Warlock Enhancements: Tainted Scholar

[HastyPudding]

A single target Eldritch Blast fires off a lot faster than one per two seconds. Exact numbers and animations are in progress, but assuming you go through the whole attack chain, it's likely going to be faster than one per second. This isn't ponderous, stately spell casting, this is flinging arcane balls of doom around. (You don't get to also attack with melee/ranged while doing this, of course. Melee attacks are also more often than one per two seconds!)

Enough with this silliness of number crunching and coding, let's get down to the REAL nitty gritty details:

How's this animation going to look? :3

You know the majority of players have to look awesome while they play (my spellsinger looks ravishing in his mushroom cap cosmetic hat and dark noble robe). We going to have a Darth Vader force choke animation with eldritch blasts? Enervating Shadow going to look like a black magic/force missile? Eldritch chain going to be discernible from chain lightning or electric loop? What about the enlightened spirt's floating animation, is it going to be like pale master wraith form? These little details are those hidden cravings and perks that players reallllllly like. Games can be just as much about visual appeal and flavor as content, as shallow as that might seem.

[Ziindarax]

Dunno if this has been answered already, but with Utterdark (rather than calling it Unholy, as it does not do Evil damage) blast turning even your aura into a negative energy damage effect, would undead-form players benefit from the aura? Would they heal from it? Someone in the Enlightened Spirit thread was asking about this.

This is correct. Some of the wording is very precise and potentially confusing, which is why the diagram also has some colors in it.

Eldritch Essences: Unholy Blast, Faltering Blast, Penetrating Blast: You can turn one on at a time. They change the way other Eldritch Blasts work (including the single target one you get at first Warlock level, or Eldritch Chain, or Eldritch Cone, or Enervating Shadow, as well as the Aura in Enlightened spirit.)

Eldritch Blast Shapes: Basic single-target, Chain, Cone, Enervating Shadow. These are toggles that make your basic attack 'cast' Eldritch Blast. These are affected by things that say, "When you Eldritch Blast", or variations thereof (we probably need to lock down text templates for these but might not be there yet). This includes the Eldritch Essences but also other things that we choose not to make Eldritch Essences (it's not good to have too many since you can only turn on one at a time).

*Aura in Enlightened Spirit: This is similar to Eldritch Blast Shapes but is a bit different. It doesn't replace your auto-attack. There's also a few things that won't work directly with it (such as increased attack speed in Tainted Scholar). However, most of the "on-hit" effects of Eldritch Blast will work with this.

Activated Eldritch Blast: These are activated abilities that are not Shapes. These will usually function like SLAs, and deal damage based on your Eldritch Blast dice (both base and Pact), and trigger "on-hit" effects that care about Eldritch Blast (or spells!). This includes things like Eldritch Ball, Eldritch Burst and Spirit Blast. Whether you are auto-attacking with Eldritch Blast or not doesn't matter for these abilities, similar to how you can just cast spells between doing other things.

[BananaHat]

A single target Eldritch Blast fires off a lot faster than one per two seconds. Exact numbers and animations are in progress, but assuming you go through the whole attack chain, it's likely going to be faster than one per second. This isn't ponderous, stately spell casting, this is flinging arcane balls of doom around. (You don't get to also attack with melee/ranged while doing this, of course. Melee attacks are also more often than one per two seconds!)

Attack chain you say? I'm intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter... Will different shapes have different casting animations or will it just be obvious enough from the EB animation?

I had assumed it would just be a singular blasting animation. Just please make sure all races have the same animation speed, I seem to recall some issues with half-orcs when they came out. Do you unlock more flourishes with higher BAB similar to melee attacks? Are all casting animations the same speed relative to each other to prevent twitching as seen for THF?

[PermaBanned]

This isn't ponderous, stately spell casting, this is flinging arcane balls of doom around.

Dude, I'm so holding you to this!


I know, I know: things in this state of development are subject to change & all, but... No. Nope, not on this one.
Make it so.

[psteen1]

Varg would it be possible to purge all mention of "auto-attack" from the descriptions? That is a WoW term. DDO players find it confusing. We don't auto-attack, which are standard attacks that happen all the time just by being in range. We are not WoW players. DDO players left click!

Also thanks for the Warlock class. It is bringing me out of DDO retirement.

