Lamannia Enlightened Spirit Feedback - Official Thread

[FinweCurunir]

Sorry dude, i mean no offense but in normal difficulty, both heroic and epic, you can slaughter entire quests naked with just a pointy stick. In my opinion it's not really a good way to measure a class.

I'll add another reference: i soloed A Cry for Help EE with a pure 20 Warlock, SWF line + orb melee, Improved Crit, Overwhelming Crit and some Metamagics. Lv28 and ubergeared. ED was Divine Crusader, twists were Double Rainbow, Prism, and probably Cocoon, or maybe Brace (or maybe light spellpower? idk). Also first life, PdK CHA based.

A few considerations: Cleaves are useless because of your bursts, so Legendary Dreadnought is out. You do not have uber attacks nor can reach uber damage scores so adrenalines and Fury are out as well. Grandmaster is out too, since you can't be centered. Fatesinger, let's face it, is a joke, except maybe for Fey Pact (nah, who am i kidding?). That leaves only Divine Crusader as a viable melee option (which is a very good ED, at least). And, in my opinion, right now Shiradi twist are the best option for damage. Honestly, i kind of like the novelty of this, but that also tells how ****ed up this is.

Back to my testing, the quest was a challenge, expecially staying alive. Consecration is an absolute must. Without that, you die, point, and go home. At least you can always twist it. Damage wise it was not THAT bad. But i REALLY hate how the bursts completely halts your attack progression. You're meleeing, then you burst, and then even if you're holding left mouse you stand still doing nothing. Please change that. This is a melee tree, anything that blocks melee is not welcome.

Ah, for reference, i had next to no problems in the same quest with my lv23-ish Paladin. Granted, 3rd+ lifers and yadda yadda, but still...


So, a few more points:

- Edrein is right when suggesting more HP bonuses in the tree. At lv28, in Divine Crusader, with top gear and +4 tome, i was reaching 700hps (with points only in CHA, of course) . Not a single more point. That's simply not enough. If those were 800 i probably wouldn't be here complaining.

- The Light damage bonuses in the tree are a joke. I can understand if you want to keep the tier 4 (Retribution) low (even though i'd suggest to double it), but the capstone? Come on! A capstone means the toon has 20 Warlock levels, and a full investment in this tree. There's no room for broken combinations. 3d6 here are a total joke. Make them 6d6. At least.

- Resist Energy is in touch with the flavor of the tree, but it kinda feels like a wasted slot. We have already a gazillion ways to have it (Spell, pots, wands, items, guild buffs)

- Displacement is good, but i would actually make it a toggle, like Tenser from Eldritch Knight (why not learn from one of the few good things in that tree?)

- Summons enhancements are totally out of place. I mean, i know you want to buff them and make them somewhat viable, but honestly they are a waste of space in the tree, that could be used for something more interesting. No one's gonna use them, if not for da lulz, i guarantee it. Expecially not the T5. A t5 summon related? Seriously? (Side note: a good topping on a disgusting food is not gonna redeem it. The food will taste like **** anyway.)

- Make the aura tick every 2 seconds from the start. Flat. 2 secs are barely enough, and i should wait 'till lv18 for that? You must be joking. Except you're not very good at it.

- Spellpower tax is huge in this tree. You need to have high spellpower in Force for the base EB, then in the Element of your Pact, then Light. On top of melee. I'm not saying that it can't be done (far from that), but that it's taxing. So please make it worthwhile to do so.

- Your defenses are meager. With medium armor PRR and MRR are where they should be, but HPs are not.

- Weapon proficiency should come earlier. Second core, maybe. Three levels of Master's Touch i can cope with. Not TWELVE.

- The Bursts are currently affected by Metamagics, or at least you can right click select them. But they do not seem to affect them. Quicken does nothing, while a quicker burst would surely be nice, if that means not interrupting the attack chain all together. Empower and Maximize are simply NEEDED on them. On any melee, i can cleave for hundreds, thousands of damage. On a burst i get 3/10d6 Light + 10d6 Eldritch Blast + 10d4 Acid/Fire/Sonic (that save for half, let us not forget that. More dices if points are spent in the other tree.). Melee i just need a stat to pump and melee power, voila 1k+ crit at worst. Here i need 3 different spellpowers and i have a low crit chance. The 2 bursts right now are decent, tops. Make metas properly work on them, and maybe they'll be good.

- As of now, there's no reason to spend more than 1 point in Cure Moderate SLA. Please keep it at 0 sp, or 1 at max. Make it just 1 Rank, and make it cost 2 AP. Done.

