The NEW Warlock Issues and Concerns Thread [Archive]

Windowlicker

07-09-2008, 03:48 PM

Ok, we need to get this going. Here is what I see as some current issues that need to be looked into. They may not be totally in-line with what everyone else is seeing, please post additions/changes or anything else here.Edit: I will try to update this top post with any additions people may have.BROKEN SPELLS AND ABILITIES- Enhance Devistation (AA Line)<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=429499�" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...99�</a>Dumbfires - Once a source of really nice DPS for us, now seem to be nearly useless on most pulls. Raid mobs kill them instantly, and in instances the mobs die far too quickly for them to be effective.Resists - The fix for the Melee hit rates involved giving us more resists. The damage from our spells was not altered at the same time. The problem with this, is that our spells had been balanced knowing we had a 100% hit rate. Now that we don't have a 100% hit rate, our DPS has been lowered.I don't think most of us would mind resists if our spells had some increased damage to offset those resists and leave us in line with the remaining T1 dps classes. On that note, as Warlocks I think most of us have accepted we won't have the same damage output on single target mobs VS multi-target mobs. Still, the seperation between us and single target DPS classes shouldn't be huge.Multi-Mob encounters - At one point this game was filled with zones containing multi-mob encounters. Much of the difficulty behind this game was in the balancing act we had to play when a multi-mob encounter was pulled. These encounters were also key in giving us higher zone-wide parses, and letting us shine as a class. Currently, there are a dismal amount of these in-game compared to previous expansions.Group buffs - The warlock has generally only ever had one real group buff that people enjoyed and looked for. The group buff from our propagations line was enjoyed by just about every class. When the ability for this line to buff proc %'s on items was removed (Without even giving us a patch note telling us it had), we basicly lost our only truely desired group utility.Our "Activators" - We require far more then any other class in the game to do good damage. - In a raid we require both a Troub AND Illusionist to keep up with many scouts who ONLY have a dirge. That's double the requirement. For most guilds, having the luck of the raid leader giving you both of these classes is remote. It's even more remote to have both of these classes show up together at the same raid. To compound this problem, Wizards are in the same boat. What makes our class fun, and why it is currently lacking - The very concept for most of us having chosen a cloth DPS class is having a class capable of insane-dps that has almost zero survivability. Well, you have the zero-survivability down .. but we aren't seeing the pay-off on the parse.Truthfully, we should be capable of doing far more damage then our survivability will allow. Make us watch what we cast, make us need to be concious of our spellcasting .. or kill us!Edit - Added stuff:Epic - The re-use timer to switch between single and multi-target damage should be removed or reduced. - Clicky effect on the mythical. It should be a bit stronger, either by increasing the damage boost or lowering cast times on the affected spells. Why do spells with damage and cast times balanced against hitting 3+ mobs only get a 30% boost when condensed into single target spells.Debuffs - Namely the two debuffs that were used for Nil Crystal farming are now basicly useless. The Max Health debuff curse is absolutely useless. Absolutely anything would be better.Buffs- Grasp of Bertoxxulous not stacking with Ro's Blade. Currently both buffs show on the target, but ours will not proc while the wizard's is present.Masters- Armageddon M1, is this confirmed to be dropping? I have yet to see a single M1 copy of this level 80 spell since RoK was released. I see numerous mobs that should be dropping it, and even after farming them for months I just haven't seen it.PVP(Added for the PVP folks)- Make Manashield a clickable permanent spell that you can turn on and off as you please to avoid people running away at the sight of a warlock (Or wizard) using Manashield.- Make DOTs usable in PVP, as of now they're useless due to the fact that fights lasts 4 seconds most of the time and 10 second tops.- Increase the survivability of sorcerers in PVP against scouts.

Ilucide

07-09-2008, 06:06 PM

Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.The way I think about it is something like this: A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.

Wytie

07-09-2008, 06:39 PM

First off Id like to say, I love my warlock and very much enjoy the game.I posted this in the other thread and would like to highlight it here.Lots of classes put out dps, the really valuable dps classes are the one who bring utility to the table also, the ones groups dont want to live without.Warlocks had that before propagations was fixed. Now with that and RoK focus on single targets we have to work alot harder to push the dps envelope when most other dps only classes can coast and blow us out the water if were not paying close attention.It should be important that every mage brings some kind of valuable utility to the raids table and not just pure dps.biggest issue right now is if you compair a equal wizzy to an equal lock and you only have 1 spot to fill, or one person to give TC to, the wizzy will win just about every single time. To me thats not right! that ratio should be more to 50% and not so one sided. Trash mobs die fast we dps slow.Reasons it one sided in this expansion is a) wizzy dps is naturaly single target focus, most all VP is single target focus b) group buffs/utility in a mage group the wizzy buffs benifit the group more than the locks, our casting buff if defused by diminishing returns from the bard and illy. Also the wizzy velum gift line brings dps to the rest of the casters. Locks just dont have anything to compare to that. So its to easy to pick any wizzy in replace of a lock for buffs and a spot.c) Zonewide parse contain a lot of trash, that trash dies quickly so quickly warlock barly have time to push the dps needed to compete.Warlocks are a dot class SOE should have given warlocks a super ubar ability that affect our dots similer to the SK's. Why in the world give them the ability for there dots to tick more? That soo should have been us honestly.On the other hand resist in VP are not a problem for me not at all, not anywhere in any zone, know why? My Disruption sits 500+ solo and i dont normally ever get 2 resist back to back unless its a debuff and that has nothing to do with my disruption so I know exactly why. My resist range from 1.5%-3% in raid it always seems worse exactly for the reason Ilucide listed because its so noticable on long cast that it really sticks out.On a side not resist can kill a casters parse in no time flat this just isnt the case for mele.In a 30sec fight if you wasted 5sec on 2 resist thats 1/6th or more dps lost where a scout just instanly cast soemtihng else and the dps is hardly effected. Casters dont have auto attack 100% of our damage comes from our cast.

Sunlei

07-09-2008, 06:44 PM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.The way I think about it is something like this:A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.</blockquote> "A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can't move. S/he can't do anything else. S/he's just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn't matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist." and so with this game and its combat speed and anti-kiting rules and the misses and resists the same as you say....why can't casters move when casting ?

Windowlicker

07-09-2008, 07:17 PM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>The way I think about it is something like this: A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.</blockquote>This is absolutely right. But at the same time, it needs to be noted that we require more in the way of group buffs to achieve the same numbers as the scouts.So:- We cast slower- We hit less- We take fewer hits- We can't move while castingAlso, it *must* be noted that we have some spells that need to be landed before others to turn out proper DPS as well. We're heavily dependent on casting order.This is why Wizards casting "Rays" really messes us up(If they don't warn first). This is also why the odd resist may have a greater impact to us then one might immediately think.I think the root concern for me at least right now, is that we have all of these disadvantages playing paper-thin cloth .. yet the pay-off seems to be getting smaller and smaller by the patch.At this point, why play a Warlock? Why not play a scout?Edit: By the way, THANK YOU for responding. In one day you've done more for this class just by responding then we've seen in ages.

CelebornXI

07-09-2008, 07:54 PM

Honestly, the only disadvantage our class has is the nature of our spells (and we are far less a dot class than say, illies or necros). My resists rates also do not change much between 450skill and 520, and that is self buffed. For everyone thinking that order matters for mage dps, well it is the same, or more-so for melee, if their skills miss they need to wait the entire refresh time, we can keep to our order once we have it and go down to much dps, but melee also have a rotation and if everything lands they deal far more dps than for another order /shrug. As far as being able to deal dps in concert with our survivability I would have to say more items which can reduce our resistability would probably be desireable. I still peel aggro on single target mobs, even if i'm not top on the parse(since that isn't how parses work), our spike damage is still decent but it can turn to dust with a few key resists or interrupts. Detaunt gear is a waste of time, position changes are the only beneficial detaunt. -Hate items would be viable for people w/o access to their VP set pants, or a troub, I sit at 44.*% dehate in raid, cap is 50%. Reuse is all over the place, I don't even need the 15% from the proc on my ear to cap out spells with <10sec recasts. Our spells are pretty well tuned, it just comes down to the bonus damage from gear really affecting our class (mostly because one of our largest dps spells is a DoT as well as not being seen as great single target damage and not always getting the best buffs in single target zones). One other thing, the clicky on our epic is great! (for the two spells it is useful on....)

Syndic

07-09-2008, 08:28 PM

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>At this point, why play a Warlock? Why not play a scout?</blockquote>hehe funny thing is I have, just need time to get him up there. Before I changed my main to a warlock our guild had just recently lost it's last warlock member the question from leadership wasn't who do we get to replace them it was do we need to replace them, not very surprising the answer swayed towards no.I'm not sure if its resist rates or not but all I can say is casters in general have been slowly getting more and more screwed as expansions come along, the ones hit hardest are the DPS casters, utility ones will always be able to lend some sort of hand. Current trend shows you should start leveling a scout now for the future.Anyway -I agree with fixing our dumbfire pets to be more useful.Try to find us some sort of utility that would make people happy to have us around and actually add to the raid configuration thought process (propagation we all thought was to be the one).Remove the use timer on the epic so that switching between single and multi is painless.Make the wizards Ray not interrupt your current spell but cast after the current action is done.

Fendaria

07-10-2008, 02:48 AM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.The way I think about it is something like this: A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.</blockquote> OK I'll bite and respond back to you. For the sake of my argument, lets say your right Ilucide and agree that caster resists are the same percentage as scout resists. I have to ask you, 'How much does that 'Hey, this sucks' moment really cost?' Figure out the time of a normal fight; 15-30 sec lets say. Give a scout and a mage one resist each. Who suffers the larger DPS loss from that one resist? Who's DPS dropped more from that one resist? Who has been effected more by that one resist? I bet you it's the mage. The scout, as you said earlier, probably didn't even notice it. Why is it right for casters to have this 'Hey, this sucks' moment while scouts don't? Also, does it really matter what the current resist percentage even is, between scouts and mages? Mages are complaining about it, the posts are out there, and not just one or two. You yourself called it a 'Hey, this sucks' moment. What if mages were actually resisted 75% less than scouts currently are. Does that change anything about the issue this 'Hey, this sucks' moment mages are having? And I'll say this right up front. I'm a DPS numbers freak. I want to blow stuff up. I heard Warlock blows lots of stuff up, so I signed up. My 'Hey, this sucks' moment isn't because the spell was resisted, it's the effects this results in. I didn't do as much damage as I could have. And it is just compounded when I see the numbers for the fight. You want a real 'Hey, this sucks' moment? End of the fight, my 3sec nuke is resisted, I'm casting again....mobs almost dead...and just before my next nuke goes off it dies. And then the scout cheers out in group about how much DPS he just did. Its a HUGE 'Hey, this sucks' moment. Oh yeah, and as you mentioned before, it isn't really like the pendulum swings both ways so the scout doesn't get his fair share of these fun moments. He probably didn't even know he was resisted and it didn't really effect his DPS much at all. For me, the truth is I don't care about resists at all. If I did enough damage, I'd be happy with a 25% resist rate, or 50% even. But I don't do enough damage and those resists are just a very visible piece of that pie right now, and easily blamed. I want to blow stuff up and I'm not doing it as well. Regardless of how you pussyfoot around the issue, or what form it takes, at the end of the day its about DPS. And my guess is Ilucide you already know this. Mages want to do more DPS than we are now. This is the issue plain and simple. And DPS does not live in a vacuum by itself. Its a number used purely for comparison's sake. The mage's DPS number just isn't where it should be. So you want an easy fix to the resist rate issue? Give mages a +20% flat damage increase to all our spells. I bet you the mages would stop complaining. Issue fixed. My 'Hey, this sucks' moments still aren't fun, but they don't suck as much anymore. Fendaria

Fendaria

07-10-2008, 03:19 AM

Oh...my other issue is Gear. It just seems much easier to gear up a scout than a mage. They just appear to have many more options open to them for good viable DPS upgrades and drops than we do. I can't put any type of numbers or facts to this, its just a feeling I've been having for a while now...longer than I can blame on just the random number generator. Could just be a case of the grass is greener syndrome, but you know, sometimes the grass really is greener. Fendaria

AegisCrown

07-10-2008, 04:00 AM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.The way I think about it is something like this: A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.</blockquote>while my experience is with scouts and scouts alone. for the longest time i played a swashbuckler in raids and casting order is immensely important. but you say that we dont have time to regret a missed combat art, we do. while our casting time is 0.35 to 0.5 we still have a recovery time of about the same. now as a swashbuckler its not as bad due to having faster reuse abilities than most but say for assassins missing an execute they feel it, waiting the reuse on that to only have a chance at missing again is terrible. im not refuting the problems with caster dps in its current form only expressing that the melee still care when they miss and that those who watch their hits/misses we notice and we think about it.

