Warlock Balancing

[Paleus]

The solution is segregation. All classes must stick to their own kind, and avoid exposure to others that may also be able to contribute.

I think Turbine tried that solution by dumbing down the challenge in the game and handing out easy self-healing to encourage everyone to solo. Problem is people keep posting YouTube videos and running with "friends/guildies" or posting in Achievements sections.

[Duetotheseverity]

So the nerf was to make gruin hits for 100k damage now?

If so enough with nerfs and start to buff it pls.

[guardiankaiser]

So, which casters "walk all over" borelock's DPS ( free huge spellpower aoe attacks ) ?

Not fvs, not sorc, not druid, certainly not cleric or wizard.
Uhh ... arty ?

:

To be fair, Warlock is a revised class, no other caster (bard not counting) has been revised, I'm sure they will all be silly and op

On the other hand, most of the revised classes can compete with warlock easily

[goodspeed]

lol u wanna see balanced check out what a beefed up fury shot can do to harry in LH. Id assume for e id be about a quarter.

[slarden]

So, which casters "walk all over" borelock's DPS ( free huge spellpower aoe attacks ) ?

Not fvs, not sorc, not druid, certainly not cleric or wizard.
Uhh ... arty ?


Not really rocket science. Sorcerer, cleric or wizard requires more than two working brain cells. Some awesome people play those still.
Half the characters over level 20 are the same stupid warlock build.

same thing really :

The sorc/wiz/fvs zombie shiradi is definitely superior to warlock from what I've seen.

Shiradi wizards with mok should have superior overall dps. Warlock might have a very slight edge on mobs, but the wizard has a major advantage with bosses that more than makes up for that slight advantage. I am running a 12 fvs/ 5 wizard / 3 fighter that is matching my warlocks dps and better defensively but there might be a favorable bug there helping the build out - I am trying to figure that out.

I am very comfortable with my sorc that can boost spellpower and crits with LGS.

I don't see nearly that % of warlocks on Sarlona although the devs can easily get those numbers to verify if what you are saying has any credibility.

I have both a DC warlock and DC wizard posted and wizard wins on DC and spell pen #s significantly.

I see warlock as a build that barely makes the top 10 at end game, but is definitely solid. While I agree it can use a nerf - I think other builds can also and some need bigger nerfs than warlock. I think Turbine is making a mistake to cave to a few haters and make a nerf to one class when there are several more powerful builds out there that will not be nerfed.

[KoobTheProud]

I had a guild leader back in my Everquest days who was fond of the saying, "If you need CC, you're not doing enough DPS." Piling on mounds of HPs in lieu of DPS is just another form of CC.

EQ is a bad comparison for any modern MMO because back in the day there were no abilities to use, for most melee classes you just clicked on the mob and started attacking, with rogues getting a /backstab and warriors getting a /taunt, both on a 10 second plus CD. That made DPS a function of gear and proper positioning more than anything else, and of course not being dead during the fight which cut heavily into your DPS.

The comment on CC is kind of silly from that perspective. After AA's kicked in and all that and a few more basic abilities were added to the classes then DPS began to become the key variable. Early on in EQ (the first 3 years of the game) mobs had pretty stiff regen and DPS wasn't about killing a mob fast it was about killing them at all. CC had a big role in keeping the party and sometimes the raid alive in that situation because no big mob was going down in under 3 minutes and most bosses not in 15 minutes even with the entire raid whaling on them.

Back on topic, the problem with Warlocks is such a minor problem in the overall scheme of things that it's hard to see this much energy devoted to it by so many long-term players.

The big problem, the one that is basically going to sink DDO in the end, is that ED's change the nature of the game dramatically once they are fleshed out and available to a character. ED's make individual power levels much too high and they take exploitative builds and make them insane with min-maxing.

Warlocks stand out only because they play at ED power levels in heroic time without a requirement for a lot of analysis involved. They only do this from about level 11 to 20 because before that they don't have enough enhancement points to go deep in ES and also get some of the damage enhancements you want in other trees. A level 5 Warlock is going to have about as much trouble as a level 5 Wizard and substantially more trouble than a level 5 Warforged Sorceror. Then you get to the point that all the bursts are unlocked and the temp hp is there and suddenly Warlocks are clearly better and stay better until 20 because their blasts are free and their bursts are free and they have earlier access to good UMD and they have maxed Jump off of scrolls or even chosen as a level 1 spell, etc.