[Banegrivm]

The aura at low levels pretty much seems useless. When you consider that someone not using the aura can do much higher DPS by just attacking normally it makes the aura even less worth using to be honest. Especially at low level. If you make it proc equal to say the attack speed of the actual blast it would be much more worthwhile. Right now it's pretty much useless. 8 seconds is too long a time in an action based game. I've gone whole fights without it even doing any damage even once and if it does do damage it seems pretty negligible to notice.

[edrein]

As much as I really hate to say this, perhaps a toggle stance to make our weapons both melee and ranged be imbued with our Eldritch Blast would work best. The Aura is terrible unless you are pure, yet you've also claimed that this tree was designed to appear to multiclass toons. Trying both pure and multiclass builds I don't see the appeal at all. I want a pure enhancement tree that captures the tabletop spirit of being a melee warlock, not a mixed bag of unique abilities from other classes thrown together to make an enhancement tree that's build primarily for heroic content.

This entire tree does not scale well into epics past epic normal, even in hard this was a bit meh and lackluster. And certain in EE where I was testing the class in ToEE it was nearly useless compared to a Wizard Eldritch Knight with a splash in Palemaster, and in case you don't know that's entirely horrible seeing as Palemaster healing seems to be broken currently and EK damage is a joke all around.

[Steelstar]

Hey, everyone. Thanks for the feedback so far. Let me answer a few questions that I can:

Hey guys,

I just rolled a 18/2 warlock pally elf to try to use heavy armour through both elf arcane fluidity and enlightened spirits medium armour. Is it correct of me to assume that they do not stack to each other or what?

When i put medium armour on obviously i dont get spell failure but with heavy arnour i get 20% which is already reduced by 15% from elf tier 1

As others said, the armor-based abilities in this tree apply to Light and Medium armor only, and do not offer their help in Heavy.

resist energy as an SLA... why??

ideally SLAs should be spells you cast often, thus benefiting from them being so readily available. how often would you get to cast energy resist? start of quest, and forget it exists.

not to mention that it's also available to the class as a spell... making this SLA even more puzzling. sure you could say "we're saving you a spell slot, now you can get a spell that actually does something for that slot instead"

We're planning on reducing the SP cost of this ability significantly compared to what's on Lamannia, which should allow you to apply all five forms of Resist Energy to your party at a lower SP cost and (MUCH) lower buffing time than the standard spell.

First impressions: the Aura is too slow to be of use dps wise. Mobs can literally run past it without taking damage. Make it 2 seconds flat and call it a day. I'd like to see it at 1 sec, but i know it's not gonna happen.

Eldritch Burst and Spirit Blast are kind of underwhelming as a Cleave/Great Cleave counterpart. Maybe the scaling is just bugged, but i was seeing some pretty low numbers. Do they interact as intended with Empower/Maximize? Again it didn't seem like i had much of a difference while they were active.

I know the class is not intended to rival the other melee DPS classes in the game - in fact at this point it doesn't even come close. I really like the idea of doing magic damage in melee range, while actually attacking with a weapon, but right now the numbers are just too low. Hope it's just a bugged scaling though

We may consider having the timing of the blast (which is 8/4/3/2 currently through the Cores) change to 6/4/3/2 or 5/4/3/2 based on the data we've gotten so far, but we're unlikely to just make it a flat 2 seconds - It'd be exceptionally overpowered at low Heroic levels (unless we heavily nerfed the low-level damage in response, which we're fairly sure people don't want here), and make low-level Warlock splashes much more powerful than they're already going to be. The Aura is strictly free(ish) damage on top of whatever you can dish out with your weapons or spells; it shouldn't comprise 100% of your damage output.

I'll check on the interaction between the Burst/Blast and Metamagic skills.

Overall I'm in general agreement the DPS is underwhelming across the board if you put your points purely in Enlightened Spirit. Eldritch Burst and Spirit Blast are decent for heroics when you have Maximize and Empower, but certainly aren't going to survive epic HP. The tree in general is lacking true survivability, the bits of PRR and MRR are alright but actual HP bonuses are needed.

As I suggested in the main forums thread for feedback, please make the level 6 core Shape Vestments scale based on the enchantment bonus of the armor. At the same numbers as given currently. 10hp per enchantment for light armor and 20hp per enchantment for medium armor. At level 6 when you get this enhancement it means a front-ended bonus of 30hp/60hp, which seems a lot yes, but you don't gain more HP for a few levels so this affect remains balanced. Additionally this means by level 27 when you have access to the +10 enchantment armor you're netting a solid 100/200hp bonus, which will increase with the level cap of 30 when we have higher armor as well. That helps smooth the enhancement pass because you won't have to go back and touch warlock up early, you can let it lay low a bit for further balancing at cap. Unlike classes which could use it now.

Another good idea would be to change the HP from Spiritual Defense to a percentage rate say 2/4/5%, not as strong as the Sacred Defender/Stalwart defender lines but certainly a little bit to help the warlock outside of epic destinies.

