Shattered Kingdoms

As everyone knows, I play Mephistir. I've put in over 700+ hours on him, and while I've not had the best track record of PK, I have managed to bag a few kills in my time. I've also ran into many situations that are down right impossible to win with the tools a warlock are given. Now mind you, I'm speaking from a solo warlock as I've not been in group PK, but the theme of this post pretty much remains the same.

Here's the problem I ran into and anyone who hasn't played a warlock, I urge you to try it. I honestly would like to see a non cabal / tribunal warlock played successfully. First off, I want to preface this with the following help file.

Warlocks are the most untraditional of the wizardly professions, for in the
truest sense they are not wizards at all. A warlock receives his powers
from Yed, the great lord of the elemental planes and all warlocks must
pledge their powers to his service. Warlocks wield great destructive
power, but are often as great a danger to their friends as they are to
their enemies.

After playing a few warlocks now and getting my hands on their spells, I envision warlocks as massive machines of destruction. Chain lightning, fireball, earthquakes are all things that do serious damage, even to the caster. However, the fact of the matter is that spell damage in general in this game is kind of messed up.

Unlike melee damage, spell damage can't be boosted. There is no giant strength / frenzy / haste equivalent to spell damage. Melee damage can hit from 4-6 times per round where as spell damage, with the exception of chain lightning, only hits 1 time per round. This means the damage has to be higher than melee to compensate. This is where the balancing portion becomes a nightmare. Against unprepared opponents, warlocks absolutely stomp them into the ground. Magma can straight up one shot some sorcerors (I did with Benedict a couple of times back in the day) and chain lightning can 2 shot people. Fireball, all the spells do insane damage, literally upwards of 25% of an HP pool or more.

The problem becomes when a warlock runs into a well enchanted opponent. Anyone who has a suit of decent magical protection with sanctuary / protection, which is very easy to get, and the warlock begins to run into problems. First off, the only spell they get to increase damage is faerie fire. This lowers the person's MP so the spells can hit harder. The second thing is shocking grasp, which lowers reflex which almost all warlock spells are based on reflex.

Now here is where things get tricky. As I said, spell damage against an unprepared opponent with roughly 22 MP done around 16-30% on some spells, mainly lightning bolt / cone of cold. However, once sanc / protection was applied, the damage was drastically cut, literally by half or more. Saves on those respective spells were doing only 2-5% hp with full hits doing around 12-16%. This is fairly understandable and makes sense. However, a warlock has no counter to this whatsoever. Furthermore, when you factor in shield or even racial bonuses from magic, things get even worse, in some cases magma spray only doing around 7-12% damage to some people. It becomes straight up impossible for a warlock to land a kill at this point against a person who even puts in a tiny bit of preparation.

Now the warlock on the other hand has access to staves / wands. They don't get scrolls so one shots like petrification and things are out the window. The only way they have to break ranks is to straight up damage down a pet or make it flee via wands of fear. Dispel wands, moderate ones are useless unless they're overpowered. A sliver of willpower will negate any attempts from a dispel wand with anything less than overpowered charges. At this point, a warlock becomes effectively nullified.

One of the advantages a warlock has is ranged. However let's take a skirmish with an MR barb. The only spell that will work on an MR barb is magma. All others are absorbed and heals the MR barb. If they have a reaching weapon, putting the elemental second row will buy some time to cast magma. Assuming it takes 5 to 6 magmas to kill someone, including a cling, you're looking at 10-12 rounds of combat or so. If the barb is smart, they'll focus down your storebought pet and put you second row while trying to dirt you so you effectively can't hurt them anymore. Once you're second row, depending on if they have a weapon that ignores stoneskin, you're done.

Now, while I don't think that warlocks should be able to gank everyone and anyone they want and be some unstoppable solo force, I don't believe they should be forced into a defensive role for cabal HQ's or tribunals either, which is currently what they're done. A lone warlock is not a threat, even to most people one on one. Classes aren't supposed to be pigeonholed into choosing a cabal or tribunal to be effective, but currently a warlock is. Their greatest advantage, range, is nullified by speed run and also the fact that the warlock can no longer step out of combat when behind the elemental once it engages. This means you're there for hte long haul. Fleeing will cause your elemental to flee and end combat for you to be chased down and bashed.

What I'm saying is that warlocks need a way to either A: Increase the spell damage people take, other than faerie fire. Literally it's a tiny increase (2-6% at best) or B: Dispel their opponents.

Otherwise, I'd seriously appreciate some advice on what else could be done. Against a prepared opponent, there isn't anything I've been able to do, even with buffing my elemental with sanc / protection etc. (Means to buff elementals are limited since they can't ingest / quaff things) and when spell damage can be reduced to a point that it takes a caster 20+ rounds to down a melee, not including heal vials..I have no clue as to what you can possibly do to win an engagement like that. Also, how do you combat people buffed out the wazoo with no means to debuff them (They're hoarded) and range can't be put into play? I'm not saying I should win every scenario ever, but I would at least like some more scenarios present that I have some chance of winning.

when you factor in shield or even racial bonuses from magic, things get even worse, in some cases magma spray only doing around 7-12% damage to some people.
I wouldn't be completely against magma ignoring all forms of MP including racial MP or warlocks getting dispel.

Nothing has changed since the last few times you posted this and everyone in the know told you that you were barking up the newb tree.

Yerp.

This is one of the few statements you have ever posted that I agree with. The spell casting system on SK is utterly flawed when the other two mage classes (sorcerer and necromancer) resort to melee damage via pet/proxy to score kills in PK - shadowy wights, charms, etc. Or they recite scrolls that can instantly kill the target (petrify and finger of death).

Unfortunately for warlocks, the melee damage of their pet is fairly weak and they don't have access to scrolls. The class is still good at CRS defense, which would be significant if most players didn't loathe it and actively go out of their way to avoid it.

Yeah, that's kind of what makes the warlock kind of a meh experience to play. It's been stated several times that you're not supposed to be required to have a cabal or tribunal to be somewhat successful. Warlocks didn't get the memo on that one though.

How do you balance the two? You've more experience than I have in the PK field, what would you suggest? One band aid for now is simply giving warlocks access to dispel so they can debuff their opponent. Then again, a well enchanted suit would protect a lot except from magma, which I imagine faerie fire, at least in that case, would be useful. Simply giving warlocks scrolls takes out from their theme. That and there is no real reason to cast in this game. The majority of PK from spell casters is as you said, carried through instant gank spells via scrolls and such, or control undead. How would you go about balancing the two? Casting in PK needs to be brought back.

Edit: Thanks for not dismissing everything I wrote. It's nice to see some potential healthy discussion.

Casting in PK makes you subject to the only real tactical mechanic in the game: command lock-out. Why do you have to bash yourself to deal damage? That ain't right.

i recently tried a warlock here is my feedback:

1. can we get 2 tick advance warning instead of 1 tick advance because some group battles actually last 2-3 ticks so elemental can go in between it all
2. can we get 2 warnings instead of 1, first warning at -5 ticks left
3. when elemental disappears can you make it drop everything instead of losing everything it carries
4. sorcerer's color spray does less damage than cone of cold but because it blinds, it has such huge utility, most team fights sorcs just spam color spray and do awesome, can we give cone of cold something like -str and -int temporary debuff due to freezing cold?
5. sorc and necro charms get to wield weapons and deal massive damage, elementals are okay can get one any time, don't wights last 2 hours now? can we adjust elemental to stay around for 45+ minutes

gg thx

I actually proposed, a long long time ago, that cone of cold also cause chill touch when it fully lands.

Now lets be serious: Warlocks are fine.