Warlocks

[Chronus]

Just to help clarify, the Dark Aggravation change that stopped Dark Aggravation from spell doubling was the change to allow you to use it on any target as opposed to only the target it proced on. However at this time Dark Overflow (the aoe part) still doubled and it was a small number of patches after this (I think within a month) that made it stop spell doubling too.

[Iseous]

2) Would be very nice if Dark Aggravation could SDA, along with any spell in the "spell" book, like Mystical Field and Aura of Void.<br /> <br />3) Curse of Darkness should at least have a shorter cast time and longer duration. Eternal Damnation is amazing and doesn't need to have its cast time lowered, although it would be nice if it were faster. As for Dark Siphoning, most encounter abilities are 1.5 second cast times. If anything, Absolution should be lowered to 1.5 and Distortion to 1 second (like almost all single target spells), and then like 0.5 with the prestige.<br /> <br />4) Yes let Aura of Void get increments and even SDA, although the Wizard's equivalent Ice Shield would need to be adjusted as well and trigger differently.<br /> <br />5) Almost all AA that aren't new abilities or changes to abilities that cannot be achieved with stats (ex. base anything, duration, number of triggers, etc.) need to be adjusted for current stats. A few crit bonus or potency for spells is ridiculous at this point.<br /> <br />7) Ancient training? Although then it would probably only have choices for somewhat crappy spells that you wouldn't pay for.

[Mogrim]

Responses:<br />2) Dark Aggravation is the most... Aggravating of the omissions, however.<br />3) I'm only looking for cast time reductions on temps. It is a quality of life type of improvement.<br />4) I'd be more than happy for Wizards to get an equivalent improvement, yes.<br />5) Right.<br />7) Another option would be allowing you to get +X crit bonus and potency where X = 10% of the level - lvl 14 = 1.4 cb and 1.4 pot and lvl 95 would be 9.5 cb and 9.5 pot

[Nubek]

2/4) I fully back Dark Aggravation / Aura of Void changes in particular.<br /> <br />1/6) The root, I can take it or leave it. Same with 'fixing' Dark Siphoning and our increments, although lowering the counter to 150 would certainly be welcome.<br /> <br />3) Considering how amazing Eternal Damnation is I really don't mind the longish cast time. I agree Gift of Bertoxx should be a maintained spell at this point since its duration is longer than the recast, and Eternal Damnation/Curse of Darkness are already enough temp procs to worry about.<br /> <br />5) I think this is a problem all classes have at this point. A major revision would be nice, but probably better to leave that till after the expansion launches.<br /> <br />7) Saves 40 days of research on a spell / getting a master and harvesting a spellshard. I think the GM choices are fine as it is.

[Iseous]

2) Dark Aggravation would see the biggest boost, yes, although Mystical Field is amazing on AOE even without any hope for double attacks, so doubling would be fun.<br /> <br />3) I'd rather see Absolution and Distortion lowered as the amount of times you could cast those compared to temps is much higher, thus the cast times add up a lot more. The temps are around once a minute, compared to 6 second reuse spells. Plus, those spells would actually be pretty good to cast with those new cast times.<br /> <br />7) You mean add those to the specific ability you choose, or just general increase? If it's just a boost in general, there are already so many cb/pot boosts in AA that it seems a bit redundant. If it's just the ability, I'd rather they give us something more interesting like an added effect or change something that can't be achieved through stats, even if it's just something simple like base casting/reuse/etc. Although then we probably wouldn't get as many options because of the time to implement it.<br /> <br />Although imo, they should just revamp the AA altogether. It is so outdated and could be made so much more simplified but versatile to give us so many more choices and ability to diversify our characters. And it is so annoying having to spend so many useless points. Just let us put the points anywhere without needing stuff we don't want, but some choices may cost more than others for balance.<br /> <br />For instance, we could have one set of choices that give us increases to basic stats, but % based so it scales. These would be for all classes. This could include things like increase to Health, Power, Primary Attributes, Critical Chance, Potency, Critical Bonus, Ability Modifier, Reuse, Recovery, Skills, etc. Basically, most of the general stats in your Character Window.<br /> <br />The second set would include all of your Class's abilities (not ones added through AA such as Fiery Blast) where you could enhance only the abilities you wanted to use. Thus, you could modify things like base reuse, casting, recovery, duration, damage, triggers, etc. Then you could modify them to your play style (enhance only to a certain extent obviously, can only reduce cast time so much for instance). And it would be relatively easy to balance most abilities such that you could potentially enhance any ability and get the same potential damage, heals, threat, etc. For instance, most would want to enhance Apocalypse over Dark Nebula, but the enhancements could simply take the (damage)/(cast + recovery) so that any enhancements yield the equivalent potential damage efficiency increase. As for reuse, balance could be achieved using (damage*60/reuse) to take into account the potential damage for using the ability to its maximum potential. Thus, you could modify only the abilities you wanted to use, and modify them in the way you wanted to use them. Obviously some abilities would not be as easy to balance based on the way they work.<br /> <br />The third set would include new abilities or new effects to existing abilities and would cost much more than the other choices. Some abilities may cost more than others. This section could also include branching sections to these new abilities that modify them in similar ways to the second set. <br /> <br />This type of change would not only reduce the overwhelming amount of clutter from repeated AA, Prestige, Focus Effects, Racial Traits (which could still give their own respective abilities), and Class Training, but give us much more versatility and choice and the ability to put points into only the things we want. And rather than adding whole new trees with so many repeated choices, they could focus on giving us new and unique/interesting abilities instead.

