Warlock Issues GU66 and beyond...

I played around with the right side last night in Dreadcutter, and it really is just functionally awful.

The whole concept of the more increments you have the faster Rift and Apoc cast is just bad. Especially when the max bonus is at max increments, so to cast those spells at max increments you don't gain any more increments, meaning those casts are completely wasted in that department, meaning longer before you build increments for the final spell again. It also encourages saving Apocalypse because you'll cast it faster, but really all that does is create more spike dps for a loss of overall dps.

Then you have the really funky stuff. Aura, no increments. Both the green AE debuff and deagros, no increments. 3 AE temp buffs, no increments. Dark Aggravation (nevermind the no spell double on it) regardless of how many mobs you hit with it only gives increments for 1 mob. Dumbfires even though they are all ae's, 1 mob. So we have all this stuff that should be helping us to AE, in AE situations, that doesn't work at all with the AE line. Doesn't really make much sense.

There are only 2 reasons this line even kind of works ever. 1, Dark Siphoning is bugged and gives you increments for every friendly player hit by the heal portion. 2, because you pull 10+ trash mobs at a time (that live for a long time) in dreadcutter, and on Pirate Kings there is dead time between add sets if you dps is good, meaning it's hard to keep increments on influx without losing dps.

Maybe if Warlocks where like Wizards, and had good useful PBAE's that you always wanted to cast, like Eci's, Fusion, and Firestorm. But alas, all we have is Cataclysm.

Bump!

Disappointing that such a constructive & well considered posting by Mogrim, which highlights all the significant issues confronting this now largely forgotten class, hasn't even been acknowledged by SoE.

Sadly it seems pretty clear that nothing is going to change anytime soon.

I prefer to think positively:

I threw a lot of thoughts and possibilities out there... my goal isn't for this to be a complaint thread, but a constructive effort to make some improvements.

I'd love to stick with the right side prestige as massive AOE is what Warlocks are all about but the way it is now the left side is so much better there is no debate about what to use.

If the right side had something extra like for each set number of increments you gain potency up to a max of 10% so as to balance with the left or spell double attack at some value. Also a personal annoyance but I much proffered it when it was one massive attack with toxic assault, getting hits for 3m + was awesome, feels like we lost our party piece.
The AOE at 180 increments also feels like it needs to be boosted considerably.

All good points by Mogrim and doing something interesting with the static discharge AA line would make both Wizards and Warlocks happy, 50K 360 AOE would be good to be relevant.

I have to say... a little sense of despair hit me when I saw Xelgad reply to some other posts, including the Conj post... and this one was ignored.

We're already seeing the max exodus and guild's requesting Warlocks betray to Wizards. How long until we get some attention here? Conj's spoke up and right away a response. I know I'm not the only Warlock who notices our problem... heck, a ton of non-warlocks have been speaking up about our issues for a while... and some of the new proposed changes have a very significant potential to hurt us even further. I'm really concerned right now.

Going to start studying how to Wizard this weekend. :-(

Non-warlock here.
I strongly support the OP on this. Some(many) of these proposed changes really really should be done.

Reducing the increments required to build up the right side prestige would be a big step forward as would upping the damage of the AOE option, it would be good to have a real choice here for warlocks.
There was a bug a while back that gave absolution a one second cast time which made it a lot more viable, it would be good if some sort of balance could be made with this and please so something with static discharge to make it more viable.

Warlocks were supposed to be the original mass mob melter, time to remove the max target restriction for some spells I think or allow them to be toggled to blue AOEs with another ability like the mythical.

I am in the same boat. There is no need for locks now when wizzies can do so much more aoe and single target damage. I have a couple friends who play wizard very well. Time to call in some tutoring favors.

Considering the time that has been spent by Mogrim and others and the ignoring that is going on, I see no other option.

If the fear is we could become overpowered (a valid concern) then perhaps it should start small? Changing Gift to a maintained spell with 5aa points in it would be really small but correct an annoyance and make things just a bit better. Then once you can see that doesn't make us OP, maybe cut down temp cast times and so on and so forth.

I agree with Chronus... start small.

My two suggestions are:
1)Make Gift of Bert maintained (one less thing to click) if you want to stick it on rank 5 of noxious attunement which changes gift of bert to affect all of our spells so be it
2) using the AA dark reaction to not only increase dark infestation but ADDITIONALY lower absolution cast time to base by .265 per rank so three ranks make it cast as fast a distortion effectively serving as a aoe distortion replacement. making it worth casting more when spec into Enchance: Absolution not Enchance: distortion.

(Ideally, both these spells should end up with shorter cast times... in this day and age as they are more filler then when they used to be the long cast long big booms.. plaguebringer, blast of devastation, and toxic assault/occult bolt among others have taken over the build up big boom role.)