[gwonbush]

Well, you can auto-attack by toggling the attack feat that every character is granted. Useful in quests like Schemes of the Enemy when you go fight a bag of hp with no means of fighting back. You can auto attack and do your own thing.

[Vargouille]

Varg would it be possible to purge all mention of "auto-attack" from the descriptions? That is a WoW term. DDO players find it confusing. We don't auto-attack, which are standard attacks that happen all the time just by being in range. We are not WoW players. DDO players left click!

Also thanks for the Warlock class. It is bringing me out of DDO retirement.

Basic attack?

I personally don't like "left click attack" because it may be that some players aren't using left click for that (or are actually using the Attack feat).

Names are hard. We usually don't have to talk about it like this.

[SableShadow]

DDO players left click!

I right click.
You left-clickers, and your left-clickie-ness!

[janave]

Why?

You are right, please ignore that part.

I still think the cores ideally would not offer that many "free" DCs, as its unprecedented even for the dedicated DC Mages. Archmages for example do not get access to increases without spending more APs.

Even if T.scholars end up on pair with more focused DC casters, the latter group may feel there is not enough going for them to stay with their specs/build.

[Drakos]

Basic attack?I personally don't like "left click attack" because it may be that some players aren't using left click for that (or are actually using the Attack feat).Names are hard. We usually don't have to talk about it like this.

Then refer to it as your Standard Attack; I agree that auto-attack doesn't really fit for this game. I think that most players would understand Standard Attack.

[Drakos]

You are right, please ignore that part. I still think the cores ideally would not offer that many "free" DCs, as its unprecedented even for the dedicated DC Mages. Archmages for example do not get access to increases without spending more APs.Even if T.scholars end up on pair with more focused DC casters, the latter group may feel there is not enough going for them to stay with their specs/build.

Yes, but remember due to the Warlock spells only going up to 6th level, these DC's are there to help offset the issue with Heightened.

[SacramentoSquid]

So far I am really excited about what I see planned for warlocks, and while there are a few things in the trees that I have reservations about, I want to wait until after actually testing things out to call for changes. There is however one giant redflag that I see in the proposal for this tree, the level 18 core has negative 25 hp's, which I kind of understand fitting thematically, however I have a hard time seeing this penalty as being justified for what the core offers. Given that it is a level 18 core, and that 18 levels in one class alone is already a big sacrifice, the benefit of 10% more damage output from your primary source, and that by your own math is roughly equal to the 20% crit bonus damage from the level 12 core, not to mention that the +1dc can lead to as much as 5% more damage, both of which affect everything you do, not just your blasts, hardly seems to warrant the HP penalty.

[psteen1]

Then refer to it as your Standard Attack; I agree that auto-attack doesn't really fit for this game. I think that most players would understand Standard Attack.

I agree... standard attack or basic attack.

Down with the "auto-attack"! There is nothing auto about DDO's action combat. That's what makes it cool compared to those lame MMOs.

[btolson]

We'll see. Without the capstone, it's about a 15% damage boost if you have 50% crit chance. (15% great to have, of course!)

I think you mean with the capstone, it's a 15% damage boost @ 50% crit chance.

You start from dealing x2.0 damage with crits, increasing to x2.6 with the capstone.

2.6/2.0 = 1.3, meaning your crits achieve a relative gain of 30%.

Thus, if you had 100% crit chance, this would signify a full 30% damage boost. At 50% crit chance you are realizing a 15% damage boost.

[btolson]

Basic attack?

I personally don't like "left click attack" because it may be that some players aren't using left click for that (or are actually using the Attack feat).

Names are hard. We usually don't have to talk about it like this.

For the sake of consistency, I think Basic Attack is good. I know Dance of Death and Defensive Sweep both reference "Basic Attack".

[MrWindupBird]

Looks very interesting, looking forward to testing on Lamma. A new playstyle would be welcome.

One concern is that it looks like most of the warlock comes from their Eldritch blast, which is great, but presents a scaling problem in epic levels. The only difference is Eldritch blast damage between a level 20 and a level 28 warlock will be from spellpower.