Once you get fully fleshed out ED trees to work with and 3 or 4 twists of choice your character is going to be overpowered to the extremes unless you choose to intentionally gimp it. Even then, how do you give up the incremental advantages of past lives? Really you can't, so you're OP and there's nothing you can do about it and if you think the guy playing the Warlock next to you is the problem, well you're masking a much bigger problem because you could own his (whatever) if you just switched to another build and it wouldn't have to be a Warlock...

[zehnvhex]

EQ is a bad comparison for any modern MMO

Cleave damage is king in heroic content. In most cases the 'boss' mobs are typically still within 10% hp of normal NPC's in heroic content so single target damage takes a back seat. Prior to Warlocks becomming the kings of heroic content the best classes were ones with lots of boosted cleaves (Ranger, Barbarian, Paladin). Prior to the enhancement passes that gave them boosted cleaves the best were those that had access to firewall and blade barrier. Remember when Necro2 first came out and there really was no point to doing it unless you had a wizard along?

Unfortunately you can't really 'punish' cleave heavy builds in heroic content by creating high hp boss monsters because at those levels most non-cleave builds still are not very far ahead of the competition. Truth be told it's even more slanted towards Warlocks because they have access to ghetto Shiradi at level 4 (Spiritual Retribution).

Once you get to epic content all bets are off though yeah. Everybody has access to the same survival tools such that Warlocks are no longer really unique snowflakes. Even Warlocks with their supposed OP AE ability lead off every fight with Energy Burst which every caster gets.

[KoobTheProud]

Cleave damage is king in heroic content.

I agree with this which is why I think Warlocks are not OP in heroic until they get access to the bursts. People who want to hate on Warlocks need to play one from level 1. Not level 7. Level 1. They'll find that Warlocks are just as squishy as other Arcanes early on and that even Chain shape isn't foolproof when arrows are flying at you and you have no heals/temp hp to mitigate them.

[LT218]

So, which casters "walk all over" borelock's DPS ( free huge spellpower aoe attacks ) ?

Not fvs, not sorc, not druid, certainly not cleric or wizard.
Uhh ... arty ?

Classes != builds. Good builds are usually a synergistic combination abilities from 2 or 3 classes.

Offhand though, palemasters and several versions of shiradi beat warlocks. So do tempest rangers, shuriken builds, several fighter variations, gxbow mechanics, several repeater builds, etc.

The main thing warlocks have going for them is that they're noticeably less gear dependent than the other top-tier builds. That's okay and actually a good thing in my opinion. Any mature, 10+ year old game like DDO needs some newb-friendly classes and builds that don't require 30 PLs and a year's worth of farmed raid gear to be viable, especially given the dwindling public LFM numbers over the past year or two.

[LT218]

EQ is a bad comparison for any modern MMO because back in the day there were no abilities to use, for most melee classes you just clicked on the mob and started attacking, with rogues getting a /backstab and warriors getting a /taunt, both on a 10 second plus CD. That made DPS a function of gear and proper positioning more than anything else, and of course not being dead during the fight which cut heavily into your DPS.

The comment on CC is kind of silly from that perspective. After AA's kicked in and all that and a few more basic abilities were added to the classes then DPS began to become the key variable. Early on in EQ (the first 3 years of the game) mobs had pretty stiff regen and DPS wasn't about killing a mob fast it was about killing them at all. CC had a big role in keeping the party and sometimes the raid alive in that situation because no big mob was going down in under 3 minutes and most bosses not in 15 minutes even with the entire raid whaling on them.

I wasn't talking about year-one EQ. I was talking about EQ after it matured. Like DDO, it was a 10+ year old game (before I retired from it). I think it's still going based on some posts I read on the Monkly Business forums the other day when I had a moment of nostalgia.

No, my comment on CC wasn't silly. EQ had some really great raid mechanics that made them more than just the mindless DPS zergfests we get in DDO these days. I was in one of the most successful end-game raiding guilds in EQ for several years. For whatever reason, we could never seem to recruit/keep good Enchanters and healers for CC. We learned to compensate for the parts that usually required CC with max DPS.

The thing is, even being one of the highest DPS guilds in the game across all of the servers at the time, there were still plenty of parts in EQ raids that required things other than DPS. Overwhelming DPS almost never trivialized entire raids in EQ. We failed raids for months while learning them, even with crazy amounts of DPS.

The same cannot be said of DDO.

[darknoobslayer]

Some interesting opinions there! Let's break that down:

• Wolf/Tree build fixes are coming.
  
