Here is a little list of what I've found of issues, and what I like/don't like First a judgement of how I find the game atm I should say Im in fully fabled stuff, and got nothing but ad3 and m1s. And I havent tried playing <lvl 50 for ages, so all my comments are 50+ Solo: Playability: Must say I dont find much difference here than Pre-Dof. Solo mobs can still woop my royal [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] if I'm not awake, and on the other hand, they die very fast if I am I dont really much like soloing, so I only do it when there is nothing better to do. I can still kill some heroics, if I can toss the AE's on them, but I die to often for it to be good xp. Grade: A XP: Decent, Grade B (about 5-7%/hour) Duo: Playability: Don't really find much difference here either. Except that tank/warlock duos are now impossible, because the tank dies way to fast. Healer/war duos are nice, so are wiz/war, and both allow you to chain kill heriocs if you choose them carefully, and don't have adds. Grade: A XP: Decent, Grade B+ (About 10-12%/hour) Trio: Playability: For most group setups, this I feel is almost similar to Pre-Dof aswell. Tried War/Wiz/healer, War/Scout/healer, War/tank/healer and all of them were great success. Again, can't take down everything with the first two, but when you do, [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] its fast kills. Killing with a scout is funny, because they can actually hold aggro pretty well now, chainkilled spiders at Tarantula until there were no more around, and had great fun. Tank/healer/war is classic safe trio, and I must say that it depends alot on which tank class you choose. - Tried with Bruiser, can't hold aggro for 10 sec on single mobs, and forget about aggro holding on group mobs. - Tried with Zerker, they can hold aggro for a while, both single and group, but the healer has to spamheal to keep them up, making it hard for them to heal me when I get aggro. - Tried with SK, decent single target aggro, a tad better than bruiser, but not much - Tried with Paladin, decent aggro, but whats more important is the Amends spell which transfers my aggro to him which makes for great aggro in a large group, but not much difference in a trio. - Tried with Guardian, which is by far the best IMHO. Great single target aggro, and decent AE aggro, plus the healer has surplus to spamheal me when I do get aggro. Can do most dmg here without getting myself killed by far. Assugage is a great spell, I dont understand why the paladin is 42% to him, and 42% away from me, and the guardian is only 28% away from me. Seems rather unfair to the guardian. Grade: A XP: Great! Grade A (15-20%/hour) 4-6 people groups: Playability: What I said about the tanks hold mostly here aswell. But I find it annoying to be in large groups, and the larger the more annoying. The problem is multifold. If we are killing a +++, then my rampup-time to do any dmg at all means the mob is mostly halfdead already, and my dps sucks (well it doesn't according to parsers, but it feels that way). On the other side we got group mobs, if you target whatever the tank is targeting you will never do any dps at all, because the mob is simply dead before you ever get one of your AEs off. This also means that the good tanks doesnt have time to taunt all the mobs in the group, because they have to use their single target taunts on the main target or the scout gets aggro. Grade: C XP: Extremely bad. Grade F (4% per hour in a full group) Raids: Playability: Raids are certainly the most changed combat situation there is in the game. Most of them are like this: "Tank (lvl 60 offcourse, anything else is utterly useless) pulls, tank dies, raid dies, retry", and after 4-5 rounds of that, you get lucky and healers get some spamheals in before tank dies, and in some cases, tank actually survives first 30 sec when the debuffs from all the raiders pour in. As for my own situation when the pull goes well, is about the same as pre-dof, except I die fast if I overaggro, but that is less likely now. Grade: Gonna give it a F- becuase of the overall pull, die, retry. As for warlocks in raids, a B. XP: Worse than extremely bad: Grade Z (if you get 0.000000001% for every 10% debt, you are more than