This tree gets more PRR and MRR than any other tree in the game, and there are definite sources for improving HP in other classes as well as items and destinies; we're not sure yet that they need a further dedicated source in this tree. Still, it's a concern we've heard a few times, so we're going to do some internal digging to see if they are particularly worse off compared to similar characters in other classes.

Instead of a Displacement SLA, could we have a multiselector for permanent Tenser's Transformation seeing as this is a melee oriented tree?

Using Tenser's will probably be a strategy for many in this tree, but (at least at the moment), it will cause your Eldritch Burst and Spirit Blast cooldowns to be 2x as long, because they're spells.

2. Break forth has the same bug that was present with the cleric positive energy burst, needs a target to activate. **** annoying.

I'm going to take a look at both of those spells today and see if I can get that fixed.

A few considerations: Cleaves are useless because of your bursts, so Legendary Dreadnought is out. You do not have uber attacks nor can reach uber damage scores so adrenalines and Fury are out as well. Grandmaster is out too, since you can't be centered. Fatesinger, let's face it, is a joke, except maybe for Fey Pact (nah, who am i kidding?). That leaves only Divine Crusader as a viable melee option (which is a very good ED, at least). And, in my opinion, right now Shiradi twist are the best option for damage. Honestly, i kind of like the novelty of this, but that also tells how ****ed up this is.

A few points on this:

• We're not really concerned that Legendary Dreadnought isn't a good fit for a Pure 20 Warlock in this tree. It shouldn't be the best choice for every build, especially a caster (albeit one with weapons).
• Same with Fury.
  
  • That said, we're certain some Warlock/(insert melee class) multiclass builds will fit fine into these two destinies.
  
  
• No reason you can't be centered as a Warlock.
• Got some decent damage numbers in Fatesinger with Fey pact, some Bard levels and the right gear in a test build last week. Don't underestimate it!
• Divine Crusader is a solid option.
• Everyone seems to forget Exalted Angel. In the test builds I was running with this tree, an Exalted Angel was in the running for top DPS. Light & Fire forever.
• The long story short: If this build excels in Destinies that aren't commonly used right now, that's a good thing.

Back to my testing, the quest was a challenge, expecially staying alive. Consecration is an absolute must. Without that, you die, point, and go home. At least you can always twist it. Damage wise it was not THAT bad. But i REALLY hate how the bursts completely halts your attack progression. You're meleeing, then you burst, and then even if you're holding left mouse you stand still doing nothing. Please change that. This is a melee tree, anything that blocks melee is not welcome.

Warlocks are not meant to excel at healing. You have some things in the Enlightened Spirit tree that can help with that, but you should need to turn to sources outside the base class/trees (scrolls, destinies, items, etc) if you want to be viably soloing difficult content.

We'll take a look at how the bursts affect the attack chain, and see if we can smooth things out a bit.

- The Light damage bonuses in the tree are a joke. I can understand if you want to keep the tier 4 (Retribution) low (even though i'd suggest to double it), but the capstone? Come on! A capstone means the toon has 20 Warlock levels, and a full investment in this tree. There's no room for broken combinations. 3d6 here are a total joke. Make them 6d6. At least.

- Spellpower tax is huge in this tree. You need to have high spellpower in Force for the base EB, then in the Element of your Pact, then Light. On top of melee. I'm not saying that it can't be done (far from that), but that it's taxing. So please make it worthwhile to do so.

All Light damage in the tree scales with Spell Power; we'll make sure the abilities more clearly state that. We're gathering some feedback on this damage, and will look into whether it needs to be adjusted, and in what way. There are more handles for changing this than simply increasing the damage dice, such as degree of scaling with Spell Power (which would help alleviate the Spell Power tax in your second comment there).

You must be joking. Except you're not very good at it.

As a general note (not just to you, Finwe): This kind of thing isn't useful to this process, and makes good feedback harder to get on our end. It also doesn't help convince us of your argument, and sometimes has the opposite effect. Please try to keep this kind of talk out of Official discussions, it only makes things more difficult.

- Weapon proficiency should come earlier. Second core, maybe. Three levels of Master's Touch i can cope with. Not TWELVE.

Something to bear in mind, as another general note: This is not a Melee tree on its own. Enlightened Spirit is a tree that synergizes well with Melee multiclasses, and should support you well if you wish to do close-quarters combat as a Warlock; however, its primary focus for damage is on improving the viability of your Aura and the Cleave-esque Bursts, along with secondary lesser support for weapon attacks. In terms of Martial Weapon proficiency, there are options:

• Use non-Martial weapons for the first while. Warlock isn't a martial class by nature, and shouldn't have access to those weapons innately from first level.
• Use Master's Touch. Annoying, perhaps. But the spell should have a reason to exist.
• Multiclass into a class that gets that weapon proficiency.
• Take the feat for the weapon proficiency, and swap it later.

