Warlock Prestige

[slippery]

Overall I'm not really thrilled. 

Let me start off by saying that there really needs to be big linked ae encounters that actually have hp. Without that, Warlocks really don't bring it. TSO was the only expansion that got this right, and they got it in spades everywhere. Ykesha, Gynok, big groups of trash that had a decent amount of hp, big groups of linked adds, things Warlocks could actually dps. Since then, bombed. Warlocks keep getting stuff for AE's, stuff for AE's, stuff for AE's. It isn't helping, because there is nothing to AE, and it blows single target. 

Take for example the right line, a line that gains increments based on the number of targets hit on cast. So you have to actually have targets to hit for this to reach it's potential. So in most cases this probably is going to be no where near what it should relative to other classes. 

The left side makes me sad. Much like Gift, being limited to Noxious abilities proc'ing it is just bad. Lets look at my spells that aren't noxious. Thunderclap is magic, Concussive Blast is Mage, Arcane Bewilderment Magic, Flames of Velious Elemental (especially ironic being that you buff this spell in this line to get this ability, and it still isn't buffed enough really reach worth casting much higher then most other things), Encase elemental, Blast of Devastation Magic, Rift Magic. Then you have all the temp buffs we have to cast which won't proc it, Aura of Void probably won't proc it either since it isn't actually a damage spell (hostile). Then you have spells that don't make it into the cast order because they are so bad that do nox (Dissolve, Distortion, Absolution, Dark Nebula). So that leaves Plaguebringer (22.5 recast), Apocalypse (22.5 recast), Dark Siphoning (30s recast), Acid and Dark Pyre (4 sec recast) to actually proc it. We don't really cast that much Noxious, please get away from tying damage to casts of it. 

Miasma is about as usless as it gets. This ability is just awful. Enchanters get like 50 cb or potency for the group (that is also going to be useless in raids for a different reason that I'll post elsewhere). We get an ability, that we actually have to cast, that gives 3% power to the group? This is just bad. I need something that gives me single target damage, not an awful group power spell. 

Noxious attunement might be okay if the damage is decent and it is 45% chance.

The stuff is blah. 

[Xelgad]

Yeah - we're in the process of redoing the AE line. Instead of the incremental AE, you'll proc charges (more procs from AEs), and you can detonate the charges to deal either AE damage or more ST damage.

[slippery]

Does it really have to be ANOTHER thing we have to cast? Just something like Ambidextrous Casting that we can hit while casting. Warlocks are already the class that has the worst cast times because the spells they actually want to cast are generally speaking the long ones. Have more to cast doesn't really help this. Please don't make it like Dark Aggravation. That spells function is horrendous (that one should work a lot more like Exploit Weakness, and a lot less like it does right now. Proc'ing it and losing the cast because you can't figure out what it proc'd on, or because the debuff on the mob got dispelled is enraging). For the left line to really be viable the Flames ability is going to need some love (this applies to both Sorcerors). It just isn't significant since the extra damage doesn't gain from everything like ability mod. The boost to the spell just isn't enough to even push it up to one of the top 5 abilities we'd cast single target. Relative to changing Netherealm from a useless ability to one that dominates on AE encounters, the comparison just isn't there. For their to be any sort of parity here we need something akin to another Plaguebringer (kind of like how Wizards got Eci's, the best AE spell in the game). The Flames buff just isn't up to par, and is going to end up forcing all Sorc's down the right side.

[Mogrim]

Again, our Void Contract is not a strong Prestige choice. There are balancing issues with how the Max Power/Max Health buffs that summoners give will help all Mage dps EXCEPT Warlocks. In that perspective, giving us something somewhere in these Prestige Points to offset that would be much appreciated. Perhaps The Cast/Reuse Reduction on the right side could be replaced with something that helps our dps. Perhaps replacing it with something that reduces the base cast speed of Absolution/Rift (as the fact that Absolution cannot cast faster than 2 seconds and Rift cannot cast faster than 2.5 seconds remains a major problem when we try to keep pace with AOE dps on low-health adds, which should be our specialty). Also, replacing Void Contract with something else would be useful. If we're simply looking to provide a counter balance to the fact that the other classes will benefit more from the max power/max health buffs, how about a 1 point spent ability that makes Curse of Darkness and Eternal Damnation instant cast?  Gift of Bertox is interesting, but not incredibly powerful. Suggestion: Rank 3 makes Gift of Bertox a maintained spell instead of a temp.  In addition, Ranks 2 and 3 of Toxic Mist and/or Noxious Bolt are required to advance the tree, but are pointless as our reuse is capped. Would not mind making that just a 1 Prestige Access and dropping the remaining aspect of it, as long as we improve the "Endline" Prestiges (Gift of Bertox and completely scrapping Void Contract for something else)

