Warlock Endgame Problem: Immunities

[SpeakerForTheDead]

Warlock is a fun, popular class for regular leveling, but for endgame the vast majority of warlock dmg options are not good due to 1 simple reason: immunities.

The only dmg builds that seem to work are a sonic warlock, because not much is resistant/immune to it, and a fire warlock, but only if used by a tiefling, because tiefling can remove fire immunity briefly. but both these are viable for 1 simple reason: immunities.

The most extreme example of this problem is the abyss pact warlock, which does negative dmg. if you choose to try to focus on the negative dmg, you will find that your abilities constantly heal undead, and unlike a wizard you have no way to stop it. every time you fight undead you need to turn off your DI mantle, and sometimes your abyss pact too, and thus only do a small fraction of your dmg potential. all of your SLAs from the magus of the eclipse tree will heal undead foes, your DI shadow dragon breath heals them, and if you're like me and think maybe you'll use warlock's high spell crit dmg for a ruin build, you'll find your DI t5 ruins heal undead more than it damages them. and there's nothing you can do to turn it off, so your ruins are useless vs undead bosses and such, along with all your other good spells. considering you fight undead a lot in this game, this makes this char basically useless endgame compared to other options.

Elemental warlocks have a less extreme problem but compared to other classes like sorcerers who can all remove immunity there is no comparison (except for tiefling).

Warlocks already have to split their dmg between the basic blast dmg and pact dmg. if warlocks actually had a way to remove immunities for their pact type, it wouldnt make them overpowered, it would just even things up a little. druids and sorcs already have much higher caster lvls with their spells so they do more dmg, even with warlock's increased crit dmg. and sorc, druid, wizard, etc. have better DC potential since their max spell lvl is 9, while warlock is only 6, giving warlocks a minus 15% chance for their heightened dc spells to hit compared to the other casters.

On a personal note, i was very disheartened to find that my first character that i've put dozens and dozens of hours into (abyss dmg warlock) basically has to sit back in a team when fighting undead and not cast most of my spells, because they'll do more healing than hurting, and undead come up a LOT.

Please give warlocks the ability to remove immunities, so that more may join the ranks of the useful endgame characters. Please voice your support if you agree that you'd like your warlock to have the ability to remove immunities for it's pact type. The more support this gets, the better the chance of a dev making a decision based off of it ;) ty

[Tyrande]

I /support this thread. Yes, the warlock damage is minuscule if you are playing along with Sorcerers and Druids in the same party on Rx.

On R1-R4 it wasn't bad, since the damage is enough to kill the monsters or IK working... but R8-R10... the difference is huge.

And sorry OP, you should've played an ice warlock, fiendish (fire) or GOO (acid) or fey (sonic) warlock... Abyss warlock just isn't feasible on DDO since DDO has a lot more undead than your regular P&P campaigns.

Night Revels: undead.

Crystal Cove: undead.

Festivult: not entirely undead, but its regular questing and regular questing have lots of undead.

Mid-winter festival: personally I have not engaged in this festival but AFAIK its just skating and skiing.

Mimics: ... finally not undead, but its regular questing and looting chests: see Festivult.

[LurkingVeteran]

More like SpeakerForTheUndead.

It's a good point though. You can turn the pact off, but it severely limits your damage in undead content and there is nothing you can do about it. Neg Cleric has a similar problem but at least can do something about it (e.g. secondary focus on light spells). As I've said a million times in the past, there should be a feat to change the element of your spells for a steep cost (sp or cd), or change your spell power to another type so you are not as penalized for switching to other spells (when they exist, although lower crit is still a huge DPS loss). In theory it could be fun to learn to know which element a mob is vulnerable to and attack with that. Rewards players that pay attention and make choices in combat.

[mr420247]

Acid locks do ok not great but they get the job done 31 di 22 primal rest xx

[Wizard1406]

+1

If not a full immunity break then at least an enhancement so mobs don't heal from your pact and break 50% of immunity or something.

[Zuldar]

Immunities make sense in pen and paper since you can realistically prepare alternative methods or use ingenuity to deal with them. That's less practical in DDO do to the massive power creep over the tabletop game necessitating extreme specialization rather than generalization.

