Warlock issues & QoL suggestions

[rabidfox]

Root walls... Ahhhh! So many can't be broken with warlock blasts. One has to toggle it off, wack it with a weapon, and then toggle it back on. Tar pits in dread being one example, but many many quests are don't let you break them (a few do).

Pact damage and mobs that heal from that element type. I love the modern stuff that's been put on some effects in-game where stuff just does no damage vs healing mobs; that would be awesome to see on existing pacts. But baring that, it would nice if the pact toggle didn't take 3 seconds to turn on; make it instant. It really wrecks the flow of combat to drop pact toggle to kill something that was healing off the damage, watch one's damage take huge hit as a result, and then get stuck doing 3 second animation to turn it back on to go back to killing other mobs effectively.

Enervating shadow: With the changes to damage scaling on various blast types, it seems like you devs want us to use it for single target. But it moves slow, can't hit the side of a barn that moved a single inch (very few mobs will just stand still and take it), and it really needs to work like precise shot and pass thru any mob that isn't the target (trash between a warlock and a boss never happens, right?), and it probably could also use having the range doubled to make it more situationally useful beyond those other issues. (chains and focus blast shapes also have targetting issues and could faster travel /etc.)

Hurl into hell: It was changed to have a save. Can't be emboldened currently.

There's probably more stuff I'll add later or others will add.

 

[The Blonde]

Great post, agreed on everything.

 

[rabidfox]

The attack faster bit in core 5 tainted doesn't seem to do anything. A guildy mentioned that ages ago Lich tried even faster attack speeds out on a test server and it still did nothing (so it wasn't just that 10% was too small to notice). Not sure if there's a potentional fix for it or if should just be replaced with something else.

 

[KingZela]

I agree with everything, warlocks skills too from tree is sooo slow to hit targets, they dodge easily, i just make a thread talking about this..

 

[PraetorPlato]

Hurl into hell is not a spell: it's not affected by spell resistance and a few other things. Making it subject to embolden would be a nerf, not a QoL fix (quicken, on the other hand.....).

Consume and stricken are slow projectiles for balance reasons, I believe.

Agree on the other two.

 

[Edrein]

A mild inconvenience/design oversight for the new Acolyte of the Skin is the fact they don't get a medium armor prof enhancement like Enlightened Spirit gets.

The only reason I say this is the fact that the most synergistic set to wear on a Acolyte iconic/while leveling towards cap would be Flamecleansed Fury, which you can't wear due to the Arcane Spell Failure.

Even an ASF enhancement could be neat if they want us to burn a feat on medium proficiency.

Only recalled this one due to myself personally playing an Acolyte this past week to get the PLs on my main.

As for base Warlock most of the suggestions in this thread are spot on, I'd like to add things like:
1. Aasimar still cannot have both a pact and their bond toggled at the same time. Let's be honest, the balance reason this existed in the past is no longer relevant with all of the nerfs to Healing Hands. If they want to make it a thematic restriction; then add a caveat that a Celestial Pact warlock counts as an aasimar bond. We've got a few other racial-class interactions in game, might as well lean into that one.
2. Still no innate pet for the Enlightened Spirit to make use of the various pet/summons boosts. Great for GOO-locks and charm builds but those aren't exactly used anymore sadly.
3. Steal Life Force feels notoriously bad for 'blank firing' as people say. I can't begin to count how many times over the years I've tossed it out and not seen it actually deal damage/heal me. This one could also maybe use a bit of 'modernization' and allow Maximize, Empower, and Intensify on it.
4. Wave Blast shape does not match the visuals. At the risk of getting wave nerfed; the range is longer than the visual, can we please have the visual effect extended to match the range?
5. Conversely, despite using the same cone visual as Eldritch Wave/wave blast shape, Fiendish Glare and Glare of the Pit both have shorter range than their visual effect.
6. The evil damage portion of both Fiendish Glare and Glare of the Pit appear to not scale with spellpower/scale lower than the advertised 100%.
7. As a request I'd love to see the "melee eldritch blast" from Fiendish Symbosis get separated from the transformation into a blast shape by itself.