[Mogrim]

<div class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeQuote" data-author="Iseous"> <aside> <div class="attribution type">Iseous said: <a href="index.php?goto/post&id=6118758#post-6118758" class="AttributionLink">↑</a> </div> <blockquote><span class="ae_quote_symbol">“</span><span class="ae_quote_content">3) I'd rather see Absolution and Distortion lowered as the amount of times you could cast those compared to temps is much higher, thus the cast times add up a lot more. The temps are around once a minute, compared to 6 second reuse spells. Plus, those spells would actually be pretty good to cast with those new cast times.</span><span class="ae_quote_symbol">”</span></blockquote> </aside></div>This is the exact reason Absolution and Distortion probably shouldn't be changed, though. A significant cast time reduction for Absolution or Distortion would instantly make them part of the meta (in terms of efficiency, which is measured in terms of damage caused divided by time invested) where previously they're filler spells at best. This would result in a significant power boost in our classes power. <br /> <br />Small changes to spells that are only used infrequently has a much more narrow impact on class power.

[Mogrim]

Since I've already made a post about the new prestige, this will deal with just class specific issues.<br /> <br />Disclaimer: This is just intended to request fixes on a few things that don't seem to be working correctly along with a couple change requests to things that seem counter-intuitive to how the game works right now. I am not requesting our class to be "buffed" because I know sorcerers are in a good place. That said, I feel like now is the best time to bring up class issues.<br /> <br /><span style="font-size: medium"><b>Warlock - Related Fixes/Improvements</b></span><br /> <br /><span style="font-size: small"><b>1) Dark Siphoning</b></span><br /> <br />The What: Close the increment loophole while simultaneously changing our increment scale to 150 like Wizards. Currently, this loophole is **the** reason our increment scale is 180 instead of 150.<br /> <br />The Why: Love us or hate us, right now we have to work significantly harder to charge at the same rate as wizards. In order for us to be on a productive increment charging curve, we've got to toggle off our myth and counter-intuitively use a low damage encounter version of a spell on a single target mob, all while making sure we're within 7.5 meters of all our groupies, and then immediately toggle the myth back on so that its active for Apocalypse. Warlocks really do have a lot more "mid cast button mashing" than our counterparts in order to achieve the similar results.<br /> <br />The Broken: The Dark Siphoning loophole actually has several major flaws. If any of these are present, our increment build becomes massively slower.<br /><ul><li>Shorthanded? Every empty slot in your group is 1 less hit for increments</li><li>Group split up or requiring a lot of movement causing people to be more than 7.5 meters away? Same issue. Every out of range group member is 1 less hit for increments</li><li>Does a group member have 100% health and power and therefore the initial hit of the heal/mana regen doesn't register? Also same issue.</li></ul>So really and truly, the loophole that exists is<br /><ul><li>Probably unintended</li><li>Probably being missed by the mediocre players, creating a bad play experience for them</li><li>Often buggy as heck, often times failing, and ending up being far less effective than if it didn't exist and our increment scale was 150.</li></ul>The How to Fix: I think the most accurate fix (with smallest impact to class balance... next to no impact in my opinion, other than for players who never found this loophole all of a sudden getting a little stronger) would be to fix Dark Siphoning so the heal/regen component did not generate increments, while also moving the Warlock increment scale to be the identical 150 that Wizards possess. However, I do not know if this fix is easy to accomplish or not.<br /> <br /><b>2) Dark Aggravation</b><br /> <br />The What: Dark Incubation allows the Warlock to apply Dark Overflow (direct damage, plus aoe damage). However, part of applying Dark Overflow removes Dark Incubation from the caster. Because the removal of Dark Incubation occurs before the spell checks to see if it can double cast, the Warlock gets an error message implying we attempted to apply Dark Overflow when we were not maintaining Dark Incubation.<br /> <br />The Why: This was fixed in the past. Then when a patch went through (to the best of my knowledge, this is how it was explained) the old spell code for Dark Aggravation went in and it stopped working again.<br /> <br />The How to Fix: I believe the easiest way to fix this would be to change one thing. When Dark Overflow applies, have it last .25 seconds, and have it remove Dark Incubation upon termination. By doing this, Dark Overflow's spell-double check should occur prior to removing Dark Incubation, allowing it to work as intended.