Noaani

07-10-2008, 08:41 AM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.The way I think about it is something like this:A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.</blockquote>Sorcerers ahve an average cast timer of about 3 seconds, not 2, just an fyi.While I can see what you are saying here, I want to point out something that has happened reciently, even though it may seem unrelated.When looking over the guild recruitment window, Rothgar told us all that it would list a maximum of 40 guilds. After people claiming that it did not list nearly that many, and him stateing clearly that it did according to the code, he changed it to list guilds even if they have no recruiter online. With this change live, people went back and counted the number of guilds listed, and posted that it was not listing more than 25 guilds on live. Rothgar had already noticed this before it was posted, and had it patched up, but the fact remains that players had reported something not working as it should, and a developer used what should be happening in the code to say that what we are seeing was incorrect (he didn't say we were wrong or anything, and fixed it, so nothing at all against him).So, you are saying that according to the code, resists should be minimal with more than 475 disruption. We are saying that, irrespective of what the code says, disruption (or any other casting skill) has a minimal effect on resists at best as it stands now on live.

Noaani

07-10-2008, 08:44 AM

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>Epic - The re-use timer to switch between single and multi-target damage should be removed or reduced.</blockquote>What is the recast of this?I haven't asked my guilds warlock, but I always just assumed it would be insta cast insta recast... would make sence to me.

Windowlicker

07-10-2008, 08:49 AM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>Epic - The re-use timer to switch between single and multi-target damage should be removed or reduced.</blockquote>What is the recast of this?I haven't asked my guilds warlock, but I always just assumed it would be insta cast insta recast... would make sence to me.</blockquote>I'm not sure to be honest, if someone could provide it I'd gladly add it to the original post. I had updated my original post with it purely because someone had brought it up.Currently I'm in VP, but haven't received my Mythical update yet. It was a surprise to me to hear it wasn't instant recast as well.

revren

07-10-2008, 09:10 AM

Hey Hey Well I am gonna guess it has a 5 sec casting and a 10 sec recast, before you include spell hastes. It would be nice if it was an instant cast. Welcome Home Rev

MrWolfie

07-10-2008, 09:22 AM

My Warlock has been retired since RoK came out.If it weren't for the fact that I also have a 67 (and levelling quickly) Wizard, I *would* have betrayed already.Soloability needs to be improved. Seems like every spell we have is designed to break root, seems like every AA ability is designed to break root.IMO, Warlocks should have been made into an avoidance caster (like a Monk with spells) able to move while casting, and with some really cool void effects (like removing an add completely by having them sucked thru a portal into oblivion).

Griffinhart

07-10-2008, 11:46 AM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>The way I think about it is something like this:A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.</blockquote>I'm a Wizard and not a Warlock, but I do have a comment about this. There's something more definate than more time to ponder the "hey, this sucks" aspect of resists. Scout classes and pet classes are less affected by spell resists. Sorcerer's are the only classes completely dependant on spell damage. Sure a melee may have a CA not land but about half of the total DPS of, say a Scout class, is Auto Attack damage. Combat Arts account for a much smaller amount of damage than spells do for Sorcerer's. Same thing for Pet Classes. Yes, resists suck for them as well, but their pets have been providing steady damage during that cast time.I myself have been resisted on my big spells several times in a row in some zones, SOH for example. I've had Fission, followed by Bolt of Ice, followed by Fission resisted back to back and on more than one occasion. Even with Spell haste, that's about 10 to 12 seconds of producing zero damage. Ok, maybe a couple hundred points from Melee if we have auto attack on. But in a 30 to 40 second fight, that is a drop in DPS of 25 to 30%. No other DPS class sees such a dramatic drop in DPS due to resists.

Hukklebuk

07-10-2008, 12:26 PM

Have a warlock alt that I keep up with just because I hold out hope he'll be fun to play again. My perceptions leveling him through RoK were several;Wow, my T7 AD3 root sticks and lasts better than the T8 one. Wow, I really need to be ready to run an encounter off at any momentOuch that hurt! I should be more careful.Holy crap, nothings landing!YGTBFKM root broke again... oh no... it's social.... this is gonna hurtrez up go repair and think about what happened... it isn't as fun as it used to be being a Warlock, boy I remember I used to take out groups of mobs where other classes couldn't... there's no groups here. Oh wait there's the one group by the lake in KP.If you aren't going to have groups of mobs, reduce the cast times on the warlock groups spells, increase the damage and make them single target. If you want them to be the kings of AoE, put an AA line that let's you turn all your spells into AoE, or encounter based AoE.Probably some other good or bad ideas I have floating around, butI'll let those that play as mains handle the better ideas or tell me I'm full of crap. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />That being said, the simple fact that you don't need any mage or summoner class on a raid or in a group besides the Enchanters speaks volumes. Yes other classes aren't needed either, but this is a Warlock thread.I'd love to enjoy playing my Warlock a lot more than I do now at some point in the future, I hold out hope!just my $.02

Wytie

07-10-2008, 01:04 PM

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>Epic - The re-use timer to switch between single and multi-target damage should be removed or reduced.</blockquote>What is the recast of this?I haven't asked my guilds warlock, but I always just assumed it would be insta cast insta recast... would make sence to me.</blockquote>I'm not sure to be honest, if someone could provide it I'd gladly add it to the original post. I had updated my original post with it purely because someone had brought it up.Currently I'm in VP, but haven't received my Mythical update yet. It was a surprise to me to hear it wasn't instant recast as well.</blockquote>Its cast ime depends on your casting speed. Currently mine seems like a 10sec cast an instant uncast with a 30sec recst.This suck tbh the cast should be no more than 1sec or its not worth using in combat if it needs to be.To get the best use out of it on the few encouter mobs RoK does have like the books by Druushk for example, I leave the clicky off, to burn the encounter then would like to turn it on fast to finish the last mob. To me we should have the ability to do this without waiting for its crazy cast time. Because 10 sec base cast time is not worth 30% extra dps in combat.Fix the epic clicky cast time and increase the recast for all i care, right now if you dont already have the clicky activated its not worth wasting the time to cast incombat.I have noticed that this ability does stay active after swaping to a different weapon which is a neat feature because mobs like Master P our epic is a no no, and thats kinda sad <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

Hellswrath

07-10-2008, 01:18 PM

The thread has already listed most issues I can think of. However, I have one for the list.Our Max health/power curse is utterly useless. Maybe you could use that spell slot to give us some utility or actual damage to achieve the "payoff" that Zahne mentioned. Because he was right on the money about that, IMO.

Baielfire

07-10-2008, 04:05 PM

- Grasp of Bertoxxulous not stacking with Ro's Blade. I can understand if you don't want melee classes to be able to load up on proc buffs from sorcs, but if thats the case then either theirs or ours should be changed to something that allows stacking. Currently both buffs show on the target, but ours will not proc while the wizard's is present. - Clicky effect on the mythical. It should be a bit stronger, either by increasing the damage boost or lowering cast times on the affected spells. Why do spells with damage and cast times balanced against hitting 3+ mobs only get a 30% boost when condensed into single target spells. -A nod to the future. Guessing, as a lot of other sorcs I know are, that spell double attack will be an attainable stat during the next expansion. A work around/fix for how it affects dots needs to be determined before it arrives and we are all upset that our best spell gets screwed.

Zmobie

07-10-2008, 05:21 PM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.The way I think about it is something like this:A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.</blockquote>Yes, this is true. And I think we understand that... but what the issue is, is that I cast a spell. It gets resisted. In that time, a scout casts a CA, and it misses. During the time I was casting, getting reisted, the scout missed once, hit several times with autoattack, drops a high-damage CA, autoattacks a couple more times.Net effect:Caster: 0 DPS.Scout: n DPS (autoattack) + n DPS (successful CA) - n DPS (missed CA) = n DPS.Multiply this by however many times the scenario happens in a raid encounter, and there is just NO WAY that a caster will ever match the scout's DPS, even if we have as many resists as they have misses.It's not just a heightened perception problem. It's not just that we see the effect of a miss/resist more than scouts do, it's that there is a very real, and quite obvious detrimental effect to our DPS because of it, which simply doesn't apply to scouts (or other melee types).I'm a Wizard, not a Warlock, but I assume we have similarly long cast times. We both have no autoattack to speak of. If I cast an Ice Nova, it takes 4 seconds to cast. If it is resisted, that is 4 seconds of fight that I am doing absolutely nothing. In that same 4 seconds, an Assassin can drop 8,000-16,000 points of damage (or more). So, I have to re-cast. Another 4 seconds. If I get another resist, the problem is even worse.Another thing to think about is how important cast order and timing is for us. When I got serious about maximizing my DPS, I was amazed at what a huge effect casting the wrong spell at the wrong time, or having a resist at a key point in the rotation had. Perhaps this issue isn't as bad when you are with a so-called "hardcore" raid. But I am here to attest in non-ideal raids, it surely is a problem, and if you don't think it is.... well, you don't understand the whole issue. I raid on Venekor. We are already running at a huge dissadvantage since we are limited to only Evil-side classes. Consistantly, the top 5 of the parse are scouts (assasins, an occasional brig), with the only reason I can make the top 5 because we don't have 5 assasins in the raid. Not only is it disheartening to see, without fail, an Assassin on top of the parse, but that same one parsing twice what I do consistantly, and half the time having the highest hit, beating Ice Nova and Fusion.--Tusk

Rhayv

07-10-2008, 05:36 PM

/waves his hand like a Jedi.There's nothing wrong with your class. Move along.

Frank Sojourner

07-10-2008, 06:43 PM

<div>It isn't just the resists, its the mitigation that was added as well. When spell mitigation was re-introduced to epics, was physical mitigation added as well? Because, I am seeing parses where the minimum hit for Distortion is <100 dmg and yet I notice that none of the melee autoattack dmg seems to be lower than the weapon's stated dmg range.</div><div>On some of the few multi-mob encounters check what your hit %'s and dmg amounts are for Upheaval, Absolution, Cataclysm and Armageddon. It isn't pretty. As a warlock my disruption skill is quite high, easily 500+ in raids. But, when you get into a situation where some of the mobs you are trying to hit aren't being actively debuffed, the effectiveness of our spells plummet. The recast timer still runs, the cast time and power usage remain the same if you hit 1 mob or 5 mobs.</div><div>Not saying that I don't top the parse on multi-mob encounters, but it is often closer than I am on single mob encounters. I preceive the difference to be that classes that focus on single target mobs have their primary abilities always hitting a debuffed mob, encounter specialists are now trying to hit 1 debuffed mob and how ever many more that aren't. It isn't such a big problem at this stage with the lack of linked encounters, but it could be in the future.</div>

Windowlicker

07-11-2008, 08:10 AM

I find we even fall behind on some of the raid-zone multi-mob encounters at times. The problem is the final mob has so many HP, that the scouts will catch up and pass us before the last mob drops.

Noaani

07-11-2008, 02:54 PM

<cite>Wytie wrote:</cite><blockquote>Its cast ime depends on your casting speed. Currently mine seems like a 10sec cast an instant uncast with a 30sec recst.</blockquote>The only word I can think of to discribe that is blocked by the filter, but its starts in "ret", and ends in "arded".As a wizard (the supposed king of single target DPS... lol), this should be insta cast, insta recast. Its their epic, it should be, well, epic.

