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1 year ago ::
Dec 26, 2011 - 3:09PM
#1
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Fey Pact Binder www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/d...Comments? Kind of looks to me like this is a bit stronger than the HoS Binder. There are a couple of pretty nice powers here, but it also seems like the concept is 'control at melee range', which is OK but surviving is going to be tough. I doubt it will fully address the original's weaknesses. Sort of sounds like some of the powers are still likely better used on a regular warlock (though many of them are also pretty anemic unless you have the Fey Pact Binder riders. Overall not bad, but you can still get basically the same sort of concept with a stronger build using straight feylock. Maybe I'm missing some detail though, lol.
That is not dead which may eternal lie
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1 year ago ::
Dec 26, 2011 - 3:26PM
#2
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Fey Pact Binder
www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/d...
Comments?
Kind of looks to me like this is a bit stronger than the HoS Binder. There are a couple of pretty nice powers here, but it also seems like the concept is 'control at melee range', which is OK but surviving is going to be tough. I doubt it will fully address the original's weaknesses. Sort of sounds like some of the powers are still likely better used on a regular warlock (though many of them are also pretty anemic unless you have the Fey Pact Binder riders. Overall not bad, but you can still get basically the same sort of concept with a stronger build using straight feylock. Maybe I'm missing some detail though, lol.
Its mostly par for the course. The problem with the original binder is that its pact goes off when you either kill(you don't deal damage well) an enemy or when one dies adjacent to you(you're a ranged Controller who doesn't want to be adjacent to enemies). This failure of class features combined with the generally weak riders on Binder powers and quality powers from the base Warlock class result in the fact that a regular Warlock does it better than the Binder. So much better than the Binder in fact that the Binder might as well not exist.
The end result is that the Binder class still sucks, the article gives more candy to the original Warlock than it does to the Binder, and we got a third option for Hybrid Binder to poach the Boon onto a Striker chassis(taking as little from the Binder side as possible) that will actually benefit from it.
...whatever
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1 year ago ::
Dec 26, 2011 - 4:02PM
#3
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The trigger condition for the pact boon has always been the big issue. There's just a low chance of ever invoking it. The value of the boon is pretty situational too. Yes, clearly this new variant does nothing to fix that.
That is not dead which may eternal lie
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1 year ago ::
Dec 27, 2011 - 2:30AM
#4
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I don't often agree with Erachima, but his "This is clearly meant to be a joke" in the CharOp thread sums this article up quite well IMO.
The idea of the binder subclass was a good one: a warlock who gives up his striker extra damage feature to get controller riders on his powers. But the execution has been abysmal. In many cases, the binder's riders actually make his powers worse rather than better, by giving the enemy concealment from the binder's allies or dealing damage to the monster he just dominated, as examples. Even when the rider makes a power slightly better for the binder, it generally does so by making it deal a tiny extra bit of damage, not by improving its control effects. Combine that with the binder's inability to actually choose most of his powers (controllers value flexibility more than any other role) and his borderline-unusable Pact Boon, and you have the game's one and only (to date) true 'trap' class.
It's not a trap because it's merely bad (although it is very, very bad, to the point that it can easily help the monsters more than it helps the party), but because it is strictly worse at being a controller than the pre-Essentials warlock, who can take nearly all the binder's powers and use them almost as effectively, just as effectively, and in some cases more effectively, than the binder, while also doing more damage and being able to choose powers that are better than the binder's fixed powers anyway. The one and only advantage the binder has as a controller over the pre-E warlock is access to multi-target at-will attacks, and a human or (at paragon) half-elf warlock doesn't even have to worry about that. Even then, the binder's multi-target at-wills are nowhere near as potent as the wizard's, invoker's or druid's equivalents.
This article does nothing whatsoever to fix any of that. At best, it gives pre-E warlocks some more controllerish powers to choose from. Arguably, by doing that, it actually makes the binder's problems worse, because it makes it even more obsolete than it was already.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 27, 2011 - 3:15AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Feb 27, 2010
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I don't often agree with Erachima, but his "This is clearly meant to be a joke" in the CharOp thread sums this article up quite well IMO.
The idea of the binder subclass was a good one: a warlock who gives up his striker extra damage feature to get controller riders on his powers. But the execution has been abysmal. In many cases, the binder's riders actually make his powers worse rather than better, by giving the enemy concealment from the binder's allies or dealing damage to the monster he just dominated, as examples. Even when the rider makes a power slightly better for the binder, it generally does so by making it deal a tiny extra bit of damage, not by improving its control effects. Combine that with the binder's inability to actually choose most of his powers (controllers value flexibility more than any other role) and his borderline-unusable Pact Boon, and you have the game's one and only (to date) true 'trap' class.
It's not a trap because it's merely bad (although it is very, very bad, to the point that it can easily help the monsters more than it helps the party), but because it is strictly worse at being a controller than the pre-Essentials warlock, who can take nearly all the binder's powers and use them almost as effectively, just as effectively, and in some cases more effectively, than the binder, while also doing more damage and being able to choose powers that are better than the binder's fixed powers anyway. The one and only advantage the binder has as a controller over the pre-E warlock is access to multi-target at-will attacks, and a human or (at paragon) half-elf warlock doesn't even have to worry about that. Even then, the binder's multi-target at-wills are nowhere near as potent as the wizard's, invoker's or druid's equivalents.
