Acolyte of the Skin - Recommended changes

[SpeakerForTheDead]

feedback on this tree has been very negative from what i've seen, it doesnt do nearly as much dmg as other builds (warlock in general has a problem with dps, but this seems bad even for a warlock), and the small amount of Crowd Control it does makes enemies scatter, which will usually hurt a team more than helping it. Usually i try to go for one or 2 small changes that have large effects on the playstyle. might need to bump it up a bit for this one but i'll try to keep it manageable...

1. Blast shape beam should be changed to a small, long-range cone like scorch that can hit multiple enemies long range as well as smaller enemies. beam shape as is just isnt working, no one's using it. There's already much better long-range single-target options, and much better AoE options. There's no reason to pick it. If this was changed to an actual AoE long range beam instead of the tiny targeting it has, then it would actually fill a useful new attack for a warlock.

2. Fiendish Glare and Glare of the Pit should have the fear effect changed to a different kind of fear effect that paralyzes enemies for like 1.5 secs. short enough so that "CC chars" will still be much more useful for CC, but long enough to help out a little bit solo and maybe even work well with a CC char by being able to fill any short gaps that pop up, or paralyze the first group of enemies for a few secs till the other enemies get there at which point the CC char can hit them easier all at once. this char needs to work well with a party, not against it. not quite sure how it works now since there's no info on it, but i think the fear effect on both of these skills should be a separate necromancy save DC

3. Drink their Fear should be changed to have your fear-like spells and SLAs (including Fiendish glare and Glare of the pit) apply a "mark" on the target that lasts several seconds and is separate from the actual fear, and that can target bosses. creatures with that mark should take double pact damage, or if they're immune to fire, they lose their fire immunity instead for the duration of the mark. warlocks need a way to remove immunity, and to deal better dmg to bosses. this would help with both of those. This way they'll still deal less dmg to enemies that were immune to fire too, so it's not too good.

4. Fiendish Symbiosis should be changed to permanent toggle for a short range melee aoe blast. maybe lower the fort bonus and take out the healed by fire part to compensate. If this warlock is going to be a melee caster it's gotta actually be able to use melee when it needs to, and ranged when it needs to. If a long-range sorc blaster is still going to be able to out damage a melee in it's special transformed form that it can only do 1/3 of the time, you should at least be able to make the change permanent. Eldritch Knights already have good long-range spells with good close-range attacks and spells too. This warlock needs to be able to compete with those chars, so give it a hard-hitting melee aoe main attack so that it can do good melee dmg when it needs to. maybe even increase the spell dmg bonus to like 225% or even 250% since feedback on dmg for this skill has been really bad so far.

This tree already has nice defenses for a caster, and that should enable it to be an effective short-range dps caster with some smaller long range aoe dmg. and if it's not going to be able to compete with a sorc for dmg, or a wizard for DCs and versatility, it should at least have melee aoe dps that is at least close to a sorc's aoe dps, while throwing in a little bit of USEFUL CC that can work well solo or in a group.

Thank you for your time, i hope this helps.

[droid327]

Agree generally - here's a few things I'd add on to that...

1) I dont think a Scorch style AOE is really enough to distinguish it from Cone Shape. It still would only be preferable in a small subset of mob geometries. Rather, I think it needs a completely novel mechanic to set it apart...I still want to see it realized as a channeled attack. I'd remove the usual delay in the animation (similar to how EB is timed when you go into Demon Form), and give it a stacking bonus to spellpower and/or crit every attack, max 10 or so, with each AotS core improving the scaling, that immediately clears when you stop Blasting (eg when you do any other action). That'd incentivize an entirely different playstyle than regular Warlock shapes. Also, yeah, change the AOE to be a little broader. And change the animation to be a continuous beam, with instant hit detection, rather than an awkward projectile.

2) Agreed, should be a Cower rather than a Flee. And I think, given how many Fear immune enemies there are, you can be a little more generous with its benefits, too. This should apply to the Fear and Scare spells, too, since those obviously were intended to be high-value spells for Acolytes. I dont think many Arcanes use those spells for the Flee effect, either.