  • The timing has less to do with the severity or priority and more to do with the complexity.
  • Yes, there is time to fix Warlock before broken Druid abilities. It takes less time to repair a crack than rebuild an entire wall.
  
  
• Planned Warlock changes are based primarily on data collection and testing.
  
  • Warlocks aren't the most powerful damage-dealers in the game right now, but neither are Paladins or Barbarians.
  • For that matter, we really haven't been hearing that "Melee players are upset that their OP Paladins and Barbarians aren't miles ahead of all the Casters anymore" at all. Even if we had, it would not be the sole deciding factor.
  
  
• Endgame is not the only measure that counts.
• The fact that some changes are necessary is not diminished by the fact that other necessary changes have not happened yet.

Anyway!

Hope everyone is having a fine morning.

I agree warlocks are definitely not the most powerful damage-dealers at the moment and I don't get why people are still complaining. At the moment I'm currently running a con based tank warlock in ES, which in the release notes was meant to be a tankish tree. Sure in heroics it plowed through trash with burst but even a first life cleric with maxed and empowered bb can do that. It does decent in epic normal - elite as well, I don't use hellball or energy burst like most caster locks which helps a ton in epics, but when you hit legendary quest, even some of the newer epics, you notice the burst are nowhere near as good. I think the real reason people get angry with warlock is because aoe burst = Kill steal. As for barbs,not many play barb due to endgame content, but there are still good ones out there that manage to get top kills in epics it's when you hit legendary quest that draws the line. Maybe it's time to nerf mobs? In my opinion all class passes should have occurred before any nerfing for more accurate data collecting and testing.

[RobbinB]

I agree warlocks are definitely not the most powerful damage-dealers at the moment and I don't get why people are still complaining. At the moment I'm currently running a con based tank warlock in ES, which in the release notes was meant to be a tankish tree. Sure in heroics it plowed through trash with burst but even a first life cleric with maxed and empowered bb can do that. It does decent in epic normal - elite as well, I don't use hellball or energy burst like most caster locks which helps a ton in epics, but when you hit legendary quest, even some of the newer epics, you notice the burst are nowhere near as good. I think the real reason people get angry with warlock is because aoe burst = Kill steal. As for barbs,not many play barb due to endgame content, but there are still good ones out there that manage to get top kills in epics it's when you hit legendary quest that draws the line. Maybe it's time to nerf mobs? In my opinion all class passes should have occurred before any nerfing for more accurate data collecting and testing.

So I'm assuming your "con-based tank ES warlock" has what 3000 hp and 150 prr and is pretty much unkillable when you are paying attention? And the fact you don't lead the kill counts means that warlocks aren't op? This isn't like the pre-changes survival Paladin that was hard to kill but couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag. You are still probably doing way more than reasonable damage. Revamp that Warlock for max spellpower/spell crit/dc/pen at the cost of some of that survivability and you will be frequently leading kill counts, but then you might occasionally die so I guess that means warlock isn't overpowered.

People are angry with warlock's because they kill steal=aoe burst but then you claim aoe bursts suck in note-worthy content? I'm gonna use my low-dps aoe to steal kills from you exactly how?

[darknoobslayer]

So I'm assuming your "con-based tank ES warlock" has what 3000 hp and 150 prr and is pretty much unkillable when you are paying attention? And the fact you don't lead the kill counts means that warlocks aren't op? This isn't like the pre-changes survival Paladin that was hard to kill but couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag. You are still probably doing way more than reasonable damage. Revamp that Warlock for max spellpower/spell crit/dc/pen at the cost of some of that survivability and you will be frequently leading kill counts, but then you might occasionally die so I guess that means warlock isn't overpowered.

People are angry with warlock's because they kill steal=aoe burst but then you claim aoe bursts suck in note-worthy content? I'm gonna use my low-dps aoe to steal kills from you exactly how?

Your telling me you've never played melee and had a warlock in the party wait till the killing blow to burst after all your hard work cleaving a group of mobs? And burst is not the only spell in most caster warlocks spell rotation. Ever use hellball up close + energy burst that's enough to clear most groups of mobs. Burst alone will not 2 shot mobs unless you are running epic normal or casual. What is reasonable damage to you? until all classes had there pass you really cant pin reasonable damage down. 3000 hp and 150 prr is really nothing for a con based tank in unyielding sentinel considering my pure charisma based pally had that much hp and had 230prr so 150prr is nothing since most rogues have 100+ anyway. And the 10,000 temporary hp from US ed must be too powerful to for tanks since it's more hp than you can reach?