extremely lucky) Warlock Issues: Sorry about all the comparisons to wizards, couldn't help myself Overall, Im very happy about all the changes made to us, but lots of tiny details that needs to be fixed still Bony grasp/Skeletal graps: The rendering speed of this spell became better with DoF, but it can still sink many machines to a crawl on 4-5 mobs. The upgrade from bony to skeletal is very bad, goes from 50s to 60s hold, which are both quite decent And personally I really like that it can break, makes it much more fun to play with There is however a problem. Compared to the Wizard counter theirs is alot better, with a 12 sec slow by 53% when breaking the spell. Why was a similar proc left out of the Warlock version? LU 16: Bony Grasp now has a slightly shorter maximum duration. It lasts longer than Ring of Cold, which has an additional effect. Bony Grasp is also slightly harder to break. Will update when I've tried it out, still sounds like the wizards get the much better version though PF/Cower: Nice spells, much much much better than pre-DoF. Compared to the wizard ones it sucks though. My master 1 cower is 50% chance to slow by 35% + make afraid for 4 seconds. The wizard is 100% chance to slow by 49% (at ad3) for 10 seconds. Doesnt seem balanced. And for some very odd reason the level barriers were removed from beta to live, so a 60 warlock might aswell use Frozen Menacles, since the slow is more reliable, cost less power and is cheaper to get upgrade at your local sage. Not many will notice the 30 to 60sec duration upgrade anyway. LU16: - The snare effect of Paralyzing Fear now increases properly with spell scroll upgrades. Sound good Freeze/FF/Deter/Twart: First issue with these is that the casttime of freeze is 1sec, whereas all the upgrades are 2sec and stun duration is 2/3/3.5/4sec, and recast of freeze is 15sec compared to 30sec on the others, so any sane warlock would use freeze all the time. And IMHO these spells does way too much damage, would be more than happy to cut power cost in half, casttime in half and recast in half along with damage in half. LU16: - Freeze now has a cast and recast time similar to its Wizard and Warlock upgrades. Ohh well Vulian line: Really nice spell line. Don't see why it has a damage effect though when its not more than 50. Tongue Twist does stiffle, but upgrades do pacify, which is nice Does nothing in PVP, think its a bug. Seal line:This is a buff which has many warlocks wondering. From experience there is ZERO difference with it on or off, so utterly useless. Tried on greys, greens, blue, white, yellow, orange, reds. Solo, heroics, epics. Mobs with poison resists and without... ZERO difference Netheros: I got my nice netheros in master 1. But I have to say this is one of the more useless spells I have. It doesn't do any dps, on a lvl 45 (with me 55) downarrow mob I see it does about 20% dmg to the mob over the intire duration... Using my own melee I can do alot more than that, and thats with a melee skill thats still somewhere around 180. About the only good thing its good for is pulling a group of mobs that seem to be too farspread to grab with a bonygrasp, but 4 tripple downarrow can kill it in seconds. Sometimes use it to pull harder encounters to get time to cast my debuffs in before he goes on me. Still, the DPS it generates is WAY WAY too low. Btw. Why does netheros use heat based spells? and the spells are same dmg as the autoattack, so why does he even have them? Dark Infestation: This is a cool spell Use it alot, but it does have some bugs. The pets can spawn many times during the spells duration, and each they do, they reset to original position and seem to take 10-15 sec to get into doing any damage at all, and many mobs are dead long before they get some damage off which makes the proc rather useless. However when they do get to do some damage it seems its rather nice, but really can't say for sure since it happens rarely. Pets doesnt scale with you, they stay at lvl 52 and several warlocks and only spawn one set of mobs, both should be considered bugs. LU 16: - Dark Infestation's swarm will now grow with level. YAY! Null Caress: Unlike Dark infestation which is rather useful, this spell is utterly useless. For soloing, why would