U46 Patch 2: New Warlock Pacts

[droid327]

That doesn't seem so bad?

How would you know? Have you ever tried being not Tilo?

[droid327]

The lack of negative hamp in the warlock trees and Abyss pact make the undead form far less powerful than it is for a wizard (in addition to the loss of attributes and other bonuses).

Furthermore, the capstone for Tainted Scholar is Energy Drain, which makes the highest-level bonus spell for Abyss warlocks moot for anyone reaching that goal. Negative Energy Burst as the 6th level bonus spell would be a good choice to avoid that conflict, and you may want to consider adding negative hamp to the Tainted Scholar or Soul Eater trees to provide some further development incentives. Or at least provide some negative hamp bonuses to the pact itself.

To be fair, Energy Drain isn't redundant if you don't go pure lock; say, if you splashed wiz for the PM bonuses. I really think that abyss pact will work best as a MC ES of some kind, and a pm/ek seems to fit naturally. Of course then DA and abyssal form are redundant...

[Chacka_DDO]

I just tested the negative healing on Lammania and it seemed to be very disappointing so I made a second wizard build...
The result is that if I sing a negative healing song on a warlock with Channel the Abyss and 163 negative amplification it heals around 510 negative damage.
But if I do exactly the same on a wizard with 164 negative amplification she gets healed by more than 2000 hit points.
So it appears like Channel the Abyss only receives a quarter of the healing a wizard gets in Vampire form from negative energy.

Is this intended?

[Carpone]

[*][*]Warlock Level 15 Special Ability Channel the Abyss: Shroud yourself in the Abyss, which will grant you unholy power at a cost. You have +100% critical hit resistance, are healed by Negative Energy, take 50% healing from Positive Energy, and take double damage from Light. You are considered Undead rather than your original type for the purposes of most effects.

All of the disabilities, none of the perks.

[Carpone]

Absolute Zero has a 25 second cool down, and it really does last forever. It's not a big deal. The mob can be killed normally. Thankfully the affected mob does not have DR Adamantine like LGS Ice.

Uh, doesn't Greater Creeping Cold suppress Niac's Biting Cold? It was that way for years, and I don't recall ever seeing that addressed in patch notes.

I confirmed Niac's Biting Cold and Greater Creeping Cold stack. It's a bit silly that a single target spell like Greater Creeping Cold can't be cast in a public area like the Dojo. I had to go into a quest to test it.

Sleet Storm appears as a level 2 spell in the spellbook instead of a level 3 spell. Also, you realize the Storm Warlock is going to be reviled by other players in the group unless there's someone else that can cast Freedom of Movement, right?

[PublicEnemy]

I for one welcome our new undead brethren (and sistren).

That being said, as others already said in this post, they could use a little bit of help , the 2 main points currently being :

-The ability to bypass the possibility of healing enemy undeads (the strength of wizards is their adaptability, for warlocks it is their main attack, if im not mistaken)

- More options for them to heal properly (negative energy burst sounds like the best one so far)

[Seljuck]

No answers to great feedback that we have here..Does that means nothing will be changed??

[niknight]

I think that we are missing what is actually going on, the devs planed to give undead form so enlighten spirit was not default, I have been looking at soul eater and it plus abyss seems to fit like pb and j. if I am right in this than they might have a bit more hidden behind the curtain. lets not complain our way out of something that lots of us seem to be interested in. as for healing undead mobs that probably will be addressed in a update to the trees.

There's a major difference between something not being the default, and it not working at all. Trees are supposed to allow you to specialize in a specific job, while not sabotaging the base class. It's extremely poor design to have a class granted feature close off the upper tier of an entire enhancement tree. It's like saying that the capstones a Favored Soul could take were gated by whether you chose Wisdom to hit or Charisma to hit at level 2. Oh, sorry, you chose Charisma to hit... I guess you can't take the Beacon of Hope capstone.

[Xgya]

Also - I know I sound like a broken record - but I believe the addition of clearly evil classes warrants the addition of all the Dungeons and Dragons alignments. Any version of the paper and dice game has all 9 alignments - yes, version 5 which is heavily influencing DDO presently does too - why the most successful game to do Dungeons and Dragons as an MMO does not.

Add all the alignments - alignment is flavor and would allow for the correct utilization of alignments by the classes instead of this wonky 'not good' or 'must be good' system that we now have -

or remove alignment altogether if we are not going to implement what exists in Dungeons and Dragons and make it a video game dump stat:

'Good'
'Not Good'

Orwell was right when he wrote English language is in a bad way, what he called a 'general collapse' where things are not represented correctly with words for what they really are. Evil is called 'not good.'

