Warlock NERF Again

[Vanhooger]

Let me give you the usual answers.

1 - Learn to play: clearly it is your fault, you suck at playing monks.

2 - Learn to build: your monk is gimp, monks are better than warlocks.

3 - Play a henshin: its so good, 1 shot everything with incinerating wave.

4 - Don't group with warlocks

5 - Don't play a monk: seriously, you want everything to be top DPS or you quit?

6 - Play solo

You can /roll 1d6 on these answers.

[BigErkyKid]

Why does nobody talk about difficulty of content? Balance is a multi-faceted concept. It is not limited to comparing the power of characters to each other. Balance also means that the power of a character and the difficulty of content are in line.

I've watched the movie and saw how warlock seemingly effortlessly destroys the newest LE content. In my opinion, it should be nerfed further so that that isn't possible. Similarly, all other classes (and epic destinies) that are too good compared to the content need a nerf. This is in my opinion the only sane way to get an engaging and balanced game.

Luckily reaper mode addresses some of these errors.

What I don't like about reaper is that it will push too much towards specialization. Some is necessary, but forget self heals, anything but a tank dies, etc. all those are not my cup of tea.

In any case, you mention balance versus content. Funny thing is that some builds are well balanced in LE content. E.g. an acrobat, a fighter fleshy, maybe an assassin. Those builds can be powerful, but running into too many mobs can get you killed pretty fast.

So IMHO we do have success stories. The problem is that very few people play that in end game, and the easy buttons (such as warlock) make running those builds very painful. First because in a group you feel pointless. Second because you know that everything would be so much faster on a power build. Who doesn't want faster lootz?

So that's why nerfs, instead of endless buffage, are IMO the best way to go. Some minor buffs to make sure things scale well can be justified, but the current melee crit big bang, boom magic crits, etc. is excessive.

That's where th true homogenization of the game is. Unique abilities like bard songs, arti buffs, monk finishers, some tactics (long cool down, single target) are left in the bottom of the barrel and then we are given crit profiles / MP / PRR. If they had just scaled unique abilities, bard wouldnt have needed a better crit profile. Ditto for most of the other classes.

Warlock is OP in quests. Its easy mode, its also very annoying to play with, and for all these reasons it needs to be scaled back. We have as much evidence as one could possibly need. Similar things could be said about other builds, but this is thread about warlocks.

[slarden]

Sorry said I wouldn't post here anymore but had to answer you.

You want facts when you don't want to post a single screenshot yourself so please...

If you go scholar capstone and rest ES you still get everything you need and one dot from SE. Bit less HP but you still can get 1,5k hp that is enough to even survive 90% of the mob in LE.

I've posted alot of screenshots in a lot of threads - I'm long past the need to prove myself. It's not like soloing newest content on elite on all my builds is anything new - been doing that for a long time. The last time I succumbed to such a request was for an assassin (whichI linked) which at least was a reasonable request because yeah it's much harder to solo on an assassin with a decent completion time compared to barbarian, swashbuckler, kensai, tempest, mechanic.

You make it sound like 1500 hp is some difficult task. I have 1500 hp on both my wizards and would have higher hp on barbarian, fighter, ranger, paladin, swashbuckler - just about any other build. My Barbarian spec'd for max dps had more hp 2 years go than my warlock has now.

My ES Warlock has about 1900 hp and my shiradi wiz has 1700. Difference is basically the ES capstone and the ES Warlock takes a lot more hit since it's an up close blasting build.

Math matters. Some of things you are complaining about are more subjective, but many are just simple math...

Most of the hp in the ES tree come from the capstone so I am not sure what you are talking about by "bit less".

[Forzah]

What I don't like about reaper is that it will push too much towards specialization. Some is necessary, but forget self heals, anything but a tank dies, etc. all those are not my cup of tea.

In any case, you mention balance versus content. Funny thing is that some builds are well balanced in LE content. E.g. an acrobat, a fighter fleshy, maybe an assassin. Those builds can be powerful, but running into too many mobs can get you killed pretty fast.

So IMHO we do have success stories. The problem is that very few people play that in end game, and the easy buttons (such as warlock) make running those builds very painful. First because in a group you feel pointless. Second because you know that everything would be so much faster on a power build. Who doesn't want faster lootz?

So that's why nerfs, instead of endless buffage, are IMO the best way to go. Some minor buffs to make sure things scale well can be justified, but the current melee crit big bang, boom magic crits, etc. is excessive.