These things have costs, yes... but they should.

The aura at low levels pretty much seems useless. When you consider that someone not using the aura can do much higher DPS by just attacking normally it makes the aura even less worth using to be honest. Especially at low level. If you make it proc equal to say the attack speed of the actual blast it would be much more worthwhile. Right now it's pretty much useless. 8 seconds is too long a time in an action based game. I've gone whole fights without it even doing any damage even once and if it does do damage it seems pretty negligible to notice.

The difference between "Using the aura at low levels" and "Not using the aura at low levels" is the 1AP you invest to get the Aura. Unless that 1AP at low levels is invested in something extremely powerful, you aren't dealing significantly more damage with it turned off. It's extra damage on top of whatever else you're doing. And as said above, we may reduce the initial time.

Four issues so far;

The Tier 2 permanent Shield enhancement is present and active while I'm in the Marketplace but disappears when in any quest instance. I know the vendors can get pushy about their +1 bolts but those aren't the magic missiles I want protecting from.

Core 4 Aura of Menace isn't providing martial weapon proficiency. It isn't even in the tooltip.

The Cure Moderate Wounds SLA at rank 3/3 isn't taking any spell points to cast.

Summon Monster IV spell - the pop up to choose which monster to summon is an empty black box. Not much use for the summoning enhancements so far.

Thanks, we'll take a look into these bugs.

[Mast3rR0b]

I like your idea.. but not really for Warlocks. Imbueing your weapon with arcane damage is something i'd like to see in the Eldritch knight tree, ie. Yes, we already have that, but it sucks, hard. All spellswords damage should scale with spellpower, and not only 2 damage. They should also implement a toggle menu to let us chose a spell (a touch one, maybe) to be autocasted when you land a melee hit, or at least have a chance to.


With Warlock, i like the idea of the Aura as a shape. I think it's just the numbers and some enhancements that needs to be changed. 2 seconds flat tick, at least. Way better light damage dices and scaling.


On a side note, i'm quite curious about your experience with EK vs Wlock. I literally just finished a run in EE Feast with both a INT based EK and a CHA based Wlock, both SWF, lv28 and Ubergeared, and the Wlock seemed to me to have way better DPS, except for Energy Burst that wasn't twisted.

[edrein]

Hey, everyone. Thanks for the feedback so far. Let me answer a few questions that I can: ...

...Thanks, we'll take a look into these bugs.

I hate to sound rude or like an a-hole, but can you please stop approach class design that enhancement trees should be made to support multiclassing over pures? What is wrong with promoting pure classes in the entire mindset of the Dev team compared to promoting these typical 8/6/6, 12/6/2, etc. splashes over giving us an actual PURE class that is comparatively on par with these splashes.

I remember when splashing was for utility not the be all end all min-maxing power gaming it has turned into.

Give us an Enlightened Spirit that is a competent melee fighter like the Pre-MoTU Warchanter. We don't have to be Swashbuckler, Paladin, or Barbarian 'overperforming' in epic elites, but we certainly don't need to be turned into gimps. You stated that we have more PRR and MRR, ok that's nice. The problem with that is it means nothing when you have less than 350hp on a level 20 warlock with 16 base con, full HP bonuses from Enlightened Spirit, greater false life, and a +6 con item. Now if we're talking my main with all his past lives, gear, etc. Sure I can handle your current Enlightened Spirit, heck I may even be able to play it as is outside of Divine Crusader. But right now even with Divine Crusader they are underperforming, worse than an Eldritch Knight and in case you haven't looked at the feedback on that tree for the past year and half it's a joke to us players. The damage is terrible, most of the AP choices are terrible, and it usually only gets used for builds picking up permanent tenser's transformation.

So if you want this to be a class people splash for whatever reason (I'd mostly assume to get past lives out of the way) then atleast give us permanent tenser's somewhere to further buff our PRR/MRR, give a smidge more HP through the alchemical +4 con, and generally aid our melee combat with higher BAB as well. I saw the fact it doubled the cooldown of the 'cleave' bursts, I can live with that even if it's not intended as long as I don't have to either scroll or recast tenser's every 1-2 minutes. Our SP pool isn't large enough to support that, healing, and trying to use CC such as Howl of Terror (which needs it's DC to be looked at.)

And on the case of my HP proposal, if you think that's too much potential HP fluff for such a low core then swap 12 and 6, so we get martial weapon proficiency at level 6 and don't have to waste one of our two precious spell slots on Master's Touch. Atleast that way a pure/primarily warlock character will get a decent HP bonus for sticking with warlock levels over splashing say fighter for the defender stances or paladin for the same.