 

[Ying]

A mild inconvenience/design oversight for the new Acolyte of the Skin is the fact they don't get a medium armor prof enhancement like Enlightened Spirit gets. The only reason I say this is the fact that the most synergistic set to wear on a Acolyte iconic/while leveling towards cap would be Flamecleansed Fury, which you can't wear due to the Arcane Spell Failure.

AotS doesn't need medium armor prof. It just needs a supported light armor gear set, similar in stats to Flamecleansed. I have hope the mini-xpac will address this. Blight Caster suffers the same issue with gear.

I am not a fan of the AotS EB Shape: Beam. I found it was too narrow in practice. I ended up going back to Cone for trash mobs because it's the best implemented shape. And if you aren't using EB Shape: Beam, then there's little reason to be in AotS tree. And if you aren't in AotS tree, then you might as well be a standard Warlock for the additional spells.

 

[Edrein]

AotS doesn't need medium armor prof. It just needs a supported light armor gear set, similar in stats to Flamecleansed. I have hope the mini-xpac will address this. Blight Caster suffers the same issue with gear.

I am not a fan of the AotS EB Shape: Beam. I found it was too narrow in practice. I ended up going back to Cone for trash mobs because it's the best implemented shape. And if you aren't using EB Shape: Beam, then there's little reason to be in AotS tree. And if you aren't in AotS tree, then you might as well be a standard Warlock for the additional spells.

Acolyte's niche to me is the Pact Attunement feats. I wish they'd pull these from the Archetype and make them a base class feature for warlocks frankly. It'd open a whole new world for strange warlock builds.

The general issue with Acolyte is the same for warlocks; no strip for the times you come up against a mob that heals or doesn't take damage from your pact element. Though I did notice that Acolyte's fire damage only heals certain mobs compared to other fire damage sources. I'm sure that's bugged and not intentional sadly.

Acolyte conceptually is an interesting Archetype/Tree, but like you say you're better off playing a normal warlock and not being tied to the hip with tiefling as a requirement for your build.

 

[rabidfox]

I am not a fan of the AotS EB Shape: Beam. I found it was too narrow in practice. I ended up going back to Cone for trash mobs because it's the best implemented shape. And if you aren't using EB Shape: Beam, then there's little reason to be in AotS tree. And if you aren't in AotS tree, then you might as well be a standard Warlock for the additional spells.

It needs something that makes it stand out compared to other options; maybe double the range and make it the sniper beam of the shapes.

Acolyte's niche to me is the Pact Attunement feats. I wish they'd pull these from the Archetype and make them a base class feature for warlocks frankly. It'd open a whole new world for strange warlock builds.

Conceptually it opens builds, but the reality is it requires 12 levels of AotS to be decent as a blaster in epic levels. Both https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Pact_Dice and https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Eldritch_Blast require 12 warlock to take and without them the damage will get worse and worse as a multiclass approached cap. They should change the requirements on them to "12 warlock or Greater Pact Attunement feat taken" and then build options would be amazing (it would just be the feat tax of taking the AotS blast feats).

 

[Ying]

Acolyte's niche to me is the Pact Attunement feats. I wish they'd pull these from the Archetype and make them a base class feature for warlocks frankly. It'd open a whole new world for strange warlock builds.

Eh. To me the hallmark of being a Warlock is access to 60% spell crit dmg which no other class has. So the pact attunement feats aren't very interesting to me.

 

[rabidfox]

Root walls... Ahhhh! So many can't be broken with warlock blasts. One has to toggle it off, wack it with a weapon, and then toggle it back on. Tar pits in dread being one example, but many many quests are don't let you break them (a few do).