I ever use it? A 2 sec stun is hardly enough to get away as an emergency spell, and in the 5-6 attempts I've tried it they all seem to teleport right next to me anyway, nowhere is the average 10m. In groups, if I cast this, the tank [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]es at me because it has no value at all. My judgement of this spell is that it needs a serious rethinking Chaotic Maelstrom: All T6 spells I've seen so far are really nice upgrades, but M1 of the lvl 41 spell has 8% debuff, and ad3 of the 55 spell has 7%. Not gonna upgrade this spell until thats fixed. Curse of Emptiness/Darkness/Desolation: This is a very close contender to the most useless spell in the game. Make it 0 casttime, and 0 powercost and I might consider casting it once in a blue moon to generate a nil crystal. LU16: - Curse of Darkness had its power cost greatly reduced. Well, my comment still holds Gift line: Very nice spell Just one problem with it Description sounds much like its supposed to trigger on DoT ticks too, but it only works on casting a new spell if its supposed to trigger only on new spells cast can the dmg be upped a bit, please. The power cost of the trigger isnt stated in the actual spell description, so does that work? Another problem is the comparion to the wizard spell of this one. Mine does 43-80 and costs an nil crystal and works only for me, theirs does 171-209, a 1sec 49% slow and works for the whole group, but costs power to cast. That doesn't seem balanced. Contract line: Also known as canni spells This used to be one of the few spells where you actually felt you got something when upgrading to adept3, or master. But now its just as bad on all levels. With my current stats its eats 15% hp and returns 5% power at ad3, and in raids its barely enough to keep me casting my super low power spells. Please give us casters a bit more here, we should be able gain just a tad more power. On a sidenote, I don't mind the Dark Siphon line or the Endow Energy as they currently are. Aura of nnn: What a super spell Only one minor grief which is when I compare it to the wiz counterpart. Wiz has to be cast on tank, and ours on mob. So whomever triggers the warlock ones gets extra aggro, and the wiz one help tank maintain aggro. Wiz is 501-612 dmg, ours is 391-478 dmg. The Aura line is supposed to be triggered whenever you do damage "When target is damaged with a spell...", however only DD spells proc it. Dots doesn't, not even on cast. Uhh, just saw the inquisitor version, 417-695, 123 power cost, 4 sec stun Netheros Realm: LU16: - Netherous Realm now pulsates 1 trigger every 5 seconds instead of an unlimited amount. Sounds like this spell went from nice (if tanks could hold the aggro) to worthless Devastation: The spell now has this written in it: "Stuns target - If target is heroic or weaker. Does not affect raid targets". As if I didnt get it the first time Fury line: This is the out-of-encounter AE we get. The top of the line, boundless fury procs with 4*169-314 dmg, or roughly 1k. Given the circumstances you can cast this is, it ought to be alot better once you actually use it, give it a 75% boost and its just fine All my AEs: The single most frustating thing about casting an AE is the HUGE casttime, and the minute chance that the mob you are targeting is alive once its done casting. Why does it matter that the mob I were targetting specifically is alive, I were trying to hit him and all of his pals, Please change it so you only get "Target is dead" once the whole encounter is dead. Overall Single Target DPS: Our single target dps isnt the best in the world, it feels slow when you have to have 6 dots/procs running before you actually do any real nukes. Any DPS parse of it shows Im doing alot of dmg, but it just doesnt feel like it. Level 54 M2 choices: What would you rather have? A minute upgrade to a drain spell? An upgrade to a spell which has no real value according to those testing with and without it? A real nice upgrade to an AE stun/dmg spell? Or finally a pet which does close to no dps? Utility: Pre-DoF I could say to a wizard, hey I get a bit more dps and you get evac Now I can say, I got equal dps, and you still got evac... Can I have something too, please? Max int