Warlocks!

[Feralthyrtiaq]

Concerning Eldritch Blast...

1) What Metamagics (if any) apply.
2) Do Feats such as Spell Focus, Wiz active PL affect EB DC
3) Does EB have a School (like evocation, illusion w/e)
4) Does EB proc Colours of the Queen or Shiradi effects like Nerve Venom, Stay Frosty etc.
5) Do ED abilities that affect spell DCs modify EB
6) Does the EB with an acid or fire component count as an acid or fire spell for Draconic Spell Augmentation or for
7) How about [Spell School] Augmentation from Magister?
8) Does the Fire EB count towards FVS AoV Just Rewards?

[Vanhooger]

I can't comment this till it's going on lammania. I'm not really impressed by this so far maybe I will change my mind.

I see they're going to use SP...you probably choose that way, because an arcane with endless mana is OP.

The EB could be nice, but it scale with level so I don't see reason to multiclass warlock.

I see you do bit of work on spell..could you please also copy& paste earthquake from druid to cleric please.

[Failedlegend]

Concerning Eldritch Blast...

I'll Answer what I can

1) What Metamagics (if any) apply.

This is up for debate...mainly focusing on whteher people want Emp and Max to effect it...if yes less spellpower boost if no large spellpower boost, mainly its a question of Can the locks afford the feats, I frankly say no because your weapon stikll function when utlizing EB so your going to want melee feats not magical ones, and this is especially difficult for ranged builds since they need so many more feats than Melee's

2) Do Feats such as Spell Focus, Wiz active PL affect EB DC
3) Does EB have a School (like evocation, illusion w/e)
7) How about [Spell School] Augmentation from Magister?

Yes Evocation

4) Does EB proc Colours of the Queen or Shiradi effects like Nerve Venom, Stay Frosty etc.
5) Do ED abilities that affect spell DCs modify EB
6) Does the EB with an acid or fire component count as an acid or fire spell for Draconic Spell Augmentation or for
8) Does the Fire EB count towards FVS AoV Just Rewards?

Not sure but the devs had said EB counts as a spell.

[Blackheartox]

As many have said, and i will repeat this again, if you want to ballance warlock dont ballance it around heroic content only, and dont make it the best caster now.
If you want to put warlock for us on live then you need to do 2 things this update (there are more but those 2 are major), otherwise it will not be succesfull.

No matter what many people say, warlock in lore, in games, in dnd is initially a caster so i will only talk about casting aspect and not melle which imo for warlock should be the same as eldritch is for sorc/wizz (niche flavor but not something you actually play with), so to skip all this nonesense first you need to add burst option to warlock.
2nd you need to do the dots idea you guys had for other casters.
I will tell you, it is not fun to meet a 400-600 k hp enemy and start casting spells and then either be forced to use slas and take forever or dedicate toward sp potions.
Yes i know that you guys prolly think that more sp pots with super low sp bar on warlock and many players not being able to conserve mana = income, but keep in mind that many players who dont like that and feel cheated, rage quit and dont play ddo after that = less income.

First fix casters by giving all some kind bursty options to handle bosses and meatbags, then we can talk about rest as this is a universal issue that all casters face right now and the sole reason why casting isnt popular nowadays.

Eldritch to me seems like "okish" free magic type damage but again i dont see it scaling very well into epics

[ThomasHunter]

A thought that came to me was how potentially similar to the wolf/bear form this class might be in terms of "weapons". Here's what I mean (and I hope I can explain this well enough):

In animal form, you don't get the weapon damage, you simply get the animal form damage (d8 or whatever and this is why animal forms become much less fun in epic content as there is no scaling). Animal forms cannot take advantage of the nice weapons from TOEE (yeah, I like the weapons and especially the 5[w]) or Thunderholme where the weapon multipliers are darn nice in both instances!

From what I understand, if the toggle is on, the blast happens on an attack and that is it. Since that is tied to level, that also stops at 20 (although at least scales with Magic Power?).

Just some food for thought here. I would love for this to be fun and viable at 28 (my wolf sits at 20 and is bummed in his den).

Thanks for reading and I am looking forward to U26!

[Augon]

So the stated intent is that damage comes primarily from Eldritch Blast. In 30 pages there is:

- a lot of measuring of things that will get removed by the forum filter
- a lot of talk about alignment
- a lot of concern over the rest of the spell book
- very little talk about the EB. Why?