[slippery]

I wanted to talk a little about cast time and why it is important. I'll bring you back a few years to when gear proc's got nerfed in to an oblivion they haven't returned from. Around that time I told you that nerfing proc's on gear was not addressing the problem. There was only a few proc's that needed to be changed. Why? Because the only proc's that create a real imbalance between classes are the ones that proc 100% of the time. Largely those weren't on gear, they are spells cast by players. The imbalance is there because not everyone casts the same amount of stuff over a period of time. Warlocks bomb here, hard. The pet classes (Summoners, Enchanter, Beastlords, Shamans when dps'ing) have it the best for days because not only do they have the fastest casting spells (or ca's) they also have a pet that is proc'ing those things too.

Edit: Think Peace of Mind, VC, etc (nevermind that melee classes get more of these type of proc's and proc them a ton more, and spell auto is lacking in what it proc's because the way it was implemented was a joke) This is where the imbalance has always existed. The fact that spells we want to cast take so long to cast kills us. It's why not maintaining a balance of the spells has really hurt us. Our faster casting spells that would be the ones that help us in this scenario are the ones that are absolutely horrendous and not worth casting. Then account for the fact that we effectively have 6 temp buffs we have to cast. Gift, Curse, Eternal Damnation, Sanguine Sacrifice, Curse of Void (is effectively a temp buff), and Negative Void (putting it in this category) Negative Void is pretty bad these days as well. The function here really needs to be looked at. It's one of those things that worked when it was put in the game, and doesn't work now. It just works as a penalty to the warlock. Take an encounter like boar as an example. What do you do? Mostly single target, but then there are groups of 4 adds. When the adds spawn do you cancel Negative Void so you can use your best AE on them, or do you leave it up and just not cast your best AE so that you don't have to waste the time casting this again so you can get the damage proc and additional damage/full ability mod on Apoc and Dark Siphoning while spending the majority of the time dps'ing the boar? It needs to either be instant cast/recovery or just give us a second set of abilities that are single target.

[kenzar]

Even with the implamentation of the 12 points in the top line to get both sides of the original tree, I still think that filling out the 20 points into the prestige points currently on live is going to be atractive unless there are some serious improvments to the new lines.

The Flames upgrade is pretty meh, but having a second spell to reset FC and an extra 25 to 30ish static potency for most raiders is pretty powerful. You even still have 5 points left over to throw into the new abilities.

I guess I would just like to see some endlines that actually floor me the way the healer ones did when I logged those in.

[Shotneedle]

Noxious Bolt with the damage enhances is pretty strong, guys.

[Mogrim]

With 60 Incriments, Apocalypse is still casting as normal. Rift works find, however.

[Mogrim]

After testing and conceptualizing, I like these changes. I do however, have a minor balancing concern. Fusion is a lot lot lot stronger than Rift. Apocalypse is a lot stronger than Hail Storm. Just straight up, unless the encounters have enough 8+ mob enouncters for Warlocks to shine, this would be a lot stronger for the Wizard than the Warlock. If you add in that Fusion can also be reset at a 24% success rate, it can stack up pretty quickly to be a decisive advantage on the smaller encounters/named fights for the Wizard. Smaller encounters/named fights are what raid builds are generally based around. As long as there are significant large encounters to balance this seeming-Wizard advantage, we're all good.

Otherwise, some minor improvements to our Prestige would be wise. Perhaps for the Warlock, since our mythical gives us more help with hate, Toxic Confusion can be replaced with something that provides a dps edge?

[slippery]

It isn't even in the realm of balanced between warlocks and wizards. Like, it isn't even in the same ball park. We're talking World Series vs pee wee baseball. Wizards can reset fusion, so they could get back to back instant cast fusion. Wizards have something that has massive gains from all of this. Fiery Blast. Not only do they gain from the extra spells they can cast (and possibly 2 fusions) during Fiery Blast because of the instant cast time, they also get a nuke that is probably going to hit for 2-4m. That means in addition to those instant cast spells adding extra to FB, and the extra spells cast adding to FB, and the nuke adding to FB, they get a ridiculously high FB. What do Warlocks get? Yea I got nothin.  Go Warlocks.

I mean, I can't even recommend anything that compares. Wizards are going to completely wreck everyone. Wizards already gain the most from all the buffs in the game relative to other classes because of how synergistic everything they have is. 