That's where th true homogenization of the game is. Unique abilities like bard songs, arti buffs, monk finishers, some tactics (long cool down, single target) are left in the bottom of the barrel and then we are given crit profiles / MP / PRR. If they had just scaled unique abilities, bard wouldnt have needed a better crit profile. Ditto for most of the other classes.

Warlock is OP in quests. Its easy mode, its also very annoying to play with, and for all these reasons it needs to be scaled back. We have as much evidence as one could possibly need. Similar things could be said about other builds, but this is thread about warlocks.

I'm still wondering why developers did not choose to balance with those well-balanced class as baseline. Looking at the top performer and then making newer classes stronger than that is a neverending process. It's really beyond me.

[Chai]

Why does nobody talk about difficulty of content? Balance is a multi-faceted concept. It is not limited to comparing the power of characters to each other. Balance also means that the power of a character and the difficulty of content are in line.

I've watched the movie and saw how warlock seemingly effortlessly destroys the newest LE content. In my opinion, it should be nerfed further so that that isn't possible. Similarly, all other classes (and epic destinies) that are too good compared to the content need a nerf. This is in my opinion the only sane way to get an engaging and balanced game.

Luckily reaper mode addresses some of these errors.

I have been talking about content balance for years. you and others shot it down calling it "complete nonsense" claiming there needs to be class vs class comparisons for balance reasons, while also claiming that even if the content is brought up to par, the class power still wont be balanced.

Here you defend people who have it easy in 98% of content demanding a nerf of something that has it easy in 99% of content. and only NOW, want to talk content balance, something advocated for years now, by the crowd who understands that nerfing abilities directly does not bring game balance.

[2pc2]

I wish we had more facts coming from the people calling for nerfs rather than just lolz.

Feel free to provide proof rather than just ranting.

People have already linked videos of other classes soloing that end fight - there is no need for me to repeat it.

Interestig, some may call that hypocrisy... 12 pages after and still not a single link of that imaginary vids YAY!

Someting like this you know

[Chai]

I'm still wondering why developers did not choose to balance with those well-balanced class as baseline. Looking at the top performer and then making newer classes stronger than that is a neverending process. It's really beyond me.

This situation is very easy to understand actually. The new class was as strong as pre nerf last class revamped. Its the nerf demands that have been making this direct contradiction in logic possible for years now.

players complain bards suck, and are bottom of the meta
devs revamp bards to top of the meta
players complain its too powerful, not willing to wait to see the full vision before advocating for nerfs, compare bard to 2013 designed classes.
devs nerf bard to something less than top of meta.

players complain paladins suck, and are bottom of the meta
devs revamp paladin to top of the meta
players complain its too powerful, not willing to wait to see the full vision before advocating for nerfs, and compare paladin to post nerf bard, when it was designed to be in line with pre nerf bard
devs nerf paladin to something less than top of meta.

players complain barbarians suck, and are bottom of the meta
devs revamp barbarian to top of the meta
players complain its too powerful, not willing to wait to see the full vision before advocating for nerfs, and compare barbarian to post nerf paladin, when it was designed to be in line with pre nerf paladin
devs nerf barbarian to something less than top of meta.

So on and so forth.

The direct logical contradiction is the knee jerk reaction for nerfs. Had players not advocated for nerfs after most revamps, those other classes would be closer in power to warlock, this lesson hasn't been learned, as we see the same behavior exhibited here regarding the current thing they are demanding nerfs of, all the while comparing it to things they demanded nerfs of in the past. the reason why warlocks "ruin your fun" is because you demanded less power be added to other things, thinking it would curb the overall vision of changing the meta a few times a year to make a bit of extra cash selling hearts and stones.

[BigErkyKid]

I'm still wondering why developers did not choose to balance with those well-balanced class as baseline. Looking at the top performer and then making newer classes stronger than that is a neverending process. It's really beyond me.

I can come up with several reasons.

First, they probably really dislike nerfing because it ****es players.

Second, I think they believe that by changing the pecking order so much they can have us running around. People TR and spend TP in pots, ottos, respecs to get the build right, need new gear for the new build, etc. So end game being try the new FOTM being an end game in DDO.

Also at first people liked the new shinies. Now it is apparent that there is just constant system changes, so people I feel care less and less.

In any case providing a solid sense of classes for me it is waaaaay better at creating a fanbase than all this TR into the new FOTM style they have.

Warlock is just p2w, frankly. It also arrived in a moment of super sloppy dev work.

[nokowi]

I'm still wondering why developers did not choose to balance with those well-balanced class as baseline. Looking at the top performer and then making newer classes stronger than that is a neverending process. It's really beyond me.