If EB is the primary method of damage, why is hardly anyone talking about it?
- is the proposed system horrible and so people want the other stuff to back it up?
- is the proposed system amazing and so we are moving on to the ancilliary stuff?

Like many others have said, if we are getting a new class, I ask that it be unique. We already have lots of casters. We also have melee casters who use magic to make their melee abilities better.

What if this one used things that normally improved melee to improve the spell casting? EB already activates based on your weapon attack. What if the devs really dug into this part? Instead of taking SF: evo, GSF: evo, ESF: evo, max, emp, quicken like every other caster, players picked a weapon style and build their caster that way? Basically a backwards Eldritch Knight. Instead of their skills in magic making their melee (ranged) combat better, their skills in melee (ranged) make their magic better. (It might be horrible and completely not warlock like, I don't know, I have non of those D&D books, I'm just brainstorming. If the concept is too wrong, might as well stop reading here. 8) ).

First, allow the weapon effects to have some bearing on the EB. Maybe even completely replace the force damage with the damage type from the weapon. If you use a paralyzing weapon, your EB can paralyze. If you use a shock weapon it does shock damage. If you use a force weapon, it does force damage. etc.

Two Handed Fighter
- THF line creates glancing blows and a chance for weapon effects to proc. Do this on the EB.
- Cleave - when the warlock cleaves, EB shoot out from around the warlock (pick how many, but maybe in half cardinal directions for 8 total; remember they still have to hit something.)

Two weapon fighter
- The off hand can send an additional EB, but in the same line as the mainhand would go.
- Maybe this character has a curse spewing weapon and a paralyzer and send curses and mez out in its EB.
- Maybe this character uses a fire and a cold weapon and the blasts coming from the character roughly alternate between EB of ice and fire.

SWF
- Faster EBs just like SWF goes faster

Ranged (bow)
- precise shot - EB skips the mob in between and only hits the target you selected
- imp precise shot - EB hits all the mobs in a row
- fires slow due to ranged rate of fire
- MANYSHOT EB!!!!

Improved crit would increase your crit range with the blasts if you hold the right weapon.
OC could increase EB damage on 19/20.
Instead of quicken, melee (ranged) alacrity would speed up your attacks.
Higher bab would mean more & faster EB attacks.

The different weapon styles would launch the eldritch blasts in unique ways. Honestly, the bow one would be most boring because it would look a lot like you are just shooting magic and we kinda do that now. But, a TWF might could send one EB with each weapon swing. One on the right swing, one of the left and a double shot on the spin around double swing move. Basically look at the current weapon animations and find could points in them to have the EB launch out from the weapons.

A warlock could actually move between physical and magical combat and be good at both.

Edit: this could also be a great chance to really turn the art department loose. Really hype up the weapon effects while the EB toggle is active. Push the weapons auras out further and make them more intense and then have them focus as the weapons swings and surge off the weapon, stretch out into a line and then ball back up again when hitting the target. When the EB is launched the aura could go away completely and then quickly fill back in.

For bow users the whole bow could glow with the aura and when the string is drawn, the aura slide from the ends of the bow to the hand grip and then follows the drawing hand back stretching out into a line of magic and then shooting out like an arrow, leaving the bow dead looking for a moment and the aura build back on the bow quickly and it repeats.

Again, just brainstorming, but I think there could be a lot of cool stuff done to make the class look and play differently than the existing ones.

I like this idea. It certainly makes Warlock unique. Of course, like this poster, I have no experience with warlock in PnP and you folks that do would probably have a fit because this isn't warlocky enough, but I still like the concept.

[HatsuharuZ]

I know I said "I have one last thing to say about Warlocks..." in my last post, but here is a crazy suggestion for you, Devs:

Concerning a compromise on Warlock spells costing SP... let the base Warlock spells themselves be free, but make it so that Warlocks still have to pay for metamagics! Just a thought.

[edrein]

As many have said, and i will repeat this again, if you want to ballance warlock dont ballance it around heroic content only, and dont make it the best caster now.
If you want to put warlock for us on live then you need to do 2 things this update (there are more but those 2 are major), otherwise it will not be succesfull.

