Dont know if its just me being unlucky with setup of raids and groups or what, but in most raids ive been in pretty much anything part from tanks target will be mezzed to make it safer (makes sense), then i got few single target spells and some powerexpensive area nukes to use on singletarget, obviously i`ll run short of power early and onto that my dps will always be average.. imo is whole setup with AE specialists (that noone asked for) is so wrong, cuz its theoretical damage and it plays some classes out against eachother AEs and chanters fex. then theres the whole agro issue aswell with AE, i havent played 6 months now, but still following boards to look for encouragement to start up again, doesnt look like SOE cares tho, too bad. Message Edited by Birdman- on 04-14-2006 04:54 PM
lol, you come in here anonymous with personal attacks and you're telling ME to grow up? Thanks for the comic relief.
Not sure about your guild, but in my guild I play with other people, and not with characters. We take people to raid. We dont replace warlock in raid if some summoner logged in. And since this seems to be very important question for you, your guild does. I feel sorry for you.
You may not agree with Fat T but he gave you an honest response not a bunch of condescending nonsense like your response.
I never said that's how my guild operates. I'm welcome to every raid, we're a small guild where people aren't just a number. I'm asking the question because I'm going back to the original point of this thread. Making a high end raiding guild there is little reason to take a Warlock over a summoner, will warlock's still be invited to high end guilds? Sure, 1 possibly 2. But there's a thin line between our aggro liability and our uber l33t T2 spiking to T1 dps. The rest of your post doesn't warrant response.
why bring a warlock? because their DPS isnt gonna get nerfed anytime soon and well if you rely on the summoner for DPS you and your guild are in for a world of hurt. They will be fixing summoners soon and they will be back down to the T2 DPS where they belong thats why.
I think it is a mistake to ever think we are safe from the nerf bat. Wasn't that long ago they nerfed Devastation.
FYI not having prob with agro anymore .... de agro line .....plus the robe switcihng it off amnd on with aoe spells..... i dont even have deagro in grp ....it works ... =) fyi only 3 points into the deagro ability hhehehe thinking i might just take it away
No other class has the same kind of requirements to shed aggro as warlocks. Most classes go into a raid in their best offensive/defensive gear, depending on their class. We have to use a robe that is lower stats/resists than other options, for the deaggro proc. (and some people choose to swap gear mid encounter...way too much work- you might as well just take 5 seconds off between spells...) Rangers have a passive reduction, and an instant cast reduction. Assassins have a transfer, ad an instant deaggro. Monks and Bruisers can fd if they pull aggro in a tight situation. Plus, if any of these classes do pull aggro, its a gradual build up of aggro, which can bump them up a position on aggro list. merely turning off auto attack, or ceasing ca's for a few seconds will allow the easy return of aggro to the mt. When warlocks pull aggro, its not a slight gain of aggro that does it, or something that 2-3 seconds of inactivity can clear up. We grab aggro solidly, tanks must rescue, taunt and get in a hit or two to regain aggro. If we're still alive that is...the timeframe between pulling aggro and using warlocks FD (you know, 100% chance to convince mobs that we're dead, cuz we are....) is often shorter than the time it takes a tank to pull aggro back. IF we have good healers, they might be able to keep us alive during this time, at a heal/power cost 2-3x what it would take to heal a tank for that duration.
One of the things that's eluding me in this entire venerable thread is this: If you are playing warlocks, why do you care what a Summoner is/can do? Summoner is pushing 50 percent more dps than you? Good for them. If there has been one constant in this game since I started, it's been that good things don't tend to last. If someone is pushing 1800 dps on a single target with any degree of consitency, you can BET on a nerf, because it's totally out of whack with where other "dps" classes are. Parses are cool, I run one too, but I also understand how they work. What they do. And most importantly, what they DON'T do. They are a snapshot of a fight in which you divide damage by time. In between those two things are a TON of variables that are out of your control. Xede alluded to this in one of his eloquent posts. The biggest variable in parses is the composition of your raid in terms of DPS. If you are in a raid with yourself, 4 of your wizard buddies, and 4 necro's making up the core of your dps, your parser is going to smoke because your target is not going to live very long. (Same amount of damage divided by much less time) On the other hand, if you are in a raid with 14 healers, a couple paladins, a tank and very little dps, and cast all the same spells, in the same sequences and whatnot, your dps will suck. (Same amount of damage divided by much MORE time) I had the chance recently to parse two different Harla Dar kills, several days apart, with a raid that was mostly the same, with a handful of individual changes. I was shocked at the difference in my parse between a fight that went a little under 4 minutes the first time, and went like 2:27 the second time. My single target went up 300+ even though I did nothing any differently, and even had to re-position a time or two. Time of fight is everything in a parse. I guess my point in all of this is that parses are cool things that were never really meant to do much more than give you as a player a general guidepost for how you are doing relative to the other folks around you, and posting a parse in a forum to support or refute an argument is fundamentally bogus unless you are prepared to explain in excruciating detail all the variables that existed in your raid the day you took the parse (minus wind speed/direction) I have been playing a raiding Warlock in a pretty tight guild daily for nearly a year now, and I put a lot of work into figuring out how to be better at it. I have seen some of the parses being posted here, and my reaction has been anything from "Yeah, right" to "Ok, maybe" to "Yeah, that looks about right". Xede's post probably most closely resembled my experience, and I would not be surprised if I found out that a Dissolution raid force didnt look all too different from one of ours. Enjoy what you play, because the grass usually is not greener. Aelleor/Warlock/Eidolon/Antonia Bayle
Putting robe on mid fight isnt hard at all. YOu place the robe on oyur hotba and click. Simple and easy.
