warlocks are imbalanced

[Phoenicis]

I've played warlock and it takes next to nothing other than a few common sense decisions to make them far more overpowered than you can do with anything else. And if someone knows what they are doing it goes from being ridiculously overpowered to stupendously, ridiculously overpowered. Yeah, you can mess them up but you almost have to be trying to mess them up.

I made a pally/warlock, walked around with my aura running and not blasting anything and was still getting complaints about killing everything.I've seen some first lifers gunk up a warlock. But far and away most just put everyone to shame. It absolutely makes the game not worth playing unless you are playing warlock. If you get in a party with a decently built one and you may as well just pike.

And why? Why do you want to just kill everything instantly. It's like some five year old's idea of fun. Design a game where you walk in a room and everyting dies. Weeeeeeee. I'm winning. Why don't they just make it so warlock blasts just kill the entire dungeon so we can walk around and pick up the loot. That is essentially what most of us non warlocks end up doing anyway.

And it really is indefensible. If you think in your screwed up logic that it isn't a problem, you just have not been playing this game. Look around at the number of warlocks being played. Look at the LFMS and all the high reaper levels, almost all have 2 or 3 warlocks. Look at the number of kills they almost always have compared to anyone else. Yeah occasionally someone will kill more, but not often. Probably just when the Warlock started feeling bad and quits really trying.

Play EH or higher. Warlocks don't scale well past EN

[Gralhota]

Destinies killed the characteristics of each class with few being OP as Legendary
Dreadnought, other weak like Shadow-Dancer and boring (weak ) as a magister.


Warlocks pick some thread. hahahaah

[Cantor]

Taking things away is generally a rather bad approach.
Better yet improve the weaker classes.

This kind of mentality among players (I feel the pain when something is taken away too) is why the game is trivial on elite. You don't always buff, sometimes nerfs are needed.

[dragons1ayer74]

BLUF: There are too many people playing Warlocks

In an ideal world, every class would be balanced and roughly the same number of each class would be online at any time. At this current moment on Khyber the number of each class logged on is:

Artificer: 10 (4.26%)
Barbarian: 10 (4.26%)
Bard: 9 (3.83%)
Cleric 15 (6.38%)
Druid: 8 (3.40%)
Favored Soul: 2 (0.85%)
Fighter: 13 (5.53%)
Monk: 19 (8.09%)
Paladin: 20 (8.51%)
Ranger: 22 (9.36%)
Rogue: 32 (13.6%)
Sorcerer: 5 (2.13%)
Warlock: 49 (20.9%)
Wizard: 21 (8.94%)
-----------------------
Total: 235 (100%)

As you can see the warlock has an un-proportional player base when comparing it to the other classes. I am not going to speculate whether that is because they are OP or because they are simply more fun; however, the point I am trying to make is that DDO is heavily weighted towards Warlock while other classes barely get played at all. There are 14 total classes (so if you do the math in an "ideal world" roughly 7.14% of the people should be playing any particular class at any particular time) yet one out of every five people play a Warlock at any given time. In other words, there are 3x as many people playing Warlocks as there should be. This is a problem.

I'm not calling for a nerf, I'm calling for a balancing of classes (whether it comes from how fun they are to play or how powerful they are) to entice groups to have more diversity. I'm tired of running a raid with 7 Warlocks or running Reaper quests with 4 Warlocks. Quite frankly it's ridiculous.






And yes.... I have nothing better to do this Saturday morning.

+1 Cool for your research and I would say it is feels accurate with my play experience.

Back before the very new enhancement lines came in and Favored Soul was the new shiny thing people complained how OP they where and now you see this data and how little they are played. Heck they even nerfed at least one amaranth quests because Favored Souls could do the quests so much easier than 85% of the other classes/players combo.

3 Years ago their was no heroic quest my Favored Soul could not complete that my warlock these days couldn't complete. That said my Favored Soul took a bit longer to complete some quests and needed to use some rest shrine and drink the odd manna potion.

Some observations and opinions:
1. Racial and Reaper Grinds are enticing people to blow through heroic content as fast as possible in order to get then next power levels
2. For most players this equal warlocks
3. There are a lot of very poor warlock builds for every good one I see about three bad
4. There are a lot of player that are still new to the game yet have past or mutipast lives
5. Reaper like BB was but much worse is hurting grouping options
6. I have started to see LFM groups that won't allow Warlock (the funniest/strangest are those that are led by a Warlock)
7. The player skill and power discrepancies in PUGs is crazy

[phillymiket]

Warlocks are kind of the best of all worlds, in some ways.
You can hit from a distance, you got spells, you got unlimited blasting, you can be pretty tough if you want.
It's no wonder they are popular.
Popularity doesn't necessarily equal over-powered.
IMO the class synergizes with how Heroic content is these days very well.
I'm personally using a Warlock ATM to run Heroic lives but if wanted to run capped content I'd probably play something else.
Is that OP? idk.
Warlocks certainly spin the hamster wheel fast w/o much effort.
If my mouse and keyboard were broken and I only had one button but still needed to level fast, I'd choose Warlock.
But once you step off the hamster wheel the math changes so who's to say where the power lies.
I say leave them as they are.