at 7*level: This limit doesnt make any sense, its way too close to what everyone has. If Im nekkid and with e.g. a fury, I'm almost already there. No real point in getting any t6 outfit at all for me so far. Besides the dmg difference from nekkid without buffs to max bonus is rather small. Deaggro: I don't know what scouts and others get on this, but I know for sure it doesn't require them to get hit to use it. The way this spell is currently I don't ever use it, since it's faster to kill the mobs than wait for the tank to regain aggro. And I do think there is a bug somewhere, I've seen people post screenies where the nullmail is 750ish threat, mine is 550ish. Could it be because it was ad1 before DoF and the other guys was ad3? Another bug is that the spell greys out without a replacement. Log lines: It would be very nice if our pets could get our name in the logline so its easiere for any parser to sum up the damage. E.g. "Ilee's netheros lord hits some big ugly mob for 150 crushing damage". Post LU15: The full group thing is even worse now, I can barely get 2 nukes off before the mobs are dead... I feel so useless Done with my ranting If you don't agree, make a constructive comment about what to change! Edit: Forgot paladin, Amends and Assuage comments Edit: Forgot the Aura triggering bug, added under aura Edit: added pvp bug on vulian line and bugs from Dark inf. Edit: added deaggro comments and bugs Edit: added inquisitor version of aura Edit: Added comment about log lines plus added comment on netheros Edit: LU16 comments Message Edited by Cine on 10-13-2005 07:55 PM Message Edited by Cine on 10-18-2005 11:34 AM Message Edited by Cine on 10-18-2005 02:33 PM Message Edited by Cine on 10-18-2005 09:11 PM Message Edited by Cine on 10-21-2005 03:16 PM Message Edited by Cine on 11-05-2005 03:06 PM
Very well written, agree with almost all of it... In Trios... Pally is easiest tank to use, since Ad3 Amends is 41% of your hate to them. One taunt will be enough to keep aggro. Personally I dont think this skill is very fair to other tanks... In Cap... I carry a set of +int gear for normal use, and a set of +power gear for when I am grouped with a fury (in raids etc).
Have do disagree with you on 4-6 person group xp post them fixing the xp for bigger groups. The right duo/trio groups are best experience for us but I can easily get 10-15% without vitality with a full group. This is taking huge camps and clearing them out in no time cant believe there are no mobs up half the time when we clear it. This is a good mixture of groups 2+ mobs and ^^^ single encounters just blowing through them. Usually one tank can also be a conjurer's pet then 2 or 3 classes good at single dps count a bard in that for power regen, take the bard away add a chanter then a healer and myself I take care of groups just fine by myself and there ya have it.
The issues most people can agree I think are these. 1. We need disease based spells. 2. Our seal line is garbage, give us back our INT buff. 3. Curse is also garbage, give us back our debuff. 4. The distortion line needs to be on a quicker cast timer by 1 second.
This thread expresses my main concerns http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=24&message.id=13375
i agree with all exept the soloability and the full group part. soloing id give an a+ at lvl 49 not i can easily pull 10% an hour ...hell 15% if i try REALLY hard. and full group..HELL....i dont know why i wasnt beafore....in the clefts and a few other places i can pull 20% an hour...WITH NO VITALITY alot of people seem to have a hard time with soloing.....but if you appl yourself and think outside the box...warlocks still rule. oh and even though i hate the cast times in some zones like pillars of flame when you get groups of 2 or 3 mobs that are both ^^ or ^^^ our ae spells kick the crap outa um and nethros (i got the master scroll) hitting for 300 a swing adds a good 2k damage....i aint complaighning. ya we need fixes and bad....but we still kick [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]
Thank you for putting time and effort in all this. An official reply to your post (other then "we will look into that") would be great, but I can only hope they read it. Can this be stickyfied?