No matter what many people say, warlock in lore, in games, in dnd is initially a caster so i will only talk about casting aspect and not melle which imo for warlock should be the same as eldritch is for sorc/wizz (niche flavor but not something you actually play with), so to skip all this nonesense first you need to add burst option to warlock.

That's 4E/5E logic where melee warlocks were essentially cut from even being 'flavor'. 3E and 3.5E always supported the option of a melee warlock through Hideous Blow and Eldritch Glaive as a blast shape. Toss in Eldritch Claws (which was an action free attack during your combat sequence, which would directly translate to a high doublestrike ability) and you were set. Let alone the fact warlocks can wear light armor and cast without issue. Come now, by dismissing the melee warlock you are at the same time dismissing almost half their use as a class in Pen and Paper. Perhaps I'm a bit adamant in my plea for this option due to playing it myself. But I would like to state again that this was a possiblity and one of the most used ones in games that I DM'd, that I played in, etc. Heck, even go and play the other D&D PC games in particular and note the option for melee warlocks, cheif amongst these was Neverwinter Nights 2. Now go and play Neverwinter Online and notice the lack of any form of a melee warlock. Even their 'hexblade' prestige cut out the actual melee portions for being a pure caster type build.

Overall going for strictly caster based warlocks is useless at the moment, especially when you consider the fact that we are not getting actual new warlock invocations. We're getting rehashed Bard/Wizard spell lists with nothing original tossed it. I'd then have to ask you why you want to play a Bard/Wizard hybrid that can't actually equal either class seperately as is. The only thing useful about warlocks prior to us actually getting to play them on Lamania currently is the premise of Eldritch Blast. Other than that. Nothing.
I'd atleast ask you to see the use of a melee warlock then. Eldritch Knight isn't even niche, I've tried multiple times on a toon well geared for both caster and melee, with past lives and years of raid/gen loot to back me up. It's simply not viable, uindead or warforged. It is a terrible attempt at giving 'niche' builds that are flavorful. If you're a pure you might as well just stick with being a caster, now if you're multiclassed sure possibly you can pull off incorperating Eldritch Knight. Because after all in pen and paper it required you to be a Fighter with Arcane Caster levels. But warlocks my friend only require Eldritch Blast to be an effective melee force. Throw in their invocations, light armor, and 'decent' weapon proficiency and you actually have a 'spellsword' type character that doesn't innately require multiclassing.

This is the entire reason I've promoted the melee warlock and have so far refused to let the dream of playing one as they were in Pen and Paper die, especially to cynnists that just want yet another boring and uninspired caster class in the game. Especially when they aren't getting new spells, druid might be useless now but when they were added they brought new spells to the table. As someone said before; druid, artificer, and monk were all generally praised for adding new mechanics and spells to the game. While Favored Soul has tappered off as it was simply a copy of Cleric in the vein of Sorcerers are to Wizards. (Excluding the Lantern Archon, because we all love the shoulder cannon.)

[Seikojin]

In that case, i'm not sure if it has been said or suggested yet, but I'd love a flame-blade-like ability called "eldritch glaive" that created a two-handed weapon for the warlock. You could even pattern it after Rahl's Might.

;-)

I think that could become a valid enhancement 'shape', where it imbues your melee weapon.

[Drathsiddh]

ENHANCEMENT TREES
Soul Eater
Your pact makes you an extension of your patron's hunger. You body and mind become more inhuman, and your ability to consume the souls and life force of your enemies also feeds your patron. Your attacks erode the life essence of your targets.

• Notable Enhancements:
  
  1. Eldritch Blast Shape: Chain Lighting
  2. Damage-over-time effects
  3. Debuff
  4. Death Effects

Tainted Scholar
No secret is barred from the Tainted Scholar's grasp, and if such forbidden knowledge comes at the cost of his soul, he's willing to pay that price.

• Notable Enhancements:
  
  1. Eldritch Blast Shape: Cone
  2. Eldritch Essences that alter how Eldritch Blast work
  3. Direct damage boosting of Eldritch Blast
  4. Crowd Control, including a new Confusion ability that causes enemies to attack player and monster characters indiscriminately.

Enlightened Spirit
Although the fiendish origins of some warlocks' powers can’t be denied, not all Warlocks embrace the darkness. Some turn toward the light. Such rare individuals are called Enlightened Spirits.