Might be worth rethinking the idea of immunities to just be a sharp reduction in spellpower vs just outright immunity. One possible option would be to have immune mobs ignore some or all of your spellpower for the purpose of taking damage rather than reducing it to 0, it maintains the flavor of being immune without rendering entire builds obsolete. It might have the positive side effect of reducing the value of immunity stripping making them slightly less useful.

Maybe have immune mobs reduce your spellpower by half and mobs that absorb ignore your spellpower entirely so you do minimal but still some damage.

[Paladin_of_Power]

I do agree some warlock immunity stripping would be nice help even things up playing the abyss pack is particularly difficult because like you say it will heal some undead I’ve thought that the abyss pact blast should also do a halt undead on the undead that it hits.

When your Tainted Scholar is active have your blast Panic undead.

Oh and for all warlocks the Blood Component is not increasing the speed of your eldritch blast. Bug has been submitted.

[axel15810]

Might be an unpopular opinion but I've always disliked the ability to strip immunities in DDO and wouldn't want to see it expanded. If anything I think the ability to strip immunities should be taken out of DDO and balance achieved in another way if a balance issue does exist for a particular class. I atleast wouldn't want immunity stripping to be a normal thing every race/class has access to. Running my tiefling FVS and stripping fire immunity and killing devils and fire eles with firestorm just always felt completely absurd to me. Not to mention being able to cast a variety of spells to adapt to different enemy types as opposed to being a 1 trick pony that only ever has to use a couple spells because immunity stripping exists is more interesting game design to me for casters in general.

[eightspoons]

Might be an unpopular opinion but I've always disliked the ability to strip immunities in DDO and wouldn't want to see it expanded. If anything I think the ability to strip immunities should be taken out of DDO and balance achieved in another way if a balance issue does exist for a particular class. I atleast wouldn't want immunity stripping to be a normal thing every race/class has access to. Running my tiefling FVS and stripping fire immunity and killing devils and fire eles with firestorm just always felt completely absurd to me. Not to mention being able to cast a variety of spells to adapt to different enemy types as opposed to being a 1 trick pony that only ever has to use a couple spells because immunity stripping exists is more interesting game design to me for casters in general.

Not unpopular with me. If more classes, or ultimately all classes, were to get immunity stripping, then what's the point of having immunities at all?

Also, not an immunity bypass as such, but I utterly detested the change that made fire spells function (albeit in a less effective fashion) under water - and I still do. All because some casters focused almost exclusively on fire made lots of wailing noises while stomping around like petulant children because they couldn't supernuke in 3 quests.

[Zuldar]

but I utterly detested the change that made fire spells function (albeit in a less effective fashion) under water - and I still do.

That's actually kind of working as it's supposed to as in PnP, there's technically supposed to be a spellcraft check but it tops out at 29 with 9th level spells. If anything there shouldn't even be a fire damage penalty, that's kind of just a house rule.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#underwaterCombat

[gravisrs]

I'm not entirely towards strippinig down immunities - but at least your pact portion shouldn't heal mobs to full after one wrong shot. This is just wrong.

[slarden]

I actually think warlock is the most balanced class in terms of immunity because half is base and half is pact damage and the base damage can bypass everything between alignment, force and untyped options that exist. Other forms of immunity stripping would have been more balanced if implemented at 50-70% damage rather than 100% or even higher than 100% with immunity stripping.

In terms of damage dealt by warlock at epic levels - it is really weak and should be supplemented at epic levels and end game with epic feats and destiny abilities.

Warlock class damage is <15% of the total damage over a 15-second rotation against bosses for example. In Carceri storm if I count greater creeping cold and niac's biting cold (boosted by ED) it's still between 25-30% of my damage over a 15-second rotation. This includes a 2-feat tax at epic levels.

And unfortunately as far as ED goes EDs are going to be balanced around the heavy dps classes which will always end up hurting lower dps classes which is why this problem needs to be fixed at the class level.

Warlock damage was far worse prior to U51 so I am not inclined to complain too much. Warlock damage with ED and epic feats is double what it was before U51 which sounds op, but it's not. That boost was needed for single-target damage.