3) Disagree here, Warlocks dont need an immune breaker since they already do two types of damage. I think immune breaking is already a crutch that lets casters avoid having to support a second element, and thats part of the reason casters are so powerful right now. The only casters that need a breaker are those that have no second element, ie Artis (only Lightning spells) and Druids (forced to choose Fire or Ice), and maybe Sorcs just because they're supposed to be the most powerful raw casters. And Warlocks can already apply a lot of useful debuffs against bosses.

4) This was always the biggest problem with the tree - it just didnt seem to know what it was trying to be. Symbiosis is your marquee T5 ability, but it's completely orthogonal to everything else the tree does. I dont think the answer is to make it permanent, though, since that still splits the tree into one playstyle from 1-11, and a completely different one from 12+. I like Symbiosis being a short-term supercharge, but I'd rather see it align with Beam Shape rather than replace it. Just have it give you all the defensive bonuses and then increase your Beam Shape scaling to 200% Spellpower, and maybe add a stacking Fire DOT to really drive home the idea of searing hellfire

Orrr go completely the other way and make Symbiosis part of Core 2 as a toggle, so it can define the playstyle from early on as a melee Lock, and then reimagine the tree to gradually empower it more in the cores and T5. Kind of the same idea of Undead shape in PM or DA. Beam Shape would probably go away then. I would also change it so you use standard (ie non-Monk/Razor) unarmed animations, and your EB becomes an on-hit, following Imbue mechanics but not an actual Imbue, so you could use actual melee gear as a melee Lock and benefit from things like Haste and increased BAB. It wouldnt benefit from TWF, though, similar to Druid animal forms, so you'd still Feat out like a caster.

[SpeakerForTheDead]

3) Disagree here, Warlocks dont need an immune breaker since they already do two types of damage. I think immune breaking is already a crutch that lets casters avoid having to support a second element, and thats part of the reason casters are so powerful right now. The only casters that need a breaker are those that have no second element, ie Artis (only Lightning spells) and Druids (forced to choose Fire or Ice), and maybe Sorcs just because they're supposed to be the most powerful raw casters. And Warlocks can already apply a lot of useful debuffs against bosses.

Thanks for the feedback. good stuff. yeah, wasnt too sure on the immunity one. if breaking immunity is too big a thing though, then at least maybe make it so that the mark from fears doubles the Blast damage instead of the pact dmg. that way they'll have a slightly easier time dealing with fire immune enemies, which are going to be a real problem for these warlocks at high difficulty levels.

[droid327]

Thanks for the feedback. good stuff. yeah, wasnt too sure on the immunity one. if breaking immunity is too big a thing though, then at least maybe make it so that the mark from fears doubles the Blast damage instead of the pact dmg. that way they'll have a slightly easier time dealing with fire immune enemies, which are going to be a real problem for these warlocks at high difficulty levels.

This was always going to be the issue with forcing them into Fire pact. I think the logic here was that AotS could multiclass to gain other options, without losing their Pact and Blast die...but in practice, there's no way to actually do that in a useful way, with how the subclass is currently implemented. Especially for pure caster (ie non-melee blaster) builds, who cant multiclass effectively at all.

[rabidfox]

The big change I think it needs is to the two warlock epic feats. AotS is presented as being easy to splash by taking the blast feats to bump up it's damage (at the expensive of a feat tax) but the 2 epic feats require 12 warlock to work. https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Eldritch_Blast https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Pact_Dice This results in a huge falloff of damage in epics for anyone multiclassing (around 40% damage hit at cap) and makes it a trap to splash without going to 12. They really need to change the requirement on both feats from "12 warlock" to "12 warlock or having Ultimate Pact Attunement feat" so lower than 12 splashes would be viable.

[Bjond]

make Symbiosis part of Core 2 as a toggle, so it can define the playstyle

This would have been a fantastic way to make the entire tree thematically unique very early in the leveling process, especially if they make the core selectable for melee or ranged style and then have uprades on subsequent cores; eg. dretch -> reaver for ranged or render -> marilith for melee.

I would have liked a more general approach, though, such as regular Warlock v transformational, with the latter changing themselves into an outside/human hybrid resembling their patron. GOO end up looking like Illithids. Fey like Pixies. Etc..

[EdsanDarkbane]

Do the Right Thing And GIVE: AOTS an imbue toggle at T4 like ES has.

That should fix everything