Noaani

07-11-2008, 03:05 PM

<cite>Blacktusk@Venekor wrote:</cite><blockquote>If it is resisted, that is 4 seconds of fight that I am doing absolutely nothing. </blockquote>Another issue along these lines that is hardly ever bought up.In order for a sorcerer to do max PS, they are always casting something. A top sorcerer will have a spell being cast, the next spell qued, and either the mouse over the spell folloing that one, or a finger on the hotkey for the spell to be cast after the one that is cued. On top of this, they have their eye on the spell they are going to go to after that spell has been qued, and are thinking about the spell after that one.We never have a period of not casting spells, which is why a resist hurts.Scouts, on the other hand, can not, and thus do not do this. Their combat art cast/recast timers see them casting a combat art roughly 2/3rds of the time, at best. If they miss on a combat art its not as big a deal, because they are not delaying other combat arts in order to get that one out, as they may well have no other combat arts up.I am starting to wonder if class balance was done assuming every class auto attacked for the same DPS.

Burnout

07-12-2008, 09:23 AM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.wrong, disruption isn't changing anything. if i have in raid 400 or 500 doesn't change resistrates after all, but briga debuffs do - why? cause the current resistrate problem is not caused by the basic skill/lvl resistratio - but by the wis/resistance buff you gave the mobs. that are two complettly different things. if it would be a spellskill issue - tell me why the hitrate doesn't change between 400-500 skill, BUT does change extremly by briga resistance debuff?The way I think about it is something like this: A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.this would be a acceptable approach, if the thinking could change anything. but it doesn't - we have to pray a briga debuffs the mob, or one of those melee favour spellshields is dispelled. so where is any argument behind that? it's complettly out-of-hand for the casters to change anything. give us the heavy debuffs, and it would make sense...A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.again not understandable base missthinks - from a dev? those combos are so forgetable in power - that no scout will care if one gets disrupted. they have the constant autoattack stream, and thx to instant ca's - they do lose less time by a resist. this would be an argument if you nerf base dmg of scouts by 30% and make them really need to do combos to really inflict dmg. also, melees debuff for melees - and the most potent casterdebuffs are also in melee hand - any reason behind this?I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.parsers can swing in caster favour on 5% of all encounters - the rest is scout land. thats no question of raidsetup, skill or gear - thats called classbalance, or in this case more likely - not. you should focus less on what was printed on memo #2174 "classes can do situational dps" and move the focus more on the real numbers happening out there...As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.multi encounters also lack another point, hp. taking the hp of a single mob and divide it to 6 mobs - isn't anything worth calling encounter. they're mostly killed before any warlock can finish casting one of our get-a-acoffee-while-casting ae's. next design error on multi mobs is seen in pr - x mobs, most die like flies, one has a ton of hp. at the end the single dps done on the one powermob outweights the ae dps before by far.multi encounters on raids that are worth calling it encounter are seen on the avatar of tribunal - and i would love to see more of this in normal raid zones. encounters that are tankable, that have descent hp to actually make warlock spells land, and that don't are composed as flies sourrounding one single mob.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.</blockquote>

Rhayv

07-14-2008, 11:03 AM

It's been said a thousand times many different ways but I'll add my voice as well. Wizards and Warlocks are pure dps. There should be no situation where they do not top the parse. We have no utility and no survivability. People chose these classes to dps. These 2 classes should be what all others measure themselves against. These classes should not be about if I cast my spells in the perfect order without any resist, and all debuffs are in, the mobs stay alive long enough, and the moon is shining, that I might be in the top 5. We are dps nothing more. Please fix. Thank you and have a nice day.

Wytie

07-14-2008, 12:23 PM

<cite>Rhayven wrote:</cite><blockquote>It's been said a thousand times many different ways but I'll add my voice as well. Wizards and Warlocks are pure dps. There should be no situation where they do not top the parse. We have no utility and no survivability. People chose these classes to dps. These 2 classes should be what all others measure themselves against. These classes should not be about if I cast my spells in the perfect order without any resist, and all debuffs are in, the mobs stay alive long enough, and the moon is shining, that I might be in the top 5. We are dps nothing more. Please fix. Thank you and have a nice day. </blockquote>This pretty much sums up the problem with all of us right here. Sure some(very few) warlocks in perfect gear in the perfect group with perfect debuffs on the mobs can consistantly top parses but a majority of the time thats just not the case.

Errolflynn

07-14-2008, 12:34 PM

I'd like my Warlock to be able to out dps my Monk and preferably my Swashy as well. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />All lvl 80 btw.

