Played my Warlock last night in a LFG game. Out did the rogue in the party. The GM has a lot of monsters who fought smart. They rarely let the rogue get, or keep, CA against the them. My curse, with Vicious rod in had, was hitting every time I attacked, whereas the rogue couldn't. The ranger in the party did about equivilant to me, but we had some fire vulnerable monsters, and boy did they burn with my spells, giving me an edge.
Granted it was only 3rd level, but I filled my roll to a T, and everyone had a blast for it.
Frankly I'd love to see a feat to boost my Curse damage to d8's so I wouldn't have to use one specific rods. Other than that its great to see such a heated debate, I just don't see the point. People seem to want to homogenize the classes where Striekrs all have to do exactly the same dmg/round. I feel thats certainly not what D&D is all about.
Glad you had fun, that's the point of course.
The point of this thread, though, is a lot of people are not quite having as much fun as they could, because they know there is an issue with warlocks and damage. I think it was Alphastream1 who said something about warlocks being embarassed at the table (by other strikers). That wasn't your experience--but here is mine: my warlock consistently embarasses himself with his rogue Dilettante, from level 1 to level 8, even before he MCed to get Sneak Attack! There is something wrong with that!
You only get 3 encounter powers and 3 daily powers in the game. Since both classes are primary-striker, how many controller powers should they take? Given the choice between a class that has one really really good control power and a class that has 500 pretty good ones, I'll take the first.
If you only have a single really good Controller Power, you aren't a Controller, you're something else with a neat trick 1/Encounter. Nifty, but I can choose to do something akin to that trick all Encounter, every Encounter, and with my Dailies, and even (to a point) with my At-Wills!
Now let's compare some of these powers. Damage is an important component to a good control power as it is for any power. There are those who disagree, as you probably will, I am just explaining where I am coming from. If a power knocks out 1/4 of a targets hit points, then they will be a threat for 1/4 less time and are thereby denied 1/4 of their actions. On top of that, from a pure optimization standpoint, a power that does more damage, everything else being equal, is simply a better power.
For starters Lash of the Long Night targets fortitude, which is debilitating. This power would be really useful against brutes and soldiers who need to be in melee, but that is scarcely an option. Disruptive strike can be used against creatures of any role, any time (daze notwithstanding).
Soldiers have decent Fort, not always amazing Fort. They do tend to have amazing AC, and that's what Disruptive Strike targets, so that's really just a wash. Reckless Curse, Expertise, Shadow Warlock Armor, Nimble Blade, Prime Shot; 'Locks have access to any number of ways to boost Attack Rolls, and are one of the few Classes I feel can target Fort on a Brute all they want.
Then comes damage. Disruptive strike is an immediate action, so the damage of that twin strike the ranger did on his turn should be applied to the total as well. This makes it do, conservatively, 2-3 times as much damage as the Long Lash power.
In one Round, yes. I guess if your Combats last one Round, sure, you win. For everyone else, I can Lash Round 1, then we can kite the guy for a Round or two, or add some more Effects on to him, or just kill his buddies while he tries to close with us. It's an excellent Controller Power. Disruptive Strike is more like a Leader Power.
Third is how much this actually stops a monster, ignoring damage. Looking at non-brutes and soldiers, most have pretty good options at range. Also, if by some mircale you used it against a pure melee class and actually, somehow, hit its fortitude, it can still save its encounter powers till it is freed. Disruptive strike allows the ranger to wait till a monster uses its best attack (assuming he is privy to that info) and slap him with a -7+ penalty to hit.
Stop making it seem like hitting Fort is just soooo impossible; it's incredibly disingenuous. The Brute could be lower level than you, making it easier to hit; it could be a Soldier with massive AC and mediocre Fort; or it could be a Skirmisher with (obviously) very little Fort. Either way, it's not as hard as you make it out to be, IME.
Fourth, important to note, Lash needs to be used first round, before the monster gets to move, to have any real effect. Otherwise you are only pushing them about 4 squares, so even if they are slowed, they just have to move and charge to reach someone.