Language absolutely has political and economic causes - as Orwell points out - which we can see here, a company refusing to utilize the word 'evil' out of fear for some consumer backlash. Fear that is warranted? This is not the 1970s - there is no more satanic panic. Tom Hanks is alive and well. What was once believed to be toxic (dungeons and dragons) is now praised as a game that enhances imagination, friendship, and creativity.

Its time we implement what already exists in DDO and call it what it is - utilized the proper language - evil is already in DDO - it just isn't labeled correctly. the class alignment selections are misinformed. An abyss or a fiend warlock or an undead lich must be evil according to any dungeons and dragons rule book. that's what they are - there's no way around it. Any player who plays one is playing an evil character, end of story. You cannot be a good lich - no good wizard fractures his soul. No good warlock makes a pact with a denizen of the abyss. Conversely no paladin can be anything but lawful good. its about time we stop the madness and add all the alignments to DDO.

I disagree with your premise.
Heroes in DDO are utterly clueless, but never downright evil.

DDO (and D&D in general) uses 'nongood' as a way to represent both neutral and evil characters.
'Nongood' does not equal evil, just as 'nonlawful' does not equal chaotic.

D&D uses 'nongood' to represent people that aren't Good on the Good/Evil axis, because Neutral means both Neutral on that axis and the Law/Chaos one.

Fiend warlocks in normal gameplay aren't actually evil, just morally ambiguous, with their evil patrons trying to slowly corrupt them further and granting them power as a means to do so. A Good person wouldn't willingly accept power from such a source, not as a career choice at least.

Palemaster Wizards aren't undead at all. They're Shrouded humans. It's a spell the Wizard learns to cast that lets them copy some of the resiliency and magical prowess normally attributed to undead. Becoming a Zombie doesn't make them mindless, becoming a Lich doesn't grant them a phylactery, becoming a Vampire doesn't make them dependent on blood to live. The spell isn't Evil - it doesn't bring more undeath into the world, nor does it create spawn or corrupt the user in some way. A Good-natured Wizard could cast this to go Good things, and be perfectly justified doing it.

It's not about not wanting to say a word or catering to a crowd.
It's about not having to create a whole new campaign just because the players decided to start hating the common folk.
That's a DM's decision: 'Sorry guys, this campaign is about helping angels and killing demons, nobody on the side of evil at the table'

A tabletop DM might adapt to the sudden change. A pre-written campaign or someone running one could not. DDO is, by virtue of not having a proper DM, a pre-written campaign. It cannot veer off the rails by necessity. THAT's what makes evil alignments impossible in-game - they wouldn't make sense.

[Lynnabel]

No answers to great feedback that we have here..Does that means nothing will be changed??

Of course not! I'm just trying to finish the random loot bugs before diving into Warlock stuff. Random loot is a very meticulous and careful process to change and I don't want to drop anything fragile during the experience.

Just because I don't personally say "this is good feedback!" to everything doesn't mean it's not good feedback, trust me :P I just really don't want to leave anything in random loot that could cause potential problems, hence my focus on it. I'm listening, I'm just busy.

[Elsheran]

Of course not! I'm just trying to finish the random loot bugs before diving into Warlock stuff. Random loot is a very meticulous and careful process to change and I don't want to drop anything fragile during the experience.

Just because I don't personally say "this is good feedback!" to everything doesn't mean it's not good feedback, trust me :P I just really don't want to leave anything in random loot that could cause potential problems, hence my focus on it. I'm listening, I'm just busy.

Hope that actual mechanical errors, like the alignment restriction issue with Celestial Pact, is heard and not lost in the sea of subjective arguments for this power or that. I would have bug reported it through the in-game help menu, but there is no such creature.

[Ordinary]

At level 10 for each of the new packs I needed to select a resistance type feat:

Celestial:Celestial Resistance
The Abyss: Abyssal Resistance
The Carceri Storm: Carceri Resistance

I have currently added these to my planner as an Automatic feat for these Pacts. Do the others of Fiend, Fey and Great Old One now have a feat selection at level 10 also?
Or do Warlocks in these packs in effect gain a new additional feat that the older pacts do not? (Id dint roll any of the others on Lamannia to check).

Edit: I have now created the other 3 pacts on Lamannia and they do have feats as follows:

Fey: Fey Resistance
Fiend: Fiendish Resistance
Great Old One: Resistance of the Great Old One

I will get these added as a new feat type in the planner

[LurkingVeteran]

I think the attraction will still be Cone for consistent AOE, combined with Soundburst. At the risk of turning into Tilo, a Celestial Lock should be able to get very reliable DCs on SB, which will apply AOE Helpless to pretty much everything and letting you mow them down with your Electric damage, which isnt widely resisted. Will save seems like a hat on a hat, at that point - and I think Cold damage needs it much more since its already weak vs. a lot of monsters.