LightCC

07-17-2008, 01:55 AM

I have a level 80 warlock. I love her. But I do have some issues.... RESISTS and Subjugation Since the change to mob spell resists I've been upping my disruption. I actually pay attention to whether it's on equipment now, etc. I Even use STA line in one of my AA specs to get that +48 to spell skills. That helps a lot, but at the cost of dps from STR or WIS line. In SoH (particularly bad on resists... scouts and even tanks regularly wipe the floor with mages on our parses in there) using STA AAs to boost disruption to over 500 cuts resists way down... HOWEVER, resists on Aura of Void are very high - this is very important because it is one of our major dps spells (#2 in dps to broodlings and double the dps of most other spells with all 3 triggers). In SoH, even with STA line, I was still getting regular resists with Aura... I checked the spell and it's SUBJUGATION. Why is one of our major dps spells subjugation - it may make sense from how the spell works, but because of how the resist changes have worked out, this really hurts warlocks for dps. Are any of the main wizard dps spells subjugation? This spell doesn't root a mob or control it. It's adds triggerable damage. Perhaps there should be no resistance check for Aura up front, but then each trigger should be rolled against disruption to hit? That would fix this. Alternately, Aura could just be changed directly to disruption. Otherwise, can we please get +Subj added to much of our gear? That seems a bit out of place for a warlock, doesn't it? I like the change to disruption better. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I don't mind the warlock debuffs having higher resists and being subjugation - that makes sense as a penalty for being a dps class and not having subjugation normally on our equipment, but Aura is a MAJOR component of our spell rotations and dps... it wasn't a big deal before, the spell resist changes is what has made this an issue, and I consider this spell as badly needing to be 'fixed'. It would be nice if my debuffs didn't have *quite* such a high number of resists either - makes me want to not cast them - I'm just not built for subjugation. But with that goes the use of that whole AA tree and some of the utility warlocks have. Maybe the final ability in the reductions line should also add +25 or +50 subjugation? Either way I believe Aura needs to be changed to disruption. EPIC WEAPON Broodlings! I like the upcoming change from the dumbfire pets to 10% crit damage boost - will make it more comparable to the wizard epic in damage increase. But I would like to see this extra crit damage in addition to, instead of replacing, the dumbfire doubling. For solo/groups, and a *very* few raid encounters these pets are very useful. What I'd really like to see is some way for our pets to have survivability. Since broodlings is in many ways a class defining spell - multiple aoe damage pets - I'd love to see an AA or epic ability for the broodlings to somehow avoid AOE damage. It shouldn't be a blanket protection, like the shaman's dog has, but maybe a high percentage chance, like 75% or 80% - maybe even 50% would work - to avoid non-direct AOE. This way you would lose maybe 1 broodling per aoe on a raid mob. And it wouldn't make it overpowered on group mobs either. Such an ability would work wonderfully on the FABLED epic. Put that together with the current doubling effect on the MYTHICAL, and I think you have a great warlock effect. Alternately, you could have the broodlings AA add 15% chance to avoid non-direct AOE per point for a max of 75% chance. We don't need the broodlings to be guaranteed a full lifespan, we just need them to last longer than they do - currently only until the very next aoe in raids. This change would give them longer life in raids without guaranteeing it and without having to change current hitpoints of the broodlings (possibly affecting other issues). However, currently the dumbfire pets doubling is scheduled to be removed. The replacement may actually help with the dps issues we have, we shall have to see. If that is truly a 10% increase to total damage of any spell that crits, it will make our epic much more in line with what the wizards have. That is - once you get to 100% crit! The Clicky - 30% extra damage to single targets (encounter aoe only) Now, there is the issue of the clicky. I think everyone has issues with the cast time and maybe the reuse too. Why is it so long? Even at 1 s you would be sacrificing a lot of dps to change in battle. At any longer it's not worth it. The problem here is how SOE is currently designing multi-mob encounters. They come in 2 flavors: <ol> <li>Multi-mob encounter, but one mob is the 'boss', with high hitpoints, the rest are low hp adds. Theseencounters often barely let the warlocks even get all their encounter spells off (I'm including netherrealm, acid storm, and broodlings, here, plus 3 encounter aoes and 2 blue aoes) before at least some of the adds are down. Every mob that is already dead makes the warlock less helpful on that aoe encounter - and of course the group/raid wants to kill them off one at a time to lessen damage to the tanks. This is similar to groups fighting heroic encounters when you have a chanter mezzing the adds - the warlock loses all that glorious aoe dps because of (desired) crowd control.</li><li>Equally strong 'boss' mob multi-encounter. In some cases this is the warlocks heyday, but often the raid wants to split the mobs up... MT takes one far enough away from OT that they do not both AOE the entire raid... well, guess what, if they are far enough away to not AOE the raid, they are far enough the warlock can't aoe... </li> </ol> While the devs have worked out a few encounters that let warlocks shine, they are too few and too far between. Game mechanics work against us on most multi-mob encounters. Now, as for the clicky, the problem is the first type of encounter - stop in the middle of battle to change from multi-mob to single target, taking 5 or 10 seconds? You can't do it mid-battle - way too much dps lost. But that little burst dps we had for 20 s disappears over the next 20 s and our overall dps is nothing special. Secondly, why is there a 30% damage increase - is it just arbitrary? Or was this by design? We see wizards with 10% more damage, scouts and some tanks have 10% more damage to CAs *or* 30% damage to specific CAs (ones in stealth, back attacks only, etc.). The devs knew that we had and issue with single target damage, and this was a great idea to help with that. They also figured this fit in with the 30% damage boost category. But it really doesn't fit that category for warlocks. Here is why (side note - I mix T7 and T8 of these spells up all the time... sorry): <ol> <li>We only have 3 spells that this works on</li><li>1 of these spells is a dps mainstay, it will be cast every fight no matter what. For Armageddon, this is simply 30% extra damage. But what is Armageddon on a parse, maybe 5% of total damage (I'm completely guessing) in a typical raid? So thatwould only be a boost of 1.5% damage total. [edit: Parse of SoH (basically all single-target damage) showed Armageddon at 8% total damage, for me, so 30% boost would add 2.4% to my total damage, about the same as +6% crit...)</li><li>Absolution. It is really only worth casting from a cast-time and power perspective with at least 2 mobs, that makes it a little better than distortion. Really you need 3 to jump ahead of our standard single target spells and make it a 'must cast'. With the long cast time often one or more of your extra mobs will die before it's done casting anyway. With 30% more damage, I think it jumps ahead of the completely rediculous dissolve for damage, but is still less power efficient by a third. So it becomes the same thing dissolve now is - cast it if you have plenty of power and NOTHING else to cast. It's only a fill-in spell when you run out of other spells to cast. </li><li>Radiation. This spell is worthless. It's useless until you have at least 3 mobs dps-wise... I think the reason this spell is so [Removed for Content] on damage is that it has a stun component - that's supposed to make up for the low damage. Unfortunately in raids the stun doesn't work on epics. So it's just a [Removed for Content] spell. Add 30% - still useless. You need to add 200%-300% to make me even think about using it on a single target. I still cast it in groups, but only when we need the stuns. Maybe if the damage were doubled on epics to make up for the loss of stun - then it would at least be comparable to Absolution for dps, and any changes to the clickly that made absolution viable would make radiation viable too.</li> </ol> So how does 30% more damage make Absolution and Radiation viable? It doesn't. It puts Absolution around the dps of War Pyre... makes it a fill in ahead of dissolve is all - especially if you took the M2 for acid and only have A3 (acid is much higher dps). Radiation is worthless on single (or even dual) target unless something is done fix it, 30% damage does nothing. This clicky effect needs something else beyond 30% damage increase if the devs want this to give more than 1-2% total damage increase [edit: about 2.4%]. But what? Others have suggested cast time reduction - I would go another route. I would add 30% damage to all of them, and then add a dot component to Absolution and Radiation (armageddon already has one and doesn't need fixed). If you gave Absolution an extra 100% damage as a dot, and Radiation an extra 200% damage as a dot, over 20 s or so, it would make them viable from a dps standpoint, but by using a dot (which is very warlockish), you can justify more total damage, because if the mob dies or cures it, you lose some of the extra damage. If you aim for total damage about the same as the upgraded Armageddon on the other two (after equalizing for cast times), then you make the warlock on single target a true master of DOTs, not DD damage. Along with fixing War Pyre (see below), this really would create a dot niche for the warlock, which I believe is a better vision for the warlock than the aoe one, given the current game mechanics. The AoEs are still there for those few cases where it really works out, but those are quite limited. [edit: this fix would actually make Absolution and radiation about the same dps as acid is now, perhaps adding 2-3% additional damage per spell to total dps] This would need to be balanced to get the total dps right. I'm not sure what the devs thought they were aiming for with the original 30% boost on this effect, but let's be clear that it's currently just a percent or two [edit: 2.4% - at 5k that's an extra 120 dps for single targets]. Then there is the cast time/reuse issue of the clicky itself. Others have discussed this. The cast time on the clicky should be instant - or possibly 0.5 s or 1 s, but at 1 s cast time, thats at least 3-4k+ damage lost from another spell I should be casting instead. I need 30% extra damage on armageddon at least once just to make up for that 1 s cast time.... So I favor insti-click. Even if it's like freehand sorcery where you still have to press it when something else isn't casting. Is there a good reason to keep it like it is, which is basically to make the warlock pick just one mode for an entire fight (and have to mess with it constantly inbetween pulls). I really like the *idea* of the clicky. It's uses the strength of the warlock to make up for the loss of warlock aoe content. It's implementation is just bad due to how the encounter spells work in practice. That's why shifting Absolution and Radiation to DOTs is so perfect in my mind... let's them be high enough damage to actually make an impact, but in a very warlocky way - and makes the extra damage viable as a concept by making it take time to dole out. Thus ends the thoughts on the clicky. DISSOLVE and WAR PYRE: First Dissolve... ugh... what a bad spell. I'm not sure where this spell was ever supposed to fit in. Using 1100 int, 570 spell mod, 40 recast and 65 crit, the efficiency of dissolve (not counting any additional procs from buffs) is only 942 dps (with crits, A3 version). The M2 of the level 62 Void Absolution group aoe is higher at 1005 - on a single target mob! Both of the blue aoes are higher dps than dissolve, even on a single target, by at least 30%. In fact, the only spell worse than dissolve is the completely awful Nebula/Radiation. Even the cone AOE AA melee attack Static Discharge is slightly higher dps even on a single target (it can hit up to 4). Dissolve is just rediculous. And this is with the 10% extra damage from the AA. The next worst single target spell is War Pyre at 1538, m1, lv 66 (we'll talk about it in a minute). Encase, A3, lv72 is 1609 - (and it has a stun!). Void Distortion from T7, Master, is 1766, Distortion, T8, Adept3 is 1909 (those two have very high power efficiency). Acid, our premiere dot, M2 is 2565. Aura of Void is only behind full length broodlings at 3525 (this is why the resists from it being subjugation hurt so much). (note all these are with their respective full AAs) Dissolve only has 2 semi-redeeming qualities. It is ok on power efficiency - nothing close to aura, acid, or distortion, but equivalent to flames of velious, war pyre, and encase. That means it's about 50% better than all the aoes on a single target (with 2 mobs all aoes beat it for power efficiency - and apocalyse is the exception being slightly better even on a single target already!). The second advantage of dissolve - with it's AA's, it's reuse is really fast! Well, I'm sorry, but why do I want a fast reuse on a spell that is complete crap? I don't mean partially crap, I mean complete crap. Why do I want to cast an awful spell twice as often? Maybe this is why warlocks have so many dps problems - I think a lot of average players actually notice the prominence that the game puts on the dissolve line - one of the first spells you get, very first AA in that line, and up all the time with fast reuse, and think that it should be their mainstay spell for damage. Instead, it cripples their dps, cutting it down by at least a third, possibly in half, if they use it whenever it is up. I know that's how I started playing my warlock before I learned better. Which wasn't until I started parsing after I reached 70. There is a very simple fix to the mess that is Dissolve. Make the AA like the AA for Illusionists. Their similar spell's AA has a cast time reduction of 50% (instead of reuse reduction). If you cut the cast time in half with full AAs, it would put dissolve on a par with Distortion, master strike, and flames of velious in raw dps vs. cast time. Distortion would still be much more power efficient, flames and encase would still have their slow and stun effects (reasons to be cast, even with similar dps). It really could use more than 10% damage increase in addition, but at least DOUBLING the efficiency would make dissolve a viable spell for the first time from a raiding perspective. I understand why the reuse was added to the AA... warlocks can run out of spells to cast if not using the aoes (beyond armageddon). Maybe the cast time reductions should replace the reuse, or maybe just be added to them... but cast time reduction I believe would fix dissolve. It wouldn't be top dog, a 'cast every time it's up' like the illusionist counterpart spell (and I understand the necros as well is this way). But it *would* be a solid dps contributor, instead of being left out in the cold. Which brings me to War Pyre. War Pyre (forget the name of the T8 - Vaccuum Chamber?). The A3 for the T8 spell is actually slightly WORSE in damage than the master of War Pyre, T7, while it would cost 20% or so more power - so I still use War Pyre - I don't have the master for T8 yet. It's the worst dps of all single target spells, other than dissolve. This is comparing Adept 3 across the board. War Pyre is a DOT. DOTs are supposed to do more total damage, but take time to do it. War Pyre, however, does not do more total damage. Well, it does do more than dissolve. Maybe that's why it's so bad - maybe someone developed the line comparing it to the dissolve line. So War Pyre starts out low dps, and if the mob dies before it finishes, it's even lower dps. It's also only average in power efficiency. So much for the normal reasons for liking dots - that they do more total damage for the cast time/power required... Compare it to acid and you will see what I mean. So War Pyre/ Vacuum Chamber really isn't that great a spell. Recognizing that it is a dot, the AA makes it's damage occur faster. That is a commendable, reasonable effect. However, the AA also increases it's REUSE. Now, just like with dissolve, why would I want my second lowest DPS spell to have a faster reuse? It has no special effect like the stun on Encase. It's not especially power efficient like Distortion. It doesn't do anywhere NEAR the dps that acid does, due mainly to acid's fast cast time. So I have a dot, which is supposed to do more total damage than a direct damage spell, that in reality only does more damage than the god awful dissolve. All the other DD spells I have - even those with other special effects - are higher damage and higher dps. So, why do I want a faster reuse? The only reason is if I'm running out of things to cast and it's better to cast than nothing at all. Same issue I have with the reuse bonus for dissolve. So what is the real fix to this problem, other than reworking the spell itself? Just like dissolve, change the AA to reduce the cast time, instead of reducing the reuse. Still have the dot occur faster, maybe even keep the faster reuse, but add a faster cast time to the AA. If you cut the cast time by 40% with full AAs it would be on a dps par with acid (acid would still be much more power efficient). Then a parse-conscious warlock would be the way a warlock SHOULD be - always keeping their dots up all the time, and DD only comes afterward. Currently, War Pyre is nothing but a low dps dot - which is the opposite of what a dot is supposed to be. It's at the bottom of my list of things to cast (dissolve being *off* the list <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ). I'm not sure how much raw dps these two AA changes would give on single target for a warlock on a raid, but I'm fairly certain it would still leave wizards ahead of warlocks on normal fights. The wizards would win the average fight, but when they get a key resist or don't have their biggest hitters up, the more steady damage of the warlock would pull it out. Group encounters, we would have the edge... but there are very few times warlocks truly get to shine in that roll... Thuuga and Overking being the two main encounters I can think of currently. We would still need to manage our dots properly to get the best effect... and that's what I'd like warlock's new vision to be - masters of tier 1 dps dots. So, those are my issues. I think the small boost in dps from the cast time changes in dissolve and War Pyre AA along with fixing the clicky to adds dot components to absolution and radiation - and giving broodlings some measure of survivability - would really round the warlock out.

Eveningdress

07-17-2008, 06:36 AM

Aftershock...Is that fun spell? That is end of Explosive line but...Why dmg is low? now aftershock trigger 40% . (before patch 50%)that is not a complaint.need more +dmgnow 200~400. so low.End of Explosive dmg 200~400? ironical

wullailhuit

07-17-2008, 06:46 AM

<cite>Griffinhart wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>I'm a Wizard and not a Warlock, but I do have a comment about this. There's something more definate than more time to ponder the "hey, this sucks" aspect of resists. Scout classes and pet classes are less affected by spell resists. Sorcerer's are the only classes completely dependant on spell damage. Sure a melee may have a CA not land but about half of the total DPS of, say a Scout class, is Auto Attack damage. Combat Arts account for a much smaller amount of damage than spells do for Sorcerer's. Same thing for Pet Classes. Yes, resists suck for them as well, but their pets have been providing steady damage during that cast time.</blockquote>As a pet class I'll answer this , using a mage pet (and because of the AEs in raids I have to mostly) the pet nukes get resisted as well..

Kyburz

07-17-2008, 02:23 PM

<cite>LightCC wrote:</cite><blockquote>EPIC WEAPON<ol><li>We only have 3 spells that this works on</li></ol></blockquote>Ya ya ya... brainfart. Move along nothing to see here.

Scrappe

07-17-2008, 03:23 PM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.</blockquote>The word of the day? CharmWhat makes a charm stick and stay stuck? Most will say it's subjugation more than spell quality and mob level.Why? Because that's how it used to be, like 2 years ago. The idea was simple. You're a level 70 necromancer. You see a level 72^^ undead. You know that if he were green con, the charm would reliably land and stay stuck a lot longer. So, beef up your subjugation, which is the core skill of your charm. Base at 70 is 350, with 5 points per level. To delevel the mob by 8 levels (enough to turn him green in relation to your subjugation), you need 390 subjugation. I noticed the same thing with roots, years of noticing I might add. You achieve 390 and acquire a master charm, but the mob breaks every 45 seconds like clockwork. Why? WHO KNOWS WHY? I certainly doesn't have ANYTHING to do with subjugation (like it once did). So why should I believe that 1000 disruption is more likely to make a nuke hit home on a yellow mob? I have never seen a dev write that higher skill increases your hit/stick chance. I would agree that you need at least an even level skill (like 350 at L70) to hit an even con mob, but you cant just beef up your skill to "game the system". If the mob is yellow to you regardless of your skill, my experience shows over and again that boosting your skill beyond your level does zip. Having a master helps, but that's as much "gaming" as you can do without a true debuffer de-leveling the mob for you.

CelebornXI

07-17-2008, 03:37 PM

<cite>Kyburz wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>LightCC wrote:</cite><blockquote>EPIC WEAPON<ol><li>We only have 3 spells that this works on</li></ol></blockquote>Just an fyi... the mythical clicky only works on group aoe's that do direct damage. So that's Absolution and Radiation. Armageddon doesn't change. Kyb</blockquote>lol, armageddon is affected... maybe you should check before making so direct a statement.PS Radiation doesn't count as a spell as it is pointless to use on anything less than three mobs

Prrasha

07-17-2008, 04:08 PM

<cite>ScrapperX wrote:</cite><blockquote> To delevel the mob by 8 levels (enough to turn him green in relation to your subjugation), you need 390 subjugation. [...] You achieve 390 and acquire a master charm, but the mob breaks every 45 seconds like clockwork. Why? WHO KNOWS WHY? </blockquote>Why? Because the 5-points-is-one-effective-level math hasn't been true for almost 3 years. You can buff your skills up by (1.5x level) over the cap, 80x1.5 = 120. 120/5 = 24. A 24-level swing in effectiveness makes low-red-cons act like high-grey-cons (with more health)... and that's before you debuff the mob. Think it would be any fun if the game really acted that way? A boost in skill has a much smaller effect, and on a diminishing-returns curve, IIRC. No amount of skill will make a yellow-con mob behave like a green-con one. If you really can't hold a mob for more than 45 seconds with master1 charm and +40 subjugation over par, I think either (1) there's something so tremendously broken that I don't understand the Necromancer forum not having a 700-post thread about it, or (2) you're exaggerating for effect.