As far as abyssal pact - yes sounds much better than it actually works. It's definitely the worst pact. You should turn off the pact when it's healing enemies for sure. Fixing this would go a long way in making abyssal warlock more viable.

Another simple fix for abyssal warlock is make rend the soul the level 17 ability instead of 19 and make greater death aura the level 19 ability.

[Eantarus]

Blanket immunities are a problem for a lot of builds and IMO a very poor design choice. If a mob has "99% damage reduction" for a specific damage type, you an still kill it eventually. If its just straight up immune, you're just stuck. This problem affects all spellcasters, but hits warlocks especially hard because they lack a built-in immunity stripper.

It also makes most sorc types other than fire sorc useless and any sorc-build that doesn't go pure pointless. No matter what you choose, at some point you are going to run into a pack of mobs who just say "immune" over their heads.

While wizard nukers don't have it as bad as locks, they still have it pretty bad since they also can't get immunity strippers. You either need 8 hotbars packed with every spell in the game, or to invest seriously into EK as a backup.

So yeah. Blanket immunities are bad for the game.

[droid327]

In general: immunity stripping is bad for the game, it reduces dimensionality by allowing casters to just have one OSFA tool for every mob. It should probably be something very special and unique to Druids and PMs. Everyone else should have to spend the opportunity cost to support a second element - those two classes are kinda forced into a single element, which is why they're excepted. Yes, even Sorcs should have to take a second Savant line and partially gear for it to deal with immunes. And Tieflings shouldn't get a breaker, it should just be a fire vuln debuff at best.

Warlocks are where all other casters should be right now. They do have a second element - Chaos damage - which gives them an option for element-immunes, to complement their Force/Evil blast damage, which is pretty universal. Being forced to have a sub-optimal answer to immunes would be a counterbalance to being able to blast their way through non-immunes with such impunity.

In specific: yeah Abyss locks are extra-screwed right now, just because Neg immunes are so much more ubiquitous than any other immunity. They're pretty much relegated to being a melee ES lock to actually do anything. They maybe should get a breaker too for undead like PMs, and then have to Chaos through constructs...or maybe a "soft breaker" that reduces all neg immune enemies from 100% to like 50%, so undead/constructs are still a challenge and they're not totally OSFA

[Marshal_Lannes]

Might be an unpopular opinion but I've always disliked the ability to strip immunities in DDO and wouldn't want to see it expanded. If anything I think the ability to strip immunities should be taken out of DDO and balance achieved in another way if a balance issue does exist for a particular class. I atleast wouldn't want immunity stripping to be a normal thing every race/class has access to. Running my tiefling FVS and stripping fire immunity and killing devils and fire eles with firestorm just always felt completely absurd to me. Not to mention being able to cast a variety of spells to adapt to different enemy types as opposed to being a 1 trick pony that only ever has to use a couple spells because immunity stripping exists is more interesting game design to me for casters in general.

I concur with you. Immunity stripping is too powerful right now. Overall I support more DR/Resistances on mobs because it allows for more tactical gameplay.

[Paladin_of_Power]

A Warlock epic destiny sure would be nice.

[LightBear]

A Warlock epic destiny sure would be nice.

Would be nice to have a focus on a pact for sure and have it be with some weird ancient celestial being no one ever has heard of, if anything just to stop Vecna.

Maybe pack some nth type of damage on each of your blasts that is just plain new and no one can resist its damage.

Maybe put on something that strips +1 immunity die with each blast and then be able to add more dice to this strip roll?
Kinda like how vulnerable works I guess.

For the OP, it isn't just Warlocks, the new shadow/undead clerics have the same problem with undeads.

[SpeakerForTheDead]

Would be nice to have a focus on a pact for sure and have it be with some weird ancient celestial being no one ever has heard of, if anything just to stop Vecna.

Maybe pack some nth type of damage on each of your blasts that is just plain new and no one can resist its damage.

Maybe put on something that strips +1 immunity die with each blast and then be able to add more dice to this strip roll?
Kinda like how vulnerable works I guess.