/agree, nice work. One thing I'd like to say is that my duo xp is greater than trio or group. Grab a chanter or druid (unbreakable roots!) A couple other things: 1. Power issue -- we have it on raids, alot worse than most classes in fact. 2. Spell Components...wizards do not have to deal with this BS, why should we? This is specifically annoying for us...huge waste of time. 3. Level 54 Master2 choices are ridiculous. Not just bad, but really bad. Wizards can upgrade Ball of Incineration, but we can't Null Distortion? /thumbs down. Message Edited by Splatterpunk28 on 10-12-2005 05:00 AM
Do we take the fact that this is sticky'd to be an indication that the devs agree with our plus and minus points about our class? I really hope so :smileyindifferent:
1. Yup, power is a serious problem now, in a group I'm usually the one to run out of power first and the most often... :/ Kinda embarrasing to have the whole group wait just for you to regen. If you got a chanter in the group it's not that big a deal but without one...*shudder* 2. Well, the Nil Crystals are supposed to give us some kind of special thing, the "warlock flavor" or so - I've yet to see it being anything other than a nuisance. Our pet costs a crystal but is lacking the no-component-Protoflame's AE at the end of duration. Being forced to used 2 debuffs you wouldn't use nearly as often just because of the nil crystals - see no point in it. If they really wanna have us use nil crystals - either make the Maelstrom line generate them. I use Anarchic Maelstrom about twice as much as the 2 nil-crystal curses combined - OR change the 2 Curse of lines to something actually useful. Debuffing max health by a minor amount is useless, as is a STR/INT debuff - when the mobs' spells hit in the thousands - much more than players' spells, eg that carpet quest part 3 guy's IC... - they don't care crap about 50-100 less dmg on spells. 3. I guess Dark Nebula is supposed to be our equivalent of the Ball of Incineration lvl 54 M2. Unless the wizards also got an AE in the 54 selection I'm fine with DN<->BoI.
I haven't seen the power issue as a problem, and would not put this as a high priority from my perspective. A few regen items, good drink, and a Fury in your group is all you need I think. I would be careful in using rate of experience gain as a measure. Yes some scenarios are better than others for warlocks, but overall we don't have it as bad as some other classes. There are only 10 new levels in the game, however slow or fast you gain experience, you will be at the new level cap soon enough. So my top priorities are: - Shorter cast times (make the game more fun) - More useful spells 53-60 (give us more to look forward to) On the latter, fixing the Seal line to do something significant would be a good start.
Some good points here. A big issue for me is also the training choices. Terrible choices imo. Not one warlock in the game will take the Pillaging option so why do we have it? Its a horrible spell. We need to have Null Distortion or some other dmg spell there. How about Nil absolution to make up for Wizards getting their best lower recast single target nuke? I took Seal of Ebon Thought because I already had Dark Nebula Master 1. There really isnt another good option there. Now the Seal line is another story. Unless someone can show us verifiable proof of this spell actually do ANYTHING at all it must be changed to something useful. (ie.. Int/sta buff or something similar) There is absolutely no reason why we cant get a dev to answer how this spell actually works.
OMG!! Kal such a noob.... I mean moonguard said it make the spell mroe effective.... hmm...dosent cost less power....dont get less resists...dont get less fizzles...dont roll on mob as higher lvl....ah....forget that comment..moonguard should be the one awarded noob dev of the year I would LOVE to choose ebon again even if its 10% better without it. Now I got it only because I already had nebula and netharos master....and i aint taking pilaging for the whooping 10power or so more i will get each 2min lol my fellow wizy guild makes got a fast casting ice comet ,thier m2 choice is about 2.8k dmg with 3/9 cast timers. Simply amazing!