Oh and by the way, current build on Lamania the warlock is gaining wizard/sorcerer HP progression. I asked several people to check. They were in fact gaining d4 HP per level instead of d6, that would certainly help change the numbers a bit. But not by much.

[edrein]

I like your idea.. but not really for Warlocks. Imbueing your weapon with arcane damage is something i'd like to see in the Eldritch knight tree, ie. Yes, we already have that, but it sucks, hard. All spellswords damage should scale with spellpower, and not only 2 damage. They should also implement a toggle menu to let us chose a spell (a touch one, maybe) to be autocasted when you land a melee hit, or at least have a chance to.


With Warlock, i like the idea of the Aura as a shape. I think it's just the numbers and some enhancements that needs to be changed. 2 seconds flat tick, at least. Way better light damage dices and scaling.


On a side note, i'm quite curious about your experience with EK vs Wlock. I literally just finished a run in EE Feast with both a INT based EK and a CHA based Wlock, both SWF, lv28 and Ubergeared, and the Wlock seemed to me to have way better DPS, except for Energy Burst that wasn't twisted.

Were these both pure? Because the first thing I can think of when hearing CHA based warlock is a PDK build somehow. By ubergeared I assume you mean things from the shelves in the dojo? Was the Wizard fleshy (AKA: Undead) or WF? If WF was it a Bladeforged? I mean there a quite a few details you're leaving out of your experience for me to understand here. Notably the cleave burst was nice in my ToEE test, but the main issue I had was trying to constantly heal myself and having to kite far too much for a class with the most 'PRR/MRR' as stated by Steelstar. Even with dodge, displacement, blur, etc. I still had to keep moving just about as much as the caster warlocks in the party.

To note though, my pure EK wizard's have been fleshies using Lich or Wraith form depending on quest in particular and have always been TWF builds. Only time I've tried SWF while undead was on a wraithform swashbuckler build. The warlock I was testing however was SWF using a TF orb for spell power and critical chance. With the same scimitar I main on live. The DPS overall felt underwhelming and less than the EK (And I'm not the type to take the extra time to cast spells beyond auras/healing.), but mostly because the Warlock's HP pool was overall lesser somehow.

I spoke with Varg in game and surprisingly he stated that warlocks should have similar to or less HP than a wizard which seemed entirely off given the base HP die difference. A wizard can pick up more HP through enhancement trees to my knowledge though.

[HatsuharuZ]

Something to bear in mind, as another general note: This is not a Melee tree on its own. Enlightened Spirit is a tree that synergizes well with Melee multiclasses, and should support you well if you wish to do close-quarters combat as a Warlock; however, its primary focus for damage is on improving the viability of your Aura and the Cleave-esque Bursts, along with secondary lesser support for weapon attacks. In terms of Martial Weapon proficiency, there are options:

• Use non-Martial weapons for the first while. Warlock isn't a martial class by nature, and shouldn't have access to those weapons innately from first level.
• Use Master's Touch. Annoying, perhaps. But the spell should have a reason to exist.
• Multiclass into a class that gets that weapon proficiency.
• Take the feat for the weapon proficiency, and swap it later.

These things have costs, yes... but they should.

These things do indeed have costs. A bard can get martial weapon proficiency from enhancements via the 2nd Warchanter core ability. That's at level 3. Wizards can get martial weapon proficiency AND 2% doublestrike from a 2nd tier enhancement in the Eldritch Knight tree. Both of these classes get Master's Touch as a level 1 spell, and both of these classes have more spell slots per spell level than a warlock of the same class level.

If you want to encourage less common options, such as the use of simple weapons or the Master's Touch spell, then you should give buffs to those mechanics.

For simple weapons, try giving buffs to those weapons, such as increased crit chance/multiplier, fortification bypass, damage dice or to-hit/damage bonuses.

For Master's Touch, make it an infusion! That is, make it an item enchantment that can be applied to bracers, which gives martial weapon proficiency to the wielder. Currently, it is VERY annoying to have to switch through all my weapon sets (I keep at least 3 weapon sets for various enemies) and cast this repeatedly.

[Bernaise]

I'm not really a fan of the Resist Energy SLA either. On live, most players will be running around with ship buffs or have the actual single-target spell (redundant).

An idea I had regarding the low pool of hit points is having an SLA that creates a mana bubble on a timer that would absorb damage draining your mana pool (instead of health) until the timer expires. A drawback could be that once the bubble is active, it cannot be turned/toggled off, you must wait until it expires. Not like this is a new idea (other MMO's), but IMO it makes sense in terms of the Warlock; Big pool of mana, only so much to do with it..