• Notable Enhancements:
  
  1. Eldritch Blast Shape: Point Blank Area of Effect: While toggled on, this deals damage around, scaling with your Eldritch Blast damage. This particular shape allows you to attack with melee or ranged weapons while damaging enemies around you.
  2. Aura abilities that primarily buff allies around you
  3. Mitigation
  4. Pet/Summon/Charm support
  
  
• We expect this tree to be popular with some cross-class melee builds.

Please see follow-up posts for additional details on the class. Full Enhancement tree proposals to come later.

We'd love to hear your thoughts, feelings, and feedback!

There seems to be some confusion with some players (and, admittedly with myself), so I'd like to get everything straight.

Every tree gets an enhancement that alters how EB goes. And obviously each tree supports a certain type of build,
-Soul Eaters are mainly casters, probably with a dab of self-healing and have their EB to link from one foe to the next, like Chain Lightning or the lower level version of the spell (name eludes me) .
- Enlightened Spirits are melee Warlocks, kinda like dark Paladins, who, when attacking get an aura around them which deals damage to nearby foes while swinging their stick around, kinda like Death Aura, except it only gets activated when the stick is being swung. Basically what Varg meant when he said "Thay are expected to be popular among cross-class builds" is that melee Warlocks will work well with this build, and since melee Warlocks are likely to dip into another class for feats or something, this works well with it. A melee pure-Warlock is still possible though, but really, do we see pure EKs?
-Tainted Scholars are a line that confuses me. They are expected to primarily use their EB, since that's all the buffing that has been listed, but their EB shape is cone, meaning they are going to have to go up close to actually use it. I'd add blast to it (like fireball) so they'll be able to switch between Blast/Cone, depending on where the enemies are. But then, EB is called Eldritch BLAST, so the name will have to be re-worked, but that wont be an issue.

Another question left un-answered is the amount of damage that gets reduced depending on the shape.
-Normal EBs deal d6s.

So the more powerful it seems, the fewer dice it deals. Thus:
-Point-Blank AOE will deal the lowest, possibly a d2.

So then we got d3s and d4s left.
-Cone gets d3
-Chain Lightning gets d4.

But since Warlocks are also getting reduced Spell-Power for EBs, a normal Sorc nuke deal more damage when casting a single Chain Lightning spell than a Warlock will do. One blast will do 1d3+3 damage, for an average of around 5 per caster level. 5*20=100. Add 200 spell power to that and you got a 300 damage shot. Then add in maxi and empower
Eb will get 10d4, for about 20 damage each shot.Wow.

Of-cource all this is assuming that it is the dice that get reduced, not the spell power. The only obvious way of of-setting this is attack, speed. A normal Sorc can cast it every 2.75 secs. If we do 2 strikes by then, it'll be a 100 damage (adding super high spell-power).

So rather than reducing dies. reduce the amount of spell power they get depending on the shape.

[deredriel]

I'm afraid (and i agree with Diodore) that death spells for warlock (or all spells with 0 or 1 effect) useless on boss prevents to think about how a warlock deal against red name.

[Tyrande]

We're happy to introduce Warlocks, coming soon to DDO! These eldritch casters form pacts with powerful beings, seeking out rare and often forbidden knowledge. They deal large amounts of damage with their Eldritch Blast, and back that damage up with a variety of buff, control, and utility abilities.

Thank you, Vargouille; for taking the time to work on Warlocks.

[LIST][*]Any alignment

I know a lot of other people has commented previously already, but it sounded funny
for a Warlock/Paladin/Monk LG character.

IMHO, if someone has taken Warlock and then later advance in Paladin, he should not be able to use his warlock abilities. If someone has taken Paladin and then warlock, he should not be able to use his paladin abilities. This is only fair not to create uber FOTM combos that is out of your radar with melee EB characters.

[*]General structure of spell progression and spell points is similar to Bards:
[LIST][*]Level 6 is maximum spell level for Warlocks.

Why 6? Not 4? Warlocks that I played before only has 4 levels of invocations at 20th level.

[*]Spells are learned, known and swapped like Bards or Sorcerers.[*]Spell list is primarily drawn from existing DDO spells, though we hope to have time to add some more.

