Warlocks are in such a bad place right now

[LightBear]

It makes leveling up a warlock such a pain and I feel embarrassed when joining a group because I'm more of a liability than an asset for a party.

[Marshal_Lannes]

I recently did some racial lives on a warlock and this wasn't my experience at all. I found the modern Warlock to be extremely powerful in heroic and epic content up to around R3/4. I wasn't doing anything radical, just a 41/39 blasting/insta-killing enhancement split. With three instakills (two FoDs and trap the soul), and a massive array of debuffs and dps on the blast that can be augmented with epic gear, the Warlock was a pleasure to play. I also found Warlocks are highly customizable depending on how you set up your Epic Destinies. Now, if you're talking about only doing Legendary R8s, then sure I'd probably pick a different casting class. Still, Warlock has a lot to offer for a wide variety of gamers.

[Xgya]

It makes leveling up a warlock such a pain and I feel embarrassed when joining a group because I'm more of a liability than an asset for a party.

Agreed. The latest caster changes made each of them a powerhouse in its own right.
Warlock just got left in the dust.
Before the spell pass, Warlocks had decent DPS compared to other casters. But that's because caster DPS was in the dumps.

Eldritch Blast should be the meat and potatoes of the class, but using it feels awful.
It scales with level, but unlike casters that double dip the scaling, Warlocks simply... doesn't. (By double dip, I mean casters get increased caster levels, and better dice per caster level. Warlocks baseline get 1d6+1d6/4CL, and 1d4/2CL, and that's where it stops. 6D6+10D4 (46avg).
Even with 130% scaling, and getting 6 blasts for every spell a Sorc casts, you're just NOT catching up.
If a Sorc had equal spellpowers of two categories (they won't, and probably shouldn't, but the Warlock has to, so I'm restricting Sorcs) and chose to deal single target damage, they'd be chaincasting Thunderstroke and Iceberg (they COULD cast other things in the downtime, but I want to preserve the poor warlock's dignity).
With 1000 in both spell powers each (I'm highballing, nobody has that high in two with 100% uptime, just to help the Warlock out because of his better scaling).
Comparison.
The baseline 20 Warlock deals 7728 damage per 6 seconds (giving 2 blasts per second, which is higher than normal).
The baseline 20 Sorc deals 13860. (2 spells every 6 seconds, one Thunder, the other Iceberg)
Both without any enhancements and 0% crit
The sorc has to spend mana, but remember, he's not using metas here, neither of them has any feats - that sorc is NOT running out of mana for extended periods of time.
That's two casters focusing all their energy on dealing damage to a single enemy. The Warlock loses out some blast damage by casting spells because of the windup, but he could to try to catch up (still wouldn't, but he could TRY). Giving that edge to the 'lock would force me to look for 4 other spells the Sorcerer could be casting while the only two he was casting are on cooldown...


The last big update they got WAS useful. Getting access to Arcane Tempest, a decent damage spell in its own right, but you don't get it before level 16.
Making the light damage from ES an imbue COULD be used to buff damage somewhat, but never within the range of a properly built *any other caster*. I don't count it as a direct buff, and Warlocks are in dire need of one.

Warlocks ARE decent instakillers. They get access to a whole range of them, and they're probably better suited for THAT part of the job than actual blasting.
If you want to make an instakiller, Warlock is actually still pretty solid.

[LightBear]

Speaking of imbue dice, Spiritual Retribution is an imbue, but the only bonus dice are at level 18's Celestial Spirit.
So, 4d6 that scales with light spell power.

[Zavina]

I'm doing racials on my #2 character, which is a dragonborn warlock (pact: Carceri Storm) blaster, and it breezes through R1 (heroics). When it's in epics, its fine doing things at level. Struggles a bit when doing things above level, but that's to be expected..

Now at cap, it's a lot of fun

[adamkatt]

Ive done about 50 past lives as a warlock racials/epics etc...its one of the easiest classes to solo and group. chain shape did great on hc 7 in heroics.

[Arkat]

I have two Warlocks right now, an Enlightened Spirit fey-pact auralock, and a Sound Blaster. Both are used exclusively for LE and R1 item farming.

[Cableman]

It makes leveling up a warlock such a pain and I feel embarrassed when joining a group because I'm more of a liability than an asset for a party.

I'm not seeing an issue in heroics, did all three lives as a Warlock on hardcore this season, top of the reaper board two manning with my running mate on his Arty/Paly/Fighter. I basically carried the load through heroics with cone. I'm using a Cone/ES build, very good and survivable. My only issues are 1) having to take two feats in epics to improve blast and pact dice; 2) the changes made with imbues, Warlocks got the short end of the stick.

[FuzzyDuck81]

I've found warlocks to be perfectly solid, reliable performers - they may not have the raw nuking edge of a sorcerer but that's by design, the devs have said on multiple occasions that they fit more closely into the ranged playstyle than a true spellcasting class & they have quite a lot of variety in the types of builds you can make with them.