Cast Times Our cast times are horrible I feel like I am playing in Slo-mo now before the combat updates the game flowed alot better I could adjust my casting to the situation from a all out barrage to a tiny trickle. Now I have no choice but to chain cast because all my spells take 4 sec to cast and I atleast want to hit the mob before it dies Lack of a secondary Damage type Almost all of or spells are poison based we have a few Ice based spells like Ice Flame, the Flash Freeze spell line, and Words of force. However Ice Flame and words of force are adventure pack spells and not every one can or will get these so I hardly think that those should count as our secondary damage type Warlocks are suppose to be poison and disease based but where are our disease spells? With the changes to the raid mobs that are comming this is going to hurt us bad. Seal Buff line Could some one please tell us what this buff is suppose to do? Moorguard sure couldn't in fact his reply probably raised even more questions. see this link for more info http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=combat&message.id=71530#M71530 As a 51 Warlock I cannot tell any diffrence between having this buff up or not having it up and it is Adept 3 Please make this spell line have a noticable effect or make it a Intel / Str buff again. At least the Intel make our spells hit harder and the Str will allow us to carry a bit more which was nice but I would really rather see the Seal line of spells fixed Netheros From the recent parses of Protoflame and Netheros I have done Netheros Adept 3 and Protoflame Adept 1 did roughly the same damage as each other and Protoflame Adept 1 outdamaged Netheros Adept 3 when it died causing fiery end to proc. And sadly enough protoflame does not even require a Nil Crystals wizard equivelent Should Protoflame Adept 1 Out damage Netheros Adept 3? This was tested by me a 51 Warlock and my friend a 51 Wizzy on level 50 solo mobs both casting out pets on the same target at the same time and letting them fight it out till the mob or our pets died. If protoflame did not die Netheros would be even or slightly ahead in total damage. "Slightly ahead meaning with in 200 points of damage or less" and ofcourse since 200 damage can be accounted by the fact I hit my cast button 1 sec before him. Here is a link to a previous discussion on Netheros http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=24&message.id=12580#M12580 Nil Crystals Getting Nil Crystals to cast our spells with alot of times just seems like work it is not fun at all. The spells that generate Nil Crystals need to be changed or at least the Curse of Emptiness needs changed to something that is useful that we can cast in XP groups that will provide enough benifit to the group or Warlock that will make it worth while to cast. As it is right now the Curse of Emptiness is probably the most worthless spell in our arsenal which is sad because it use to be a spell I would cast almost every single fight before the combat changes. The Curse of the Nil has its uses but it is not really worth casting on alot of mobs because the fights are over so fast. In a White/Yellow/Orange ^^^ encounter this spell comes in handy and probably save the healer a little extra mana because the mob doesn't hit the tank quite as hard. We have been discussing thisIn the Warlock forums a few people said they are alright with the Nil Crystals because they are required for our more powerful spells.... How is Netheros more powerfull the the Wizards Protoflame which does not require any componet? They do the same DPS the only diffrence between the 2 spells is that our Netheros has cooler graphics. None of our "Nil Crystal" spells are very powerful at all. Wicked Gift is nice in AoE encounters but I would hardly call it powerful at master 1 it does about 1000 to 2000 extra damage in 30 seconds and has a 2 min recast. And Dark Pillaging gives back 156 mana back to the group over 36 seconds at master 1 with a 2 min recast and cost the Warlock 216 mana to cast. Of course a lot of fights don't even last 36 sec unless it is a raid mob . The Curse of Emptiness line needs changed back to a poison / disease debuff and / or make the Steel breath line also generate Nil Crystals. Also a spell that requires a componet in order to cast it should be more powerful then a spell that does not and this is not the case with Netheros and Protoflame and as for the Pillaging line not only does the warlock not break even on the power cost we have to have a nil crystal in order to cast it.... Here is a link to a previous discussion on the Nil Crystals http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=24&message.id=12385#M12385 Contract line This spell is in line with all the other classes version but I think that all classes that have this type of spell need a little boost. Come on 200 mana regen for a T6 spell that is not even enough to cast 75% of our DD