For the OP, it isn't just Warlocks, the new shadow/undead clerics have the same problem with undeads.

i tried a shadow cleric. they have lots of good stuff specifically for undead. good single target and aoe stuff specifically for undead. nothing like a warlock who can only use half their eldritch blast dmg and almost no spells that can hurt them. shadow cleric is still designed to fight undead. abyss warlock they just decided to screw over in that category.

[LightBear]

i tried a shadow cleric. they have lots of good stuff specifically for undead. good single target and aoe stuff specifically for undead. nothing like a warlock who can only use half their eldritch blast dmg and almost no spells that can hurt them. shadow cleric is still designed to fight undead. abyss warlock they just decided to screw over in that category.

Ok, totally off topic but care to share your shadow warlock build somewhere so I can up my experience by at least one when going through the next iteration of that class life?
As I have a totally different experience of this class than you had it seems. :)

[SpeakerForTheDead]

Ok, totally off topic but care to share your shadow warlock build somewhere so I can up my experience by at least one when going through the next iteration of that class life?
As I have a totally different experience of this class than you had it seems. :)

um, guessing u meant shadow cleric... dont have a full build made or anything, didnt get too far with him yet, but the trick is having both negative and light/alignment spellpower. holy smite works great for undead, the turn undeads strait up kill them with that tree, and you get bestow curse for 0 mana that does HUGE dmg to undead, and you still have the regular bestow curse spell too that also does huge dmg to undead once you get the free one in that tree. clerics also have lots of other spells that do extra dmg vs undead. just get the right ones with the right pts spent in the shadow tree and you should be fine for undead. only prob i've really found with the shadow cleric is that it goes through mana really fast if you cast a lot.

[Zuldar]

A Warlock epic destiny sure would be nice.

That would help for sure, maybe have it give alternative pact options, so you could use your regular pact or switch to a different element as needed. To make it useable by anyone I'd have the first core be an eldritch blast toggle that uses your character level as your effective warlock level, than core 2 be a pact option also using your character level (maybe with unique pacts to the destiny). If they're feeling particularly ambitious the epic moment should a a wild shift type ability that temporarily turns you into an avatar based on your currently active pact with a uniquely powerful eldritch blast based on the type (maybe a large AoE attack with a legendary greensteel effect based on the pact so say Salt for Caceri for instance).

[Smokewolf]

Yet the Dev’s implemented it anyway…

Between the healing of Undead, to your Shroud (form) preventing the use of Celestial Spirit, this Pact is all but useless for anything but Heroics. Furthermore, Warlocks have to use a spell (Death Aura) rather than being healed by their own negative Eldritch-Aura! (Why…? When Radiant Clerics do it.)

While I get that development is a mix of balance and compromise, what we were given was beyond underwhelming. To the point that, other than the Pact’s initial release, I can’t say that I’ve seen anyone using it.

I’d ask that this Pact be re-visited and corrections made but when has that ever happed?

-Smoke

[krimsonrane]

Acid warlocks work decent. Only 2-3 things in the game are immune.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

I agree.

And the Immunity break should come with the new Destiny system.

Draconic is basically the sorcerer Destiny, sorcs already receive an immunity breaker in their capstone, but it would be a great add to the new system to add an immunity break to the core of DI for the elements there.
That would fix the necro warlock bc there is a a neg energy tree in DI.

Magus of the Eclipse should also receive one, as it is the wizard tree. An Immunity Break for Cold/Necro

Primal Avatar too, since druids get their Immunity break either as part of their elemental form, or as a spell cast, it would be nice for Heart/Thorn/Storm to contain an immunity break.

this would allow for the builds that are not min/maxed to compete in mid-to-high skull reapers, as well as make the game play more flavorful and meaningful for the casters.

I love the idea of a necro warlock - it is thematically fantastic - however the implementation is not fun, it doesn't work at all, the spells are the wrong ones and do not help, it's just broken bad. To top that you cannot be in ES and undead at the same time and that means you must blast on a necrolock and blasting in epics/legendary is bad bc the dmg is so low - you basically must kite/run and blasting you'll pull every group and I hope you really like running around in circles bc you can't kill mobs fast; perhaps can do better with hold monster and E tentacles keeping the rush away but one or two fey champ and boom, deader than dead, you're undead already so what's the point, better to grab a pair of shades and a book and go back to the dark crypt from whence you came.