Please add a "Vargouille" line of spells as the old sorcerer/wizard spells list is very old, most of those were designed back at pre-epic days and epic were not a consideration at all and hence they DO NOT scale into epics.

Please see follow-up posts for additional details on the class. Full Enhancement tree proposals to come later.

We'd love to hear your thoughts, feelings, and feedback!

Sure. Here is my feedback. The spells list needs to be revamped.

The Wizard and Sorcerer spells list themselves need to have a pass.

Here are the problems:

1. They do not scale beyond level 20. Some of them do not scale beyond level 15 or level 11.
2. The Charm-x spells. They do not stick in Epics due to Epic Ward.
3. The Hold-x Spells. They are the same as the charm spells, although a few seconds might be enough for 2nd action like a damage spell like Energy Burst or evocation spells.
4. The Dispel spells. They are plain broken. They do not work at all; and nobody is using them. Reason. They are based on the class level of the PC casters and compared with the monster's ML on the buffs. They simply don't work; especially in higher difficulties.
5. Summoning spells are useless. They are simply a 1 or 2 seconds distraction for epic monsters.
6. Sleep type spells are useless.
7. Mordenkainen's Disjunction is broken (see dispel spells)
8. Trap the Soul. This spell is useless too as it has a limitation of 30HD. Now in upper level epics, all monsters are over 30HD.

IMHO, in order for Warlocks to have a better presentation, a spell pass for the wizards and sorcerers spell list is in order.

[Tyrande]

Spellcasting
We are planning for Warlocks to have spell points and cast spells from a spellbook, similar to Bards. Warlocks have very few spells slots, [...] Using spell points instead of some custom resource allows them to multiclass far better with other classes, as well as make better use of Epic Destinies.

Question: Which destiny is a warlock themed destiny?

We feel that a small spell point pool and lack of damaging spells, including lack of damaging spell SLAs in Enhancement trees, is the best method for making Warlock gameplay feel distinctly different from existing classes and playstyles, yet still able to integrate with other classes and offer multiclass options. We also chose to have a relatively small amount of "known spells", similar to pen-and-paper Warlocks.

[...]
[TD]20[/TD]
[TD]525[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]

Here is my other concern:

According to your table there, level 20 warlocks only get 525 spell points at level 20 prior to items and stat considerations. That is very little. Are there plans in the warlock enhancement trees or somewhere in the warlock class feats to regenerate or absorb or leech spell points from the ether?

In other D&D games, warlocks do not need spell slots or spell points to cast invocations.

[Matsu_Ieyasu]

Still reading along, a few excellent posts today, sorry I haven't had more time to reply individually to those posts yet.

I encourage more posts on Warlocks, especially by anyone who hasn't spoken up yet on any particular Warlock topics.

My feed back needs to be taken with a grain of salt, I have not played a Warlock in Pen and Paper so my comment come from my questionable memory and play style in DDO.

Warlocks are not Arcane Spell casters rather they use there covenant with a third power to invoke a spell like ability, there are no limits in PnP on how many invocations a warlock may attempt to do beyond time and the fact the invocation is easily interrupted. I believe that using Spell Points takes away from that model and leaves us with monotonous character classes that play alike. I want different. It bothers me enough already that my Sorc and Wiz basically play alike now you are going to add another Class that plays the same way? It appears I am not the only one in this thread who feels that way.

My memory suggests that older versions of the Warlock had serious restrictions on alignment, I fully realize that DDO has little impact beyond character creation when it comes to alignment. I feel that DDO should do more to make alignments matter in game and I feel alignment restrictions should still be in place when it comes to Warlocks.

[Blackheartox]

That's 4E/5E logic where melee warlocks were essentially cut from even being 'flavor'. 3E and 3.5E always supported the option of a melee warlock through Hideous Blow and Eldritch Glaive as a blast shape. Toss in Eldritch Claws (which was an action free attack during your combat sequence, which would directly translate to a high doublestrike ability) and you were set. Let alone the fact warlocks can wear light armor and cast without issue. Come now, by dismissing the melee warlock you are at the same time dismissing almost half their use as a class in Pen and Paper. Perhaps I'm a bit adamant in my plea for this option due to playing it myself. But I would like to state again that this was a possiblity and one of the most used ones in games that I DM'd, that I played in, etc. Heck, even go and play the other D&D PC games in particular and note the option for melee warlocks, cheif amongst these was Neverwinter Nights 2. Now go and play Neverwinter Online and notice the lack of any form of a melee warlock. Even their 'hexblade' prestige cut out the actual melee portions for being a pure caster type build.