That's hard to balance: if it works well at 20, it won't at 28: the spellpower increases simply don't keep up with monster HP. It isn't remotely close: its why sorcs and wizards use primarily epic destiny abilities for DPS: the class spells that are great in heroics really trail off in late epics, since they too are scaling only with spellpower. Warlocks, both thematically and with a limited SP pool, won't be able to make as good use of epic destiny spells/abilities, so I'm a bit concerned about the offensive output of a class depending on a poorly-scaling ability at cap.
The reason melee and ranged scale well into epic now is that melee and ranged power give much greater marginal effects from 20-28 than spellpower does, and because melee weapons themselves scale up (also the improved critical profiles we get access to at 20). Attack speeds also scale somewhat with BAB.

Some pretend numbers for you:
assume 300 spellpower at 20, 500 at 28 (reasonable-ish)
225 spellpower from max/emp
Total multiplier at lvl 20: (3+2.25+1) = 6.25 x Elridtch Blast damage
Total multipler at lvl 20: (5 + 2.25 + 1) = 8.25 x Eldritch Blast damage, or about 30% more. Thats the problem- a lvl 28 character needs to be able to do more than 30% more damage than a lvl 20 character.


This is a big-picture problem, and one that will be hard to fix without some actual testing and numbers on Lammania.

That said, the tree looks pretty fun, and I'm looking forward to it. Love the idea of tying debuffs to blast.

[Vargouille]

Thats the problem- a lvl 28 character needs to be able to do more than 30% more damage than a lvl 20 character.

How much more should a 28 have over 20?

We haven't specified how much Eldritch Blast damage scales with Spell Power, and that's one of the things that's likely to change as we proceed and playtest.

[Xaxx]

How much more should a 28 have over 20?

We haven't specified how much Eldritch Blast damage scales with Spell Power, and that's one of the things that's likely to change as we proceed and playtest.

it would have to be a pretty incredible scale because its not like theres a massive amount of spell power in epic destinies for force or negative or untyped and items go from 90 to 150..... so blast damage has to scale enough to be useful on enemies with 8-18k hp at 28 and up ee from enemies that are at 500 to 5k hp at level 20.... with only what between 100 and 200 spell power with no dice boosting......

I'm not a fan of all the changes made to what a warlock was to make this warlock.. but if your going to do it and have its damage ties to mainly one big core mechanic.... that core mechanic BETTER work on ee...

of course this is how most casting is in epics which is why probably 75% of spells thrown in epic arcane are mass hold, ottos's, fod, wail, energy burst, dragons breath. Yet the warlock comes up dc short compared to wiz and without the spell power for an elemental school as sorc to back up energy burst.

There has to be something added for epics to bring blast to where it will need to be.

[Silverleafeon]

How much more should a 28 have over 20?

We haven't specified how much Eldritch Blast damage scales with Spell Power, and that's one of the things that's likely to change as we proceed and playtest.

Sadly I am not sure I can answer that.
But its something all casters suffer from.
As mobs scale faster than their spells.


Should we lay down some sort of scale such as:
"Here is the hit points of level 20 quest EH monsters and here is the hit points of level 30 quest EH monsters?"

Also,
"Here is the hit points of a level 20 Red Named EH Raid boss, and here is the hit points of a level 30 Red Named EH Raid boss?"

Also mix in:
"Here is a 25% mix of the ratios of EE monsters as they scale from 20 to 30."

Along with a mix in:
"Here is a 10% mix of the ratios of EN monsters as they scale from 20 to 30."

Ect...

[Angelic-council]

You are right, please ignore that part.

I still think the cores ideally would not offer that many "free" DCs, as its unprecedented even for the dedicated DC Mages. Archmages for example do not get access to increases without spending more APs.

Even if T.scholars end up on pair with more focused DC casters, the latter group may feel there is not enough going for them to stay with their specs/build.

With all do respect jan, you have to read my comment. Warlocks can't compete with DC wizards. Warlock spells will cap at level 6 (3 lower DC than a wizard), additionally.. only 2 slots are availbale per spell level. Also, they have extremely limited spell pool, nothing near close to a wizard, and even bards can beat it.

Now, just take a look at the warlock spell list/spell pool.. and imagine. Do you honestly think, that with 2 slots in each spell book and limited mana, they can outperform a wizard who get more SP, more spell choices, good self healing, excellent feat bonuses and everything.. Just because they get 2 fixed DC from core and 1 limited SLA, 2 DC tier 1 core. Alright, they also get 1 fixed DC from tier 5. Without counting core 1.. they get 3 DCs, which at this point, they are finally per with arcane class.

Edit: you have to invest a lot in this tree before getting all those missing DCs.