or AoE spells Cower line: Master 1 cower is 50% chance to slow by 35% + make afraid for 4 seconds. The wizard is 100% chance to slow by 49% (at ad3) for 10 seconds both have the same duration. Seems a little unbalanced to me maybe making Cower Adept 3 49% slow for 8 sec and a 50% chance to fear for 4 sec Curse of Emptiness line This spell is worthless in group situations unless the Warlock is pulling .... which we all know is not a great idea. Please change it back to a debuff Utility If the pillaging line is our replacement for Evac then we got shafted hard by SOE. At least let the Warlock break even from the power cost at Adept 3 "Currently you still lose out even at master 1" since it takes 30 sec to get the full effect. This spell has little to no use in solo or group situations and is very marginal in raid situations. This spell needs about 150 - 250 added to the amount of power regen and maybe over maybe 20 sec and a 1 min 30 sec recast. Master 2 training The level 54 options are horrible my Netheros adept 3 is out damaged by protoflame adept 1 already and I highly doubt that the master 1 version would outdamage it also although over a the full cast time netheros does 1200-2400 damage which is a nice DoT but protoflame does the same ... more if protoflame is killed and procs fiery end and does not cost a Nil Crystal so this is no really a good option for a master 2 Seal of Ebon thought at the moment no one can say that there is a for sure difference in having this spell up or not having it up ... not a very good choice. Please tell us what this spell is suppose to do and make it so we can see a diffrence by actually using it. Shadowed pillaging - Yet again a horrible choice this spell line needs some loving before it is a viable option Which leaves Dark Nebula as the only spell where you well see a for sure benifit Why do Wizzys get to have Ball of Inceneration as a choice and Warlocks get shafted here? Message Edited by Collectall3 on 10-12-2005 08:52 AM
Comments from a warlock that is below 40: Casting times: as everyone has said multiple times in multiple posts, this needs to be fixed. They are simply too long. The Absolution line, Distortion line and Flashfreeze line in particular. Roots: Make paralyzing fear an AOE root similiar to bony grasp. I don't feel like an AOE specailist right now. For v and w groups I cast grievous blast, get a stun, then start absolution and hope it finishes before they interrupt me. Curse lines: Useless. nuff said. AOE debuffs: Steal breath is contagious, but it is too slow. The mobs are usually dead before the debuff has affected every thing. Suggestion: Make one of the curse lines a debuff of poision/disease that is an group encounter debuff. Disease spells: None. Where are they? I may be wrong, but I don't think I even have one at lvl 38. This definitely needs to be fixed. We need an AOE and DD disease spell line. Right now soloing is not very fun. I end up running or dying as much as I kill. I have died more times since the revamp than in the 36 lvls prior to the revamp. Right now I have start crafting again, it is more fun. My 2 coppers worth.
Totally agree with cast times. Maybe have the AOE's the same time since the mobs stay up for a period of time, but please reduce the DD spells. That would help a lot. Sometimes I cant even get a spell off in a group with a nec/wizzy/assassin/ranger.
I have mostly soloed my way to lvl 58 and have totaly disagree on each and everything OP said Solo Warlocks rocks like never before - you cannt grind at least 15%/hour you have not a slightest clue how to play your class. Its all about picking right targets and right attack sequence. Grade A for solo Duo-Trio Well havent done much trio but duo have pro and con - pro - you get safety net - better roots, healing external power regeneration. con - you get far less exp per kill.... Overall I found that the best duo partner for warlock is coercer - godly good root, nice backup vs. adds (AE mez + single target mez) + massive Int buff + power regeneration buff + moderately good (usefull) AE + massive resistance debuff (broadband). Coercer can completely block spell casting mob from doing any harm (priceless). All in all if mob not considers as a epic - duo coercer+warlock will kill it Grade B+ for duo Group Well here is a tricky situation - you need good tank (preferebly paladin or zerker) and specific targets - aka big groups of 3+ mob per encounter. Killing +++ in group is WASTE OF YOUR TIME - exp sucks and so is loot. I repeat the ONLY type of encounter that can give warlock comparable exp to solo is cyclops. Thats it nothing esle. Second problem in group is power shortage. If you are in good group you wil be sitting at zero power most of the time (and yes I do all this [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] like t5 drinks/primatic/gebs/intution you name it). In other word to sustein damage warlock must have coercer attached