[RobbinB]

Your telling me you've never played melee and had a warlock in the party wait till the killing blow to burst after all your hard work cleaving a group of mobs?

Yes, but more commonly I play warlock and have those durn Paladins and barbarians steal kills from my bursting warlock with their melee cleaves after all my hard work bursting said mobs to low health. (I think Stormlords are the worst for that, or maybe it's Legion?)

I think my point is you can't really kill steal consistently except with a high dps ability. And then only if the high dps ability also has a long cooldown timer, since if the timer is short you aren't "timing your kills" but rather just doing consistent damage (which frequently has the interesting side effect of killing stuff).

[JOTMON]

Your telling me you've never played melee and had a warlock in the party wait till the killing blow to burst after all your hard work cleaving a group of mobs?

That's not a warlock thing.. that's first rule of the secret unwritten caster rulebook.. applies to every mana class..

Rule1:let melee sliver mob then swoop in to take the kill with a highly visual obviously magical attack... like Finger.. or in the warlocks case.. hurl...

[darknoobslayer]

Yes, but more commonly I play warlock and have those durn Paladins and barbarians steal kills from my bursting warlock with their melee cleaves after all my hard work bursting said mobs to low health. (I think Stormlords are the worst for that, or maybe it's Legion?)

I think my point is you can't really kill steal consistently except with a high dps ability. And then only if the high dps ability also has a long cooldown timer, since if the timer is short you aren't "timing your kills" but rather just doing consistent damage (which frequently has the interesting side effect of killing stuff).

XD been a while since I've run with either of those guilds will have to keep an eye out. True, I just don't think burst dps is a godly and op as everyone claims it to be especially if they are the only spells in your rotation. Wish turbine would finish the class passes before people started to complain/nerf request. Of course newly updated classes will be better than old and the next classes to be updated will probably be just as good if not better but instead we get stuck in a never ending nerf cycle and tougher mobs to balance it out.

That's not a warlock thing.. that's first rule of the secret unwritten caster rulebook.. applies to every mana class..

Rule1:let melee sliver mob then swoop in to take the kill with a highly visual magical attack.

Shh its suppose to be a secret now the melee's are on to us :P

[slarden]

Your telling me you've never played melee and had a warlock in the party wait till the killing blow to burst after all your hard work cleaving a group of mobs?

pffft, it's way more fun to finger of death enemies at 1%.

[SpiritofAlba]

I agree with this which is why I think Warlocks are not OP in heroic until they get access to the bursts. People who want to hate on Warlocks need to play one from level 1. Not level 7. Level 1. They'll find that Warlocks are just as squishy as other Arcanes early on and that even Chain shape isn't foolproof when arrows are flying at you and you have no heals/temp hp to mitigate them.

I admit that I don't know so much about low level warlocks, not having played one, and generally soloing quite a lot of that level range each life. But I certainly do find them massively OPd in higher heroics, and not all of us want to play in epic levels all the time.

I recently did PoP in a pug at level, and the warlock was pretty much wiping every room before anyone else got more than a stroke or two in at most, including on the maralith. I am on a druid / fighter / ranger and have some past lives, so can hold my own fine in most pugs. Heroics are generally too easy, but its only when following a warlock that I feel completely redundant.

[Pnumbra]

So, when did kill count become a "thing"?

1. Warlocks are only crowd control characters...have you watched a warlock in a boss fight...painful
2. As Steel has stated, warlocks do not produce the highest DPS currently...he cleverly didn't state which multi-class/hybrid toon did...nice.
3. Warlocks are support characters in EE/LE content...solo EH/LH consistently

Not sure how these thing make an OP PtW character.

[zehnvhex]

It's because people have the memories of goldfish. Before Warlocks were released the forums were full of people complaining about Barbarians who had billions of kills from all their cleave attacks and insane self healing. Then there was the whining about Paladin cleaves and holy sword. Back in the day it was whining about firewall being OP and borderline required for dungeons.

A funny side effect of warlocks being the king of cleaving is barbarians are now getting compared unfavorably to fighters for their single target damage.

I imagine if you nerfed warlock cleaves it'd reverse. The forums would be full of people whining about how Barbarians are DDO's ezmoad class because their cleaves give them stupid high killcounts and we'd see threads about warlocks sucking compared to sorc/shiradi wizards.