[SpeakerForTheDead]

I agree.

And the Immunity break should come with the new Destiny system.

Draconic is basically the sorcerer Destiny, sorcs already receive an immunity breaker in their capstone, but it would be a great add to the new system to add an immunity break to the core of DI for the elements there.
That would fix the necro warlock bc there is a a neg energy tree in DI.

Magus of the Eclipse should also receive one, as it is the wizard tree. An Immunity Break for Cold/Necro

Primal Avatar too, since druids get their Immunity break either as part of their elemental form, or as a spell cast, it would be nice for Heart/Thorn/Storm to contain an immunity break.

this would allow for the builds that are not min/maxed to compete in mid-to-high skull reapers, as well as make the game play more flavorful and meaningful for the casters.

I love the idea of a necro warlock - it is thematically fantastic - however the implementation is not fun, it doesn't work at all, the spells are the wrong ones and do not help, it's just broken bad. To top that you cannot be in ES and undead at the same time and that means you must blast on a necrolock and blasting in epics/legendary is bad bc the dmg is so low - you basically must kite/run and blasting you'll pull every group and I hope you really like running around in circles bc you can't kill mobs fast; perhaps can do better with hold monster and E tentacles keeping the rush away but one or two fey champ and boom, deader than dead, you're undead already so what's the point, better to grab a pair of shades and a book and go back to the dark crypt from whence you came.

Yeah, i think that would work great. and i agree that the idea of a necro warlock works great, but it just needs better implementation. def not enough dmg compared to the other casters even when they arent immune to most of your dmg, and then on top of that there's the immunity problem. makes no sense.

It feels like i'm in the beginning of lego movie 2 and i'm playing against a little kid that's just like "I eat lazers." def a ton of running around in a backwards circle doing very minimal dmg a lot of the time. great potential with that idea though, i picked it because i didnt want to have to worry about mana for all my attacks as a caster, and i wanted to be able to self-heal well while doing that. made abyss warlock the logical choice for me. I had no idea how bad it would end up being later on compared to the other classes though.

i really think negative dmg should just not heal enemy undead, just friendly. even the wizard's neg immunity strip doesnt work until after you've hit them with a big healing spell which will prob bring them up to full if they've taken any dmg already, and it's very buggy and doesnt work well with the DI tree. It still really sucks, and on my undead wizard i'm trying out i still hardly ever use neg dmg against undead because everything else works so much better against them, even with pts put into the immunity stripping. the fact that you heal the enemy just makes you feel so useless in the game. it's very discouraging. i tried using energy vortex epic dragon breath with negative, and the immunity stripping doesnt even work with it. i just heal them for thousands every 3 secs, along with the thousands for all the DI mantle ticks. undead players in this game are totally broken and need a big fix.

[EinarMal]

Immunities are bad for an MMO without some way of bypassing it that is why stripping exists but it is poorly applied and uneven across builds and spells vs. slashing/piercing etc.. It is impractical to take away your main element given all the specialization forced on you in epics. Sure a random mob or two, but that is not how it works, if the end boss is immune "just use a second element" good luck on R4+ contributing anything meaningful.

Imagine if mobs were immune to all slashing all piercing etc... and those mobs were littered around the quest. I would imagine the melee/ranged players wouldn't like that much.

Fortunately this would be a really easy fix.

1. Remove immunity striping
2. Remove mob healing from player damage
3. Change mob immunities to elemental absorption (I would start at max 30% for currently immune mobs to the elements they are immune to)

It gets rid of all the issues, and gives something to balance on, 30% not enough try 40% etc....

[Bjond]

I concur with you. Immunity stripping is too powerful right now. Overall I support more DR/Resistances on mobs because it allows for more tactical gameplay.

LOL, no. Play doesn't become more tactical when the build has no means of adapting on the fly. Stuff like undead warlock is quite precisely a deliberate newbie troll. Vets take one look, laugh, and ignore it; no need to try it, it's obviously intended to be unplayable.

