Warlock Enhancements: Tainted Scholar

[HastyPudding]

I, too, am not understanding the logic behind changing penetrating blast. I was definitely planning on taking it for untyped, but I don't understand the benefits to pierce. Untyped has no resistance; pierce does; therefore untyped is far more valuable. Unless you are thinking IC: Pierce will apply? Then the crits would be nice, but it's also a feat tax. I'm not really convinced that would be an improvement. I'd really like to know the thinking on this.

I doubt IC: piercing will work with eldritch blasts. If anything, it works like magic damage; like blade barrier has slashing damage and meteor swarm has bludgeoning damage. Both of those spells are made stronger via force/impulse spellpower. Penetrating blast will be no different.

I liked the untyped damage better, but at least this gives another damage option to warlocks. In all honesty, no warlock in their right mind would use any other eldritch essence other than penetrating blast if it was still untyped damage. That's probably one reason why they changed it: it completely overshadowed every other essence.

[Grace_ana]

I doubt IC: piercing will work with eldritch blasts. If anything, it works like magic damage; like blade barrier has slashing damage and meteor swarm has bludgeoning damage. Both of those spells are made stronger via force/impulse spellpower. Penetrating blast will be no different.

I liked the untyped damage better, but at least this gives another damage option to warlocks. In all honesty, no warlock in their right mind would use any other eldritch essence other than penetrating blast if it was still untyped damage. That's probably one reason why they changed it: it completely overshadowed every other essence.

I wouldn't think IC would work with it either, but I couldn't think of any possible reason to change it otherwise. I can think of reasons to not take that essence at times. Untyped only benefits from universal spellpower, IIRC, so if you have much more of another type of spellpower and aren't fighting something with resistance to it, that other essence will be more useful.

All it really does, it seems to me, is reduce my need to go as far into this tree, which IMO is bad planning. It's better to have tough choices on where to spend AP and have more things that I want than I have AP than the other way around.

[Steelstar]

I'd love to know what feedback/testing led to this change, and what the design goal/intention/benefit is of doing away with Untyped.

The drive behind the change came from the Content side of the team, primarily myself. In the current game, there are definitely sources of Untyped/Bane damage; however, most of them (especially in Heroic) are either behind cooldowns (Mutilate), require Spell Points, or both (Disintegrate, Ruin). Untyped/Bane damage is not resisted or reduced by any sources in-game, and never can be; that's the entire point of that damage type.

Eldritch Blast is free and fast damage already, and while we want Warlocks to be equipped to handle all kinds of foes, it shouldn't be through a single enhancement that makes them do damage that no enemy, inanimate object, or Raid Boss can ever resist or reduce. It makes that ability incredibly powerful (and would be considered "mandatory" in every Warlock build), and creates balance concerns across all existing and future content.

[slarden]

The drive behind the change came from the Content side of the team, primarily myself. In the current game, there are definitely sources of Untyped/Bane damage; however, most of them (especially in Heroic) are either behind cooldowns (Mutilate), require Spell Points, or both (Disintegrate, Ruin). Untyped/Bane damage is not resisted or reduced by any sources in-game, and never can be; that's the entire point of that damage type.

Eldritch Blast is free and fast damage already, and while we want Warlocks to be equipped to handle all kinds of foes, it shouldn't be through a single enhancement that makes them do damage that no enemy, inanimate object, or Raid Boss can ever resist or reduce. It makes that ability incredibly powerful (and would be considered "mandatory" in every Warlock build), and creates balance concerns across all existing and future content.

Seems reasonable to me. It's better to be cautious on such things.

[Lanadazia]

The drive behind the change came from the Content side of the team, primarily myself. In the current game, there are definitely sources of Untyped/Bane damage; however, most of them (especially in Heroic) are either behind cooldowns (Mutilate), require Spell Points, or both (Disintegrate, Ruin). Untyped/Bane damage is not resisted or reduced by any sources in-game, and never can be; that's the entire point of that damage type.

Eldritch Blast is free and fast damage already, and while we want Warlocks to be equipped to handle all kinds of foes, it shouldn't be through a single enhancement that makes them do damage that no enemy, inanimate object, or Raid Boss can ever resist or reduce. It makes that ability incredibly powerful (and would be considered "mandatory" in every Warlock build), and creates balance concerns across all existing and future content.

agreed. untyped damage is very powerful indeed, and it never should be free. like ruin is a very powerful tool, but with its high cooldown and high sp cost its limited (aka balanced)
if i got this correctly, the warlock is supposed to do these eldritch blasts all the time, being a big part of his damage-output. let that big part get untyped damage would be broken

[Sebastrd]

The drive behind the change came from the Content side of the team, primarily myself. In the current game, there are definitely sources of Untyped/Bane damage; however, most of them (especially in Heroic) are either behind cooldowns (Mutilate), require Spell Points, or both (Disintegrate, Ruin). Untyped/Bane damage is not resisted or reduced by any sources in-game, and never can be; that's the entire point of that damage type.