Ok, so since you stated a -7 for Disruptive, you're assuming an 18 WIS starting. I have to say I think you're very biased since, in the Lash example, you use a 16 starting INT to try and downplay it. Starting with an 18 INT, Lash Pushes 1+INT, meaning 5 Squares (more with Cleats or whatnot), which means that they are effectively Stunned. They can try to Move/Charge every turn, and every turn, you can easily base Move 6 away, denying them any chance of Attacking you. Hence, Stunned (Save Ends) with a Level 7 Encounter Power. As a Warlock, you also have nothing but Ranged Powers, so the guy is effectively dead if his allies can't stop you from Kiting him to death.
Last lets look at levels. Rangers get DS at level 3, warlocks get Lash at 7, that is 40 encounters of play where the ranger class is stopping one devastating attack every encounter before the warlock even comes to the table. To be fair though, DS does not get really sick until paragon when the penalty makes the attack a near auto-miss.
Pipes of Winter for a Level 3 AoE single-turn Stun with decent damage, to boot. You said Disrupting was better than any Encounter Power a Warlock gets; if you feel the need to drop Blanket Statements to make a point, then don't move the Goal Posts when people point out the obvious flaws in such a statement. Disrupting might be barely better than any equivalent-level Warlock Power for the purposes of Action Denial; it most certainly is not better than all of them.
Curse of the Golden Mist, best case scenario, does not actually help the party much. You are simply trading one guy on your side for one guy on theirs. It may be their best guy, but ensuring that your striker isn't doing any damage either is pretty horrible. Also monsters have more staying power than PCs (usually) so trading actions can actually be harmful as it is just making the battle take longer.
I disagree. A 600+ HP enemy is suddenly denied Standard Actions by a 150+ HP Warlock. Meanwhile, the rest of the Party mops up the mooks, and then it turns into an insta-win against the BBEG. Well worth it if planned correctly.
Confounding arrows on the other hand does ridiculous damage, and does not require any upkeep. If the target fails its save, then you get another turn to use a different power. Gaining actions on your side is equivalent to costing actions on theirs, so in the action denial race, you are crushing. If the target does unfortunately save, that is fine too. You just did insane damage, and your allies got at least one free CA round to pound on him, and now you are up again. He may still never get a turn.
I could see a low-will solo, like a red dragon, getting completely owned by Curse. There are situations where it is better, but overall it is no contest.
Again, though, you decided to go with the Blanket Statement of Confounding Arrows being better than any Daily a Warlock gets all through Epic, which is again easily proven wrong because there's an (almost) equivalent Daily available to a 'Lock at the exact same level. In all honesty, I'd just go with Iron Spike of Dis for a Daily that targets Reflex, Immobilizes (Save Ends) without needing to hit multiple times, and also does decent damage. It's even a Level 9 Daily.
Actually, I think Dark Rain of Mutuz-Vot (Level 15 'Lock Daily) really wins here. An AoE Power that Blinds (Save Ends) and has Sustain Minor? Sorry, Confounding Arrows, but you're nowehere near that good at Action Denial in comparison.
IMHO, Rangers are Leader-Secondary (especially Beastmaster Rangers), while Rogues are obviously the Controller-Secondary Martial Strikers. 'Locks, however, are more of a Striker/Controller Hybrid, with the ability to be quite good at both Roles, but master of neither. :S
If you only have a single really good Controller Power, you aren't a Controller, you're something else with a neat trick 1/Encounter. Nifty, but I can choose to do something akin to that trick all Encounter, every Encounter, and with my Dailies, and even (to a point) with my At-Wills!
Again, you only get 6 powers. Having two of them working towards control is a hell of a lot more than a 'neat trick.' It is a substantial part of your character. A warlock may have a lot more, but why do you need a lot more?