Newbies get enticed in and give it a try. Why? Because literally EVERY other MMO follows the principle of "we build 'em for you to have fun playing them" not "we build them to make fun of you"; ie. there's an industry-wide implicit promise that default builds always work, which DDO stands alone in ignoring.

Ha. Ha. Stupid newbie. Joke is on you. Oh, yeah, now there's a nice welcome to DDO. ><

Immunities are not "tactical fun-sauce". Pretty much none of the common builds can deal with them in a simple tactical manner. The log and the UI are not setup to inform people WHY attacks aren't working (just that they're not). And, the WHY isn't uniform or immediately apparent. What's the big nifty tactical work-around? Universal DR breakers for physical classes or .. well .. nothing at all for casters -- they're too specialized with usually one main and (maybe) one alternate power.

Once you realize the issue, it's just another build hurdle to a veteran. Being able to deal with them isn't really something to be proud of either; it only means you've so stuffed your head with ddo-trivia that it can effortless float you over all those absurd contradictory and unstated behaviors larded into the game.

BTW, this isn't a DDO problem. It's THE fundamental failure of D&D itself: trying to wag the dog instead of the tail. Story should never drive the rules. Meta & balance should drive the rules. Story is just how you explain them.

[SpeakerForTheDead]

LOL, no. Play doesn't become more tactical when the build has no means of adapting on the fly. Stuff like undead warlock is quite precisely a deliberate newbie troll. Vets take one look, laugh, and ignore it; no need to try it, it's obviously intended to be unplayable.

Newbies get enticed in and give it a try. Why? Because literally EVERY other MMO follows the principle of "we build 'em for you to have fun playing them" not "we build them to make fun of you"; ie. there's an industry-wide implicit promise that default builds always work, which DDO stands alone in ignoring.

Ha. Ha. Stupid newbie. Joke is on you. Oh, yeah, now there's a nice welcome to DDO. ><

This is def how it felt for me. i liked the idea and tried it. it was the first char i got up to the higher levels with. all the pros i talked to didnt think it was a good char though when i started to talk to them about it, but i figured there must be some way to make it good or it wouldnt have been put into the game. maybe some late game item or feat or enhancement tree pt or something. there's so much hidden stuff like that in this game that changes how things work, and i figured they'd have something for the char i was using, ESP since one of the filigree sets is specifically designed for an undead warlock. i put MONTHS of work into that char just to find out that there's nothing for it, it sux in high reaper and endgame, and no one considered it a useful char for any hard stuff. the fact that they designed a char to fail like this is baffling to me. this is the exact kind of thing that discourages new players so much that they stop playing. chars that are designed to fail in difficult content.

the sad thing is that this char could work really well with just a few tweaks to the game, along with several other kinds of chars. all it needs is a little thought and effort by the devs, and a little bit of listening to their players.

[cmecu]

I agree with OP that the warlock is like the ideal class for leveling. I did my triple racial completionist playing nothing but warlock.. did with with every race 3 times. I varied pacts to try out different things.

There is a warlock build, it is acid and ruin g. ruin , along with using primal avatar tree for dots and shards.. The build is called Get Ruined or something like that posted by a guild mate of mine. It does great dps for the class. And sure some quests are not good to run it in when things are immune to acid.. or acid heals them.. you have to turn off pact damage. and just do force damage.. or utterdark but those monsters are few and far in between.

To me also Warlock are awesome CC, and bringing order to chaos. When I play Warlock as a CC warlock I play a Fey Warlock .. just so many nice CC things in it. There are lots of insta killed, AOE insta kills, and anything that doesnt die right away can be CC while your party beats the stuff down.

Some people may be intimidated by a warlock because of its role in a group. Me personally, I feel a warlock is better suited for Crowd Control, and wiping out packs of monsters that are not death warded, and mass hold, or dancing them until party kills them.
On the same note I can play a warlock dps build with some limited CC. Normally if your going all out DPS, or CC your lacking in the other and dont do optimal control or damage. And its hard to split it because then you get a hybrid warlock that is not specialized at either thing.