Just because 2 classes get the same exact ability doesn't mean it is balanced

[Piropiro]

basically what Slip said. Also i noticed that the charges for aura seem to be randomly applying. sometimes they will charge up and other times they wont. I dont know if this is intended or not but i'd hope its not working as intended. This to go along with what was said about apoc not going to 0 cast time.

The entire issue i have with the prestige lines as they are is that they are cookie cutter identically to eachother wizard/warlock wise. you can't achieve anything remotely balanced when you try to do the same thing for each classes "equivelants".

They need to be tailored to each class specifically so that you can maintain a better balance on things. I'd 100% agree that the dehate part on warlocks needs to be changed if there is to be any way to try to balance this out for warlocks compared to wizards.

Given that this is an aoe line im not sure if it will come close to evening out in terms of name fights with fiery blast, but one possible option to make it tied in with the aoe aspect of it is to have the 3 ranks of the dehate changed into something per rank like:

1. Applies Negative Void as a passive buff. (no longer toggles to single mode, just applies the damage increase on the green spells straight up.)

2. Removes max target limits of green/blue spells

3. Adds 1 dot tick increase to Negative Void. (or 5 sda)

Something along those lines would help to keep it in line with the aoe line concept, and help to fix a lot of the mythical buff issues that currently plague the warlocks.

edited it a couple times to reword/clarify.

[Mogrim]

I agree with the previous 2 posts. I was mainly trying to keep my language from becoming too extreme."Insta-Cast Fusion is a BFD" - Joe Biden. Just saying. Anyhow more seriously, The best ideas I can think of...1) Change Toxic Confusion to be a 1 point option that gives +1 tick to all dots while @rank 60 .2) Change the Dark Pact buff to be an improvement of Negative Void:     a) remove max target limits of greens/blues    b) remove changing greens into single target while activeThese two changes would help a bunch, I think.        

[Piropiro]

Mogrim wrote:

I agree with the previous 2 posts. I was mainly trying to keep my language from becoming too extreme."Insta-Cast Fusion is a BFD" - Joe Biden. Just saying. Anyhow more seriously, The best ideas I can think of...1) Change Toxic Confusion to be a 1 point option that gives +1 tick to all dots while @rank 60 .2) Change the Dark Pact buff to be an improvement of Negative Void:     a) remove max target limits of greens/blues    b) remove changing greens into single target while activeThese two changes would help a bunch, I think.        

if that was done i'd prefer to not attach it to an @ 60 charge. we already have the cast times of apoc/rift associated with that. It should be just a passive straight up aspect. you could do confusion to be something where like

Rank 1: its at 60 charges for 1 dot tick

Rank 2: it's at 30 charges for 1 dot tick

Rank 3: its a passive 1 dot tick

But since its in that line it needs to be 3 ranks to keep it balance across the board class wise.

I'd rather change Noxious Attunement to the Negative Void one though, and address more possibilities.

Rank 1: Makes Negative Void apply its bonus without changing to single targets

Rank 2: Removes limits on targets

Rank 3: Changes Green AE's into from area of target Blue's.

[Chronus1]

Personnaly I quite like the changes apart from Toxic assault dispelling all incriments that you've built up. If this is intended incriments need to be gained a lot faster but I think it would be better if instead it just took 20 off.

Also the dark pact buff seems pretty weak.

And at 60 incriments apocalypse doesn't instant cast.

[slippery]

Sooooooooo, about the fact that Wizards blatantly gain more from this stuff then Warlocks, can we expect anything or is it just going to be lopsided? Warlocks really need the help, especially as I haven't really seen any AE content.

[Chronus1]

Well first of all apocalypse actually instant casting at maximum incriments would be nice (the entire speeding up thing for apoc seems bugged, it's hit and miss).

For improvements somthing other than miasma would help, as an endline it's doing less than 1% of anybody's parse with the poor proc rate on the most AE-ish fight in the new expac. It's essentially pathetic.

How about somthing to improve Curse of darkness with an extra large single target hit in addition to what it does now? Would help due to this expansion being obviously geared towards single target. Or maybe somthing to make the mythical buff better? I'm sure Slippery and Mogrim could come up with better ideas.

I don't really want to suggest not allowing the new stuff to count towards Fiery Blast as it's just trying to get another class nerfed essentially but if you can't make it balanced by giving the warlock somthing better/different then I can't see an alternative unless you genuinely believe that wizards are actually behind warlocks at the moment...

