so...still depressing?

[Kazimer]

<DIV>I recently came back after leaving because of LU13? (the combat update).  I got the eq2 itch again, so I decided to give my toon another try.  So I log in my now newbish lv 45 warlock and start grouping.  A few things I've noticed:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>- Ok, my dd's are 50% of what they were....this is known, but my aoe's are much better, which comes to...</DIV> <DIV>- keeping aggro down in groups is near impossible unless there is a paladin tanking.  and that's just with ONE aoe halfway through the fight.</DIV> <DIV>- CASTING TIMES ARE HORRIBLE.  most things are dead before I can even cast anything.</DIV> <DIV>- Can someone please tell me why a Bruiser is doing near double the dps I am in normal group fighting?  This is ridiculous.  I am parsing close to the wizard, he wins out more than not except in 3+ mob groups.  The bruiser, scouts, and summoners are consistently doing CONSIDERABLY more dps than me in normal group fighting and that's with me going all out, when i can.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I read several threads on here, which were promising, about some lv 55+ warlocks keeping up near the top of the dps chain, but is this what I have to look forward to until then?  It's kind of depressing and makes me realize why I left in the first place..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And before someone comes on here trying to give me a lesson on spells, I read those threads, I found what was most efficient at lv 45, and am now comfortable that I have been using the best setup for consistent max dps.</DIV>

[Ronzul]

<DIV>I'd say that either the people you grouped with were geared far better than you, or you're a little rusty and haven't gotten the hang of the spell changes, or a little of both.  I'm in the same level range as you are, and my gear pretty much sucks because I've soloed most of the way to level 47, but I can pull aggro on single targets from tanks of higher levels easily if I go full-out.  I was about level 25 when LU 13 was introduced, so I don't really know how it was before at level 45, but I am satisfied with the way things are now.  If your group is fighting blues, greens or heroic groups with no ^'s, then yeah, we kinda suck at that because of our long casting times.  Find a place to hunt ^^^'s and you should be happy with your performance.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As far as AE and groups go, it's a mixed bag, really.  Most groups are afraid of it, and don't know how to do it, so you're stuck with only using it to clean up the down-arrow mobs in the few places that you find them in heroic groups.  Other than that, it's good for solo exp when you can find large groups of double- and triple-down arrows that /con white or yellow.</DIV>

[Junaru]

While I agree with the cast times sucking and without a doubt the main reason my Warlock is now just my Provisioner for my Monk, damage wise I will hold my own in fights with 3+ mobs. Since I have come back to EQ2 I have only had one person out damage me with multi-mob groups and that was a Ranger 3 levels higher then me. Granted when I left the game I had mostly Adept III spells for my Warlock and pretty good gear.But again my Warlock really only comes out when my Guild needs some AoE damage for a raid. Other then that I just level up my Monk. I'm not putting the Warlock class down, just can't get uses to the cast times. Besides SOE did such a good job balancing the Monk class it makes playing the game fun. I don't win every fight with ease but I also hold my own when soloing. And in a group I can either be the MT or DPS.<div></div>

[tiki-jiki]

I dont even care about pulling agro. I know i am about 10 levels higher, but i just cast dev, nil absolution and dark nebula. i will draw agro but everything is practically dead. We are able to easily finish off the encounter and go to the next. As far as soloing goes, i just pull with devestation, cast nil absolution, then maybe dark nebula or a couple of single target nukes and the encounter is dead. <div></div>

[Roriondesexiest]

<DIV>I too took a break (6+ months)  Never had any trouble with aggro before except for the 2nd stifle spell, I forgot the name.  After my hiatus it seems about the same, I can do the most DPS and rarely ever pull aggro from the tank, unless I start off with a big AOE.  Maybe I just group with better tanks, not sure. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I did stop debuffing unless we are fighting a really tough mob, by the time I get all my dot's and debuffs most normal mobs are dead.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Omaplata</DIV>

[MrWolfie]

<BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV><FONT color=#99cc00>- keeping aggro down in groups is near impossible unless there is a paladin tanking.  and that's just with ONE aoe halfway through the fight.</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>Yeah, that's right. SOE made us "The Masters of AOE", but really we're the masters of getting aggro.</DIV> <DIV>So, we got a lot of spells we can't use without getting killed (or [Removed for Content] off groupmembers who have no idea what it's like being a Warlock).</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV><FONT color=#99cc00>- CASTING TIMES ARE HORRIBLE.  most things are dead before I can even cast anything.</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>Um, yeah (again). Full group (half a group, even) ~ why even bother casting?</DIV> <DIV>You can either:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr> <DIV>Cast an AOE. It'll take 4 seconds, you'll immediately get aggro and spend the rest of the fight spamming your stuns. (even our Direct Nukes take too long to cast, and way too long to refresh ~ esp. Nul/Nil Distortion)</DIV> <DIV>Cast Netheros/Use a Nil Crystal and spend the rest of the fight casting senseless debuffs so you get your Nil Crystal back at the end...</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>Most of the debuffs and group buffs we have need to be removed. The necessity to have Nil Crystals needs to be removed. We need a personal deaggro buff using a concentration slot and all our spell casting times reduced by AT LEAST one second. I hear there's a deaggro spell going in, but we don't need ANOTHER frickin' spell ~ it already takes too long to cast the ones we have...</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV><FONT color=#99cc00>I read several threads on here, which were promising, about some lv 55+ warlocks keeping up near the top of the dps chain, but is this what I have to look forward to until then?  It's kind of depressing and makes me realize why I left in the first place..</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>Yeah, it is depressing. A Warlock needs a high level tank and a big, big battle to shine. Any encounter that's going to be over in 8 seconds makes a Warlock superfluous (as far as grouping goes).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Galap]

For AoE, you can't use assist.  You have to pick a target the group isn't pounding on.  It is really annoying that TAB can not target a mob in the group you are fighting if there are any other mobs in TAB range.  Things can get hectic in group encounters, and picking out a good target manually for AoE isn't always easy - especially if you're lagging.

[Gandi]

To the OP...yep...still depressing as hell.

[Marxx]

<DIV>I can give a view from a 60.. I was 40 when the expansion came out..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you are doing AoEs in a group, you will probably get aggro.  Right now, Pallys are the best tanks for us since they can syphon our hate.  Thats being reduced in the next live update.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I group with a guild wizard quite a bit and can say he dies more then me though.  We have enough stuns/stifles to buy some time if you draw aggro.  You may not have the full arsenal till about 55.  When I draw aggro (as I tend to when grouped with a monk MT) I just make sure to keep the mobs from doing damage to me.  You do need to be fast on the fingers and chose spells well.  delay one stun till a nuke goes off and it could kill ya.  But mostly we just joke about it since we know when its going to happen.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, If you dont want to draw aggro, you can do that as well.  It cuts down on DPS though.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>-Pocket</DIV> <DIV>60 Gnome Warlock</DIV> <DIV>faydark</DIV>

[Tanatus]

<DIV>Just learn of new way of playing and enjoy it ... Warlock is by far margin best cash farming class and if you cannt solo 15%/hour with zero vitality you doing something horribly wrong. LU13 took out of warlock rich only 1 type of target named heroic casting mobs. You still can farm 7/24 named melee heroic mobs</DIV> <DIV>In groups - educate healers that on AoE type encounter you MT that's all..... Believe you or not but you can perfectly tank group of 4-5 yellow conned mobs w/o any arrow. Also learn you spells. You have panic buttom spell VI, you have root that garanty proc 4s fear on termination</DIV> <DIV>So as I said in group vs. AoE type encounter dont hestitate to tank and vs single +++ type use VI and root to drop agro</DIV>

[Zaphenath]