Eldritch Blast is free and fast damage already, and while we want Warlocks to be equipped to handle all kinds of foes, it shouldn't be through a single enhancement that makes them do damage that no enemy, inanimate object, or Raid Boss can ever resist or reduce. It makes that ability incredibly powerful (and would be considered "mandatory" in every Warlock build), and creates balance concerns across all existing and future content.

Even the switch to piercing damage, Penetrating Blast will be mandatory for every Warlock build. It sounds like the driving force behind the EB damage type is basically the few bosses in game that have damage shields that are bypassed by untyped damage (Aurgloroasa, Xy'zzy, etc.) The problem is that you're left choosing between making Eldritch Blast bypass such shields by default or making Eldritch Blast "just another spell".

Eldritch Blast is THE key class feature of Warlock. In my opinion, adding elemental damage types, reflex saves, spell resistance, etc., to water it down are all bad ideas. Trying to balance Eldritch Blast like a spell is the wrong approach. Balance Eldritch Blast like exactly what it replaces - basic attacks. Figure out the DPS you're shooting for, and scale Eldritch Blast with spell power to keep it in that range from level 1-30, just like you adjust the way melee abilities scale with melee power and the way ranged abilities scale with ranged power.

[Steelstar]

Even the switch to piercing damage, Penetrating Blast will be mandatory for every Warlock build. It sounds like the driving force behind the EB damage type is basically the few bosses in game that have damage shields that are bypassed by untyped damage (Aurgloroasa, Xy'zzy, etc.) The problem is that you're left choosing between making Eldritch Blast bypass such shields by default or making Eldritch Blast "just another spell".

Eldritch Blast is THE key class feature of Warlock. In my opinion, adding elemental damage types, reflex saves, spell resistance, etc., to water it down are all bad ideas. Trying to balance Eldritch Blast like a spell is the wrong approach. Balance Eldritch Blast like exactly what it replaces - basic attacks. Figure out the DPS you're shooting for, and scale Eldritch Blast with spell power to keep it in that range from level 1-30, just like you adjust the way melee abilities scale with melee power and the way ranged abilities scale with ranged power.

That's a bit like saying "Weapons are THE key class feature (at least for damage) of Fighters. All weapons wielded by Fighters should do Bludgeon, Piercing, AND Slashing damage, always bypass DR, and always bypass PRR".

We aren't trying to balance it like just another spell; we're trying to balance it like the primary attacks (AND primary spells) of every other class, which are all resisted by SOMEthing, even if they're able to switch to another spell or weapon to counter that. Things like PRR, MRR, DR, Energy Resistance, and Protection from Energy apply to every other class' primary attacks; Untyped Spell damage is not reduced by any of those.

[LordTigerDawn]

That's a bit like saying "Weapons are THE key class feature (at least for damage) of Fighters. All weapons wielded by Fighters should do Bludgeon, Piercing, AND Slashing damage, always bypass DR, and always bypass PRR".

We aren't trying to balance it like just another spell; we're trying to balance it like the primary attacks (AND primary spells) of every other class, which are all resisted by SOMEthing, even if they're able to switch to another spell or weapon to counter that. Things like PRR, MRR, DR, Energy Resistance, and Protection from Energy apply to every other class' primary attacks; Untyped Spell damage is not reduced by any of those.

Amen, Steelstar.

[onny]

The only real question I would be asking on the damage type is between Force, Poison and Piercing is there any monster that is 100% immune to all three. And I think that with piercing in there its a safe bet the answer is no. The only real concern I would have is that the way its setup you would be forced to splash Tainted Scholar since none of the other trees offer the ability to change damage type and there definitely are monsters that are 100% immune to force damage. Maybe put some stand alone in teir 4/5 of the other trees to give options for those that don't want to splash scholar.

[Mahatu]

I wanted to start out saying that I am really liking the looks of all the trees so far, and I think we will be getting some very interesting builds when this comes out.

The depravity mechanic looks very interesting. As a couple others have brought up, there may be some trouble with how strict the generation of stacks is and how many abilities make use of the mechanic. I think this could be helped by giving other means of generating stacks in later cores. Some ideas are on spell crit, on landing a debuff or control spell, when an enemy dies within a certain period of time after being damaged/debuffed, or on dealing damage to a cc’ed target. If such an additonal means of stack generation was added, it could be on a separate cooldown, much like how spirit generation in primal avatar is.

I would also like to jump on and add that I think staunch giving 50% and 2% seems pretty balanced to me.