[edrein]

I'm not really a fan of the Resist Energy SLA either. On live, most players will be running around with ship buffs or have the actual single-target spell (redundant).

An idea I had regarding the low pool of hit points is having an SLA that creates a mana bubble on a timer that would absorb damage draining your mana pool (instead of health) until the timer expires. A drawback could be that once the bubble is active, it cannot be turned/toggled off, you must wait until it expires. Not like this is a new idea (other MMO's), but IMO it makes sense in terms of the Warlock; Big pool of mana, only so much to do with it..

Big? I went pure charisma on a test build and only had about 1k SP. Which as an infernal pact melee warlock, let me tell you I burnt through it fast trying to use Howl of Terror and self healing.

[Steelstar]

I'm not really a fan of the Resist Energy SLA either. On live, most players will be running around with ship buffs or have the actual single-target spell (redundant).

Ship buffs stack with the Spell/SLA, and the SLA will have a lower cooldown and (overall) lower SP cost if you are planning to cast all of the Resists.

[Mast3rR0b]

Were these both pure? Because the first thing I can think of when hearing CHA based warlock is a PDK build somehow. By ubergeared I assume you mean things from the shelves in the dojo? Was the Wizard fleshy (AKA: Undead) or WF? If WF was it a Bladeforged? I mean there a quite a few details you're leaving out of your experience for me to understand here. Notably the cleave burst was nice in my ToEE test, but the main issue I had was trying to constantly heal myself and having to kite far too much for a class with the most 'PRR/MRR' as stated by Steelstar. Even with dodge, displacement, blur, etc. I still had to keep moving just about as much as the caster warlocks in the party.

To note though, my pure EK wizard's have been fleshies using Lich or Wraith form depending on quest in particular and have always been TWF builds. Only time I've tried SWF while undead was on a wraithform swashbuckler build. The warlock I was testing however was SWF using a TF orb for spell power and critical chance. With the same scimitar I main on live. The DPS overall felt underwhelming and less than the EK (And I'm not the type to take the extra time to cast spells beyond auras/healing.), but mostly because the Warlock's HP pool was overall lesser somehow.

I spoke with Varg in game and surprisingly he stated that warlocks should have similar to or less HP than a wizard which seemed entirely off given the base HP die difference. A wizard can pick up more HP through enhancement trees to my knowledge though.

Sorry, i indeed left out important details. The Warlock was pure 20, PDK cha based SWF using a TF Longsword and the Blazing Sun. The rest was mostly gear from Epic Orchard and Haunted Halls/Thunderpeaks.

The Eldritch Knight was a Drw 18Wiz/2Rog, although i tried it with 2Ftr too, in Lich form, SWF with a Scimitar and a Libram/TF Orb


Back on the main topic, i honestly don't understand the dev's reasoning on this class. Warlocks are hybrids, and this tree's primary core is the Aura shape for Eldritch Blast, which is used in melee range. What are warlocks supposed to do in melee range, if not meleeing? Steelstar said that the aura is "free" dps on top of whatever else you are doing, either swinging a sword or casting spells.

Now, from what i remember, i mostly saw buffs, CC and instakill spells. I'm quite sure there weren't much damaging spells, and certainly no such spells worthy of use, because either they are bad or they can't be supported/suistained. That leaves swinging a sword, or CC/instaKill. Thing is, unless you're a PDK, you can't do both to a decent extend. Which is right, per se. And you'll never be able to reach the levels of prowess with said sword of a Barbarian, a Paladin, or a Bard, etc...

So my point is, since your melee dps is gonna be quite low anyway (namely half of those classes i cited before), why not have the Aura and the Bursts supply that difference, to an extent? No one's saying "bring melee Warlock to the same levels as Barbs!!!! yadda yadda". Just don't make them Eldritch Knight tier, pretty please?

Oh, and why should Wlocks have less hp than Wizards?

[edrein]

Sorry, i indeed left out important details. The Warlock was pure 20, PDK cha based SWF using a TF Longsword and the Blazing Sun. The rest was mostly gear from Epic Orchard and Haunted Halls/Thunderpeaks.

The Eldritch Knight was a Drw 18Wiz/2Rog, although i tried it with 2Ftr too, in Lich form, SWF with a Scimitar and a Libram/TF Orb


Back on the main topic, i honestly don't understand the dev's reasoning on this class. Warlocks are hybrids, and this tree's primary core is the Aura shape for Eldritch Blast, which is used in melee range. What are warlocks supposed to do in melee range, if not meleeing? Steelstar said that the aura is "free" dps on top of whatever else you are doing, either swinging a sword or casting spells.