Scrappe

07-17-2008, 04:25 PM

I wish I was exagerating, and what you say is perfectly logical, but that hasnt been my experiencing and I'm not exagerating. I will admit one thing I conveniently left out. Some races, like vampires, appear to be far more resistant to maintaining a charm than others. However, that is a community statistically analyzed opinion, so I dont want to muddy up my rant with player conclusions of the current dynamic. I haven't heard of diminishing returns associated with skill. I'd be happy to accept it if a dev ever wrote that, but they don't release information like that. My post is not an attempt to drag information out of a dev, nor to bring about change. I was merely flabbergasted that a dev would insert a piece of unsupported misinformation after years of saying nothing on the subject when thousands of man hours of community driven statistical analysis had been spent (quite some time ago at this point) trying to figure out whether or not skill boosting affected stick chance. I dont know why it was supposed to be a secret, and I dont care anymore. It was just a bell ringer reading what Ilucide put in his reply.

Ilucide

07-17-2008, 04:35 PM

<cite>LightCC wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have a level 80 warlock. I love her. But I do have some issues....</blockquote>Great post, thanks Light. There's a lot to digest there. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

DerFunkBlaster

07-17-2008, 05:30 PM

One thing I am starting to envy as a wizard now that i see this recent change to the warlock mythical is consistency. Everything about their weapon is consistent and the main attraction of it isn't luck based. Now look at the wizard mythical where you have a 10% chance to double attack - The other day in VP i gained an whopping 230 extra dps from just double attacking spells - this feels a bit under powered.

Windowlicker

07-17-2008, 05:39 PM

LightCC, I'll fully admit I need to spend a little more time reading your post. (Ninja-post at work ftw!)Out of curiosity, what AA spec are you using on your Warlock? Are you playing on a PVP or PVE server?

LightCC

07-17-2008, 06:26 PM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>LightCC wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have a level 80 warlock. I love her. But I do have some issues....</blockquote>Great post, thanks Light. There's a lot to digest there. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote> Yes, and that took way too long to write. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Ah for the love of my class and the numbers behind how things work... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> One thing to correct. I checked some recent parses and Armageddon for me comes in at 8%-12% of my parse (SoH 8%, PR 9%, KorSha 12%). The 8% was from SoH where I believe it was 100% single target mobs, so on single target mobs at 8% or a little higher, the 30% boost to Armageddon would add a total of about 2.4% damage, not 1.5% as I guessed. I think if you changed Absolution to add 100% more damage (+30% overall) as a dot, and Radition to add 200% more (+30% overall) it might add another 3-5% between the both of them on single targets... (they would become dots with about the dps efficiency that acid has right now, so they would replace DDs that have about 30-40% less efficiency in the rotation). this would be something to test to find out exactly, so these changes would add about 7 or 8% total damage on single targets is my guess. Now, I'm not sure what the devs thought it would add total, but I'm thinking that's probably more in line with what they were aiming for (considering most other class effects are either 10% across the board or 30% of a subset of CAs which probably adds up to around 8-10% total damage. <hr />----- Windowlicker (Interesting name... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ): <blockquote> LightCC, I'll fully admit I need to spend a little more time reading your post. (Ninja-post at work ftw!) Out of curiosity, what AA spec are you using on your Warlock? Are you playing on a PVP or PVE server? </blockquote> I'm PvE My solo/group spec is AGI, STA, STR with FC, Protection, Removals (and 3-3-5 into aoes) My raid spec is the standard AGI, WIS, STR with FC, Prop, Aftershock I used the solo spec in SoH to test the benefit of the +48 spell skills on resists this week and it helped a lot - I may stick with that AA spec for that zone, even though I lose about 5% total damage and a few individual spell dps mods with it. I find that with a troub and an Illy the prop final is still well worth it, though it would be nice if the mythical gave us perhaps a 2% item proc rate boost to go along with the spell proc boost <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I can always dream. <hr />----- For the record, my spell efficiency spreadsheet calculates dps and power efficiency with max'd AA for each spell. It's a little bit tricky because changes in INT and spell mod I haven't been able to have it calculate, so I have to actually log in and copy all the damage numbers based on a particular INT/Spell mod that my warlock currently has. The cast time, reuse, and crits can all be changed on the sheet however, and calculate through everything. It basically matched an efficiency chart that I believe I found linked here somewhere, so I'm pretty confident in the calculations (it also essentially has proven itself out in fixing my spell rotations, etc., though it doesn't account for buffs like PoM, etc. - any that are percent based will be better off with shorter cast times, etc.

Xedex

07-17-2008, 06:34 PM

Fix the resist rate and IMO warlocks are just fine I'm getting 5k+ single target easily without a brigand but our Assassin is getting 10k+...hrmmmOnce i get resisted its a PITA because that lowers my DPS...without a fully debuffed mob and even with a fully debuffed raid mob i still seem to get resists like crazy. I have 482 Disruption solo and if our troub decides to run Dove's Song it its even higher yet im getting resisted like crazy. I understand every once in awhile but 5 or 6 times in a row is pathetic. If resist rates are back to how they were before the change everything would be gravy and scouts and mages would be competing for the top spot.

LightCC

07-17-2008, 07:02 PM

<cite>Xedex wrote:</cite><blockquote>Fix the resist rate and IMO warlocks are just fineI'm getting 5k+ single target easily without a brigand but our Assassin is getting 10k+...hrmmmOnce i get resisted its a PITA because that lowers my DPS...without a fully debuffed mob and even with a fully debuffed raid mob i still seem to get resists like crazy. I have 482 Disruption solo and if our troub decides to run Dove's Song it its even higher yet im getting resisted like crazy. I understand every once in awhile but 5 or 6 times in a row is pathetic. If resist rates are back to how they were before the change everything would be gravy and scouts and mages would be competing for the top spot.</blockquote> Xedex, The biggest resists I'm getting are from Aura and my debuffs, all of which are subjugation. Is this your experience as well? What is your subjugation? I might get 3 or 4 resists on aura in a row, but almost never that many on all my other dps spells, which are indeed disruption. As I suggest in my post above, I believe Aura ought to be changed to disruption with this recent change of spell resists.

Xedex

07-17-2008, 09:06 PM

in raid my subj is at 475disruption is 512...but still im getting resisted on my broodlings, armageddon etc just as much as aura.

Burnout

07-18-2008, 12:11 AM

<cite></cite> resists, spellskillschange the way spellresits are working. spellskills: they should be THE values which determine if a spell lands or not. casters shouldn't be enforced to rely on a brigand just to land the spells. spellskills are reflecting our skill in casting - what else should be used as basevalue for the question resist or not?resistance/wis: debuffing those should result into dealing more dmg - having a debuffer in raid on the mob should be a bonus, not a need.

Windowlicker

07-18-2008, 07:44 AM

n/m - mistaken in this post./removed

Windowlicker

07-18-2008, 08:33 AM

<cite>LightCC wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Windowlicker (Interesting name... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ): <blockquote> LightCC, I'll fully admit I need to spend a little more time reading your post. (Ninja-post at work ftw!) Out of curiosity, what AA spec are you using on your Warlock? Are you playing on a PVP or PVE server? </blockquote> I'm PvE My solo/group spec is AGI, STA, STR with FC, Protection, Removals (and 3-3-5 into aoes) My raid spec is the standard AGI, WIS, STR with FC, Prop, Aftershock I used the solo spec in SoH to test the benefit of the +48 spell skills on resists this week and it helped a lot - I may stick with that AA spec for that zone, even though I lose about 5% total damage and a few individual spell dps mods with it. I find that with a troub and an Illy the prop final is still well worth it, though it would be nice if the mythical gave us perhaps a 2% item proc rate boost to go along with the spell proc boost <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I can always dream. <hr />----- For the record, my spell efficiency spreadsheet calculates dps and power efficiency with max'd AA for each spell. It's a little bit tricky because changes in INT and spell mod I haven't been able to have it calculate, so I have to actually log in and copy all the damage numbers based on a particular INT/Spell mod that my warlock currently has. The cast time, reuse, and crits can all be changed on the sheet however, and calculate through everything. It basically matched an efficiency chart that I believe I found linked here somewhere, so I'm pretty confident in the calculations (it also essentially has proven itself out in fixing my spell rotations, etc., though it doesn't account for buffs like PoM, etc. - any that are percent based will be better off with shorter cast times, etc.</blockquote>Windowlicker was my nick in basicly every MMO but this one. Name filter hates it. Here, I'm Zahne <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I'd be interested in checking out this spreadsheet you created, and seeing what formula's you used for the calculations.

inshiningarmor

07-20-2008, 01:16 PM

<cite>Ilucide wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hotness. Thanks for the new thread.I'm not convinced that resists are anywhere near as poor as people have mentioned (at least, around 475ish disruption - they get do get a lot worse the lower that number gets), however, there's a significant difference in the way resists are perceived when compared to melee misses.The way I think about it is something like this:A caster spends 2 seconds casting a spell. During that time, caster sits there and looks at the casting bar. S/he can’t move. S/he can’t do anything else. S/he’s just waiting for the spell to finish casting. Now s/he gets a resist. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter much, but it does. S/he hit 9 times in a row before that resist, but those 2-2.5 seconds are important, because after that comes the next two seconds of casting, and the caster now gets to think about that resist.A scout/melee tank spends 0.37 seconds using a combat art. During that time, the character can move. There’s no human reaction time fast enough to actually be doing something else (particularly useful) while that ability is going off. Now it misses – and it’s immediately followed by two or three hits given dual wield/double attack. There’s no ‘Hey, this sucks’ moment for the scout or the melee character, because they’re instantly off onto the next ability or auto attack. On the other hand, there are some scout chains that depend on a key ability landing, or the next combo lines don't work or don't work as well.I'm also not necessarily convinced that the resist changes from February didn't swing a little too far in the other direction either. But along with everything else, we're certainly keeping an eye on all this stuff. Parses can certainly swing in favor of melee or casters depending on group makeup and player knowledge/gear.As far as multi-mob encounters go, while they're probably going to remain more rare in solo areas, you can expect to see them in newer group areas along with single mob encounters.Edit: Fixed the nasty color.</blockquote>I do not mean to question what is planned, but for casters they are EXTREEMLY group dependent. If you throw together a group to run RE2 you can grab 2 assassins and run the zone easily as there DPS does not go down much. If you grab to Wizzards or Warlocks, the zone is not near as easy because the DPS is SO MUCH lower then in a raid setting. Outside of raids Scout DPS stays about the same. Caster DPS and SURVIVABILITY takes a nose dive. As a Warlock I have a damage spec for raiding ... and a group spec based on the INT line to reduce hate. Even with that line I have to start off ALOT slower to avoid pushing up daisies. Total DPS is normally 1/2 or lower compared to raids. On my Swashie and Assassin I do not have to change AA's casting order ect at all. My DPS drops by maybe 10%. In raids Caster DPS can come close to Scout DPS. I can personally get close enough to the assassin that he cannot coast, and only die 5 to 10 times in the zone in doing so.In groups we are not even close to scout DPS and we die alot more often. I group with the same raid assassin and tank and the assassin often triples my parse in groups and I die ALOT more times.

Kiara

07-23-2008, 04:35 PM

Stickied this for you all so that it'll be easier to access!

