Warlock Balancing

[Ziindarax]

Your comment communicates inexperience with Shiradi:

1) You DO get to do helpless damage against enemies struck by nerve venom. At level 20, my Epic Antique Great axe gains a significant damage boost (thanks to sense weakness) to damage on foes stunned by nerve venom (much to my surprise, making this destiny excellent for aura warlocks who can effect an AOE crowd control). Additionally, I am able to clear Epic Elite mobs using Shiradi just fine (even though I must use skill to survive the throngs).

2) Anyone running sentinel with mana will be able to enjoy those same benefits and near invulnerability; it's not that warlocks are overpowered, it's that you're making design choices that nearly get them there because that is what the tree is DESIGNED to do.

3) Care to define what a "triple exploit" build is? Because as far as I am aware, the only exploit builds that are out there now are the monk tree builds with whirlwind strike (able to strike multiple times if I recall the feat correctly), and wolf builds. To say nothing of Fury Monchers who can really crank out the damage if they wanted to.

You also only chose to address one part of my sentence rather than the whole of it (which mentioned Draconic - if you're running fiend/Great old one warlocks, who benefit from the acid/fire spell power. They do quite a lot of damage, and the wing surge is quite effective. Even more so, the destiny's extra aura and acid damage add a nice punch). Legendary Dreadnought warlocks who run in melee spec (like I do with a greataxe) enjoy quite a bit of damage reduction and significant melee DPS boost. Crusader also grants a nice mix of dps and healing (I see them as being in between Sentinel and Angel).

If I recall correctly, Quells can shut down your divine destiny abilities as well (including reconstruct, renew, and more), and they should be more common than they currently are (to make intercession ward items more useful).

Why would I trade 281 HP/sec from renewal, and 30 more HP/sec from US healing amplification for an insignificant 14 damage/spell of Shiradi, on attacks that are already up to 40 damage die? To try to damage 30-500k hp mobs?

That's a joke right?

There is a reason only triple exploit builds use shiradi, and if you look you won't even be able to find non-triple exploit epic sorcs or wiz in shiradi on your entire server. It's somewhere between awful and worse than awful, which is why you go US instead. It adds the same amount of dps (almost 0), but at least adds healing. The only reason you go shiradi on a warlock is if the mobs aren't threatening already, for entertainment value of nerve venom. It doesn't really even speed killing of groups up, since you still have to do non-helpless damage to the mobs in a group that randomly don't get hit by nerve venom.