<br /> <br /><b>3) Gift of Bertoxxulous, Curse of Darkness, and Netherrealm/Eternal Damnation</b><br /> <br />The What: These temp spells either take too long to cast, or should just be maintained.<br /> <br />The Why: Having 3 cycled temps plays a little clunky considering the other button mash periods of focused casting/spellbind, charm activation. On top of that, Dark Siphoning and Netherrealm/Eternal Damnation are frustratingly long cast times.<br /> <br /><ul><li>Gift of Bertoxxulous can be maintained permanently by recasting it every 45 seconds, making the click of the ability somewhat redundant, interrupting spell flow. This is our primary pet peeve.</li><li>Except in very rare cases, Curse of Darkness is vastly inferior to Frigid Gift. ex: Frigid Gift has twice the duration, casts in .25 seconds instead of 1, can be recast 15 seconds faster, and does about 15% more damage while also slowing the target. (cast and reuse times calculated at cap)</li><li>Lastly, Netherrealm/Eternal Damnation has a very long cast time for a temp spell (1.5 seconds at cap)</li></ul>The How to Fix:<br /> <br /><ul><li>For balance reasons, any improvement to Gift of Bertoxxulous should be coupled with improvements to Surge of Ro. I think both should be maintained.</li><li>It seems Frigid Gift was always intended to be better than Curse of Darkness in most circumstances. As a result, I doubt we'll see duration/recast/additional effect improvements. However, I would like to see the cast time of Curse of Darkness be reduced to .25 seconds when at cap. If so desired, this could be built into the Enhance: Curse of Darkness AA on the Warlock AA page.</li><li>Netherrealm/Eternal Damnation should be .75 seconds to cast when at cap. The long cast time is prohibitive because the only solid use for this spell is when aoe swarms hit. Because aoe swarms die fast, a 1.5 second cast time ends up making the spell massively less efficient unless the Warlock relies on 3rd party timers to warn them of soon to come timed add spawns. And if the add spawn isn't perfectly tied to a timer, then we're just relying on luck.</li></ul><b>4) Aura of Void</b><br /> <br />The What: Aura of Void doesn't generate increments. This is most likely due to the fact that it applies like a debuff that then triggers damage.<br /> <br />The Why: The spell is intended to be an efficient spell with delayed/triggered damage, but ends up losing a lot of efficiency due to not generating increments.<br /> <br />The How to Fix: Replace one of the triggers with an equally powerful initial damage hit.<br /> <br /><b>5) Sorcerer AA Page Changes (Warlocks and Wizards both)</b><br /> <br />The What: Catalyst's "guaranteed Crit" has no impact on current content. The potency and crit bonus granted by Freehand Sorcery do not scale well with statflation. There are scaling issues with all AA across the spectrum for all classes, but I will focus on these 2 as I believe they impact Sorcerers the most as they continue to remain irrelevant/lose value.<br /> <br />The Why: With the Critical revamp comping, Catalyst is primed for changes. In addition, with statflation, a previously important AA that only affects 1 spell per 30 seconds (Freehand Sorcery, and its enhancement, Mental Acuity) hasn't scaled well and is approaching "nearly useless" status.<br /> <br />The How to Fix: As I stated before, a change that would cause this ability to remain relevant as content grows in the future would be ideal. +X% to base crit chance (like Spellbind, but for crit chance) would probably be the most logical choice. For Freehand Sorcery and its enhancement, something similar would also make sense.<br /> <br /><b>6) Mage Roots (All classes except for Wizard)</b><br /> <br />The What: I think somehow a Mage ability never upgraded by mistake. Illusionists, Coercers, Conjurers, Necros, and Warlocks did not get an upgrade to our root spell at level 93. However, Wizards did. It really really seems like this was an error.<br /> <br />The Why: As the level cap increases I think it will be important all 5 other mages get a root for solo/heroic content as well. This probably only affects solo/heroic content.<br /> <br />The How to Fix: Retroactively add a lvl 93 root spell, or add one to our level 96 granted spells list, or improve our level 83 master root to be equally powerful and hard to resist as the level 93 Wizard root.<br /> <br /> <br /><b>7) Character Development Grandmaster Training (All classes)</b><br /> <br />The What: If all spells in a tier are Grandmastered, there is no point to Grandmaster Training.<br /> <br />The Why: This is really not a massive issue, but it is undesirable.<br /> <br />The How to Fix: Perhaps each tier would add an option for a main stat boost, only accessible if all spells at that tier are Grandmastered? Each tier would give lvl worth of main stat. i.e. the lvl 14 GM would give 14 main stat, lvl 24 would give 24 main stat, lvl 34 would give 36, lvl 44 would give 44, and so on. Players could choose between main stat or stamina. Just a thought. It wouldn't be game breaking, but would add an extra little "cool" factor for those who put in the effort to grandmaster all their spells.

