably be desireable. I still peel aggro on single target mobs, even if i'm not top on the parse(since that isn't how parses work), our spike damage is still decent but it can turn to dust with a few key resists or interrupts. Detaunt gear is a waste of time, position changes are the only beneficial detaunt. -Hate items would be viable for people w/o access to their VP set pants, or a troub, I sit at 44.*% dehate in raid, cap is 50%. Reuse is all over the place, I don't even need the 15% from the proc on my ear to cap out spells with <10sec recasts. Our spells are pretty well tuned, it just comes down to the bonus damage from gear really affecting our class (mostly because one of our largest dps spells is a DoT as well as not being seen as great single target damage and not always getting the best buffs in single target zones).

One other thing, the clicky on our epic is great! (for the two spells it is useful on....)

Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:

hehe funny thing is I have, just need time to get him up there. Before I changed my main to a warlock our guild had just recently lost it's last warlock member the question from leadership wasn't who do we get to replace them it was do we need to replace them, not very surprising the answer swayed towards no.

I'm not sure if its resist rates or not but all I can say is casters in general have been slowly getting more and more screwed as expansions come along, the ones hit hardest are the DPS casters, utility ones will always be able to lend some sort of hand. Current trend shows you should start leveling a scout now for the future.

Anyway -

I agree with fixing our dumbfire pets to be more useful.

Try to find us some sort of utility that would make people happy to have us around and actually add to the raid configuration thought process (propagation we all thought was to be the one).

Remove the use timer on the epic so that switching between single and multi is painless.

Make the wizards Ray not interrupt your current spell but cast after the current action is done.

Ilucide wrote:

OK I'll bite and respond back to you. For the sake of my argument, lets say your right Ilucide and agree that caster resists are the same percentage as scout resists. I have to ask you, 'How much does that 'Hey, this sucks' moment really cost?' Figure out the time of a normal fight; 15-30 sec lets say. Give a scout and a mage one resist each. Who suffers the larger DPS loss from that one resist? Who's DPS dropped more from that one resist? Who has been effected more by that one resist? I bet you it's the mage. The scout, as you said earlier, probably didn't even notice it. Why is it right for casters to have this 'Hey, this sucks' moment while scouts don't? Also, does it really matter what the current resist percentage even is, between scouts and mages? Mages are complaining about it, the posts are out there, and not just one or two. You yourself called it a 'Hey, this sucks' moment. What if mages were actually resisted 75% less than scouts currently are. Does that change anything about the issue this 'Hey, this sucks' moment mages are having? And I'll say this right up front. I'm a DPS numbers freak. I want to blow stuff up. I heard Warlock blows lots of stuff up, so I signed up. My 'Hey, this sucks' moment isn't because the spell was resisted, it's the effects this results in. I didn't do as much damage as I could have. And it is just compounded when I see the numbers for the fight. You want a real 'Hey, this sucks' moment? End of the fight, my 3sec nuke is resisted, I'm casting again....mobs almost dead...and just before my next nuke goes off it dies. And then the scout cheers out in group about how much DPS he just did. Its a HUGE 'Hey, this sucks' moment. Oh yeah, and as you mentioned before, it isn't really like the pendulum swings both ways so the scout doesn't get his fair share of these fun moments. He probably didn't even know he was resisted and it didn't really effect his DPS much at all. For me, the truth is I don't care about resists at all. If I did enough damage, I'd be happy with a 25% resist rate, or 50% even. But I don't do enough damage and those resists are just a very visible piece of that pie right now, and easily blamed. I want to blow stuff up and I'm not doing it as well. Regardless of how you pussyfoot around the issue, or what form it takes, at the end of the day its about DPS. And my guess is Ilucide you already know this. Mages want to do more DPS than we are now. This is the issue plain and simple. And DPS does not live in a vacuum by itself. Its a number used purely for comparison's sake. The mage's DPS number just isn't where it should be. So you want an easy fix to the resist rate issue? Give mages a +20% flat damage increase to all our spells. I bet you the mages would stop complaining. Issue fixed. My 'Hey, this sucks' moments still aren't fun, but they don't suck as much anymore. Fendaria

Oh...my other issue is Gear. It just seems much easier to gear up a scout than a mage. They just appear to have many more options open to them for good viable DPS upgrades and drops than we do. I can't put any type of numbers or facts to this, its just a feeling I've been having for a while now...longer than I can blame on just the random number generator. Could just be a case of the grass is greener syndrome, but you know, sometimes the grass really is greener. Fendaria

Ilucide wrote:

while my experience is with scouts and scouts alone. for the longest time i played a swashbuckler in raids and casting order is immensely important. but you say that we dont have time to regret a missed combat art, we do. while our casting time is 0.35 to 0.5 we still have a recovery time of about the same. now as a swashbuckler its not as bad due to having faster reuse abilities than most but say for assassins missing an execute they feel it, waiting the reuse on that to only have a chance at missing again is terrible. im not refuting the problems with caster dps in its current form only expressing that the melee still care when they miss and that those who watch their hits/misses we notice and we think about it.

Ilucide wrote:

Sorcerers ahve an average cast timer of about 3 seconds, not 2, just an fyi.
While I can see what you are saying here, I want to point out something that has happened reciently, even though it may seem unrelated.
When looking over the guild recruitment window, Rothgar told us all that it would list a maximum of 40 guilds. After people claiming that it did not list nearly that many, and him stateing clearly that it did according to the code, he changed it to list guilds even if they have no recruiter online. With this change live, people went back and counted the number of guilds listed, and posted that it was not listing more than 25 guilds on live. Rothgar had already noticed this before it was posted, and had it patched up, but the fact remains that players had reported something not working as it should, and a developer used what should be happening in the code to say that what we are seeing was incorrect (he didn't say we were wrong or anything, and fixed it, so nothing at all against him).
So, you are saying that according to the code, resists should be minimal with more than 475 disruption. We are saying that, irrespective of what the code says, disruption (or any other casting skill) has a minimal effect on resists at best as it stands now on live.

Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:

What is the recast of this?
I haven't asked my guilds warlock, but I always just assumed it would be insta cast insta recast... would make sence to me.

Noaani wrote:

I'm not sure to be honest, if someone could provide it I'd gladly add it to the original post. I had updated my original post with it purely because someone had brought it up.

Currently I'm in VP, but haven't received my Mythical update yet. It was a surprise to me to hear it wasn't instant recast as well.

Hey Hey

Well I am gonna guess it has a 5 sec casting and a 10 sec recast, before you include spell hastes. It would be nice if it was an instant cast.


Welcome Home
Rev

My Warlock has been retired since RoK came out.
If it weren't for the fact that I also have a 67 (and levelling quickly) Wizard, I *would* have betrayed already.
Soloability needs to be improved. Seems like every spell we have is designed to break root, seems like every AA ability is designed to break root.
IMO, Warlocks should have been made into an avoidance caster (like a Monk with spells) able to move while casting, and with some really cool void effects (like removing an add completely by having them sucked thru a portal into oblivion).

Ilucide wrote:

I'm a Wizard and not a Warlock, but I do have a comment about this.
There's something more definate than more time to ponder the "hey, this sucks" aspect of resists. Scout classes and pet classes are less affected by spell resists. Sorcerer's are the only classes completely dependant on spell damage. Sure a melee may have a CA not land but about half of the total DPS of, say a Scout class, is Auto Attack damage. Combat Arts account for a much smaller amount of damage than spells do for Sorcerer's. Same thing for Pet Classes. Yes, resists suck for them as well, but their pets have been providing steady damage during that cast time.
I myself have been resisted on my big spells several times in a row in some zones, SOH for example. I've had Fission, followed by Bolt of Ice, followed by Fission resisted back to back and on more than one occasion. Even with Spell haste, that's about 10 to 12 seconds of producing zero damage. Ok, maybe a couple hundred points from Melee if we have auto attack on. But in a 30 to 40 second fight, that is a drop in DPS of 25 to 30%. No other DPS class sees such a dramatic drop in DPS due to resists.

Have a warlock alt that I keep up with just because I hold out hope he'll be fun to play again.

My perceptions leveling him through RoK were several;

Wow, my T7 AD3 root sticks and lasts better than the T8 one.

Wow, I really need to be ready to run an encounter off at any moment

Ouch that hurt! I should be more careful.

Holy crap, nothings landing!

YGTBFKM root broke again... oh no... it's social.... this is gonna hurt

rez up go repair and think about what happened... it isn't as fun as it used to be being a Warlock, boy I remember I used to take out groups of mobs where other classes couldn't... there's no groups here. Oh wait there's the one group by the lake in KP.

If you aren't going to have groups of mobs, reduce the cast times on the warlock groups spells, increase the damage and make them single target. If you want them to be the kings of AoE, put an AA line that let's you turn all your spells into AoE, or encounter based AoE.

Probably some other good or bad ideas I have floating around, butI'll let those that play as mains handle the better ideas or tell me I'm full of crap.

That being said, the simple fact that you don't need any mage or summoner class on a raid or in a group besides the Enchanters speaks volumes. Yes other classes aren't needed either, but this is a Warlock thread.

I'd love to enjoy playing my Warlock a lot more than I do now at some point in the future, I hold out hope!

just my $.02

Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:

Its cast ime depends on your casting speed. Currently mine seems like a 10sec cast an instant uncast with a 30sec recst.
This suck tbh the cast should be no more than 1sec or its not worth using in combat if it needs to be.
To get the best use out of it on the few encouter mobs RoK does have like the books by Druushk for example, I leave the clicky off, to burn the encounter then would like to turn it on fast to finish the last mob. To me we should have the ability to do this without waiting for its crazy cast time. Because 10 sec base cast time is not worth 30% extra dps in combat.
Fix the epic clicky cast time and increase the recast for all i care, right now if you dont already have the clicky activated its not worth wasting the time to cast incombat.
I have noticed that this ability does stay active after swaping to a different weapon which is a neat feature because mobs like Master P our epic is a no no, and thats kinda sad

The thread has already listed most issues I can think of. However, I have one for the list.

Our Max health/power curse is utterly useless. Maybe you could use that spell slot to give us some utility or actual damage to achieve the "payoff" that Zahne mentioned. Because he was right on the money about that, IMO.

- Grasp of Bertoxxulous not stacking with Ro's Blade. I can understand if you don't want melee classes to be able to load up on proc buffs from sorcs, but if thats the case then either theirs or ours should be changed to something that allows stacking. Currently both buffs show on the target, but ours will not proc while the wizard's is present.
- Clicky effect on the mythical. It should be a bit stronger, either by increasing the damage boost or lowering cast times on the affected spells. Why do spells with damage and cast times balanced against hitting 3+ mobs only get a 30% boost when condensed into single target spells.
-A nod to the future. Guessing, as a lot of other sorcs I know are, that spell double attack will be an attainable stat during the next expansion. A work around/fix for how it affects dots needs to be determined before it arrives and we are all upset that our best spell gets screwed.