Frank Sojourner

07-23-2008, 07:58 PM

It has been brought up before, but I'd like to reiterate. Sorcerers, in general, should be able to generate more dps independently.In order to come close to competing with scouts on the parse. I need to have a troubadour, illusionist (with TC on me) and wizard in group, a monk and brigand in raid and hate management classes in the mt group. I did a little figuring, I don't have the exact numbers so these are guestimations. A troubadour, with mythical, alone accounts for 20-25% of dps attributed to me on a raid. With a +10% to spell dmg, Dissonant Note, Precise Note, (DN and PN generally account for 8-12% of my dps total), spell hast, +spell crit, dehate and regen. An illusionist with TC provides another 10-15% of my dps with just the spell haste and reuse buff of TC and the procs of Tandem. Add in the 13% spell haste of the monk and assorted other buffs, debuffs and regen provided by other classes. I'd guesstimate around 35-45% of my total dps in a raid comes from sources outside of my character abilities, AA and gear. I believe those numbers are on the low side as I don't want to exaggerate our dependence on other classes to perform our primary role in a raid.And that buff stacked group will only let me compete with the top parsing scouts in our raid group on a handful of fights throughout a raid. The bottom line is that I have a raid geared warlock that has 3 expansions worth of raid experience all with the same VP clearing raid crew and an alt brigand that is poorly geared and that I'm still learning how to play effectively in a raid environment. For a vast majority of RoK instanced raid encounters. It would be more efficient for the raid to bring a poorly geared and played second brig than it would be to bring a pretty good warlock. As the loss of my personal dps would easily be surpassed by the increase in raid dps enabled by the second brig and the other sorcerer in the group could get TC. Let's face it Grasp of Bert, Shroud of Bert, Boon of Solitude, Curse of Humility, Curse of Luclin, Vacuum Field, Mana Trickle, and Pillaging, may seem like a long list of abilities that would be useful to a raid, but the reality is that they aren't missed if a warlock isn't there or even noticeable when the warlock is there.

Windowlicker

07-29-2008, 10:51 AM

<cite>Frank Sojourner wrote:</cite><blockquote>Let's face it Grasp of Bert, Shroud of Bert, Boon of Solitude, Curse of Humility, Curse of Luclin, Vacuum Field, Mana Trickle, and Pillaging, may seem like a long list of abilities that would be useful to a raid, but the reality is that they aren't missed if a warlock isn't there or even noticeable when the warlock is there.</blockquote>This is true, people will always use these as examples of all the "Utility" we have. Yet we can raid full time in a hardcore guild, and nobody will ever notice if they're running.The only reason I'd even notice, would be the fact my main is a Warlock. Otherwise, nobody really cares if any of these abilities are even upgraded. Although Pillaging, Mana Trickle, and Vacuume Field are very useful. The hate transfer on Boon is useless, however the power feed is a nice-to-have for *one* sorcerer on the raid.Boon Suggestion: Change it from a % chance to proc on the tank being hit, to a % chance to proc on the melee completing a successful swing.This would at least make the line useful for all the sorcerers in the raid.

LightCC

08-01-2008, 02:51 AM

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Windowlicker was my nick in basicly every MMO but this one. Name filter hates it. Here, I'm Zahne <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I'd be interested in checking out this spreadsheet you created, and seeing what formula's you used for the calculations. </blockquote>Still working on it. I've now got it working so that you can input INT, spell crit%, cast time, reuse, recovery, +SD, and base dmg mod and it spits out all the dps eff and average damages for each spell. It currently matches the tooltip damages correctly, although I understand there is an error with the tooltip damage that is shown. It apparently allows base dmg mods to increase the SD cap but in reality out in the field, confirmed by parser, base dmg mods don't increase the SD cap. I intend to test this out myself, using more than just the popular flames of velious. I also need to parse the swarm pet spells (Acid storm, broodlings, and netherbeast) to get those damages. The only things that changed significantly as I fixed my spreadsheet is that aura of void dropped down a lot on the list because the SD is cut to 1/3 for it (the cap is based on just 1 trigger, and the amount calculated for that trigger is then spread out over all 3 triggers), and netherrealm and gift of bert get no benefit at all from SD, which makes them a lot less attractive. Also, the big error I found in my calculations - I was reducing the recovery time by the cast time mod. Fixing this made short cast time spells drop down on the list - mainly that's Aura and Gift of Bertoxxulous. This made aura drop from a 'must cast all the time' spell to a spell with similar dps to our other DDs and now you *must* get all three triggers to make it worth it. Acid also dropped a bunch, but it's still on par with distortion if you get in all ticks. This isn't right, by the way - Aura is a tricky spell, not even just a dot - you need to LAND three more spells in time to make it worth it. Dots should have significantly higher damage if you manage to get all the ticks in. Acid is just marginally better than most DDs and Vacuum Chamber only matches the low end DDs (other than the crappy dissolve). Of course, I need to test this still in the field, this is all based on tooltips across various different INT, crits, SD levels, etc. Dissolve is still very bad, Absolution only pulls up equal with encase and flames in the DD category with the epic clicky., Radition is still not worth it except 3-4+ mobs, etc. etc. Currently I'm adding procs to the spreadsheet as well. I need to corner one of our troubs and an illy and get some values one of these days. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Windowlicker

08-01-2008, 08:25 AM

<cite>LightCC wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite> The only things that changed significantly as I fixed my spreadsheet is that aura of void dropped down a lot on the list because the SD is cut to 1/3 for it (the cap is based on just 1 trigger, and the amount calculated for that trigger is then spread out over all 3 triggers), and netherrealm and gift of bert get no benefit at all from SD, which makes them a lot less attractive. Also, the big error I found in my calculations - I was reducing the recovery time by the cast time mod. Fixing this made short cast time spells drop down on the list - mainly that's Aura and Gift of Bertoxxulous. This made aura drop from a 'must cast all the time' spell to a spell with similar dps to our other DDs and now you *must* get all three triggers to make it worth it. Acid also dropped a bunch, but it's still on par with distortion if you get in all ticks. </blockquote>I have actually been following your SD post on Flames, and would be interested in seeing a "high level" summary of your findings. Have you looked at our broodlings or netherlord? I can almost bet neither of those will be effected by SD either. I'm sure the DOT/Debuff component of the broodlings would, but the broodlings themselves likely aren't.Edit: I know Pinski has been working on some calculations with damage scaling as it relates to base damage, crit and spell dam. He might be a good person to chat with.

Efrath

08-08-2008, 03:04 PM

Hope ya wont mind if I make a post without reading trough the entire thread, Ii think you're mostly talking about PVE tho. I personally want to bring up the issue sorcerers have in PVP in the higher levels.I do think sorcerers are a tad bit overpowered in low tiers if they manage to get a high enough AA to get Manashield but in higher levels it's all too common that everyone simply runs away as soon as either us warlocks or wizards turn on manashield. Sadly, we depend far too much in my opinion on manashield but as long as SOE doesn't change resists as well as survivability against melee classes, we are usually forced to rely on it. Personally, I think the main problem is this: in that mages only wears clothes which means we have a low physical mitigation but can at least get a high elemental mitigation plus we do really high damage over the course of several seconds. We can get interrupted easily by knockbacks, stuns and etc. and even normal attacks unless Focused casting is turned on.In the meanwhile, scouts can have quite a decent physical mitigation AND elemental mitigation as they wear chain, they can stun, root, stifle, slow and some can mess as well and troubs can charm. Ontop of that, the most common scout classes played (Assasins, Rangers, Brigands, Swashbucklers) can do almost as high damage as wizards and warlocks in a much shorter timespan, some take a bit longer o'course depending on the class but I think you know what I'm trying to point out here. Manashield is truly the only reason we can survive against these classes.Now, if SOE isn't going to help us make it easier for warlocks and wizards to survive against melee classes, I would suggest to at least make Manashield more or less a permanent spell that can be turned on or off. No timer at all.That way, we wont at least have to be frustrated over that pesky ranger or assasin rooting and slowing you down before running away as soon as you turn on MS, only to come back 30 seconds to own you because you don't have it left plus they''ve recovered some of their stronger combatarts as well.O'course, if they would make Manashield like I suggested, they should also lower the Power/Health ratio, or this is what Ithink because we don't want it to be too overpowered right? Anyone else that has any ideas or thoughts? I personally think that wizards and warlocks needs perhaps something else they can do beside only damage? Another thing that would be nice would be to have our DOTS actually worth using in PVP, but that is hard to implent I think.EDIT: I do hope it's alright to discuss PVP matters when it comes to Warlocks here right?

Windowlicker

08-15-2008, 08:42 AM

<cite>Efrath@Nagafen wrote:</cite><blockquote>EDIT: I do hope it's alright to discuss PVP matters when it comes to Warlocks here right? </blockquote>Absolutely, but if you could toss down some suggested changes into bullet-form it would make it a bit easier for me to update the first post.

Efrath

08-16-2008, 10:18 AM

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Efrath@Nagafen wrote:</cite><blockquote>EDIT: I do hope it's alright to discuss PVP matters when it comes to Warlocks here right? </blockquote>Absolutely, but if you could toss down some suggested changes into bullet-form it would make it a bit easier for me to update the first post.</blockquote>Sure thingMake Manashield a clickable permanent spell that you can turn on and off as you please to avoid people running away at the sight of a warlock (Or wizard) using Manashield. Make DOTs usable in PVP, as of now they're useless due to the fact that fights lasts 4 seconds most of the time and 10 second tops. I should mention that I'm speaking from a 1 vs 1 point of view as I personally solo alot in PVP so someone who is more experienced with group PVP should put some inputs too about my suggestions.Also Increase the survivability of sorcerers in PVP against scouts. Why should scouts be able to have high resists in both physical and elemental attacks while all mages can only have high elemental? Perhaps a change in armor would be in order, IE Leather armour has quite decent phys and elemental resists, chain has higher phys resist but lower elemtal resists.In short:Either increase the damage of sorcerer and summoner spells or change resists on armors so that leather and chain has less elemental resists than clothes. Plat should o'course keep having high resists in both physical land elemental resists.