[Darkon]

<div class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeQuote" data-author="Mogrim"> <aside> <div class="attribution type">Mogrim said: <a href="index.php?goto/post&id=6118765#post-6118765" class="AttributionLink">↑</a> </div> <blockquote><span class="ae_quote_symbol">“</span><span class="ae_quote_content">This is the exact reason Absolution and Distortion probably shouldn't be changed, though. A significant cast time reduction for Absolution or Distortion would instantly make them part of the meta (in terms of efficiency, which is measured in terms of damage caused divided by time invested) where previously they're filler spells at best. This would result in a significant power boost in our classes power.<br /> <br />Small changes to spells that are only used infrequently has a much more narrow impact on class power.</span><span class="ae_quote_symbol">”</span></blockquote> </aside></div>All of Mogrims initial post outside of the 180-150 increments are QoL changes. I am not convinced that the 180->150 increments and the removal of the loop hole would not result in a noticeable boost. That said, I will freely admit I have not done in depth maths in regards to this.<br /> <br />Honestly the QoL suggestions listed in the initial post are all fair. I wouldn't say changing catalyst like that would be a good idea because it'd increase fiery blast chains by a significant amount, whereas it wouldn't help warlocks nearly as much.<br /> <br />Right now the two sorcerers are fairly comparable, but if that change were to be made wizards would have a clear advantage.<br /> <br />New crit system recalculates legendary/fabled/mythical crit every dot tick, for explanation as to why it would help the single hit wizard more than the multi-tick warlock.<br /> <br />All classes shadows trees need help. 95% of the abilities are useless for all classes. It would take an in depth revamp for a week to go through all the classes and fix everything. I'd say not to do it until the dev team is ready to take on ALL classes shadows trees.<br /> <br />tl;dr -> Yes to maintained gift/surge. Yes to 2/3/4/6 - No to 1/5/7 because dev time can be better allocated at this time.<br /> <br />If 1 really is a break even, then I guess it doesn't really matter because it is just purely QoL, again, haven't tested it myself.