Stop making it seem like hitting Fort is just soooo impossible; it's incredibly disingenuous. The Brute could be lower level than you, making it easier to hit; it could be a Soldier with massive AC and mediocre Fort; or it could be a Skirmisher with (obviously) very little Fort. Either way, it's not as hard as you make it out to be, IME.
The DM who runs my warlock's game uses higher level brutes constantly and I quickly learned to hate fort powers. If your experience has been different, that is great. I can only work from my own anecdotal experiences, where I sometimes roll a 19 and still miss because I targeted the L+4 elite brute's fortitude.
Ok, so since you stated a -7 for Disruptive, you're assuming an 18 WIS starting. I have to say I think you're very biased since, in the Lash example, you use a 16 starting INT to try and downplay it. Starting with an 18 INT, Lash Pushes 1+INT, meaning 5 Squares (more with Cleats or whatnot), which means that they are effectively Stunned. They can try to Move/Charge every turn, and every turn, you can easily base Move 6 away, denying them any chance of Attacking you. Hence, Stunned (Save Ends) with a Level 7 Encounter Power. As a Warlock, you also have nothing but Ranged Powers, so the guy is effectively dead if his allies can't stop you from Kiting him to death.
Okay my math was a little off here, although 5 squares does not usually ensure he can't get to someone in 4.
Pipes of Winter for a Level 3 AoE single-turn Stun with decent damage, to boot. You said Disrupting was better than any Encounter Power a Warlock gets; if you feel the need to drop Blanket Statements to make a point, then don't move the Goal Posts when people point out the obvious flaws in such a statement. Disrupting might be barely better than any equivalent-level Warlock Power for the purposes of Action Denial; it most certainly is not better than all of them.
...
Actually, I think Dark Rain of Mutuz-Vot (Level 15 'Lock Daily) really wins here. An AoE Power that Blinds (Save Ends) and has Sustain Minor? Sorry, Confounding Arrows, but you're nowehere near that good at Action Denial in comparison.
Go back to my previous posts. I am sorry if I didn't make it clear on my 'blanket statement' but all of this is about Single-target control, not area control. Area control, unlike single target control, actually works well. Dark rain isn't just a great warlock control power, it would be one of my first choices on a wizard too. That power is amazing. But I was only referring to single-target control.
I disagree. A 600+ HP enemy is suddenly denied Standard Actions by a 150+ HP Warlock. Meanwhile, the rest of the Party mops up the mooks, and then it turns into an insta-win against the BBEG. Well worth it if planned correctly.
This comes down again to anecdotal evidence. I have played a warlock in a game with a ranger since 4e came out. I have tried retraining every level to try out all the various fey-lock powers trying to be useful and in the end trading one of my actions for the chance of maybe costing the BBEG one of his was never as impressive as just stunning him and doing insane damage or giving him -9 to hit and doing insane damage.
Again, though, you decided to go with the Blanket Statement of Confounding Arrows being better than any Daily a Warlock gets all through Epic, which is again easily proven wrong because there's an (almost) equivalent Daily available to a 'Lock at the exact same level. In all honesty, I'd just go with Iron Spike of Dis for a Daily that targets Reflex, Immobilizes (Save Ends) without needing to hit multiple times, and also does decent damage. It's even a Level 9 Daily.
Dis is a con-based powers. You can't just mix and match con powers and charisma powers in explaining what awesome control powers warlocks have to choose from because they can't choose both of them, especially not if they want their Lash of the Long Night to still push 5 squares.
Frankly I'd love to see a feat to boost my Curse damage to d8's so I wouldn't have to use one specific rods. Other than that its great to see such a heated debate, I just don't see the point. People seem to want to homogenize the classes where Striekrs all have to do exactly the same dmg/round. I feel thats certainly not what D&D is all about.
That is not what we are asking for. We don't expect all warlock builds to be about insane DPR. It is fine to have a control build. The problem is they should get the choice of having a more pure DPR build if they want. Let feylocks continue with their low-dpr if they want to, but why to dark locks and infernal locks have to suck at damage too?