Overall going for strictly caster based warlocks is useless at the moment, especially when you consider the fact that we are not getting actual new warlock invocations. We're getting rehashed Bard/Wizard spell lists with nothing original tossed it. I'd then have to ask you why you want to play a Bard/Wizard hybrid that can't actually equal either class seperately as is. The only thing useful about warlocks prior to us actually getting to play them on Lamania currently is the premise of Eldritch Blast. Other than that. Nothing.
I'd atleast ask you to see the use of a melee warlock then. Eldritch Knight isn't even niche, I've tried multiple times on a toon well geared for both caster and melee, with past lives and years of raid/gen loot to back me up. It's simply not viable, uindead or warforged. It is a terrible attempt at giving 'niche' builds that are flavorful. If you're a pure you might as well just stick with being a caster, now if you're multiclassed sure possibly you can pull off incorperating Eldritch Knight. Because after all in pen and paper it required you to be a Fighter with Arcane Caster levels. But warlocks my friend only require Eldritch Blast to be an effective melee force. Throw in their invocations, light armor, and 'decent' weapon proficiency and you actually have a 'spellsword' type character that doesn't innately require multiclassing.

This is the entire reason I've promoted the melee warlock and have so far refused to let the dream of playing one as they were in Pen and Paper die, especially to cynnists that just want yet another boring and uninspired caster class in the game. Especially when they aren't getting new spells, druid might be useless now but when they were added they brought new spells to the table. As someone said before; druid, artificer, and monk were all generally praised for adding new mechanics and spells to the game. While Favored Soul has tappered off as it was simply a copy of Cleric in the vein of Sorcerers are to Wizards. (Excluding the Lantern Archon, because we all love the shoulder cannon.)

The moment i saw they didnt add any spells to warlock spellbook that are actual warlock spells i myself played with as pen player and in never 2 i gave up on all the flavor the class brings.
I am looking at it purely from what they presented to us and i see a wizz with bard spell pool with runearm that doesnt scale well and will have useless dcs in ee with capability to focus on enchantment spells.
When i look at it from the perspective as a ddo player then i see the same playstyle being used as sorc where slas will be replaced with eldritch and as warlock doesnt look to be a dodgey or prrish class i wont even think about going melle with it since losing caster levels will hughely impact eldritch damage.

So all that i can see from this proposal is a air savant copy past with runearm that doesnt scale well and it will have the same issue that all casters have now, extremely bad boss dps.
Its easy to figure out why i am fearing that, you just need to bring a sorc for example into temple of ee one e solo and a barb.
They would need to either give warlocks some extraordinary melle or caster support to be relevant as class in ee.
Even tho they gave them "instakills and cc" the issue with those spells is they cost sp and with the low sp bar i dont see a reason why play a warlock beside maybe the efficiency of blasts.
So main issue is, how efficient and useful will blasts be?
And another thing, best way to bypass those issues is to do a dot revamp now for all casters as that way you could make casters meaningfull in ee.


Of course best way would be to nerf melles currently but as i see in game and on forums that option will be hated, so only way is to give warlocks some unique strong nuke and to revamp all casters with some change to mechanics of specific spells.

/this is purely objective opinion from taking into account with current proposal what the flaws and fun killing factors of warlock would be

If they wanted to make melleish warlocks with a unique feel i have no idea what could be done.
IF you use prr mrr or dodge mechanics it would be boring and not unique so a option i see is use pacts with enchas as a way to prevent damage based on either a form of avoidance or mitigation or shields.
Shields and a counter mechanic would be unique tho, lets say every 3 blasts you do you gain 1 counter and then lets say you expend counters you use up as a shield that makes you immune to damage of specific aligment or something in that way.
I personally dont want warlock to be a autoattack class, i want it to have many things you need to keep track off that gives you more fun in combat.