[RobbinB]

. the melee reaper tree is weaksauce.. amp it up.. increments of +1 Melee Power/action point .. really.. pft... pathetic..

I second this. For reaper enhancements, wherever the ranged enhancement is +1 power the melee enhancement should be at least +2....wherever the ranged enhancement is +2 power the melee enhancement should be more than +2.

[HuneyMunster]

Instead of nerfing warlock I would prefer to at least other casters have most of there SLA's reduced to 0 spell points. This would at least help them perform with some capability while waiting for spell points to regen. Echoes of Power could also do with being improved.

[Sanader]

You obviously play only Heroic content. Warlocks are fine as is when Epic level play is considered.
No class should be balanced with Heroic levels as the baseline.

What? Really? Should we only just compare all classes at lvl 30? Because you know...........DDO is alll about at playing on lvl 30. There is no leveling proces in DDO. Leveling is not a huge part of DDO. At all.

So basicly, this is another tread where everyone agrees that warlocks are OP in heroics and OK-ish in epics?
Yay! Another same conclusion as in all other threads in last 2 years.
What is done about them being OP in heroics?
Nothing.

Those few nerfs they had affected BOTH heroics and epics. Warlocks need to get nerfed in heroics not epics.

[Whitering]

What? Really? Should we only just compare all classes at lvl 30? Because you know...........DDO is alll about at playing on lvl 30. There is no leveling proces in DDO. Leveling is not a huge part of DDO. At all.

So basicly, this is another tread where everyone agrees that warlocks are OP in heroics and OK-ish in epics?
Yay! Another same conclusion as in all other threads in last 2 years.
What is done about them being OP in heroics?
Nothing.

Those few nerfs they had affected BOTH heroics and epics. Warlocks need to get nerfed in heroics not epics.

The reason you do not judge based on heroic normal to elite, reaper is its own beast, is because, and I know this from experience, there are classes that veritably fly through heroics and then hit a huge wall at say, level 21. I was at level 21 for, I don't know, 3 years? Because I now hated my character, I used a free LR20 given during some time in the past to remake my character to my favourite character I've yet played, yes, more than Warlock, Axel's Battle Cleric.

I still hope to end up a cleric, not necessarily a battle one, but like, when I play NWN or BGT (Baldur's Gate Trilogy (mod)), I tend to play a cleric, because at high level they are freaking wonderful, not so in DDO, that might change with the pass. Yes, Warlocks can blaze through heroic, take that as sop to those of us left behind on the tr train that keeps us from having to repeater sound as we previously had to do 6 arti/6 rogue/8 class or something.

In Epic, you do see a fair class balance (very few rogues), with locks having a slight edge, but maybe that's because they are so easy to play in heroic. Quit nerfing things, who cares? This is not a competitive game.

[Sanader]

Quit nerfing things, who cares? This is not a competitive game.

Gotta love that argument. It that pops in every thread regarding any class balance. I say to you than: Quit buffing things, who cares? This is not a competitive game.
I hear there is a cleric pass coming soon, maybe we should start writing on forums to stop buffing classes? Why are trees getting updated anyways. I heard druid one will come to. Who cares. This is not competitive game. Leave people that play druid (all 0,0003% of them) to play druids as they are. Leave 30% people playing warlock in heroics alone.

And as I mentioned again, I'm talking about nerfing warlocks in heroics not epics. What does a wall at lvl 21 have to do with my reply? It's the epic level.

P.S. talking from experiance (50+ lives) all classes hit a wall in epics. Actually playing EEs solo on a warlock at lvl 21 was the easiest while being in shiradi compared to any other class i played.

[Whitering]

Gotta love that argument. It that pops in every thread regarding any class balance. I say to you than: Quit buffing things, who cares? This is not a competitive game.
I hear there is a cleric pass coming soon, maybe we should start writing on forums to stop buffing classes? Why are trees getting updated anyways. I heard druid one will come to. Who cares. This is not competitive game. Leave people that play druid (all 0,0003% of them) to play druids as they are. Leave 30% people playing warlock in heroics alone.

And as I mentioned again, I'm talking about nerfing warlocks in heroics not epics. What does a wall at lvl 21 have to do with my reply? It's the epic level.

P.S. talking from experiance (50+ lives) all classes hit a wall in epics. Actually playing EEs solo on a warlock at lvl 21 was the easiest while being in shiradi compared to any other class i played.

Not all classes hit walls in Epics, maybe you played crappy toons, here are the toons I've played recently that just rolled right through epic

1) Barbarian
2) Battle Cleric
3) Druid, caster and xploit versions
4) working half heartedly on the wraith fighter build from the fighter forums, it's working pretty well.

Those are just the classes I've played lately, but others I've played flew through heroic (ranger, arti, etc), and I hit a wall at 21. The one that made me leave the game was a clonk lol

It's not about buffing or nerfing, it's about making the game fun to play, yet they are more concerned about balance than fun.