This article does nothing whatsoever to fix any of that. At best, it gives pre-E warlocks some more controllerish powers to choose from. Arguably, by doing that, it actually makes the binder's problems worse, because it makes it even more obsolete than it was already.
Designers please read this and act upon it.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 27, 2011 - 4:09AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2005
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I don't often agree with Erachima, but his "This is clearly meant to be a joke" in the CharOp thread sums this article up quite well IMO.
The idea of the binder subclass was a good one: a warlock who gives up his striker extra damage feature to get controller riders on his powers.
Yeah. The problem there is that the Warlock already had great controller riders on his powers. So, giving up striker extra damage to gain them is giving it up for nothing.
I'm having trouble even trying to figure out what the design goal is behind the Binder. The Vampire is terrible, but at least it looks like it was designed with goals in mind. I'm just lost when I read the Binder.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 27, 2011 - 10:03AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Dec 17, 2008
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I agree with the consensus.
Unless!
They are doing something with Binders in the upcoming errata package, then it could be cool.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 27, 2011 - 10:16AM
#8
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I agree with the consensus.
Unless!
They are doing something with Binders in the upcoming errata package, then it could be cool.
If they were doing that why would they release an article now that would simply have to be updated in a few weeks? I wouldn't hold out any real hope for that.
I think you just have to understand that the devs clearly have different criteria than charops. In the case of the Vampire IMHO that's all there is to say about it, the class is solid and the design deliberatly does what it does for reasons that relate to what the devs wanted it to do. The Binder I think is just one of those concepts that theoretically sounds neat, but just doesn't work in practice.
That is not dead which may eternal lie
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1 year ago ::
Dec 27, 2011 - 12:21PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Dec 11, 2011
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I agree with the consensus.
Unless!
They are doing something with Binders in the upcoming errata package, then it could be cool.
If they were doing that why would they release an article now that would simply have to be updated in a few weeks? I wouldn't hold out any real hope for that.
I think you just have to understand that the devs clearly have different criteria than charops. In the case of the Vampire IMHO that's all there is to say about it, the class is solid and the design deliberatly does what it does for reasons that relate to what the devs wanted it to do. The Binder I think is just one of those concepts that theoretically sounds neat, but just doesn't work in practice.
Well, yes, but some of the bigger flaws are fixable via update. Reword the pact boon so it triggers if an enemy dies in your LoS while adjacent to an ally (rather than just you) and you'd give Gloomies some quite viable positioning tricks and Stars an excellent defensive feature. "Unfix" the encounter powers so binders can cherrypick from the entire warlock menu and you'd reduce the complaints about how awful some of their pact riders are by letting them just skip on them without MC swaps.
Add a good Dragon article with some build-specific feats designed to buff their controller role and some good encounter powers keyed to each binder pact that can't be poached by other warlocks and you could have a viable subclass with minimal effort.
They're flawed, but not so badly as to be unrepairable, no matter how stridently some argue otherwise. Trading curse damage for control or defensive pact boons isn't inherently a bad idea, it's just the current execution that needs work, and not even all that much work at that.
The vampires and bladesingers are in much the same boat as the binders. Probably none of them will ever make CharOps happy, but with a little feat support and a few more options to choose from, they could be quite nice to play in campaign games at all tiers.
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1 year ago ::
Dec 27, 2011 - 12:29PM
#10
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I agree with the consensus.
Unless!
They are doing something with Binders in the upcoming errata package, then it could be cool.
If they were doing that why would they release an article now that would simply have to be updated in a few weeks? I wouldn't hold out any real hope for that.
I think you just have to understand that the devs clearly have different criteria than charops. In the case of the Vampire IMHO that's all there is to say about it, the class is solid and the design deliberatly does what it does for reasons that relate to what the devs wanted it to do. The Binder I think is just one of those concepts that theoretically sounds neat, but just doesn't work in practice.
Well, yes, but some of the bigger flaws are fixable via update. Reword the pact boon so it triggers if an enemy dies in your LoS while adjacent to an ally (rather than just you) and you'd give Gloomies some quite viable positioning tricks and Stars an excellent defensive feature. "Unfix" the encounter powers so binders can cherrypick from the entire warlock menu and you'd reduce the complaints about how awful some of their pact riders are by letting them just skip on them without MC swaps.
Add a good Dragon article with some build-specific feats designed to buff their controller role and some good encounter powers keyed to each binder pact that can't be poached by other warlocks and you could have a viable subclass with minimal effort.
They're flawed, but not so badly as to be unrepairable, no matter how stridently some argue otherwise. Trading curse damage for control or defensive pact boons isn't inherently a bad idea, it's just the current execution that needs work, and not even all that much work at that.
The vampires and bladesingers are in much the same boat as the binders. Probably none of them will ever make CharOps happy, but with a little feat support and a few more options to choose from, they could be quite nice to play in campaign games at all tiers.
Bladesingers and Vampires are fine. More options never hurts any class, but there's at all really wrong with either one.
I'm not really so sure with the Binder. Sure, you can 'fix' the pact boon, but I just don't see where the class really filled a niche that needed to be filled by a new class. Better to just give regular 'locks the option to take a fixed version of the boon. One less class to support and nothing lost. Really though there just never was a strong need for more controllery 'lock anyway. The fundamental problem with it was always that the concept is just weak.
That is not dead which may eternal lie
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