There are so many combinations of abilities that devs can't make a large number of builds good without having a few combinations that outperform. Trying to balance all DPS was going to fail no matter what choices devs made.

This was not really a problem in the past, because we all had roles we could choose to play to be useful (with the exception of two builds and one racial ability that were so much better than the rest).

Once they gave all players much more similar abilities (self healing, run speed, etc), they largely eliminated having a role and DPS while keeping yourself alive became the only factor needed for a build.

In the past you didn't need to play a FOTM build because you could still fill a useful role. In the current game, if you don't grab the latest easy button you are simply a worse version of much the same character. This is OK for some, but upsetting for others.

Player complaints about other builds are justified in this environment, and a natural result of the design that devs have chosen to allow DDO to be a single player game with everyone doing the same thing.

Reaper is a chance to undo some of this.

[Chai]

There are so many combinations of abilities that devs can't make a large number of builds good without having a few combinations that outperform. Trying to balance all DPS was going to fail no matter what choices devs made.

This was not really a problem in the past, because we all had roles we could choose to play to be useful (with the exception of two builds and one racial ability that were so much better than the rest).

Once they gave all players much more similar abilities (self healing, run speed, etc), they largely eliminated having a role and DPS while keeping yourself alive became the only factor needed for a build.

In the past you didn't need to play a FOTM build because you could still fill a useful role. In the current game, if you don't grab the latest easy button you are simply a worse version of much the same character. This is OK for some, but upsetting for others.

Player complaints about other builds are justified in this environment, and a natural result of the design that devs have chosen to allow DDO to be a single player game with everyone doing the same thing.

Reaper is a chance to undo some of this.

this.

also, classes used to have strengths and weaknesses comparatively, rather than sameness. In the past when i played my cleric and we played quests with living mobs I was middle of the pack DPS, throwing heals when people needed it, and taking some of the hits to help with survivability. when we ran quests with undead, only the best players kept up with my clerics trash mob killing. since theres no shortage of quests with undead, I wasn't always playing the same single role. by the time we hit mid level I had a blade barrier that helped a lot even in quests with living mobs.

[2pc2]

Second, I think they believe that by changing the pecking order so much they can have us running around. People TR and spend TP in pots, ottos, respecs to get the build right, need new gear for the new build, etc. So end game being try the new FOTM being an end game in DDO.

Exactly that.

[2pc2]

The direct logical contradiction is the knee jerk reaction for nerfs. Had players not advocated for nerfs after most revamps, those other classes would be closer in power to warlock, this lesson hasn't been learned, as we see the same behavior exhibited here regarding the current thing they are demanding nerfs of, all the while comparing it to things they demanded nerfs of in the past. the reason why warlocks "ruin your fun" is because you demanded less power be added to other things, thinking it would curb the overall vision of changing the meta a few times a year to make a bit of extra cash selling hearts and stones.

For 1 time you seem to make sense.

All this nonsense started with the stacking crtitical, holysword, prr, etc nerfs, because whaag it was too OP, and made the game too easy, or that's the reason that was given.
Most people agreed that it was too OP at that time, so they went on. Now this ppl who got their builds nerfed because they were told it was to OP see how new classes and builds do much better than they did pre-nerfs and are more OP. Do you really expect them to be ok with that? I nerf you because you're to OP and next month I release a class that's better than you were pre-nerfs, c'mon...

Either you balance warlocks ( and some other broken builds) to the same lvl of the rest making game more challenging or you buff all the rest to warlock lvl making game even easier, to me 1rst solution is way better and easier to implement, the second is not so good and harder to do imo but way better than having 3-4 builds miles ahead of the rest like it is now. To the point it's not worth playing anything else if what you look for is efficiency, only for flavor.

Btw you just ( and probably unintentionally ) admited that most classes/builds are not even close to warlock power

Had players not advocated for nerfs after most revamps, those other classes would be closer in power to warlock, this lesson hasn't been learned

[Phil7]

After U26 there have been no more "serious" build posts, except from Cetus Fighter which was to be expected and Tempest Ranger from Cthu

The number of views that the whole Warlock section has, is propably larger than 2 or more other Class sections combined.

Turbine tried pushing people to play other casters by releasing new Epic Feats. That day, warlocks became happier

Monks tr... oh sry, I meant warlocks with pyjamas.