toolzen2

08-20-2008, 03:29 PM

Forgive me if I'm over-simplifying the issue, but in ANY and EVERY multi-mob encounter, under any and all circumstances, a Warlock should have THE HIGHEST DPS ALWAYS. Period.Why? Because that's what we're supposed to do - different classes are designed for different purposes - our purpose is to create death and destruction. Our nukes our designed to do around the same or more damage than that of a wizard, but distributed within the encounter, whereas a wizard in a single-target instance should have the highest damage, because their damage is designed to do massive amounts of hurt to one target. The main purpose of a Wizard or a Warlock is to do Massive Amounts of damage - that defines us as a class - the trade-of being we get killed easier than a bug on a busy highway. The other cloth wearers have trade-offs too - some argue coercers are the best soloers in the higher levels. Summoners get their pets. In a role playing sense powerful mages summoning creatures to do their bidding, taking control of the minds of others and casting deadly spells is what the game mechanics should be built on, and I assume based on the descriptions of all the mage classes, and the fact that this is a fantasy-base role-playing game - they were meant to be. We trade off survivability for immense power. Yin for Yang.We're supposed to be group dependent - this game was designed for that. If we went out by ourselves and picked a fight with a big baddy that we could easily plow through if they just stood there - well they're not gonna just stand there after I just cast a big giant poison cloud on them - they're going to make me into a pie for their baby monster to eat later. That's why I need a "tank." The very term implies something armor-plated and in your face. Somebody who can, assuming I don't go crazy spamming damage spells while auto-attacking and insulting the mob's mamma, keep me from dying. A group need scouts to soften things up, reduce resists, stifle etc. We need a priest to heal us in case "Tankage McPwnU" falls asleep at the wheel for a few seconds or we're fighting a really tough mob/mobs. And we need Wizards and Warlocks to makes things die.With this in mind, what is a scout in the game currently? A scout archtype should be someone who has a little more survivability and utility, at the cost of a little less damage - or so you would think. This is a ~Fantasy~ based ~role-playing~ game after all. A scout should never ~ever~ under any circumstances do more damage than a sorcerer with a big solid ~period~ If a scout based class has slightly more survivability, but can do as much or more damage than a wizard or warlock ~under any circumstance~ - we're not role-playing in this role-playing game. We're not keeping in the spirit of a fantasy in this fantasy-based game. We're not balanced.I'm not saying we should be able to sit there and spam damage - there should be some skill involved as far as knowing what to cast, when to cast it, and how much dps you can do before you start being clawed to death - but assuming you're in a well-rounded group with players of around the same skill, a sorcerer should be the top of the parse as in #1. Think of it as a big line on a piece of paper. On one end of the line write the word power(as in damage, utility, etc.) - on the other write survivability. The more towards one end you move, the further from the other you get - each archetype, I believe, was meant to fall in different places on that line. Priest cannot begin to compare in DPS to sorcerers, but they are not near as squishy. This makes since. If my job is to sit around in chain, leather, or plate armor and heal people, it would be unfair if I also could do massive damage. In the same token, if I can't do the massive damage, then if makes since that I can wear better armor. I would need it - things get mad when you heal what they're trying to eat - but being that the point of any encounter is to kill the mobs, If a class can do that better than any other, that class should pay the most in survivability.If a scout is:a) more survivableb) does more damagec) has many more useful utilitiesThen I really need to know: What is the point of a sorcerer who:a) is in theory suppose to do the most damage but doesn't (or should if we're role playing - which I'll reiterate this is a MMORPG) b) is only supposed to do damage, thus giving no utilityc) dies in in one or two swacks - supposedly the trade off for doing the most damage - which s/he doesn't do?????????????Explain to me why that's fair? Explain the balance in that please.I'll go ahead and point out myself (since I'm sure somebody else would anyway) that I'm a new player (returning player actually) and that I play on a pvp server.As far as PVP goes - the game wasn't originally designed for it, so I'm not going to make PVP specific points - just please fix the PVE aspect. And as far as being new goes - the fact that my character is level 27 doesn't take away my right to voice an opinion - I paid the same amount of money everyone else did, and the issues are, or will someday affect me just as much as a lvl 80 - just in case anyone wants to pull the "noobs just don't know enough to do anything but keep their mouth shut" card. Just because my character hasn't kissed a Dark Elf lass on the cheak yet or stood around killing sableflame watchers in one hit just to impress the newbs (that actually happend to me the other day - is there a /rolleyes emote?) doesn't mean I don't understand the concept of game mechanics and balance.I really mean for this to be a constructive post, so I apologize if when reading it sounds more of a vent - I really don't mean it to be. But as a previous poster said - I signed up to do damage. If I wanted useful utility spells or buffs/debuffs, I would have stuck with the defiler I made or made a brigand - some people enjoy that more. I, on the other hand, prefer destruction and chaos. Make sorcers the best at this - that's a niche we're supposed to fill - we're not supposed to be well-rounded or middle of the road.

SageGaspar

08-20-2008, 04:00 PM

The thing is most multimob encounters also have one harder mob. So you're going to spike DPS when the adds come in and then struggle to keep up against the big bad guy. You may not win the overall parse but you definitely rocked the adds faster than everyone else. That does count for something in the long run, especially if the adds are bad mofos. The idea that ext means everything is sorta wrong in my thinking. Or at least it should be. Adds should be hard enough that you want them down ASAP even at the cost of a guy that might not be #1 in the end after he blows them up.Also in encounters with like two mobs or really weak adds if a single target DPS gets on one of them and blows it down fast, basically it almost might as well have been a single mob encounter.Where you really notice lock AE on EXT DPS are encounters with 3+ mobs of similar difficulty (PR group), or encounters with constant streams of adds (slamhammer), or encounters where they die instantly to an absolution or upheaval (RE2 big goblin groups), or encounters where adds take a lil' beating and the last guy doesn't take forever (Druushk books).

Efrath

08-21-2008, 02:40 AM

<cite>toolzen2 wrote:</cite> <blockquote>If a scout is:a) more survivableb) does more damagec) has many more useful utilitiesThen I really need to know: What is the point of a sorcerer who:a) is in theory suppose to do the most damage but doesn't (or should if we're role playing - which I'll reiterate this is a MMORPG) b) is only supposed to do damage, thus giving no utilityc) dies in in one or two swacks - supposedly the trade off for doing the most damage - which s/he doesn't do?????????????Explain to me why that's fair? Explain the balance in that please.</blockquote>Sadly, we have the same exact problem in PVP. even if we can do good damage in PVP, scouts does nearly the same damage to us in a short timespan while at the same time being able to root, slow, stifle and stun. Plus they can track, evac and they can get as high or higher resists against elements and spells like any other mage and yet have a fairly high physical mitigation. Either us warlocks and wizards needs to both have our damage and resists fixed or we need to change how armours are like so there's some equality (IE LEatherarmour and chain has more miti but less resists than a cloth armour).Ontop of that, I hear sometimes that even *Coercers* do more damage than us warlocks PVE wise in t8, I'm not fully sure but this wouldn't surprise me much. Our debuffs both PVE and PVP wise sucks as only the one lowering disease damage is good. The one lowering strength and intelligence can be nice but the one lowering health and power is truly useless and I do hope we get it replaced with some form of spell that helps us in PVP better. Even though roots helps alot in both PVE and PVP, there are potions and in PVP in high tiers, we have a really difficult time surviving at all unless they have no potions or we use focused casting to multiply or damage.While we are supposed to be pure damage... The way that PVP works now, we are in serious need of something that helps us stopping scouts from killing us under 3 seconds or 6 if we get off Manashield. Lorewise, wouldn't it be logical for a mage that uses disease and poison to be able to disable the enemy somehow?

SageGaspar

08-21-2008, 04:36 AM

Actually I think I have one issue. If warlocks are supposed to be masters of the AE then they need their AEs to actually hit. Unfortunately on AE encounters typically the only debuff helping you out on the adds and only within the one encounter is going to be your AE debuff. This resists and is also not a huge amount. If it's multiple non-linked encounters it's even worse, the adds will have just about no debuffs on them. When I get multiple encounters it's pretty typical to have multiple cataclysm resists and such, and this rather defeats much of the purpose of casting them in the first place.My suggestion would be to give warlocks some sort of PBAE noxious debuff. This could replace curse of luclin. My personal idea would be an anchored noxious debuff that pulses around an anchor mob like netherealm. You could also just put a debuff component on netherealm itself. You could make AE spells much harder to resist too, but I think the other suggestions are more fun.

Windowlicker

08-21-2008, 08:26 AM

<cite>Ragadagh@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Actually I think I have one issue. If warlocks are supposed to be masters of the AE then they need their AEs to actually hit. </blockquote>I'm curious to know what your disruption is at. Even in VP vs dark orange mobs, I generally sit around a 98% hit-rate.Not to say that 2% dosn't hurt, because it does. But it's not huge.

toolzen2

08-21-2008, 11:14 AM

Even against yellows at 28 I also have a pretty decent hit rate fwiw. I will say that the freeze spell I have gets resisted almost every time - maybe because I got it a bajillion levels ago, but all my poison and diseased based spells usually hit. I think this has something to do with my casting order maybe - usually I start out with absolution, since it takes forever and it's master II, so I can cast it while the mob is standing around looking dumb instead of waiting until I'm being beat on to try and get that spell off. This sometimes hits a solo mob for over 1k, which I would like to think isn't bad at 27/28 (anyone care to comment on that?) Then, my next spell is the breath line debuff - so my first spell is master ii so it is obviously going to hit more, then I follow with a debuff which probably helps all my other spells (except the freeze one) hit. I know in my STA line I am putting 32 points total 8 are going (or, have already went into) the advancement that increases disruption. Also, I have nearly a full set of MC that I made that adds to wis as well as int. In the coercer forum they seem to think that wis not only increases your ability to resist spells, but also your ability to land them - especially charms. The only thing I can find in my little booklet is the wis helps your resist, not increases your chances of hitting, but If somebody knows could you please verify?As far as coercers having higher dps - I was a coercer for a while, and according to ~several~ forums, coercers are hands down no contest the best end-game soloers. Not necessarily because of higher dps, but their ability to have complete control of the situation and chain stun. So I don't know that they have high dps per say (maybe they do, I'm saying I don't know) - but I think most of the "hype" I've heard is their centered around their solo ability.Another thing I noticed - and I could just be being paranoid - but it seems like if my disruption is not maxed (say, right after I level) I will get resisted more on the same mobs, even though my disruption is technically higher. ie. If my disruption is say 110 out of 110 I'll hit a lot, but if it's 115 out of 120 (know the numbers aren't right - but just as an example) I'll miss more on the ~same~ mobs. It's as if having the skill maxed is worth more than the number itself (because even if I'm not maxed at 115, it's still a higher number than 110 which was max for the previous level). As I said, maybe it just seems that way to me, but I'm curious to know if anyone else has noticed - maybe my doctor gave me the wrong pills.True story - the first time I cast absolution, the spell started - I noticed how slow the progress bar was going, so I went out to the mall with some friends, then went and caught a movie, then found a cure for the common cold and ran for president, and then when I got back home the spell was just about to finish and when it did I was like ZOMG! thats really a cool spell! I really do like that spell, but it takes a reaaaaaally long time to cast. Not saying it's broken - I suppose it should take that long since it's (or at least it seems like ) one of our more damaging aoe's. Anyway has anyone noticed the above on the resists?And I play on a pvp server, but I do so more for the excitment that at any moment I might get ganked. I still enjoy the pve aspect more, but I enjoy the combination of both rather than any one by itself - if they fix the pve side and make us the dealers of death we're supposed to be, I'll be happy. I will agree though that most "fights" between me and a scout last roughly 5 seconds, if that.

Windowlicker

08-21-2008, 11:29 AM

Beyond your group buff that buffs spellcasting skills, you likely won't find any gear with decent amounts of disruption before your in your 60's/70's. Best bet during that time is to upgrade your spells(A3 or higher) and increase your INT as high as you can.Your cap for INT is your level x 15 plus 20. Diminishing returns (The point where it becomes less benefitial for you) kicks in around 70% to 80% of that amount.

Fendaria

08-21-2008, 01:26 PM

I believe there is an issue with the Boon of the Dark / Boon of Solitude spell line. A lot of this might be missinformation but it seems correct.1) Doesn't stack with the Pali Amends buffs. Everything I've ever read says not only doesn't it stack, but it cancels the other out too. I'm scared to cast it on a MT Pali, even if I'm not the one who has the Amends buff. And if I have Amends I'm scared to cast the buff on someone else worried that it is going to mess up the hate transfer of Amends.2) I don't believe it stacks with the Wiz version of this buff (or other Warlocks). Either the buff doesn't land, it does but doesn't do any thing, or they cancel eachother out and nothing happens. Given the tiny hate transfer it does, this really shouldn't be.Fendaria

Fendaria

08-21-2008, 01:44 PM

We had spells that generated Nill Crystals before and thankfully the need for the crystals was removed.However now I have a bunch of spells used to generate crystals and now never get cast. I don't know what to do with them but they are basically worthless.Part of me is worried someone is looking at them thinking we have utility we don't. Another part of me is worried a dev is going to look at the spells and 'boost' them so we have utility we don't want (with the potential we no longer are a DPS focused class).Much of me also favors just scrapping the spells alltogether so I won't need to take up hotbar space with spells I never cast.Fendaria

SageGaspar

08-21-2008, 03:21 PM

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ragadagh@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Actually I think I have one issue. If warlocks are supposed to be masters of the AE then they need their AEs to actually hit. </blockquote>I'm curious to know what your disruption is at. Even in VP vs dark orange mobs, I generally sit around a 98% hit-rate.Not to say that 2% dosn't hurt, because it does. But it's not huge.</blockquote>Well first if you're reading that off ACT it's inflated since a DoT resist counts as one resist but a DoT hit counts as five, six, whatever many hits. But yeah you're right, on a single mob when debuffs go in it's not bad at all. Without debuffs it's a whole different story, depending on the zone too, like in SoH if the brig fell asleep it's not uncommon for me to see two, three resists in a row.In VP additionally the only things you're likely AEing are the Druushk books (heroic) and those three mob hatchling things that I believe are like level 80 even, but either way they're just single ups.It'd be different if you had linked orange epics (are there any of those in instances?), and much worse when you have unlinked epics. If you pull multiple trash mobs in SoH for instance my master cataclysm seems to resist against the adds more than it hits.My general thinking anyway regardless of resists is it'd be peachy keen to be able to mit debuff adds in multiple encounters even as that's sorta supposed to be the warlock's show. It would potentially let them add some oomf to all AEs on the raid too, which would actually be some utility.EDIT: Oh yeah sisters, I'll have to go back and double check on that.