If you're in a raiding guild with a 24 person raid force who all shows up every raid... then no worries. What about when 36 people show up on raid nights? Who gets sat out? Sure, the redundant classes that are not needed in bulk...ie a 3rd or 4th guard logged in. the 9th, 10th, 12th healer, etc... they're gonna get sat out if necessary. But when it comes down to picking caster dps, who's gonna sit on the bench? the Conjuror who can aoe as well as a warlock, and has a tank pet who can pet pull and coth players accross the zone. Not to mention the mit buffs that can replace a crusader in an offtank group?? The necro who can dish out insane single target dps AND heal, feign, and rez?? lets face it...they have some great utility, and we've never begrudged them that. They are more USEFUL than us. We've always had our advantages too. We've been the best at our job, blowing stuff up. Thats not the case anymore. We're no longer the best. We're not even close. We're 2nd or 3rd string dps, our aggro potential is still 1st string, and our buffs and utility are virtually nonexistant- nothing we do can't be done better by another caster class. Well, except for die. We still do that best.
Ok I spent the last hour reading all the posts in this thread. To summarize for everyone else that does not want to read it all but does have an opinion. All warlocks in this thread agree that Necro's and Conjuor's Need to be looked at by the devs in terms of their potential DPS. There was a post a few weeks ago indicating some nerfs to these classes so we all feel they will eventually see the wrong end of the nerf bat. That said Warlocks are in good shape as far as DPS goes and agro problems do seem to be getting a little better for us with adjusted play style (stop trying to beat the necro on the parse) and equipement.
So far, at 47 the damage is average at best, we're made of paper and our buffs are so-so. And that with all master spells, can't imagine what it would be like with ad1. Ad1 warlock is unplayable, ad3 warlock is marginal, m1/2 warlock is mediocre/average. Looking forward to good times ahead.
Raid tactics ... do you think your assassin will be happy with lesser poison debuffs ... or any other class that uses poison. Do you think your raid leader will be happy without 66% stun on AE encounters at pull ... (if the adds are heroic for example) You can even stun right of the bat if you do it right (rift grin ) Nihilistics is the finest damage shield in game for aE encounters, it is better then any other damamge shield. Hell it does around 100-200dps on AE mobs. Ask a conjuror to do give that kind of extra dps to a tank ... Ah well raiding is about stacking buffs and debuffs, not about getting 20conj and kill it, cause you will not.
lol you guys still complaining? In lyecum i was getting 1400 single target DPS while we were farming the respawns for relic. This was with less than 18 people so the fights were fairly long too. Of course summoners could still beat me, and assassins were right there with me, but i didnt feel like i was sucking. One thing we found funny, our swash got that one hand spear from harla dar (this after proc rate was nerfed to 5%) and he also has his one hand AA's. On encounters with 2-3 mobs he was pushing 2000 DPS. Of course he was buffed to the gills, but was amazing damage. The summoner and I were the only ones who could compete with him. Also, one thing people forget to mention, on most of the AE fights in KoS, we dont dodge the AE. This means that alot of the times summoner pets will die, while the sorcerer is still chain casting not haing to worry about pets. But, summoners are still way too strong when they can keep their pets up. Hell, our necro has master 1 caster pet which is a warlock. His warlock pet + swarm pets can match or beat my own personal dps. Thats insane.
I must be doing something seriously wrong then. The max I can ever really do on a raid mob (single target) is about 800dps no matter how I switch up my casts (Distortion M1; Absolution M2; Apoc, thwart, soul ad3). Maybe it's the aa? I currently only have 23aa all wasted down the aggro reduction line, does the agi and wis line give 200+ dps? I know I have a couple items that I need (awakening necklace and Pris2) that will help. We also don't have a brigand, swash or troub, do those add to dps or just help control aggro?
yes yes and yes, we commonly have 2 brigs at raids to debuff, and troubs help our dps a ton. im going down the str and wis AA lines, in str 4/4/4/8, and 4/8/4/8 in wis. Not getting any final AA abilities, they arent that great imo. And i also think the agi line is complete crap, but thats me =).
/sigh LU 23 notes came out from test , still nothing for us warlocks... i mean i guess 900-1100 dps on raids is ok ( considering im usually top 8 still on raid parse ) but it just sucks that im being out dpsed by conj,necro,swashies and brigs ( i dont count the assasin since he is suppose to do T1 dps ) I mean i cant say im not doign my job ( since me and other guild warlock switch spots constantly on parser ) its just every other dps class in my guild knows there jobs well also... oh well i least im contributing to our raids dps average which is about 13.5 k dps
Don't know about you other warlocks, but Vic(leader of my guild/warlock) was coming close to me in the parses in Lycuem raid. I'm an assassin, he was in the same group as me..he was pushing around 1400dps while me and the necro were around 1500-1800. You guys do dps, if you don't parse well learn to better yourself by changing CA combos and try to get better group setups. The group Vic and I were in was also not just for us 2, was for the wizzy and brigand in the group too for added dps, fury for healing, and the troub helped the 4dps'ers control their aggro. You guys do have decent dps, should be increased a lil bit but fine imo...you guys have nice proc added for melee classes, and nice buffs to poison mitigation. If you want to talk about utility, talk the predators who have..about none that are raid useful...well 2 for the assassins but thats it.