Warlocks and Clerics once battled within the woods and... well warlocks won. Thus came the Treelocks

Warlocks told shurikens to gtfo and stole Shiradi. Now poor shurikens are forced to play with Fury

LGS weaps were nerfed and we were left with Vacuum and Affirmation. Ppl blamed Turbine, but real warlocks knew better and kept their mouths shut

Warlocks can play on the left side in Sentinel with max CON and lose almost zero dps. That is ofc balanced, because dps=good player=defense and whoever denies that should l2p.

CHA warlocks didn't like that and decided to max out their dmg and didn't care about defense. After that they died alot and promised to make a comeback with shiradi and screenshots.

Warlocks can also turn a bad player into a good one. Unfortunately the effect does not persist in Public Areas, in Guild and Party chat and after logout.

It is by now a common fact, that if you have a warlock in your group it will fill up faster! It has to be the Charisma

Every time 1 player dies 0,74 warlocks die aswell

One may notice that, a great number of new players have absolutely no idea what DR, Armor Pen, TS, Fortification and other similar terms mean.
This becomes even more obvious after they are witnessed dying repeatedly in melee range with Crossbows in their hands.
Warlocks are ofc oblivious to this and deny such facts.

It is said that Wizards are better than Warlocks. More DPS, more death, more everything!
That is until the player runs out of SP pots.
Then the player ''magically'' realizes that Warlocks are better!

Warlocks actually did contribute towards build diversity!
Arti/warlock, Barbarian/warlock, Bard/warlock, Cleric/warlock, FVS/warlock, Monk/warlock...

Warlocks can also kill the heroic version of Xyzzy without having to charm her puppies!

Warlocks are now arguing with Mechanics over who is better.
Mechanics have to hold down the mouse button
Warlocks don't
Mechanics cry and ask for Hellball nerf
Warlocks cast Ruin to get rid of them

But still... warlocks are not op...
I read it c'mon, people said it's top 10 dps and top 5 dps and top 3 dps
And they also said that there are ''other'' builds with better dps and much more
I'm sure if we ask them politely they will reveal them to us.
They've just been busy playing Mabar with their warlocks all this time.
And ignore the 9/10th of my guild and the server who bring only their warlocks to farm slavers, mabar and w/e
We just like the purple icon

P.S.
A bit more serious answer:
Most of the people I play with don't really care about this nerf. It didn't affect them much.
They play with TS capstone and eldritch wave in shiradi.
Hellball - wave- cleave room is clear.
There is more that needs to be done to warlock

[Forzah]

I have been talking about content balance for years. you and others shot it down calling it "complete nonsense" claiming there needs to be class vs class comparisons for balance reasons, while also claiming that even if the content is brought up to par, the class power still wont be balanced.

I doubt I called the content balance idea "complete nonsense" since I am in favor of this idea myself; you probably refer to someone else. I may have said that class vs class comparisons are important, since given that content balance is not likely to ever be implemented, it's the next best thing that we can strive for.

Your notion of content balance is different from mine, however. You want to create/modify content so that it challenges different types of build in creative ways. If anything, I called the idea impractical because implementation is very labor intensive. In essence it requires reworking all existing quests and significant extra thought when creating new quests. My notion of content balance is more practical to implement: nerf classes to the point where content becomes challenging for them. The advantage of my approach is that automatically leads to class-vs-class balance (two birds with one stone).

Here you defend people who have it easy in 98% of content demanding a nerf of something that has it easy in 99% of content. and only NOW, want to talk content balance, something advocated for years now, by the crowd who understands that nerfing abilities directly does not bring game balance.

I'm in favor of anything that brings classes in line with content and with each other. Nerfing is a means to achieve both. I do think there needs to be a more integral approach to nerfing rather than ad-hoc nerfing of certain abilities. The nerfs applied in the past were always so small that this could never bring classes in line with content. The nerfs need to be more severe and applied to many classes at once to make a difference. The proxy-nerfing in reaper hopefully achieves that.

[BigErkyKid]

I also want to add that the current bait and switch approach has eroded a lot the fanbase.

There used to be more people devoted to a single class. Some of them would have fan websites covering it, create guides, and so on.

I see far less of that now. Reason being that as others pointed out if you care about good builds you ought to be switching constantly as the meta changes. I think that the meta swings have been particularly hard the last 2 years.

[Vanhooger]

I've posted alot of screenshots in a lot of threads - I'm long past the need to prove myself. It's not like soloing newest content on elite on all my builds is anything new - been doing that for a long time. The last time I succumbed to such a request was for an assassin (whichI linked) which at least was a reasonable request because yeah it's much harder to solo on an assassin with a decent completion time compared to barbarian, swashbuckler, kensai, tempest, mechanic.