<DIV>I'd have to admit that Warlocks have seen a lot of hard times. I started mine on day one, playing him off and on, I actually stopped at lvl 29, this was still in Decemeber or early January when the game was released. The warlock at that stage was pathetic. We were masters or nothing.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Then LU's started coming around and around 13 or so we got our much deserved boost. Now, with the final Combat Upgrade changes, we've been brought down a little bit and everybody is complaining. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I just wanted to say that I really dont have anything to complain about. I've gone from 48 to 52 in about a week or so of pretty regular playing and I've been running combat stats the whole time. The only time I've gotten out DPS'd is when a brigand is in the group and we're fighting a single target. Toss one more target in there and I don't have a problem putting any class to shame (dps wise)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>On normal group xp fights I see an average of around 330-430 dps. My top dps on a single heroic pull was a little over 2200dps... (Granted that was a large group, but nobody else even broke 100 dps on that fight).  Also, NO other class can even come close to touching that much dps on any single target fight or multi-target fight.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The important thing is that even on single target mobs I can still easily hit 400 dps, that's as high as any scout or caster that I've played with, including both types of summoners and nearly all scout classes (bards, rangers, rogues, no assassins though).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I pull agro occassionally, but only towards the end of the fight and I almost always know when I'm going to pull it, you could say I do it purposefully because I know that as soon as I gain agro, Devastations 3.5 second stun will kick in and before it wears off the mobs will be dead with my next AoE.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Final comment, 330-430 average dps is just fine by me and I'm only lvl 52. Knowing I can out DPS everybody else on big pulls by litterally thousands, now that's something to be proud of!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Ziffna]

<P>Beyond the lack of an encounter agro debuff that would let us use our dps at 50+ another reason that we seem to have major problums with doing damage is that in tier 6 levels 51-60 we only got upgrades for 3 of our real damage spells soul flay , nill distortion and boundless fury, not one one those spells is what most warlocks would say is there best spells.  Most or at least the majority of high level warlocks would say that Devistation, nill absoultion and Dark nebula are our key spells as far as damage goes, none of these spells got upgrades with this expantion.  </P> <P>I run a parser a good amount of the time and currently on fights that last more then a few mins if i get close to half the dps of rangers, summoners i end up pulling agro from the tank this in my opinion is just wrong.  A few weeks ago while getting some more guildies prismatcs while doing the fight with darathar i pulled agro while  12th over all in the raid as far as dps was concerned, this wasn't after one of the stun/mem wipes but about 50% in on the last round with him there is no reason i should be pulling agro that far down having guardians scouts summoner pets all with higher dps yet i pulled agro that seems to be a bit of a problum.</P> <P>Concussion will hopefully solve the problums with single targest but atm it doesn't work on mobs in the encounter when in conjuntion with an aoe spell, it only affects the primary target of the spell.  This is a slap in the face and just contiunes to show the lack of forthought that sony had when they decided to implement a class thats primary role is AoE.</P>

[Dreadwalk]

Was grouped with a ranger , another warlock and a conj (mage pet) in an XP group today.  The conj damage both single target and group beat out the 3 tier 1 classes with ease and whats worse never got aggro once.  I was able to get aggro as the second rank DPS damage.  Whilst i can handle  a ranger beating us in some situations (due to high costs of posions etc) , the conj seems to have it all on a plate:  Great single target , great AOE , low aggro issues , autoattack pet when mana runs out, good for short fights , good for long fights etc...    Can someone tell me where is their disadvantage ?Depressing --> Definately.<div></div>

[Kasai]

Well conjurors do seem to have dps real nice.  There are a few small things that they can't do though..The first and most important thing is that when their pet dies(when it steals aggro[which it tends to do a lot]) All of that hate goes onto the conjuror, which can be a big load at times.Second, they can't go full out if they need/want...Their pet is such a majority of thier DPS and since the pet is always doing the same moves every second, they can't change their playstyle as much(without switching pets and dramaticaly changing it.)Third, Some pets are VERY restricted to certain places...When there is a mezzer in a group, the Fire pet is useless becuase it AOEs.  The air pet is the only one left for DPS.  Lets say that the mob is immune to peircing(which is all the air pet is now) Thier DPS goes WAY down.  With non pet classes they could just not use AOE or switch weapons.Indeed in most xp groups thye have it made, but they have thier restrictions like everyone else.<div></div>

[pharacyde]

I don't know about the AoE pet thingie. I thought mezzes didn't break on AoE spells. <div></div>

[Kasai]

    Hmm im not sure...i was hearing somewhere that one of hte pets was casting a PB aoe...it might of been a bug...im not sure.<div></div>