Windowlicker

08-21-2008, 07:04 PM

<cite>Ragadagh@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ragadagh@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Actually I think I have one issue. If warlocks are supposed to be masters of the AE then they need their AEs to actually hit. </blockquote>I'm curious to know what your disruption is at. Even in VP vs dark orange mobs, I generally sit around a 98% hit-rate.Not to say that 2% dosn't hurt, because it does. But it's not huge.</blockquote>Well first if you're reading that off ACT it's inflated since a DoT resist counts as one resist but a DoT hit counts as five, six, whatever many hits. But yeah you're right, on a single mob when debuffs go in it's not bad at all. Without debuffs it's a whole different story, depending on the zone too, like in SoH if the brig fell asleep it's not uncommon for me to see two, three resists in a row.</blockquote>Absolutely, when I say I have a 98% hit-rate I factor that in. Technically the data *is* correct, although misleading.That DOT might hit for 10k total damage, but technically there's only one resist check that takes place. So if I land the DOT? It's hitting __ times guarenteed.Once it's ticking, other stats/debuffs effect the damage volume each tick is hitting for.Personally I sit at a little over 600 Disruption raid-buffed. That's likely why my resists are pretty low in general.

SageGaspar

08-21-2008, 08:17 PM

Obviously the data is correct according to how many resists actually occurred, but we don't care about resists per ticks of spell damage, we care about resists per amount of actual casts. As far as I can tell Obsidian Chaos doesn't resist either so you're diluting your number of cast spells by about half if you included that too. There's a couple other wonky ones that don't resist or are treated differently, etc, I dunno, probably not new information but just so we're on the same page.Looking back over my last Sisters fight, I actually had 100% hit rate against ire and my resist rate on ACT (so actually more resists) was 92%. The simple reason is that malevolence isn't getting spiked with debuffs until ire is dead. On my latest run through the first wing of VP my main sources of resists were nexona adds, druushk adds, and the tome encounters due to lack of debuffing in all three cases. The former two really don't matter because it's just me getting on them early, but there are only a handful of ways to AE debuff things such as a linked orange epic (Malevolence) or a smaller group of orange heroics (druushk books).I'm not talking about single target orange mobs. On those it is rare to see a resist once debuffs are in. I'm talking about AE encounters against orange mobs. Granted these are semi-rare in this expansion unless you're pulling multiple epic trash, but hopefully next expansion we'll see more of them and this resist rate will be more of an issue. It's obviously not a top issue but I think some sort of PBAE debuffing would be cool and theme-fitting for a warlock.

Hellswrath

08-21-2008, 10:03 PM

<cite></cite>I actually tried to address the issues with two of our worst spells, the dissolve and curse of luclin lines, at Fan Faire.I was basically told that the tank rebalancing was coming first, and that they would then look over the rest of the classes. A rather distant unofficial timeframe was given, so don't expect anything for a while.

AlStealHeart

08-21-2008, 10:16 PM

(opps wrong thread)

Windowlicker

08-21-2008, 10:34 PM

<cite>Hellswrath@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>I actually tried to address the issues with two of our worst spells, the dissolve and curse of luclin lines, at Fan Faire.I was basically told that the tank rebalancing was coming first, and that they would then look over the rest of the classes. A rather distant unofficial timeframe was given, so don't expect anything for a while.</blockquote>Yep, top priority right now is Tank balance. It's pretty long overdue.Knowing they plan on re-introducing the multi-mob encounter with the next expansion, I'm sure it's a smart bet to wait and see what new problems arise, and what old problems become seemingly fixed by adding correct content again.

Hellswrath

08-26-2008, 10:10 PM

We can only hope that while they are rebalancing tanks, they keep in mind the AE aggro issues we have and give tanks something to help with that. We haven't had to worry about it much in RoK because of the decided lack of linked encounters.

Windowlicker

08-29-2008, 05:36 PM

<cite>Hellswrath@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>We can only hope that while they are rebalancing tanks, they keep in mind the AE aggro issues we have and give tanks something to help with that. We haven't had to worry about it much in RoK because of the decided lack of linked encounters.</blockquote>And you know, in a way I miss the hate problems. At least back then it wasn't a boring chain-cast on every single pull. We actually had to be concious of what spells we used and when.

Fendaria

08-29-2008, 07:02 PM

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hellswrath@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>We can only hope that while they are rebalancing tanks, they keep in mind the AE aggro issues we have and give tanks something to help with that. We haven't had to worry about it much in RoK because of the decided lack of linked encounters.</blockquote>And you know, in a way I miss the hate problems. At least back then it wasn't a boring chain-cast on every single pull. We actually had to be concious of what spells we used and when. </blockquote>I don't mind having to balance my hate at all. Its fun. In fact this what what I expected when I signed up for a Warlock. Do to much DPS and you die.It's just the DPS I am doing is not balanced for the agro its generating. That's what bothers me.Another side of this is you really can't 'wait' to cast and unload your spells on most mobs anymore. If wait to cast the mob is either dead or half dead already.Fendaria

SageGaspar

08-30-2008, 04:33 AM

I am waiting until I see the new warlock AA. I'd be really surprised if there wasn't at least one deaggro option. Although I think null caress should really come with a position blip too by default.As for the encounter situation in the new expansion I hope that not only do they have trash multimob encounters but we see more meaningful encounter adds on named. Slamhammer, RE2 epic using a burn strat, OK, Byzola, probably avatars but I've only pulled one once... those are the only mobs where I feel the AE is actually contributing in a big way to success. It's more than straight up parse candy (Vyx adds, books, etc). Although I could handle being designated trash killa I guess.

Hellswrath

08-30-2008, 06:40 PM

<cite>Fendaria wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hellswrath@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>We can only hope that while they are rebalancing tanks, they keep in mind the AE aggro issues we have and give tanks something to help with that. We haven't had to worry about it much in RoK because of the decided lack of linked encounters.</blockquote>And you know, in a way I miss the hate problems. At least back then it wasn't a boring chain-cast on every single pull. We actually had to be concious of what spells we used and when. </blockquote>I don't mind having to balance my hate at all. Its fun. In fact this what what I expected when I signed up for a Warlock. Do to much DPS and you die.It's just the DPS I am doing is not balanced for the agro its generating. That's what bothers me.Another side of this is you really can't 'wait' to cast and unload your spells on most mobs anymore. If wait to cast the mob is either dead or half dead already.Fendaria</blockquote>I doubt few people mind having to balance their hate, provided that the reason we need to balance the hate is because we are doing the most damage hands down. The tier dps class system has long since been dead.The hate we generate IS balanced with our DPS. It's just most other dps classes have better means of controlling/reducing the hate they generate. So they can do more damage before getting aggro. In some cases, they can do more damage as well (i.e. assassin).Yes, I agree that I miss the days when we had to watch what we cast. But there is no pay-off for being a glass cannon anymore. While I am a bit nostalgic about it, not providing tanks a means to hold AE aggro while they are already going through the trouble of rebalancing their aggro abilities will only hurt us further as a class.

AikonHalcy

09-03-2008, 12:18 PM

I agree with most of the issues and concerns that I see in this thread, though I have only given it a glance to be honest.I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned one of our spells called Boon of Solitude, which includes a 3% hate transfer to a fighter.Now while the tank should be able to hold aggro anyway, I think it would be cool to see that 3% go up a little, perhaps through Achievement progression. We currently have the opportunity to increase it's trigger chance in our Warlock (the EoF one) AA tree. How about adding a 1% or 2% increase in hate transfer for every point we put in? Maybe have it so that it maxes out at 10%.Just a minor suggestion to enhance that ability I thought of.

Hellswrath

09-04-2008, 08:17 PM

<cite>Aikon@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>Now while the tank should be able to hold aggro anyway, I think it would be cool to see that 3% go up a little, perhaps through Achievement progression. We currently have the opportunity to increase it's trigger chance in our Warlock (the EoF one) AA tree. How about adding a 1% or 2% increase in hate transfer for every point we put in? Maybe have it so that it maxes out at 10%.Just a minor suggestion to enhance that ability I thought of.</blockquote>Actually, I think that would be a great idea. Maybe even cause this line to be more worthwhile now that propogation isn't affecting item procs.

Windowlicker

10-01-2008, 09:55 AM

I also think Boon should transfer more hate. Especially seeing as only one person in the raid can run it on the MT at a time.

CoLD MeTaL

12-11-2008, 01:51 PM

So no response for over 2 months, I guess i should just reroll to a melee class and forget this crap. At 67% crit self buffed can't get to half an assassin's dps when the assassin is wearing treasured only gear. SOE needs to fix this TOTAL BS.Edited: for clarity.

Nadr

12-29-2008, 06:35 PM

This thread scares me.I came back to the game and thought instead of picking up my 53 bruiser I would reroll new.I looked around at the choices and asked myself... what do you want to do this time around, tank? heal? support?Nah I said.. I want to blow S*** up. I dont want to look at the mob and have it quake in fear that it will die. I want his frends to quake with him. Sounds like a Warlock to me.My tank side screamed out nooooo... you will be squishy and die in two hits.My newfound mage side responded with not a problem... cause the the mobs should only get one hit on me before they fall over dead.Currently I duo with a Mystic. She tosses a ward on me and I go to town blowing up the everything in range. It works rather well and I am happish with him, but lately I have started to get concerned that his damage was not exactly at the top of the food chain. I hit some giants for 1700 each (1700x4) and was very proud of myself. Until that mystic friend, who has a ranger, yawned and said her ranger has been doing that for awhile.Thats the event that sent me into the forums to see if it was true.. could the warlock not be king of the dps? Tell me its not so!I also like to raid, and it sounds like the higher end content is not even going to need me!

maddawg138

01-05-2009, 03:27 AM

stick with the warlock....at lvl 50 you get your special which is an AE dot that does massive damage on each tick.

attila

10-09-2009, 05:40 AM

1. tso aa reduse dot duration. it should work on disease dot too. we have only 2 solo dot and why dot duration didt work on vacuum chamber?2. mythic clicky should work only on apocalypse. other spell didnt use on solo target and on most named i cant hit add because mythic clicky nerf absolution.3. Fix swarm pet. On swarm pet didnt work base, cri,t critbonus its horible. And on most fight swarm pet live only few second. it work good for kos expansion but now it make 3 spell useless.4. nerf wizard mythic!!! its overpower.

Korrupt

10-09-2009, 02:46 PM

Don't ever ask for a nerf to someone else. Instead ask that we get upgrades as well to bring us in line. As for the rest of your post.......

attila

10-09-2009, 11:44 PM

<cite>Korrupt@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>Don't ever ask for a nerf to someone else. Instead ask that we get upgrades as well to bring us in line. As for the rest of your post.......</blockquote>now there is no reason to keep others dps classes except wizards

Morghus

10-22-2010, 09:33 PM

1. Debuff stripping needs to stop stripping dots.2. Dark Aggravation needs to be altered. As it is, it is too unreliable due to the random proc rate, and it can also be stripped from mobs who remove debuffs. It also fails to always hit in an aoe and resist issues cause you to switch encounter targets even if one encounter member was hit, if the others resist it you have to directly target the affected member.3. Swarm pets need to either be removed or made useful. The Warlock's Acid Storm is nowhere near the Wizard's Rays of Disintegration and is simply another worthless dumbfire pet.4. Resist rate of Warlock spells seems much higher than a wizard's.5. As Curse of the Void now has a buff portion due to aa's, it should be made until canceled or have a much longer duration. I don't see the real value in it having a short 10s or less reuse and a 1 minute duration. Or alternately it should have the buff portion to the warlock persist even if it is stripped.6. Same issue with volativity. It has a 3 or so second reuse and lasts roughly a minute. No reason for it to not be until canceled as it is just more busywork.7. Aura of Void's range is not consistent with other warlock spells and you have to be closer than normal.