Shattered Kingdoms

Okay yeah, I imagine you guys are probably getting sick of all the warlock threads, but hey, I enjoy the class and truth be told, they do need to be made better, so, I'll post what I think is most broken about em and try not to spam too many threads.

The topic of today's discussion: Elementals!

Now, asplain to me this. You have the fire elemental. A big hulking walking silent guy with a hot temper to match. Now, the thing with these guys is upon taking a beating, they're completely immune to fire attacks, like say..Fireball. The message says they're immune, damage done is 0. I've tested, they are immune.

Then, you have the air elementals. These wispy fighters are jus a step below their hot tempered relatives, but theres one glaring problem. Where fire elementals are immune to fire, air elementals aren't immune to lightning or "air" element spells. It really makes no sense. You cast chain lightning, and kaboom. The elemental takes a truck ton of damage if you're unlucky. Why is it that the fire is immune to it's element but the air is not?

Moving along, we have the earth elementals. The stalwart obsidian wearin tanks. These guys aren't immune to earthquake (like anyone would cast that anyways...) So yeah. I stand by my point. One thing that could help locks in survivability, levelling and PK is make their elementals immune to their respective elements like the fire elemental.

Thoughts anyone? Share your ideas.

Now this change I can understand and I don't think it would throw the class out of balance all that much. It would make sense just as harm/cause spells heal undead.

If you enjoy them, then they must not be bad. :/

No, I don't see a reason that elementals should all conform to the same pattern. Some are clearly meant to be more defensive than others.

I would like to see improvements, especially to air/water. Except for a few immunity-mismatch and RP cases, I was always using fire/earth. Given an warlock's other spells, and that earth and water are now learned at the same time, there's no reason to have such an obvious hierarchy of elementals. This is a class that needs more variety, instead of continually casting the last-learned spell.

My question is this.

How could an elemental get hurt by it's own element? A water elemental would freeze and shatter, but it wouldn't hurt it. Ultimately it'd thaw, and reform.

A fire elemental is composed of fire, so fire isn't going to hurt it but feed it / add to it's form.

An earthquake isn't going to damage an earth elemental because it'll just break apart and reform and lightning isn't going to damage an air elemental because it's incorpereal. The lightning would literally pass right through it. It makes no sense why the other elementals don't share that same trait as the fire elemental.

You say you want to make the other elements more useful. Water has reach, but is incredibly weak. Air and fire can fly and have energy hide, I see no difference in the two other than fire is completely immune to fire attacks.

Earth has obsidian hide and can't fly. I'm not sure of it's special abilities if any at all. What would you propose that make the elements more balanced instead of the dominance that fire currently possesses?

Should higher level earth elementals have mithril and eventually adamantite hides instead of obsidian? Technically, metals are a part of the earth are they not? I could see that strengthening an earth elemental.

Air has energy hide, so you can't really strengthen it, but instead give it immunity to lightning. Fire is fine as it is.

The last one boils down to Water. How would you strengthen it? You don't have to worry about immunities becaus theres no water spells htat warlocks get that hit them as well.

Isn't there a certain way (using tablets that shall not be named) to turn a water elemental into an ice elemental?

That was a Yenko thing afaik, and I believe it was removed.

you can still make them a ice elemental, and IMO warlocks are one of the easiest classes to level, right off the bat you get decient damage spells. PK wise even with thier glaring weaknesses they are still not to horrible (granted i played a lock 5 years ago and it was MUCH better) There are a few things that could make them have more utility, but they have all been discussed and if they are going to happen or not this thread will likely not sway a vote.

Well, let's see:

Water elemental: Needs decent damage output. Reach is great in concept, but an offensive ability backed with so little damage isn't helpful. That the water elemental has wretched general defense is payment enough for reach.

Earth elemental: Not sure it needs anything. I used it regularly at Master+ because it was so great at soaking NPC damage; it's the only elemental with heavy armor.

Air elemental: Needs something, since it's just an inferior version of the fire elemental, save for the damage type. I'm thinking utility or a debuff, since its lower power level is intentional. A poison bite attack, due to toxic vapors? A version of dust kick that works while airborne? Airy water automatically in its presence?

Warlocks in general: Their problem is they're built for raw spell damage, which the common magic protection enchantment soaks up so nicely. It'd be nice to see increased damage on warlock spells, combined with increased damage reduction if you make a save. Or give warlocks a minor mass debuff based on reflex: a poison cloud spell or somesuch. Make reflex count for something.

First their elementals need to actually have a save for dispel magic so the warlock isn't !insta owned in one cast.