The capstone in this tree looks really awesome! I am certainly going to be taking this one =)

I know that it was mentioned that warlocks would be getting the magical training feat in one way or another, but I don’t see it as part of the planar power enhancement. Will warlocks get it at level 1 like other casters?

As others have been saying, I am not sure that “unholy” blast doing poison damage really helps the situation. What if it acctually did unholy damage? That would also give it some very good synergy with the enlightened spirit tree, as well as a couple different destinies.

Stunning blast looks like a really awesome enhancment, but the DC will absolutely need to be able to be hightened, or scale with warlock level. The proposed DC of 11 + Cha mod + enchantment school modifiers will just not be enough in high end content.

I like the looks of eldritch ball. Will the spellpower scaling of this ability be more like the single target eldritch blasts? What will the cooldown on this ability be? I think that giving it a short cooldown, or even no cooldown, could make for interesting gameplay choices. As it costs depravity and that is a very rate limited resource, having a short cooldown would give a warlock the choice to either use it infrequently and have depravity for other abilities, or burn through large amounts of depravity all at once for high damage, but be left without for a time as it builds back up.

On the subject of eldritch blast damage scaling into epics, I think that it will suffer from the problem that most spells do in epics: there just aren’t all that many ways to raise spell damage in epics. Melee and range characters have tons of options. Increasing their primary damage stat, plenty of + damage effects, many on hit/crit/vorp effects, attack speed bonuses, doublestrike/shot, melee/ranged power, bonus weapon dice, and several ways to increase both the critical threat range and damage multiplier of weapons.

Spell casting characters on the other hand have small increases in spellpower, small amounts of crit chance, and very rare instances of increased max caster level. Oh, and the lantern ring. Other than that, they really don’t have much of anything.

I think there are a few ideas that could help the situation. Give +1 caster level and max caster level to all spellcasting classes every 2 epic levels (give warlocks +1d6 eldritch blast damage at these levels as well). Give damage spells bonus base damage equal to their primary casting stat that scales with spell power (if this option is taken, it really should only apply once to multi-hit spells like magic missile or scorching ray). Add more items that add on hit effects for spells. Add items that increase the caster level and maximum caster level of spells, or items that increase spell critical damage.

Any combination of these sorts of things (and probably many others that I haven’t thought of) could help the situation for casters. I think the main point is that casters need more than just a couple of ways to scale the power of their spells

I would also like to add that while epic spells can be powerful and a lot of fun, they really aren’t a great soloution to caster’s weaker damage in epics. Epic spells should be powerful, momentous abilities that are used infrequiently, not the main source of a caster’s damage. The spells that we gained in heroic levels should be able to serve us in epics. At least that is how I feel on the subject.

Anyways, I am very excited by what I see here and can’t wait to try warlocks out when they hit Lamannia!

[Augon]

All weapons wielded by Fighters should do Bludgeon, Piercing, AND Slashing damage, always bypass DR, and always bypass PRR.

NOW YOUR TALKIN!

So, when does my fighter get this enhancement?? Afterall I have a quote from a developer saying this is so, so I expect it in the next update. And don't you dare nerf it!

[Grace_ana]

That's a bit like saying "Weapons are THE key class feature (at least for damage) of Fighters. All weapons wielded by Fighters should do Bludgeon, Piercing, AND Slashing damage, always bypass DR, and always bypass PRR".

We aren't trying to balance it like just another spell; we're trying to balance it like the primary attacks (AND primary spells) of every other class, which are all resisted by SOMEthing, even if they're able to switch to another spell or weapon to counter that. Things like PRR, MRR, DR, Energy Resistance, and Protection from Energy apply to every other class' primary attacks; Untyped Spell damage is not reduced by any of those.

It was suggested by someone (sorry, can't search through everything to find who) that each pact be given two options instead of one to add on to the blasts. Acid and light was an example instead of just acid. You would still only have one of them active at a time, much like EK. I still think that would be a good option to go along with what you are saying above. If a warlock comes up against something that is immune or resistant to several of their damage types, it would be nice to be able to switch to a different pact add-on. I know the essences are supposed to do this, but it would indeed be unfun to lose two-thirds of your damage options (and therefore damage) just because. Melee can switch to a more useful weapon, casters aren't limited to only casting certain damage types. Warlock shouldn't lose out on flexibility.

[HatsuharuZ]

Here is a crazy idea... make "Unholy Blast" a toggle that changes the pact-based damage to... something else. I know for a fact that there are some enemies that are healed by fire or acid.

[Sebastrd]

That's a bit like saying "Weapons are THE key class feature (at least for damage) of Fighters. All weapons wielded by Fighters should do Bludgeon, Piercing, AND Slashing damage, always bypass DR, and always bypass PRR".