[Mogrim]

Perhaps a way to mitigate #1 w/out doing a massive overhaul would be simply to change the radius of Dark Siphoning from 7.5 meters to 15 meters, and the range from 25m to 35m. Doing this would help eliminate the times where we're unable to use Dark Siphoning to make up for our larger increment scale.

[Iseous]

Changing Absolution and Distortion would be better, but even then they still wouldn't be a huge boost compared to the alternative filler spells. Yes, they'd show up higher on the parse making it look like they were good, but only because you weren't casting the filler spells you were casting before as much. They'd be around 10-20% more efficient than other filler spells with that change, which might be like 2% more to your overall parse depending on what you cast. They'd basically just be worth casting on single target, whereas now they are very low priority, unless you're left side prestige for Distortion, then it's actually worth casting over other filler spells. <br /> <br />I don't think the increment change is really necessary, as reaching max increments at the right time has never really been an issue unless I die. I wouldn't mind having it lowered to wiz's 150, however.<br /> <br />As for catalyst, if it lasted a short duration rather than just the next spell hit, it would make things more even between the two classes.

[Mogrim]

The key thing regarding increment charging is that this last set of oontent usually allowed Warlocks to use the Dark Siphoning loophole pretty effectively. The loophole could be used once every 30 seconds, and generally pretty effectively. When the loophole worked, we charged at a similar rate with Wizards. When it didn't, we charged slower. A lot slower.<br /> <br />Some easy examples of current raid content where 180 + Dark Siphoning Loophole is bad.<br /> <br />1) Avatars:<br /><ul><li>Marr: People spread out, likely out of range of a few group members</li><li>Tunare: Generally due to stacking, you can't hit your entire group with Dark Siphoning.</li><li>Prexus: Joust mechanic, port mechanic</li></ul>2) Accursed Sanctum: None.<br />3) Guardian's Ediface:<br /><ol><li>Rarthek (similar reason to Marr)</li><li>Jardin (initial script would cause players to be spread out, managing bubbles)</li><li>Zlandicar (significant amounts of movement mean people frequently out of range of Dark Siphoning)</li></ol>4) Maw:<br /><ul><li>Feshlak (joust scripts = people out of range for Dark Siphoning)</li><li>Irdul (frequent moving, ice block people out of range, etc)</li><li>Vulak - Mage Portal Script = people out of range if you're not called to run.</li></ul> <br />My initial proposal of a clean close the loophole and adjust our increment scale would solve all of the above issues.<br /><br />My compromise proposal to double the radius and increase the range of Dark Siphoning would fix most of the above, with possible rare exceptions of a far joust on Feshlak, or someone from your group getting ice blocked on Irdul and also would likely not solve mages being out of range on Vulak.<br /> <br />A third option bandaid while considering my initial proposal: You COULD just make the radius of the heal/regen on Dark Siphoning to be zonewide. If you did this, you'd still force us to use the clunky playstyle we currently use, but you'd close up the gaps above. However, there would still be some other issues that could arise with new content.<br /> <br />***What if a fight comes in where the 3 mobs are part of the same encounter but you can't use greens on them? That would crush our ability to charge even remotely close to Wizards. What if a fight specifically disallowed certain damage types periodically? (Think Captain Grush from Ward of Elements, but instead of occasionally being weak to an element, the mob explodes if that element is used)***<br />----- What I'm saying here, is that there are a lot of foreseeable content issues in the future that could cause our "meta method" of charging (which is vastly different from wizards due to this mechanic) to be either buggy or outright non-functional, effectively hurting our rate of increment charging by up to 16.667%.<br /> <br />For this reason I do think my initial suggestion is still valid. On the above fights I've mentioned, Warlock increment charging is unintentionally hampered by our larger scale and our failure to effectively utilize the spell that is the reason for the larger scale in the first place. Because the initial fix to balance against the loophole was a quickly implemented reduction to the Wizard increment scale, I think closing the loophole and adjusting the Warlock scale is the right course of action.