You make it sound like 1500 hp is some difficult task. I have 1500 hp on both my wizards and would have higher hp on barbarian, fighter, ranger, paladin, swashbuckler - just about any other build. My Barbarian spec'd for max dps had more hp 2 years go than my warlock has now.

My ES Warlock has about 1900 hp and my shiradi wiz has 1700. Difference is basically the ES capstone and the ES Warlock takes a lot more hit since it's an up close blasting build.

Math matters. Some of things you are complaining about are more subjective, but many are just simple math...

Most of the hp in the ES tree come from the capstone so I am not sure what you are talking about by "bit less".

Shining and capstone and other temp hp.

I don't know why you think for me 1,5k its an hard task.

You guys are assuming way too much, it was just an example. Temp hp matters too.

Maybe someone in the forum got this complex of being a better player then anyone else...or a better builder or whatever. So many people can do what you're doing.

So if you take tier 5 scholar and scholar capstone you will have a bit less hp compaed a WK with ES capstone and Shining.

If you keep asking for proof without posting anything yourself, don't expect other to do so, since you lose credibility, even if you posted in other thread or in the past.

Post you're barb screenshot it take less then 2 min.

[nokowi]

Either you balance warlocks ( and some other broken builds) to the same lvl of the rest making game more challenging or you buff all the rest to warlock lvl making game even easier, to me 1rst solution is way better and easier to implement, the second is not so good and harder to do imo but way better than having 3-4 builds miles ahead of the rest like it is now. To the point it's not worth playing anything else if what you look for is efficiency, only for flavor.

Your ideas make sense here, but devs have already tried to do this and experience shows they can't balance the classes across all the builds that players choose when DPS+staying alive are the only requirements for a successful character.

Q Why doesn't Slarden play his assassin currently?
A Because it take more effort to do the same thing, and at a much slower pace

Q Why is BigErky upset about running melee through Slavers
A Because is a grind in which all builds do the same thing, but some can do it faster

Q Why hasn't Nokowi played in 3-4 months (6 months? not sure any more)
A Because the game is so trivial that my toon doesn't bring anything that is needed to the table. I can rack up a reasonable number of kills, but if I was piking in the corner the outcome would be no different.

Q Why do new/casual players complain about Warlocks running ahead and ruining there fun?
A Because the new/casual player isn't contributing anything to the quest

Devs need to abandon the idea of perfect balance through buffing and nerfing. This doen't mean that buffs or nerfs can never happen, but that this is not the way to create balance.

All players want is to bring the toon that they enjoy to the game, and be able to make a contribution to the group.

It's as simple as giving players difference between builds and letting them have roles again. Having three trees to find the best combination that stays alive with maximum DPS does not create significant build differences. It creates some builds that are better than others, while all doing the same thing.

Remember when all the melee characters surrounded a boss and that was helpful? That's called a role. It makes you feel useful even if you have a smaller kill count, or need someone else to keep you alive. Devs, can you imagine any situation in reaper where any but the tank could fill this role? I don't see it happening in the current Amp-Up-The-DPS reaper mob design.

[nokowi]

I also want to add that the current bait and switch approach has eroded a lot the fanbase.

There used to be more people devoted to a single class. Some of them would have fan websites covering it, create guides, and so on.

I see far less of that now. Reason being that as others pointed out if you care about good builds you ought to be switching constantly as the meta changes. I think that the meta swings have been particularly hard the last 2 years.

This is fun for the 5% of the population that always had to play the top FOTM in the past. Not so much for the other 95%.

Continually switching back and forth between assassin Dex and Int builds (to do the exact same thing!) was one of the top reasons I didn't enjoy DDO anymore. I tried to explain why Dex to assassinate would create less builds, but I lost that one. Having more build options isn't more choice when they all play much the same.

[2pc2]

Warlocks can also turn a bad player into a good one. Unfortunately the effect does not persist in Public Areas, in Guild and Party chat and after logout.

LOL'ed a bit to hard on that one

[nokowi]

My notion of content balance is more practical to implement: nerf classes to the point where content becomes challenging for them.

If you buy the argument that all builds do much the same thing (few roles), only the top % of builds will be viable in your preferred option.

Seems like a way to lose players.


Are you really arguing that devs can perfectly balance all builds across all the single and multiclass options players might choose?

They could have gone this route with higher level requirements for enhancement tiers (making balance easier to implement), but they chose not to.