Shattered Kingdoms

Nah. Just that you knew what to expect from them, and how to avoid them. The game would totally be better with PK groups who had opponents to face them instead of being forced to pick on people who don't want to get involved.

Then you could play your own way instead of being forced into someone else's agenda all the time.

It's not golden age syndrome. It's "Hey, I like some people who used to play" syndrome. My god, that is TERRIBLE!

I stopped reading right there and now agree with you fully. Right now everyone gets PK'd and then there's a mass exodus from one cabal to another.

Warlocks are still terrible, though. 30 MP and you might as well laugh at all their damage.

How does everyone get RE these days?

How about a high level warlock only spell that has their other cast spells ignore MP as long as they maintain concentration? (probably a crazy idea)

...I don't like that idea at all.

I'm so glad D-A isn't here to respond to that.

How about making all warlock spells non-magical like magma spray so that they ignore magical resistance enchantments?

A really awesome idea would be to make it so that warlocks can cast their utility spells like stone skin on other pc characters.

Chain lightning also needs looked at. Earthquake also sucks massive balls. I couldn't find any use for this spell other than spamming it against NPCs that were weak to blunt. It doesn't do decent damage against anything else. Sure we have a spell like fly that penalises people for flying but earthquake is still subpar. Why use that when spells like fireball, cone of cold and chain lightning are superior?

Finally, split resist elements up into different spells like resist cold and resist fire. Why should there be a one spell panacea for all elemental spells? Make it so that resist fire doesn't completely neuter magma spray. It can already only hit for double damage once. Why make it so that it's impossible to get it to cling, and take reduced damage from it? Better yet, make these skills that are only possible if you are playing the warlock class.

Why don't searing heat, or freezing cold do some sort of damage to characters such as the form of mana drain or movement drain? Abilities like these would give warlocks extra utility as they would be able to move through these areas unimpeded.

Give them a skill that can be toggled on and off that emulates the Jason theme so that when they close in on their prey they can scare the [REDACTED] out of them.

I dunno, there's a lot of ideas I could probably come up with given more time.

I don't drink red bull.

Earthquake does need to be looked at badly. At expert 2, i was casting it on some tough NPCs. Just a few NPCs at a time, like 3 or so. It took 15-18+ casts to kill ONE NPC, and 9 times out of 10 it ONLY killed one NPC. Those 15-18 casts also took ALL of my mana (i usually cast it about 25ish times but some always failed as its only superb) the damage is laughable. WIthout resist elements, casting it on myself yields about...3-5% dmg on a warlock. With resist elements, even less.

Lightning bolts damage isn't too bad and fireball I've not gotten to use much. The fact that it hurts everything in the room, including you and your elemental kind of sucks. You literally have to cast fireball, then healing ray twice. Any incoming damage no your elemental or you, and fireball becomes useless unless you can cast it at range on an immobile target. Chain lightning and cone of cold i've not gotten to look at as I'm only expert at the time.

However, locks seem to have a bunch of weaknesses i've noticed. The lack of being able to get in third row unlike sorcs / necros is rough. Stoneskin, while nice, is easily bypassed by magic dealing weapons, which theres a lot out there. Ironguard would is super useful, but my only complaint with that is the fact that most NPCs tend to throw wooden spears rather than the steel daggers. Levelling is an absolute pain because of this. All the AoE spells become useless if you're not careful as 5 things throwing daggers at you constantly will eat your armor alive, not to mention kill you as the things are made of wood generally. You can't really order the elemental to dirt kick everything because of order lag and insane NPC saves vs dirt kick.

Earthquake would probably be better if it had its cast time lengthened and maybe the damage quadrupled or so. As of now it's incredibly weak and even though it hits other rooms around you, it doesn't do any damage whatsoever to NPCs.

As to dulrik's response, i think making everything bypass MP would be nice, but..probably a bit over the top. Something like that though would have to require heavy concentration (not that locks have many spells to hold to begin with compared to a necro or sorc i've played.)

Oh and one buff that would severely help. Make elementals NOT use a timer and make them undispellable or something. Seriously, having the elemental just poof mid battle because you lose track of the time it's been summoned is a certain death. The cast time on it is so long that, if you were in PK, well. flee or die and hope you don't get bashed. I generally don't have many problems levelling a character but this one has been stupidly hard. Any magic NPC i face instantly dispels it like 3 rounds or at the first chance my elemental actually misses a bash. It's ridiculous, then I have to wait about 30 minutes irl (it seems) just to resummon it.

But yeah, these are just things i've noticed. Feel free to comment on em or offer advice. I'm new to the class after all and know little to nothing of PK mechanics. Advice is always appreciated.

I just want to say that if you're casting conjure elemental in the middle of a PvP battle then you're doing something wrong.

Earthquake doesn't need to be buffed. There's a recently GMed 14 hour character to attest to that. Yeah yeah, he had help, but I was able to level like a madman with a centaur warlock killing 9 or so NPCs solo at a time using earthquake, and that was a pretty low-risk situation. You do have to realize that it will always be -only- a leveling spell. Yeah sure, it takes 18 casts to kill one NPC, but think about it this way: It also only takes 18 casts to kill 20 NPCs. Thrown weapons were actually implemented -because- warlocks are so broken, but even then as a lock there are ways to mitigate that damage, or escape from it if you need to rest.

Also, don't ever ever ever ever ever level on sorc/necro NPCs while playing a warlock. Just don't do it. Level on warrior NPCs or hellion/priest NPCs.

Definitely the biggest weakness of warlocks is their inability to reach third row: Which usually dictates that you either join a certain cabal, join a tribunal, or don't fight hellions/paladins/mercs/barbs without someone else to help you and stand in the way. If you don't do that, then you are pretty screwed by a good player honestly, on account of the fact that stone skin is broken by magical weapons and warlocks have no avoidance skills except dodge and also have crappy HP. You'll get massacred by any merc/barb before you can even o all bash, o all rescue. I'm not really sure if that's a terrible thing given that warlocks have so much strength in ranged combat and group affect spells (For one being the best group healers in SK), but it is something to think about. I'm tempted to say that making stone skin work for all types of weapon damage would be the best solution to this, but truth be told that would probably be too powerful in favor of warlocks.

Oh, and the fact that any sorc/shaman/necro can totally screw them by dispelling their elemental. If you want a good change to warlocks that will help the class overall, make it so that dispelling their elemental allows them to resummon one after 2-3 ticks at most. Killing it shouldn't do that, just dispelling it.