Pact damage and mobs that heal from that element type. I love the modern stuff that's been put on some effects in-game where stuff just does no damage vs healing mobs; that would be awesome to see on existing pacts. But baring that, it would nice if the pact toggle didn't take 3 seconds to turn on; make it instant. It really wrecks the flow of combat to drop pact toggle to kill something that was healing off the damage, watch one's damage take huge hit as a result, and then get stuck doing 3 second animation to turn it back on to go back to killing other mobs effectively.

Enervating shadow: With the changes to damage scaling on various blast types, it seems like you devs want us to use it for single target. But it moves slow, can't hit the side of a barn that moved a single inch (very few mobs will just stand still and take it), and it really needs to work like precise shot and pass thru any mob that isn't the target (trash between a warlock and a boss never happens, right?), and it probably could also use having the range doubled to make it more situationally useful beyond those other issues. (chains and focus blast shapes also have targetting issues and could faster travel /etc.)

Hurl into hell: It was changed to have a save. Can't be emboldened currently.

There's probably more stuff I'll add later or others will add.

The attack faster bit in core 5 tainted doesn't seem to do anything. A guildy mentioned that ages ago Lich tried even faster attack speeds out on a test server and it still did nothing (so it wasn't just that 10% was too small to notice). Not sure if there's a potentional fix for it or if should just be replaced with something else.

Conceptually it opens builds, but the reality is it requires 12 levels of AotS to be decent as a blaster in epic levels. Both https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Pact_Dice and https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Eldritch_Blast require 12 warlock to take and without them the damage will get worse and worse as a multiclass approached cap. They should change the requirements on them to "12 warlock or Greater Pact Attunement feat taken" and then build options would be amazing (it would just be the feat tax of taking the AotS blast feats).

Now that Tonquin has been doing a bunch of QoL work from forum posts, maybe some of these will get touched too. Gotta knock out warlock & AotS lives on my alt soon and would love some minor work done on them before then.

 

[Edrein]

I'm hoping some of these get addressed, and I'm hoping that one day AotS gets a bit of love/retouching.

 

[rabidfox]

The past couple weeks, I've been knocking out some heroic class lives using an AotS splash multiclass where I take the blast feats while leveling (and it lets me take the other class I use as a past life). Normally, I do these type throwaway builds for a past life as an inquisitive; thankfully AotS lets me vary things up. But the lvl 12 warlock requirements for the two epic feats makes going much beyond level 20 really painful as the damage stops scaling up (it's a lot of pact and blast dice that can't be taken). I really wish the requirements for those two feat ( https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Pact_Dice and https://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Eldritch_Blast ) were made "12 warlock or Greater Pact Attunement feat taken".

 

[vryxnr]

I agree with everything so far, but I would like to add my personal warlock beefs as well...

ES aura: when you drink a potion, it's spellpower becomes effectively 0 until you perform some other attack (or some other effect is making it do orders of magnitude less damage after a potion drink)

Celestial Pact: Ameliorate: This ability is still not working as written, and there is a typo/error in it's description.

"Attempt to obliterate an Undead, or severely weaken any non-Undead foe. Undead must succeed on a Will save ... or be destroyed. Undead who fail this save, or enemies who are not undead, instead are terrorized and have their Magical Resistance Rating reduced by 10 for 15 seconds.

1: Non-Undead are still completely immune to all effects of this ability

2: Red Named/Boss undead are completely immune to all effects of this ability (imho the MRR reduction should apply to all enemy types and tiers, including bosses) (similar abilities with the same wording, like Devour Soul, do apply their debuff to bosses, so too should Ameliorate imo).

3: the text says "undead who fail this save, or enemies who are not undead, instead...", when it should say "undead who succeed this save, or enemies who are not undead, instead..."

4: Against undead that save - while they do have reduced MRR while frozen - the debuff does not indicate this fact at all (same with Devour Soul, I only know that they work in these niche cases due to testing with no other debuffs proccing and seeing damage values and color change favorably)

 

[rabidfox]

I also still hate root walls and having to toggle off blasts, break it, and then spend time waiting for blasts to toggle back on. (was just doing this quest so figured I'd share the pain hah)

https://imgur.com/a/rzyGWrQ