Well, technically you get 8 Powers (3 Class Encounter, 3 Class Daily, 1 PP Encounter, 1 PP Daily), but I agree a Ranger could make an interesting Striker/Controller (Spiked-Chain + Dragging Flail + Lots of Ranger Prone Powers? Hehehe...).
Lash would Slow + Push 5 Squares, meaning that (unless they had Reach, and that guy, I would not target; I'm sure his Fort would be astronomical! :S) they just couldn't reach you, even with a Move + Charge (4 Square movement total).
Other than that, yeah, it's annoying that Rangers get such cool Effects as well as hella-damage; if not for the Archer Ranger, I wouldn't care much, myself. Disrupting Strike's not that amazing with a Melee-Ranger, and they can't do Ranged Control like a 'Lock at all; an Archer Ranger, though, as most everyone here already knows, is one of the most unbalanced Classes in the game. The only downside to that Build at all (and the reason absolutely no one in my groups plays them anymore) is that they are just horribly boring to play.
Well, unless you really like Counter-Strike, I guess. :P
I guess my problem is that by any account a ranged spell caster has some benefits and drawbacks. A warlock easily seems to have higher damage capacity than any Defender, Controller, and Leader. Its powers are varied, but going over the PH and AP seems to have powers in the same damage code ranges as other strikers. So when it gets down to it, the d6 should be a d8 (with a feat). Thats about the only gripe I can really see.
In other words, Empowering Shadows should scale with Tier, making it a Lethal Hunter-ish Feat that requires a Warlock to use Shadow Walk more often (which, btw, is exactly what I think they should have done with it :S).
I know this isn't an ideal method, and this isn't quite keeping warlocks warlocks (but it is also not necessarily doing anything more than snitching a little from another striker), but after badgering CustServe (which is, as of CCG 1.9, am RPGA legal source for rules clarifications), I managed to get this out of them:
Asketh me: "With the official errata of Sneak Attack: Once per round, when you have combat advantage against an enemy and hit that enemy with an attack that uses a crossbow, a light blade, or a sling, the attack deals extra damage. If you have dealt Sneak Attack damage since the start of your turn, you cannot deal it again until the start of your next turn.
I wanted to ask, does this mean that Sneak Attack can be applied to any power, no matter what kind, as long as the character is using a light blade, crossbow, or sling to attack with that power and has access to Sneak Attack? That is to say, there is nothing in the wording to suggest that Sneak Attack requires the power it is used with to be a weapon power or an implement power so can it be used with either?"
Sayeth them: "That is correct. Sneak Attack does not require the power you use it with to have the Weapon keyword."
DM thought that was too slippery to rule on (and I agreed--it didn't straight out answer my question), so suggested I pin them down with the following: "OK, since you stated that the power does not need to have the weapon keyword, does that mean that if I have sneak attack the following is true:
A) I am using a dagger or shortsword (both light blades) as an implement and I use Eldritch Blast on a target that I have combat advantage on, I am to roll my Sneak Attack damage?
B) Can I apply my Sneak Attack damage to any successful attack where I am using a Light Blade, Crossbow or Sling as an implement? This of course assumes that I have combat advantage against the creature."
Sayeth CustServ: "Hello. You are correct in both your suggestions. So long as you are using one of those weapons as your implement and have combat advantage you can use sneak attack." (emphasis mine)
In other words, CustServ has clarified that Sneak Attack works with ALL powers, provided the conditions are met--out of the box, with Sneak of Shadows, monks can Sneak Attack with a sling, warlocks can Sneak Attack with a pact blade. (And now DM agrees, so now maybe my Feylock will have a chance to make his own powers HURT MORE!)
And so, Sneak of Shadows is a good feat to get a nasty extra bit of striking once an encounter with warlock powers, provided you've got a light blade implement on you.
One issue with it is the Dex requirement, though it's not that hard to get to if you're also trying to qualify for Dual Implement Spellcaster and such without dropping too many points into Dex.