Other suggestions for right side...
1)Eternal damnation 59 second recast.. 30 second duration AND a 2.41 base cast...really?
At least move the base cast to 2.0 so at 100% its 1.0.
2)Furthermore, eternal darkness should reduce all reuse fractionally on and rift. This is should provide a net effect of rift with a lower reuse and combine with stacks should have lower cast time making up much more viable for sustaining aoe dps high aoe dps fights.
(You'll notice quickly in aoe encounter fights you run out of stuff to cast pretty fast.. aside from spamming catacylsm and popping dark aggrevation as it pops up then resorting back to single target until your spells are up again.)

3.Reduce stacks like is the popular suggestion to say 150 or 160. And make aura applies stacks like it should...
However I will personally say you do have to cast stuff like concussive blast, static discharge, blast of devastation, and cataclysm and your greens and you get back up there quickly.. but i grant this forum not quickly enough to not interrupt one's flow/rotation or feel like its a smooth transition.. cast order feels disjointed since there is lots of waiting for 180 stacks.. but there is the April 30th change where you can blow it at 36 and increases by 5% the longer you wait exists.

Just another weigh in... hope they are weighing the options!

Also, all this slightly... relative since they are adding AA profiles... on zones with encounter stuff go right side and have fun.. no encounters go back to your left side single target spec. YAAAH for dynamic AA profile switching..

--Taka

At this point, I feel like we're almost just wasting our time. Our Beta thread was pretty much ignored, and this one has been too.

/shrug. Can't do anything more than what I've done with this thread. I tried.

at least, you tried. although it would of almost been nice if soe just said we really dont care to begin with, and saved you the effort of giving them a lot of good material in how to better the class/game. it's sad when the players care and put forth more effort than the people whose job it is to produce.

You know, if it was all "OP us" I could see it being ignored. But people spent alot of time posting very insightful and well researched items. For those to be ignored make me sad for eq2 and eq-next.

Sorry I play a Warlock, I'll have to switch to something else

I sure hope they are not keeping warlocks **** only because they are concerned we might be overpowered if they implement any suggestion..... But there must be some reason. Wizzies essentially get a blue PB with Ice Comet prestige now, cant we get an effective ability too?

I strongly agree with you, I tried myself to see what a Warlock was like and all the spell timing was very bad. It took the fun out of playing.

Its about making every class fun,smooth and different.

Clarify, if you will.

I would like to understand end game warlock issue better.

I am reading the following:

1) Warlock damage escalation on non-linked raid encounters does not equal or exceed a wizard but is slightly less?
2) Our single target whatever damage is behind Wizards, Rangers, Assassins and Beastlords (possibly some Conji), effectively making them more desirable?
3) Right side does not seems viable raid spec because

• A) left side does more dps on X or less targets, [many have tested right side does, in fact, scale higher then left on linked encounters.]
• B) there very few examples of linked encounters of greater then 3 to make right side viable raid spec
• C) it does not provide no "smooth" game play like due to waiting for 180 stacks for max damage.

All that being said, warlocks contribution to the raid is still primarily damage, spreading multi-mob damage from the warlock and noxious based buffs on the group and its not like the class can't do it job.. just that the job isn't as much in demand as say... single target damage..

I personally think the whole aa layout is very poorly played out the whole class is FUBAR. they shift from one focus to another and the devs cannot make up there mind what they want to do with this class.------ first of all the dps tiers are FUBAR. only T1 dps classs should be sorcerers and predators to begin with.------ As far as this class goes i think it should be all about AOE DPS !!! ...we have negative void should make ALL aoe's single target w/ bonus, use it. Secondly the aa trees should focus on nothing but aoe ability increases/ propagation/ and modifiers get rid of the other garbage. Third and most important ----ALL abilities should be Blue mass target spells and all be singled shot by negative void. Basically the prestige tree should be aoe converted single target ability bs dmg/ crit dmg/ potency/ trigger increasers then the other side adds propagation effects toxicity and so foreth. lastly we should NOT be dependent on another class just to make the parse.....all the spells need to happen alot quiker or reduced and merged.

i have been playing around with the right side spec, i have read alot of the negative comments about it on eqflames , at first i did notice a slight drop in my dps between the 2 specs, then i accidentally dropped toxicity off my bar and wow i was chaining rift and Apocalypse over my normal spell rotation aftershocks was amazing ..the trick was not to hit and drop your tox count leave it maxed out. after i played around and worked in a decent spell rotation with my spells i noticed a slight increase in dps especially those 2-3 mob encounters, some reason my single target dps increased as well. well off to expearment some more and home that someday the devs will actually read this before there is nothing left in the game but scouts, healers,tanks and necro n-everyone else deleted.