But that is personal opinion, people maybe want a togle on autoattack casterish class in ddo

[Caprice]

Hey Sev and Varg,
If you're not yet sold on,
"Warlocks can cast an infinite number of their memorized infusions, generally of lesser power than wizard and sorcerer since they do not consume any resources, with eldritch blast making up the rest of the power gap",

then let me try and convince you that you should be.

No to mass death / helpless inducing spells:

Mass Hold should not be included. We do not need another caster who does Mass Hold + Energy Burst for efficient epic trash clearing. Bard, Sorc and Wiz's boring spell rotation for Epic trash is sufficient (and very powerful which is why the community wants it included).

Wail and other AoE insta-death spells should also not be included. The community is worried Warlock will be underpowered, so they're arguing to ensure minimum tools they know will be sufficient to make Warlock useful stay included. Again, Bard, Sorc and Wizard, are enough classes to have AoE insta-death. Someone was even arguing for Warlock getting +1 Necro as a past life which I think is indicative of the mentality. You can actually make it a distinct class, not Wiz/Sorc 2.0.
[....](Post snipped at this point by Caprice for quote brevity, but the whole text is worth a read.)

I find this post particularly persuasive. If Warlocks are mostly another flavor of mass helplessness/instakilling caster, they are not adding much to the depth of the game since we already have ~3 of those (I would include Bards; perhaps Druids belong too). Warlock should bring something more than just a different way to do damage between bursts of easy trash killing. I could see having one of the enhancement trees set up to make a Warlock more like a traditional caster by adding the CC/death spells and SP pool (or SP regen) to support it for those who prefer that playstyle, but maybe that shouldn't be a core class feature. In fact that could be a good test of the class design; if most people spec into the traditional caster aspect, then that is evidence that the other options are not sufficiently compelling/effective for the game content.

[HatsuharuZ]

That's 4E/5E logic where melee warlocks were essentially cut from even being 'flavor'.

Actually, 5E does support melee Warlocks. They can choose the Pact of the Blade feature at third level, and there are 3 passive invocations, iirc, that require Pact of the Blade. One that gives them an extra attack, another that adds neg energy damage to attacks with the pact blade, and another that adds the Warlocks' CHA modifier to damage rolls. Also, if I'm reading it correctly, the weapon given by "Pact of the Blade" can be any melee weapon, and the Warlock is proficient with it regardless of what kind of weapon it is.

[edrein]

The moment i saw they didnt add any spells to warlock spellbook that are actual warlock spells i myself played with as pen player and in never 2 i gave up on all the flavor the class brings.
I am looking at it purely from what they presented to us and i see a wizz with bard spell pool with runearm that doesnt scale well and will have useless dcs in ee with capability to focus on enchantment spells.
When i look at it from the perspective as a ddo player then i see the same playstyle being used as sorc where slas will be replaced with eldritch and as warlock doesnt look to be a dodgey or prrish class i wont even think about going melle with it since losing caster levels will hughely impact eldritch damage.

So all that i can see from this proposal is a air savant copy past with runearm that doesnt scale well and it will have the same issue that all casters have now, extremely bad boss dps.
Its easy to figure out why i am fearing that, you just need to bring a sorc for example into temple of ee one e solo and a barb.
They would need to either give warlocks some extraordinary melle or caster support to be relevant as class in ee.
Even tho they gave them "instakills and cc" the issue with those spells is they cost sp and with the low sp bar i dont see a reason why play a warlock beside maybe the efficiency of blasts.
So main issue is, how efficient and useful will blasts be?
And another thing, best way to bypass those issues is to do a dot revamp now for all casters as that way you could make casters meaningfull in ee.


Of course best way would be to nerf melles currently but as i see in game and on forums that option will be hated, so only way is to give warlocks some unique strong nuke and to revamp all casters with some change to mechanics of specific spells.

/this is purely objective opinion from taking into account with current proposal what the flaws and fun killing factors of warlock would be

If they wanted to make melleish warlocks with a unique feel i have no idea what could be done.
IF you use prr mrr or dodge mechanics it would be boring and not unique so a option i see is use pacts with enchas as a way to prevent damage based on either a form of avoidance or mitigation or shields.
Shields and a counter mechanic would be unique tho, lets say every 3 blasts you do you gain 1 counter and then lets say you expend counters you use up as a shield that makes you immune to damage of specific aligment or something in that way.
I personally dont want warlock to be a autoattack class, i want it to have many things you need to keep track off that gives you more fun in combat.