to group or at least illusionist. Buttom line groups are bad for exping for warlock - only use of em if you need finish quest that probably it about groups Grade B- for group Problems Roots - warlocks and wizards have WORST roots in game - take any other class and compare with sorcs and you will understand what I mean. I can take my lvl 50 coercer out and kill heroics +++ all day long with ZERO risk of braking root - only if I get slopy and foget refresh debuff and root got resist to many time in row. My main problem with roots is STABILITY. Ok I can agree that 1 class having unbrakeable AE root was kinda way out of balance I sorry I fail to see a difference between that situation and current situation then wardens, fury, coercers, illusionists - ALL those classes have unbrakeable roots. Bear in mind that discription on Skeletal grasp said - root have half chance of braking compare to normal root .... well total bull[expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]. I'd gladly trade current version of roots for roots with shorter duration longer recast but unbrakeable Single target DD I Still dont get it why the [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] our so called "upgrade" Nul Distortion do LESS damage then prerewamp Nil Distortion. Look its not funny prerewamp NilD did 1476-2106 at Adept 3 .... nowdays Nul Distortion at Adept 3 do .... 1106-2056. Dont give me a bull[expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] about shorter recast timer because we lost BSS during rewamp which was solid 850-1100/9s. Once again Soul Blister still not cut it off. I did not see any reason for NERFING our Dark Pyre line of nukes (before rewamp it did 333-555 damage every 6s) now its dot lol Shadow Pyre do around 600-1000 damage ... over 12s (including cast time) Canibalization Ouch here as well - before rewamp 500health=400power every 20s with Grisly Contract Adept 3 .... nowdays 400 health 233 power every 20s with Ghastly contract Adept 3 ... can we say sucks? What is good? New spells - Dark Investation - first real dot that deadly as hell if you know how to trigger broodling. Its still somethat bugged - broodling not scale up - and stay at lvl 52 which make em litteraly useless vs. anything that lvl 59+. Nul Careless - FANTASTIC spell - saved my **** more time then I dare to count - in a sence its PBAE knockback + 91% slow (read stun) for 10second.... And AE stun it what actually I always been missed on my warlock not anymore.... Netherous Realm - SOE made us AE class and this spell boost out AE ability to new lvl - simply like that Rewamped old spells - Tongue Twist line - let just say Vulian Intrusion its 7.7s stifle of mob that not epic, Devastation - 4s stun in the end is god send, altought damage of devastation been nerfed still before rewamp Adept 3 did solid 560-688 for a 5 tics total after rewamp it do 396-712 for same 5 tics which net a lot lower final damage but 4s stun in the end is danm good. Dark Nebula now actually AE stun. Damage isn't that great at all even at Master 1 (593-983) but stun is stun. What is different but can be consider is a ok trade off Well Nil Abs - its do a lot more damage then prerewamp but its on same time with rest of AE but this timer is shorter but it take more power to cast this spell then it was before but it still less then total cost of prerewamp.... So I'd say we even Aura of Emptiness - well we did lost 10.7s stun but we got damage booster for ~1000-1200 every fight but for a cost of power (and AoE not cheap to cast) - well all in all I consider it even Deter-Thwart - we got shorter casting (from 4s down to 2s) but we pay for that shrinked duration of stun (from 8s stun down to 3.5/4s stun) but now this stunds do mean damage ~980-1680 for Thwart Adept 3 Torment of Shadow - Scruge of Night - its dot - was useless still useless - it use to be great pulling spell with long long range .... not anymore, but casting time went down to 1s from 4s which is good. Damage per tic been nerfed somethat (not by much but still Adept 3 scruge of night do about as much damage as did torment of shadow adept 1 prerewamp) but power cost been seriously reduced which raised DPM of spell very notably (from 4DPM upto almost 10DPM) - so all in all we even here Abysimal Fury-Boundless Fury - well it was useless it still more or less useless. It was crappy AE with huge casting time (5s) its now crappy PBAE Rain. It gain much faster casting time it do more damage (heck it do enouth damage to be consider as actual AE attack) but now its not limited by 1 encounter its true PBAE which make it very suicide spell for warlock it will pissed off every single mob half zone around you. So use it with causion. Spell was bad and its still bad but now it have at least some use. I cound it even Chaotic Maelstorm - it was Dot with Nox debuff - now its AE selfreplicating nox debuff. We lost damage on it but we gain AE effect.... so we even