[Mogrim]

A boost simply to Curse of Darkness is too much a group boost. To make things even, looking at what Wizards and summoners are getting, we need something better for US. The best thing I've seen out here is modifying Negative Void to no longer restrict greens to single target. Another option would be to instead...have it ALSO change RIFT to a single target option, and increase the damage of Rift by 200% before modifications.

[Piropiro]

Mogrim wrote:

A boost simply to Curse of Darkness is too much a group boost. To make things even, looking at what Wizards and summoners are getting, we need something better for US. The best thing I've seen out here is modifying Negative Void to no longer restrict greens to single target. Another option would be to instead...have it ALSO change RIFT to a single target option, and increase the damage of Rift by 200% before modifications.

im more for the removal of having to toggle negative void and makn it a straight up boost, but the rift idea isn't really bad. Given Rift has been a huge pos for i lost track of how many expansions, it'd be pretty nice to at some point see something like that done.

Also, given the change to an emphasis on having 60 charges, can there be a modifcation done on the proc rate. 33% at 3 ranks is kind of blah when ur trying to build up to 60.

[slippery]

I'm in agreement on Negative Void not needing to be toggled and just always buffing our AE's damage. Especially given minimal AE content since TSO.

[Enotirab]

The Negative Void fix could replace Miasma, since its so underwhelming.

[Piropiro]

slippery wrote:

I'm in agreement on Negative Void not needing to be toggled and just always buffing our AE's damage. Especially given minimal AE content since TSO.

not to mention warlocks are blah in terms of smaller grp encounters, especially looking at beastlords. if there's not 8-12 mobs in an encounter and it lives for 30-40 seconds we really dont have an ae edge anymore. I'd also like to point out the MASS amount of large group encounters in raids in chains so far....

Rift has long been useless on 99% of encounters

Our mythical is a lesser of evils choice half the time when swaping between grps and singles on names

We're 100% dependant on UT from a troub, go go forget to joust and dying,

Our single target counterpart has the best aoes in game.

We are forced to juggle a 5 sec reseting ily temp with our 10 second reseting temp on top of our rotations on top of ours rooting us so we have to make sure on fights where there's movement that lines up right with the script and our timers, yet they both factor into our "class balance" be it vs other mages or dps in general.

What is supposed to be our big single target nuke bread in butter, Distortion, is one of our lowest single target effeciency spells.

Acid storm isn't even on hotbars and its counterpat with wizards is Rays which is a high dps effecient spell.

*edit* somehow i forgot Dark Aggravation. i still dont get why its so hard to just let it be a buff on us and let us cast on whatever.

Can we start addressing real issues already? Things are getting pretty ridiculous, and every expansion and aa or prestige tree just exacerbates it all. Or is it going to be like last expac where we were told, we plan to fix this in the "distant future."

[Thalzokal]

+1 Piropiro! Warlocks are supposed to be THE aoe mage and we are outparsed on encounter fights by wizards and beastlords time and time again. PLEASE read these forums and listen to what the people who play the class every day are saying.

[daray]

I assume, from a class balance perspective, you guys are remembering to exclude the effects of EV / Bolster / PF from your comparisons/calculations (if not being applied equally to both classes)?

In some cases, many of those buffs may fall to wizards in certain guilds, and therefore the bottom-line dps numbers may not be an accurate representation of where the two classes actually stack up against eachother.

[Piropiro]

daray wrote:

I assume, from a class balance perspective, you guys are remembering to exclude the effects of EV / Bolster / PF from your comparisons/calculations (if not being applied equally to both classes)?

In some cases, many of those buffs may fall to wizards in certain guilds, and therefore the bottom-line dps numbers may not be an accurate representation of where the two classes actually stack up against eachother.

the only buffs i calculate into balance wise are tc and ut, though both should be excluded and the classes should be made to balance w/o.

That said, primal fury will be grp wide in xpac, ev is straight up equal gain and should always be given to the better dps, and bolster well, have fun fighting for that within the entire raid and getting it consistantly. so ev/bolster should really never be factored in due to inconsistancy. in an ideal world tho if theres two sorcs theres 2 mage grps and ev on both.