[Bunker]

It is at this moment I wish I took that screen shot of me grouping during HC season VI.

Levels 5-7 I was in a party of six.

Ranger (me)
Warlock
Warlock
Warlock
Warlock
Warlock

The 4th warlock was a liability in this group. OP, that wasn't you by chance, was it?

[Cavalier]

OP, not my experience AT ALL.

I have racial completionist, and I did all of it on a "GOO"lock, and solo'd 90% of the time.

I went GOO for the pact and Tainted Scholar and Soul Eater for the enhancement trees.

Chain shape until level 5 or so and then Cone Shape. Evards Black Tentacles is your main spell when you get at LVL10 and you really don't need it before then as your Eldritch Blast will make short work of anything and everything.

As a GOO Warlock, with the exception of a few, and I mean less than 5, monsters (looking at you Clay Golems), everything took damage.

[Wizard1406]

Warlock damage is fine for low difficulty quests and warlocks make for easy leveling, but in raids and high reaper quests the really low base damage from eldritch blast becomes a problem.

It was much overnerfed a couple of years back and never tuned back to be more in line to the damage output that other casters can put out.

[rabidfox]

It's not warlocks as a whole, it's likely whatever you're doing with your warlock. Post your build(feats, enhancement, etc.) and gear and lets see what can be done to make your setup perform better.

[yfernbottom]

To me Warlocks are currently a high floor low ceiling class in terms of DPS, and a low floor low ceiling class in terms of how much skill it takes to play one. The worst DPS you'll get out of one if you spend all your points is ok, but they also top out at pretty good. Nearly any ranged DPS build, martial or spellcasting, can outperform them, but only if you know what you are doing.

[scut207]

Warlocks cruise through heroics, are bleh in low to high epics till they get ruin intensified. But they can do bonkers level single hits with greater ruin.

They arent awesome or amazing, but are niether bad nor terrible either.

just my 2c.

[Wizard1406]

Ruins with ruin intensified is strong, but it's single target with a long cooldown. And as a warlock you don't have immunity break. So the intensify it will not do damage against some enemies or even heal a few. Meanwhile all the nukers can do higher AOE damage, single target rotation with no gaps and have immuno-break or reasonably strong second element.

edit: what I meant is on higher difficulty content, warlock is not dps, it's a support with mrr/prr debuff, CC, instantkills where it works, and some damage. No healing outside of ED abilities, no real buff spells either. So other classes work better as support IMHO.

[C-Dog]

It makes leveling up a warlock such a pain and I feel embarrassed when joining a group because I'm more of a liability than an asset for a party.

Then you're not doing it right. And there are a few "right" ways to do it (altho' "some of each" is NOT one of the right ways! ).

2 recent discussions:
o https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6562143
o & re melee 'lock https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6561971

[slarden]

I prefer a sorc for the caster role at legendary levels

for heroic leveling a warlock will perform fine, but won't outdps many builds. Still if you take maximize/empower as your first two feats the slas are really strong at low- levels especially stricken. Cone is ok, but gets much better at 12 when combined with wave.

Feigned health is a good source of temp hp at lower levels. ES has some nice survivability options, although I prefer SE for heroic leveling and then swap over to ES for epic leveling.

Once you get into epic levels ED and epic spells will have a higher % of dps output with each level you gain. This makes the choice of pact less significant for dps so at least from my perspective there is little reason to go with anything other than ES unless you want to focus more as an instakiller, but with the ED revamp the game really rewards a generalist build and as a generalist ES just gives you more.

A first-life warlock can easily solo epic reaper quests once they hit 23. It can be done earlier, but at 23 you get quite a bit of ED power.

At 32 there are a few ways to build warlock depending on what you want to do, but ES is certainly really solid for short-manning and soloing.

[Aelonwy]

To me Warlocks are currently a high floor low ceiling class in terms of DPS, and a low floor low ceiling class in terms of how much skill it takes to play one.

This^! Could warlock use some improvements? Maybe some, but only in higher epics and legendary levels really. They are one of the most comfortable/convenient classes to play in heroics with less necessary past lives to make functional.

[Xgya]

A first-life warlock can easily solo epic reaper quests once they hit 23. It can be done earlier, but at 23 you get quite a bit of ED power.

That's an argument I see too often as if it excused the power disparity between two builds attempting to do the same job in a class that's supposed to be able to do so.

"A first-life *insert class* can easily solo epic reaper quests once they hit 23...."
Yes, it can, but if it does it half as well as all the other classes that can easily solo epic reaper quests once they hit 23, there's still a problem there.

There's still a problem, but the fact it can still do its thing means the problem isn't so backbreaking it prevents the character from doing things many other characters can.
Warlock has a few saving graces (the high floor talked about earlier being front and center)