[Iseous]

Well they should definitely close the loophole as that is just stupid and obviously not how it should be working. Although you're better off waiting for temps anyway, so I'm not sure how getting increments faster is really going to help much unless you can reach max increments twice as fast (thus an extra use + temped use), which probably wouldn't happen by reducing the increment requirement to 150. On AOE it would be pretty significant, but on single target you probably wouldn't see much of a difference.

[Mogrim]

Last minute bump.<br /> <br />I know its late in the game, but if I could really haggle this down to three last minute "give us something" requests, they would be<br />1) Just double the range/radius of the heal on Dark Siphoning from 7.5 to 15. so it doesn't fail hitting my group members so often.<br />2) Allow Dark Aggravation to spell double.<br />3) Make our temps <b>(Gift of Bertoxxulous, Curse of Darkness, and Netherrealm/Eternal Damnation) </b>cast faster, and in the case of Gift, make it maintained (while also making Surge of Ro maintained for Wizards)<b></b>

[Jokirr]

No Aura of Pain? hater <img src="/images/smilies/frown.gif" alt="Frown" />

[Foretold]

<div class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeQuote" data-author="Mogrim"> <aside> <div class="attribution type">Mogrim said: <a href="index.php?goto/post&id=6125643#post-6125643" class="AttributionLink">↑</a> </div> <blockquote><span class="ae_quote_symbol">“</span><span class="ae_quote_content">Last minute bump.<br /> <br />I know its late in the game, but if I could really haggle this down to three last minute "give us something" requests, they would be<br />1) Just double the range/radius of the heal on Dark Siphoning from 7.5 to 15. so it doesn't fail hitting my group members so often.<br />2) Allow Dark Aggravation to spell double.<br />3) Make our temps <b>(Gift of Bertoxxulous, Curse of Darkness, and Netherrealm/Eternal Damnation) </b>cast faster, and in the case of Gift, make it maintained (while also making Surge of Ro maintained for Wizards)</span><span class="ae_quote_symbol">”</span></blockquote> </aside></div> <br />I would make my day to see any one of these three happen. If Gift was just maintained, I'd be over the moon <img src="/images/smilies/biggrin.gif" alt="BigGrin" />

[Cleaner]

<div class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeQuote" data-author="Mogrim"> <aside> <div class="attribution type">Mogrim said: <a href="index.php?goto/post&id=6118664#post-6118664" class="AttributionLink">↑</a> </div> <blockquote><span class="ae_quote_symbol">“</span><span class="ae_quote_content">The How to Fix: Perhaps each tier would add an option for a main stat boost, only accessible if all spells at that tier are Grandmastered? Each tier would give lvl worth of main stat. i.e. the lvl 14 GM would give 14 main stat, lvl 24 would give 24 main stat, lvl 34 would give 36, lvl 44 would give 44, and so on. Players could choose between main stat or stamina. Just a thought. It wouldn't be game breaking, but would add an extra little "cool" factor for those who put in the effort to grandmaster all their spells.</span><span class="ae_quote_symbol">”</span></blockquote> </aside></div>i have sent a few feedbacks on alot that you covered, one thing i mentioned about the LVL training, in the character traits, instead of having Grandmastering of spells, Make it Enhanced Focus.<br />My idea would be that this tree, at each lvl range would Focus on all your 'CLASS specific' Abilities not just one ability. Basically you will have a tree just like the one you have now, but instead of the spell you would have Focus: Enhance Casting, Enhance Damage, Enhance Recovery, Enhance Critical. basically these would allow Over Caps on spells and abilities, example my Casting speed on X spell is .5, with focus i can get it to .25 so on and so forth.<br /><br />IT can also be reformed into a more perfect tree, where each lvl you can add much smaller increments of improvements to all your class spells over time. say you want to increas over all damage through lvl 1-100 you can add .2 dmg base dmg increase in every lvl tier increasing the class specific spells base dmg by up to 20%, or go all out on recovery and reuse maxing them at 15% over caps. then you can just mix and match till you get spell casting and dmg at a comfortable "Flow"<br /><br />My favorite idea would be to have dmg enhancements down the whole tree, increase Triggers, Decrease Duration (making those ticks hit more), Siphoning abilities, Increment building.