Now, from what i remember, i mostly saw buffs, CC and instakill spells. I'm quite sure there weren't much damaging spells, and certainly no such spells worthy of use, because either they are bad or they can't be supported/suistained. That leaves swinging a sword, or CC/instaKill. Thing is, unless you're a PDK, you can't do both to a decent extend. Which is right, per se. And you'll never be able to reach the levels of prowess with said sword of a Barbarian, a Paladin, or a Bard, etc...

So my point is, since your melee dps is gonna be quite low anyway (namely half of those classes i cited before), why not have the Aura and the Bursts supply that difference, to an extent? No one's saying "bring melee Warlock to the same levels as Barbs!!!! yadda yadda". Just don't make them Eldritch Knight tier, pretty please?

Oh, and why should Wlocks have less hp than Wizards?

That's the thing they are hybrids in pen and paper. In DDO they're just a subpar melee cleric with a walking Divine Crusader consecration that doesn't tick/hit hard enough to really matter. Atleast letting us imbue our weapons (make it something like a 20% chance to apply your eldritch blast upon melee/ranged damage) on top of the aura and we might be talking. Of course you'll need to put a small timer in to block repeater crossbows from proccing too much, but that certainly helps the DPS issue and fits the theme of warlocks being the masters of creating and usual magical items.

The same for letting us imbue your armor to give us more 'health' with Shape Vestments or at the very least let it work like EK's temp HP shield. Let it be an added temp HP amount based on the enchantment bonus and the armor type. Certainly a tenser's toggle is fitting as well as Warlocks can cast their 'buffs' for days at a time in pen and paper.

Like you said we don't want to be over performing Swashbucklers, Barbarians, or Paladins. We just don't want to end up like Eldritch Knight, you know a prestige based upon a multiclass prestige in tabletop? Make it so we can play a viable and fun melee warlock in Enlightened Spirit, don't make it another 'support' prestige for multiclassing.

[Xerio]

Any chance that Fig BAB (similar to the t5 cleric war-priest enhancement: Divine Power, minus the +6 str) can be added into the capstone?
I agree with the martial proficiency being in the 12th level core, however that currently is not working and not even listed in the tooltip on the build up in lamannia.

I have also noticed that the medium armor proficiency enhancement ceases to work after you've logged out and logged back into the game.

[SacramentoSquid]

Hey, everyone. Thanks for the feedback so far. Let me answer a few questions that I can:

We may consider having the timing of the blast (which is 8/4/3/2 currently through the Cores) change to 6/4/3/2 or 5/4/3/2 based on the data we've gotten so far, but we're unlikely to just make it a flat 2 seconds - It'd be exceptionally overpowered at low Heroic levels (unless we heavily nerfed the low-level damage in response, which we're fairly sure people don't want here), and make low-level Warlock splashes much more powerful than they're already going to be. The Aura is strictly free(ish) damage on top of whatever you can dish out with your weapons or spells; it shouldn't comprise 100% of your damage output.

I'll check on the interaction between the Burst/Blast and Metamagic skills.

I too found that the 8 second pulse was particularly bad at low levels because of how frequently targets would be out of range of the pulse at the exact moment it went off, which was not controllable by me at all. I think a solid compromise would be a set 2 second pulse timer, but have the bonus effect from spellpower start out scaling very low, and have each core add to the spellpower scaling. At epic levels only splashing a few warlock levels would still get you a very small contribution of damage from, and at lower levels the damage over time would go up slightly, but not nearly enough to imbalance things, and the consistency of use from having an always 2 second burst would be a vast improvement in qol.

[edrein]

I too found that the 8 second pulse was particularly bad at low levels because of how frequently targets would be out of range of the pulse at the exact moment it went off, which was not controllable by me at all. I think a solid compromise would be a set 2 second pulse timer, but have the bonus effect from spellpower start out scaling very low, and have each core add to the spellpower scaling. At epic levels only splashing a few warlock levels would still get you a very small contribution of damage from, and at lower levels the damage over time would go up slightly, but not nearly enough to imbalance things, and the consistency of use from having an always 2 second burst would be a vast improvement in qol.

I'm in agreement here.

[Mast3rR0b]

Speaking of multiclassing, how can a couple d6+d4 be a huge concern? Do you really think a Kotc or vanguard paladin would forsake their capstone for that? Same for Barb, and everyone else. Maybe some Bards in a 16/2/x split, but probably filling with fighter would be better anyway.

It's free damage, yes, but a very poor one. Eldritch Blast gets better with more Warlocks level. Even if you sets the aura tick at 2 secs flat, it's not gonna be OP in anyway.

And for the PURE Wlocks (there's gonna be some, no? I don't get why you have multiclassing as primary in your minds instead of pure...), try to be in the shoes of the poor soul that activates their core enhancement at the low levels...