The other issue is getting CA. This is where it actually helps the warlocks that need the most help--Feylocks. Eyebite + AP + Attack That Could Use A Little Extra 'Umph' + Sneak Attack = Tasty Tasty Damage. Even better if they are Feytouched, because that second attack is getting a +6 to hit (+4 from Feytouched, +2 from CA because they're invisible while blasting them). There are, of course, other ways to get CA for warlocks (Shadow Warlock armor...we wantssss it, precioussss, we wantssss it....)
And for anyone worried about trying to justify it in the context of flavor...it's not that hard to fluff it. Come on, warlocks are overflowing with flavor. This is how I'm doing it, and on the face of it, it's pretty utilitarian--basically, magical SA hits the same place as curse does, with the help of a blade implement to shape the magic (it's going to be much more RP and flavorful in our campaign due to circumstances, but that's the gist of it since SA and curse are both untyped damage), but pick your own poison if you decide Sneak of Shadows is worth the feat slot to give you 2/3/5d6 extra damage once an encounter to stack on top of 1/2/3d6 curse. Just make sure you have a lot of extra d6s...
So...anyhow...if you want to use Sneak of Shadows to help warlocks out in the damage department, it's there to use, and it's RPGA legal if you've got CustServ to back you up. You might have to get your own CustServ answers, but right up there *points* are legitimate rules clarifications that you can use and perhaps refine to get your own answers to bring to the table if you decide to use it in RPGA play.
I am aware that this is a known trick, what with people taking Daggermaster and all, but I hadn't seen it put in a way that could be done to convince RPGA DMs per the CCG rules in this thread (because it isn't a cut and dried issue), so I thought I'd offer it.
Curse damage is not inferior. If you're getting +4 extra at 1st level with your Sorcerer, it's only with a very specific Race, and that's not an argument you can win against a Warlock, because a Half-Elf 'Lock with Versatile Master can easily out-damage you with his new "At-Will." I use Howling Charge and a Fullblade, myself, and 2d12+9d6+35 damage with that kind of attack is simply atrocious. The average there is 83, and I'm just using a Reckless Fullblade; a Bloodclaw would put that in the 90s.
And my Cold Sorcerer does an average of 181 DPR with its At-Will. It also does 134 DPR per enemy it hits At-Will with Burning Spray. So that is over double your Warlock's damage.
vulnerable 5 really isnt that great, the gloves are nice but, meh? shard of the mage does same thing, doesnt matter energy type
You don't have to try to "salvage" the warlock, you just have to try to play it for its strengths. Yes, its less "point and shoot" type of a striker and it requires more cooperation, tactics, you know... THINKING.
Agreed. It's one of the only Classes that pretty much requires System Mastery to be good at what it's supposed to be good at. :S
Drackthor wrote:
Let's cool it with the insults and personal jabs, Crimson. I just read through the link in your sig, it's a pretty valuable post. The important thing to remember is that, at it's core, we are debating how well fake elves shoot fake fire at fake enemies, so for fake's sake, keep it friendly.
I will attempt to, and should probably go back and read that Link (again! :S), as well as Edit my post. However, Blanket Statements disguised as Facts are the hallmark of arrogant n00bs, and (as you can probably tell) that's a huge Pet Peeve of mine.
you wrote earlier that rogues can't take someone out of combat, perhaps you have not seen Knockout?
Other than that, yeah, it's annoying that Rangers get such cool Effects as well as hella-damage; if not for the Archer Ranger, I wouldn't care much, myself. Disrupting Strike's not that amazing with a Melee-Ranger, and they can't do Ranged Control like a 'Lock at all; an Archer Ranger, though, as most everyone here already knows, is one of the most unbalanced Classes in the game. The only downside to that Build at all (and the reason absolutely no one in my groups plays them anymore) is that they are just horribly boring to play.
Not just that, I remember reading an article about changes they were making to controllers where they hinted that they didn't want area attacks to be a controller thing and they specifically mentioned the archer ranger as one that should have some.
Area attacks is the only thing spellcasters have left.