We aren't trying to balance it like just another spell; we're trying to balance it like the primary attacks (AND primary spells) of every other class, which are all resisted by SOMEthing, even if they're able to switch to another spell or weapon to counter that. Things like PRR, MRR, DR, Energy Resistance, and Protection from Energy apply to every other class' primary attacks; Untyped Spell damage is not reduced by any of those.

Fair enough. That's the part I wasn't getting, and I completely see your point. However, keep in mind that Warlocks do not have the luxury of "switch to another spell or weapon". They only get one.

Penetrating Blast is going to be required for every Warlock. Can we just make Eldritch Blast piercing by default? That avoids the issue with Helmed Horrors, and apparently with bypassing every resistance in the game, as well. A Warlock's pact damage - especially if subject to a save - will be unreliable. You guys went crazy with giving mobs Evasion a while back, to the point that it doesn't even make sense on a lot of mobs (Vine Stalkers and Magefire Cannons? Seriously?). For most Warlocks, Eldritch Blast will be their sole source of damage, so it needs to be reliable.

[Unsmitten]

That's a bit like saying "Weapons are THE key class feature (at least for damage) of Fighters. All weapons wielded by Fighters should do Bludgeon, Piercing, AND Slashing damage, always bypass DR, and always bypass PRR".

We aren't trying to balance it like just another spell; we're trying to balance it like the primary attacks (AND primary spells) of every other class, which are all resisted by SOMEthing, even if they're able to switch to another spell or weapon to counter that. Things like PRR, MRR, DR, Energy Resistance, and Protection from Energy apply to every other class' primary attacks; Untyped Spell damage is not reduced by any of those.

Perhaps you forgot about the Arcane Archer cores(bypass Bludgeon, Piercing, and Slashing damage or any alignment). Maybe add both a physical and a magic damage toggle to each of the trees. Tainted Scholar has poison and piercing, give Souleater negative and Slashing, and give Enlightened Spirit fire and bludgeoning.

Or, perhaps you could remove the damage type toggles from the enhancement trees and grant them as feats that warlocks get to pick from based on class level. At levels 5, 10, 15 and 20 grant a damage type toggle including acid, bludgeoning, cold, electric, fire, light, piercing, negative, slashing and sonic.

Or grant the material type/alignment on equipped mainhand weapon to the EB.

Just throwing some ideas out there(even though they are too late to have any impact).


Having 3 options for blast damage types is good, but there will always be situations where 3 is not enough. For example, a champion golem(any type) that has the piercing immunity buff(90% reduced damage from piercing). This champion golem would be immune to poison(unholy blast), take only 10% damage from piercing(penetrating blast) and 50% from force(regular eldritch blast). While uncommon, this sort of occurrence IS common enough to be a serious annoyance.

[Requiro]

Fair enough. That's the part I wasn't getting, and I completely see your point. However, keep in mind that Warlocks do not have the luxury of "switch to another spell or weapon". They only get one. (...)

Excellent argument.

But maybe other solution?
Force Type by Default on level 1 Warlock.
And on level 4 Warlock, depends on Pact, Bludgeon, Piercing, OR Slashing Eldritch Essence Stance Feat? OP?

[CelticTrojan]

Hi,
Not sure if this was already covered somewhere, but if the Blast is force damage and spell like, does Shield or Nightshield block it like they do for magic missile?

I hope not, it will be something to test right away on Lammania.

CelticTrojan

[HastyPudding]

Hi,
Not sure if this was already covered somewhere, but if the Blast is force damage and spell like, does Shield or Nightshield block it like they do for magic missile?

I hope not, it will be something to test right away on Lammania.

CelticTrojan

Shield and Nightshield block magic missiles, force missiles, and chain missiles.

Eldritch Blast is not magic missiles, force missiles, or chain missiles.

Therefore Shield and Nightshield does not block Eldritch Blast.

[RTFM]

[*]"Unholy Blast" (name TBD): Eldritch Essence Stance: Your Eldritch Blast base damage is now Poison instead of Force.

Really? Unholy blast is POISON? Just call it "Poison blast"!

What is the big "no no" about having it "Evil Damage" just like PnP?

[kain741]

One thing I'm missing in here is how a pure DC caster will fit into the equation at endgame. With warlock's primary sphere being primal to receive a bump to it's caster level, it is going to be hampered by the lack of charisma in the sphere. There are enough spells in their spellbook that will require a spell penetration check that make the sphere important, but from the current plan I don't see how a DC caster could overcome the effective -3 DCs relative to a Wizard in Magister or a Favvy in Exalted. Is there some other plan in the works that will buff the caster's DC making it relevant to even consider a pure DC type caster or is this destined to be shiardi type caster only?