"Waaaa, i go smack the kobolds with the help of my pact!

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

... tick. Woah i dealt some damage!"

Except that half of those pesky kobolds could run in and out of the circle at their leisure.

[edrein]

Speaking of multiclassing, how can a couple d6+d4 be a huge concern? Do you really think a Kotc or vanguard paladin would forsake their capstone for that? Same for Barb, and everyone else. Maybe some Bards in a 16/2/x split, but probably filling with fighter would be better anyway.

It's free damage, yes, but a very poor one. Eldritch Blast gets better with more Warlocks level. Even if you sets the aura tick at 2 secs flat, it's not gonna be OP in anyway.

And for the PURE Wlocks (there's gonna be some, no? I don't get why you have multiclassing as primary in your minds instead of pure...), try to be in the shoes of the poor soul that activates their core enhancement at the low levels...

"Waaaa, i go smack the kobolds with the help of my pact!

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

... tick. Woah i dealt some damage!"

Except that half of those pesky kobolds could run in and out of the circle at their leisure.

That's just it the pure warlock player is getting the shaft in situation. They've made it loud and clear they want this entire tree to be about multiclassing, while penalizing anyone that would multiclass by the speed of the aura. While at the same time punishing the pure warlock by putting things such as martial weapon proficiency at level 12 instead of say 3 or 6 to compare with Eldritch Knight and Warchanter. Not giving us a form of HP scaling in a melee tree, generally subpar damage that can't even beat out the Eldritch Knight (a multiclass prestige in PnP slapped onto a wizard without requiring the actual multiclassing to advance the prestige tree) and repeatedly saying that things in this tree shouldn't compare to others because this tree is designed for multiclassing.

But heaven forbid we actually ask to get a few bones tossed to us for those of us who play pure classed characters rather than flavor of the month multiclassers.

[DANTEIL]

So my Warlock on Lamannia is now level 6 -- started with veteran 4 plus one auto-level to 5, mostly starter gear plus a smattering of things that I grabbed in the dojo but honestly I was a bit overwhelmed by what was there and couldn't find anything anyway. I ran a few quests tonight on Normal (Premium so can't open higher) -- Devil's Assault, a couple of the Sharn quests, Redwillow, & Dead Predators -- using the Enlightened Spirit Aura, the starter Greatsword with Master's Touch, plus a cleric hireling. Fey Pact.

For the most part, playing the Warlock with the Aura going didn't really feel all that different from other melee classes, fighting up close trying to get things with the aura as I smack them. That tick on the aura is really really realllllllly slow. When I got enough AP to get the 3rd level core that brings it down to 4 sec that helped some, but 4 sec is still an eternity (possible bug: Is the tooltip on the Aura supposed to change when you get that enhancement? It still said 8 sec although I timed the aura at 4). Because I'm on a Mac, the floating damage numbers are never correct (only show single digits) so I'm not sure how much damage the aura was doing. I know that I was killing kobolds with it, but the trogs and things in Devils Assault didn't seem as affected. And orange/red bosses mostly shrugged it off.

The Derlium Daze (sorry, I know that's not the right name) seemed to land okay (things got dazed), but the weird thing is that there is absolutely no animation or effect to tell you that it's gone off, until you notice the enemy kind of standing there drooling. I wasn't sure it had even worked at first.

I had the Aura of Courage toggled on, which was supposed to give me +4 against Fear but I still got feared several times.

I definitely did not feel overpowered, although I only died once, in Devil's Assault.

Of the spells I tried, the obscuring mist seemed to be okay, and I was grateful to have Blur. Resist Energy, though, wouldn't work for me because it told me that my ability score was too low -- so obviously I made a build error somewhere.


Anyway, I wanted to like it more. I haven't tried the regular blast ability, though, so maybe there's more fun to be had elsewhere. Plus I know that at level 6 there is only so much that one can do anyway. But, just to repeat again: At this level, the way I was playing it (so maybe my fault) it seemed like just another melee character who needed healing a lot from the hireling. I can see how this might be intended for multi classing -- although it seems weird to design a new class for that purpose.

[Rhysem]

We may consider having the timing of the blast (which is 8/4/3/2 currently through the Cores) change to 6/4/3/2 or 5/4/3/2 based on the data we've gotten so far, but we're unlikely to just make it a flat 2 seconds - It'd be exceptionally overpowered at low Heroic levels (unless we heavily nerfed the low-level damage in response, which we're fairly sure people don't want here), and make low-level Warlock splashes much more powerful than they're already going to be. The Aura is strictly free(ish) damage on top of whatever you can dish out with your weapons or spells; it shouldn't comprise 100% of your damage output.

I'd much rather have half damage twice as often than double damage half as often. Overkill sucks.