Not to mention Voodu Warlock Tank build.. that is a warlock build I recommend for any new player who wants survival until they understand game mechanics, and how monsters move, work , cast, shoot etc.. I always say its the confidence builder warlock build. :D

Warlocks are perfect for leveling your racials lives.

[yfernbottom]

They do need something.

To me the biggest issue with 'locks not having access to immunity bypass is that it makes some pacts flatly better than others. Acid and sound immunity are incredibly rare. Cold and negative immunity are incredibly common. The other elements fall somewhere in the middle, but acid and sound are clearly better choices unless you are a Tiefling.

For example, I would love to try a cold 'lock sometime. I like the idea thematically. However I'm not going to run a character that has utterly gimped damage vs. roughly 1/4 of the mobs I run across. For me, that option may as well not be on the character creation screen. I feel bad for anyone inexperienced enough in the game to not know what a terrible option it is.


Immunity stripping is a normal part of the game now whether you like it or not. Locks arguably need it more than any of the classes that currently have it, because with the exception of Artificer all of them can much more easily swap to a different element when they need to.

[Tyrande]

Warlocks cannot swap to a different element without LR'ing or TR'ing...
and of course they cannot do that in a quest/shrine like a wizard...

at least sorcerers can swap their trees and spells by talking to a sorcerer teacher.

Warlocks? They're out of luck for swapping elements.



Some may argue that warlocks is not **about** damage, but of control.

EDIT: On reaper 10 any CC spells like dancing ball is 3 seconds... its either kill or be killed...
Charms they are being nerfed to smithereens...

[cmecu]

Warlocks cannot swap to a different element without LR'ing or TR'ing...
and of course they cannot do that in a quest/shrine like a wizard...

at least sorcerers can swap their trees and spells by talking to a sorcerer teacher.

Warlocks? They're out of luck for swapping elements.



Some may argue that warlocks is not **about** damage, but of control.

EDIT: On reaper 10 any CC spells like dancing ball is 3 seconds... its either kill or be killed...
Charms they are being nerfed to smithereens...

trues balls are quick, but balls are only one form of cc.. alternate mass hold monsters, single target dance, mass suggestion, and if your a fire lock Howl of Terror is a really good CC, very short cool down timer. But ya R10 is kill or be killed. But any downtime you give a monster is less time its beating on you or your party. sometimes 3 seconds is what is needed.

[ivorycoaster]

EK has a very similar problem. Generally to make a really effective EK for raid dps/ r10, you have to HIGH focus one element and almost completely forego melee damage. In my case I am elec, with cold and sonic as secondary elements. This does allow me to swap to cold for elec immunes and use fatesinger for at least some damage. I also use Scion of the fey for sonic dmg, enchant dc and heal amp, which helps. I find that running any other element causes me to make major sacrifices.

Luckily my guild has an elec sorc, so I am not useless in killing time when he isn't playing his healer. But elec sorcs are rare or non existent, and so having that immunity stripper is rare. Fire and cold are TERRIBLE options, because cold doesn't affect most undead and fire, well, we all know how bad fire is without immunity stripping.

I do think this is a big problem. This is exactly why I have made it my crusade to get infernal dominion working with tiefling, and why you see so many alchs and sorcs at cap for high end game content. I don't think the answer is to add more immunity strips, but rather at least to give a bit more flexibility. Force players to make smarter choices with their attacks, give more versatility without compromising power. It only seems obvious that such a complicated game should have this learning curve for higher end content, rather than simply giving 2-3 (druid can be included) classes an easy mode option.

Any time I have ever played warlock I have consistently focused more so on the secondary utterdark blast damage over pact. That can't be how the class was intended.

[Lotoc]

to be honest one of the dumbest things about immunities is that the direction SSG wants to go is that you should just have some secondary damage type you can use effectively to fall back on.
And the first classes they really go and give that to are Sorc and Druid, Elemental Form Speciality is just... Almost no sorc or druid wants to take it but if you offered such a thing to a class that doesn't have an effective bypass like a Warlock, PM or dark cleric they'd be all over it.
It's baffling that the first classes to see something some classes direly need are the ones with no interest in it.