But that is personal opinion, people maybe want a togle on autoattack casterish class in ddo

I already tackled most of this before in Silverleafon's warlock thread. The biggest way to atleast make a melee warlock play in a unique way with what we've been presented is to remove the aura effect. Instead turn Eldritch Blast into Hideous Blow as a say 3-5 second CD active melee strike which would apply your full Blast Damage and effects. Then in the enhancement tree add Eldritch Claws as a high (50-75%) doublestrike attack or code it to essentially perform as a TWF toggle that upon every so many Hideous Blow counters you automatically perform an additional Hideous Blow. You could also make Eldritch Glaive a toggle in which your Hideous Blow would apply as a THF attack with glancing blows in say a cone shape.

Defensively they would be fine in EE if given the proper Pen and Paper conversion. If our innate damage reduction scaled to a decent amount, add in the proposed MRR, then throw in Fiendish Resilience which essentially an activatable regeneration effect similar to Fast Healing or Spellsinger's Healing Song, combined this would make them manage to hold their own in EE. Mostly against casters, but through in a bit of PRR from light armor and decent BAB progression, possibly an enhancement for Medium Armor proficiency along with shield master perhaps and you'd be able to stand your own like most. But you can always add in a fighter splash for even more defensive needs.

The biggest deal is to make a pure feel offensively there and defensively sound without splashing. But given our overlords and their love of low hanging fruit, expect some strong low level splash combos. As all I can see of warlocks at the moment is low level splashes within the 6-8 level region (mostly 8 for the past life needs), after that Warlock won't be used by most people. Which is fine as warlock was has always been a niche class. The issue is making sure that once the completionists have done it to get past it, those of us who enjoy warlock still want to play it.

[Ikeas]

Excuse me?

I've stated again and again that I loathe everything WotC has done to my beloved D&D!

I've never even picked up a 5th Ed. Book or played a 4th Ed. session!

I have played 3.5 and hated every minute of it! {Pathfinder was better but only barely playable}.

And 3rd Ed. was and is an abomination!



And as for Druids - Animal Form in DDO {and possibly 3.5} is far far more relevant than in pre 3rd Ed. D&D where Druids were Casters who meleed with an actual weapon - Usually a Stave and only rarely went into form!

Yet here we are, talking about a game that it's (or was) a D&D 3.5 adaptation... not sure all this D&D/AD&D bitter nostalgia is helping here.

[Vargouille]

-Soul Eaters are mainly casters, probably with a dab of self-healing and have their EB to link from one foe to the next, like Chain Lightning or the lower level version of the spell (name eludes me) .
- Enlightened Spirits are melee Warlocks, kinda like dark Paladins, who, when attacking get an aura around them which deals damage to nearby foes while swinging their stick around, kinda like Death Aura, except it only gets activated when the stick is being swung. Basically what Varg meant when he said "Thay are expected to be popular among cross-class builds" is that melee Warlocks will work well with this build, and since melee Warlocks are likely to dip into another class for feats or something, this works well with it. A melee pure-Warlock is still possible though, but really, do we see pure EKs?
-Tainted Scholars are a line that confuses me. They are expected to primarily use their EB, since that's all the buffing that has been listed, but their EB shape is cone, meaning they are going to have to go up close to actually use it. I'd add blast to it (like fireball) so they'll be able to switch between Blast/Cone, depending on where the enemies are. But then, EB is called Eldritch BLAST, so the name will have to be re-worked, but that wont be an issue.

We have tentatively decided to swap Cone shape into Soul Eater and Chain shape into Tainted Scholar to better fit their natures.

Another question left un-answered is the amount of damage that gets reduced depending on the shape.

...

But since Warlocks are also getting reduced Spell-Power for EBs, a normal Sorc nuke deal more damage when casting a single Chain Lightning spell than a Warlock will do.

...

So rather than reducing dies. reduce the amount of spell power they get depending on the shape.

This has been the announced plan that we are tentatively going forward with: Different shapes will get different spell power scaling. They aren't getting different die sizes.

Note that we haven't settled on what kind of scaling each will get. It's not determined yet that a Sorcerer would get higher or lower spell power scaling than a Warlock.