I think it's important that the new pacts are at least reasonably balanced against the old ones. GoO was already the by far best choice for a blaster with Will+Acid, and Will+Elec+soundburst will sum up to something better. However, as acid cone looks and sounds like farting, I'm willing to make an exception in this case. Anything to get rid of that.

[droid327]

I for one welcome our new undead brethren (and sistren).

That being said, as others already said in this post, they could use a little bit of help , the 2 main points currently being :

-The ability to bypass the possibility of healing enemy undeads (the strength of wizards is their adaptability, for warlocks it is their main attack, if im not mistaken)

- More options for them to heal properly (negative energy burst sounds like the best one so far)

Agreed - Warlocks do have their non-Pact damage, so you can still hurt Undead with Force/Evil blasts...but while that might be OK for the occasional Clay Golem for a GOO lock, that's going to be a serious annoyance for an Abyss lock with the prevalence of Negative immunes.

However, I think simply copying an immune-breaker like PM or VC or Savant is starting to get homogeneic. Every single-element build doesnt have to have a full immune buster like that, and I dont want it to become automatic or an entitlement. I'm thinking maybe something like a stacking -5% Negative Vulnerability on Neg hit, stacks up to 10, so you can gradually wear down Undead and other Neg-immunes, but they're still more of a challenge. Split the difference. Some immunes may still be unbreakable too (150%+), which preserves that unique challenge and makes it not quite totally OSFA, but those are appropriately rare.

As for healing - again, giving them DA+NEB+Shroud seems to be homogenizing them too much with PM. They're a new Undead class, they can have a slightly different approach. I'd recommend creating a new spell for them - Open Wounds, the Negative version of Close Wounds. I think that'd play with Warlock's Feigned Health better, since its more spammable than NEB, and a combo I already enjoy using on my 18/2 FvS GOO lock. And while it's not the immediate burst heal that NEB would be, I think that fits Lock better since they're not actually a healing class.

[Elsheran]

Not that Mage armor is worth the time and effort, but if you take the Mage Armor spell off your hotbar after creation as Abyss Pact, there is nowhere to get it back. It doesn't appear in the feats or in the spellbook.

[erdson]

At level 10 for each of the new packs I needed to select a resistance type feat:

Edit: I have now created the other 3 pacts on Lamannia and they do have feats as follows:

Fey: Fey Resistance
Fiend: Fiendish Resistance
Great Old One: Resistance of the Great Old One

I will get these added as a new feat type in the planner

I looked at my Warlock on the live server... He already has Resistance of the Great Old One and it says taken at 10. I really don't remember whether I had to take it when I leveled him, or if it just got there... but it did.

[Ordinary]

I looked at my Warlock on the live server... He already has Resistance of the Great Old One and it says taken at 10. I really don't remember whether I had to take it when I leveled him, or if it just got there... but it did.

i checked on Lamannia also. The planner is now updated to work correctly for these.

[Elsheran]

Abyss Pact thoughts...

Eldritch Aura does not heal other people in any Shroud or yourself
- Disappointing, but understandable.

Eldritch Aura does count as a negative energy spell to trigger PM Unholy Avatar (Strip Neg Healing from Undead)
- Nice. Not sure how relevant, but interesting passive stripping option.

Shroud comes way too late for how vanilla it is.
- A Shroud this vanilla should come at level 6. We've thought about an Undead run with our static group and this would add great variety to possible builds and roles, but at level 15, it is super late in the leveling process to build around. This isn't even talking about the compatibility issues with other stances/abilities.

Get rid of Mage Armor... Get Lesser Death Aura in somewhere? Change Level 15 to a Shroud enhancement or a splashy relevant spell like Neg Energy Burst.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

Did some testing on Lamania

Warlock undead shroud toggle does not work with and disables
Celestial Spirit: Toggle:

Considering Celestial Spirit grants float above the ground, gain Feather Falling, and are immune to knockdown effects. When enabled, your Eldritch Blasts gain 3d6 Light damage. Your Eldritch Aura now affects enemies every 2 seconds. Stance cooldown: 8 seconds.

And the Undead Shroud grants nothing but making the character undead, thereby immune any of the positive healing amp from the ES tree.

I know this is functioning as intended because Celestial Spirit and undead shrouds are not
compatible with other Transformation effects but it greatly weakens the pact as being useful

I also tested the negative energy in Epic Deleras and as expected I healed every undead I hit with so much so that it was a stalemate @ the skeletons @ the door when you pull the first lever - after 5 minutes we were all full health - again - considering how many undead are in DDO i cannot see the upside to this pact. Perhaps there are some multiclasses that would utilized it but as it is, considering the spells received are off the mark too, I doubt anyone would play it.

[Lynnabel]

Potential solution to Negative pact damage: I can make the Negative damage simply not apply to Undead. Rather than healing them with your additional Pact damage, you will do no additional damage at all. Thoughts?