[slippery]

Apocalypse still isn't instant cast at 60 increments, it is .75. There really needs to be an increment count in maintained, or a new window or something. Trying to find the constantly moving buff in my effects window is an extremely frustrating effort in futility that really detracts from gameplay. Gift of Bertoxxulous should be a permanent buff at 3 ranks of the prestige, or 5 ranks of the aa in the Warlock tree (though probably prestige). It's 45 second duration, 45 second recast. Making us recast it at this point is really kind of silly, especially since it is a self buff. No smart Warlock is going to put points in to the deagro (Except maybe the 1 left over point) because we have no need for something that small. Consider that we are running around at 50% deagro with a mythical proc that decreases threat position to the encounter. This is where the buff that removes the need for Negative Void to be toggled should be. In fact, this could even be a 3 part thing that modifies our spells. First rank makes Acid Storm a spell targeted on an NPC or targeted area instead of a dumbfire pet (including the fact that it would then be modified by our stats), second rank makes Gift a permanent buff, third rank makes negative void not turn ae's in to single target spells. To be honest, I don't like how this whole thing functions at all. It's just bad. You want to talk about the type of ability that is not intuitive to use, and is frustrating as can be, this is it. At that point you only take 1 more proc to make 2 spells instant cast? Great, just save those 2 spells until you get those increments. Until 7 spells later you still haven't got those increments and have been standing there doing less then you should. It's the kind of ability that costs people dps instead of actually benefiting them, because in reality they aren't casting things they should because they are waiting around for other things. Not casting the spells that go instant because you know you're going to get rid of the cast time, not casting the nuke because you're waiting for Fiery Blast and Time warp, not casting the nuke because you are waiting on the instant cast spells. It creates a lot of waiting. It's going to increase the gap between good and average players. What would I do differently? When you hit 60 triggers you also instantly refresh those spells that go instant cast. Why? It stops the waiting. You hit 60 triggers, you cast the spells, you cast the nuke. Although, in the case of Warlocks, that still isn't true. Why? Because they are AE's, so you are probably waiting on adds anyways (not that there really are many of those.)

[Xelgad]

Awesome feedback.  The patch today is adding spell text for when you hit 60 increments, so hopefully that will help. Does the Dragowulf SpellTimer Window work? I can see what the UI people think of adding a window like that to the default UI, but usually we like to leave the more advanced features to modders.

[Geothe]

Xelgad wrote:

. Does the Dragowulf SpellTimer Window work? I can see what the UI people think of adding a window like that to the default UI, but usually we like to leave the more advanced features to modders.

Yes, it does work.  However, not very well being as there is a limit to how many buffs are shown in the default window in the first place (20-ish?).  If the desired buff gets pushed off the maintained window.. then it isn't picked up by Dragowulf's add on anyways.  And with as many procs that are present in the game now, its a crap shoot if what you want to see will actually show up in Dragowulf window.  Get the UI people to massively increase the cap for spells shown in the default window, and then specialty addons like Dragowulf will be 100% awesome... especially if its included as an option within the game UI itself, instead of an addon.

[slippery]

Xelgad wrote:

Awesome feedback.  The patch today is adding spell text for when you hit 60 increments, so hopefully that will help. Does the Dragowulf SpellTimer Window work? I can see what the UI people think of adding a window like that to the default UI, but usually we like to leave the more advanced features to modders.

It would work (assuming it is in the maintained window and not bounced out by something else) but I haven't seen an actual increment count in maintained (which could be drums not having updated it), meaning that you only see that you have the buff. Functionally it would be better if the buff just existed with a permanent duration and showed how many increments you currently had, instead of a refreshing temp buff that always gets bumped to the end of the list every time it refreshes. That way you should be able to guarantee it shows up in stuff like the UI windows that pull information from maintained for a different window. 

I just checked default UI, and the increments do show up in maintained so they should show up in the Dragowulf window baring none of the above problems.

[daray]

Regarding the display (as I think I mentioned elsewhere), in an ideal world the functionality of the maintained window would need to be changed to give us the ability to:

• Right click on an icon and set it to "Always Hide" (as well as being hidden it wouldn't count to the ~35 limit that the maintained can hold)
• Add another right click option to the entire maintained window to "Show Hidden".

• Alternatively, just remove the ~35 limit and have the server send all the maintained data to the client, but I can't speak for what performance impact that will have.

As already stated above, those UI Mods pull their data from the maintained window, and if the buff is pushed off the maintained window due to the huge numbers of hostile procs and other random stuff that goes in there, then the data isn't available for these mods to pull from. In the case of these incremental buffs, each time it is refreshed it gets pushed off the maintained window for me, and the data isn't available until earlier procs start to drop off (at which point I have probably refreshed the incremental buff anyway).

EDIT:

slippery wrote:

Functionally it would be better if the buff just existed with a permanent duration and showed how many increments you currently had, instead of a refreshing temp buff that always gets bumped to the end of the list every time it refreshes.

And that is actually a good idea, regardless of whether you want to tinker with the maintained window code or not.

[Shotneedle]

But this is the best part about Miasma.