New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Silverkey.2078

Silverkey.2078

Hi all

Here is my contribution to the game of inventing new elite specs, with a very un-original name: the warlock.


Currently, the necromancer and reaper have one of the highest “passive” sustain in game thanks to their high HP pool and their death shroud. But this boon is also their downfall as this comes at the price of very low mobility, very limited active defenses, and to some extent a fairly low DPS in PvE.

Because of this, some roles are simply unaccessible for necro or reapers. For example, roaming roles, both in PvP and WvW are difficult, necros being unable to properly disengage when things go dire or to chase targets who are trying to disengage from them.

Also, while necros and reapers excel at self-buffed sustained damage, their burst is very limited. Their whole class mechanics, slowly building up with time, make them very strong in prolonged fights, but they are usually unable to end the fights quickly.

The concept of this elite specialization is to fix these problems by removing one of the main feature of necros: their “double HP bar”. In the warlock specialization, the shroud does not act as a second HP bar, but simply an energy bar to power attacks. To make up for this loss, shroud skills bring high burst, mobility and active defenses, and they are positioned in the F- skills, meaning that weapons and utilities are still usable while in shroud. In this sense, the shroud works more like burst skills of berserker: first activate the shroud (F1) to get access to the shroud skills (F1-F4).

Also, contrary to traditional shroud, warlock’s shroud always start full and regenerates on its own even out of combat.

In terms of thematics, the warlock is a dark mage, wielding dark and fire magic (not unlike the warlock in other franchise).


As briefly explained above, activating the warlock’s shroud (F1) unlocks 4 shroud skills (F1-F4), inheriting from all the traits of standard shroud skills. The shroud has a maximum duration (20s maybe?) and can be cancelled earlier by using F5. During this time, all damage still goes to our health bar, and all weapons and utilities (including heal and elite) can be used normally. Life force can be gained by all usual ways even in shroud, but the shroud skills have high LF cost so energy management will be an important issue. Also thanks to a minor trait, LF will regenerate (still fairly slowly) out of shroud.

The 4 shroud skills are displayed in the attached images below. The first one is a multi-hit burst damage skill, without cooldown but with high energy cost (a small cooldown may be needed for balance, but I hope not to make energy management more important than cooldown management). F2 and F3 give mobility and stealth. Finally F4 gives a channeled AOE damage.

As I wrote earlier, the F1-F4 skills inherit all the shroud traits. This is also the reason why shroud 1 is now multi-hit: since it cannot be spammed as usual (due to its energy cost), it needs to hit many times per activation. The way all shroud traits apply is fairly straightforward. One thing to mention is that the second part of the “Unholy Sanctuary” trait (shroud activation if lethal blow) will still work thanks to the third minor trait death defiance. When taking lethal damage, unholy sanctuary will activate shroud, and “death defiance” will then transform the LF into HP.


The warlock can canalize its energy in form of mantras, reinforcing its burst potential. It can also now equip torches to channel its inner fire.

The skills are displayed in the images below. The torch offers both burst damage and mobility (and very nice escape potential). The mantras offer burst damage, burst CC, boon corrupt, a very strong stunbreak and short evade. Also, the elite gives a very nice “executioner” tool in the form of heal denial. While it still allows the enemy to heal himself, it prevents healing from his allies. This way, you can execute someone in a fight while preventing his ally elementalist to heal him. I don’t know how strong this utility would prove, so the CD may need tuning (up or down).

One important point about the mantra mechanics: currently the annoying thing with mantras is that if you have one charge left, you will be tempted to burn it to get the recharge started. I think it would be nice (and that also applies to mesmer mantras) if the mantra recharged up to a third of the total recharge after each charge consumed. So for example, a 24s CD mantra will recharge up to 8s after the first cast, up to 16s after the second and up to full recharge of course after the third one. Example situations:

  • mantra cast at t=0, the mantra start recharging up to t=8s, second cast at t=10, mantra recharges up to t=18s. Last cast at t=22, remaining cooldown is 8s.
  • mantra cast at t=0, the mantra starts recharging, second cast at t=3, third at t=5. Remaining cooldown is 19s.

I think this is fairly easy to understand and will make mantras much less clunky to use.

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(edited by Silverkey.2078)

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Silverkey.2078

Silverkey.2078


The traits are displayed below. They are centered around burst damage, burning, mobility/disengage/evade and defense negation (boon rip and unblockable CC), a speciality of the necromancer.

Deathly regeneration is meant to ensure that LF will be full at the beginning of a new fight as well as to ensure that the shroud will be usable again reasonably soon after being used the first time. Since LF does not act as a second life bar, having a higher LF regeneration is not as dangerous for a balance perspective.

Death Defiance acts a bit like the berserker trait, allowing you to defy death a bit longer if killed while in shroud. I put it here mostly to ensure that unholly sanctuary still works with the warlock.

Merciless is another “executioner” trait, which may needs tuning, but it is important to note that it is a boon rip and not corruption.

Second chance allows you to use the survivability tool from the warlock shroud (especially death veil) when things turn bad, but it is not fully passive since you still need to activate the shroud yourself. It synergies well with Otherworldly Immunity as a get-out-of-jail card.

Ghostly avoidance obviously also synergies with the mantra traits.

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(edited by Silverkey.2078)

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Kodama.6453

Kodama.6453

Seems very interesting. I would love to see torches for necromancers, I think the whole hellfire fits really well.

Just one point: your elite mantra is way too strong. It has 3 charges and it is insta cast, which means when your enemy is activating his healing skill you can activate the mantra in the last second. He wouldn’t receive any healing while his healing skill is on full recharge. Basically, you are shutting down the healing skill of any other player with this skill which is just a too huge advantage in pvp.

Please rethink this one.

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Silverkey.2078

Silverkey.2078

Seems very interesting. I would love to see torches for necromancers, I think the whole hellfire fits really well.

Just one point: your elite mantra is way too strong. It has 3 charges and it is insta cast, which means when your enemy is activating his healing skill you can activate the mantra in the last second. He wouldn’t receive any healing while his healing skill is on full recharge. Basically, you are shutting down the healing skill of any other player with this skill which is just a too huge advantage in pvp.

Please rethink this one.

I specifically wrote “external healing”, meaning healing from allies. I clearly agree denying full healing would be too strong, and I thought this would already be quite strong (but not OP) in a team fight. Maybe situational, but useful. And it would create a unique niche for the necro as an executioner.

Otherwise, glad you like some of the ideas.

(edited by Silverkey.2078)

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Zero Solstice.9754

Zero Solstice.9754

I’ll be honest with you, the concept looks very fun, but both offkey and too strong as it is on paper.

For example, Necromancer as a class just doesn’t need to have stealth; it’s not in our flavor chart. However, there are fun ways we could create pseudo-stealtkitten to Necromancer’s flavor. For example, imagine if instead Death Veil put down a 900 radius smoke field. Instead of stealthing the Necro, the Necro turns into a shadow, which is still targettable and visible (kind of like the Strawberry Ghost food), however immune to all damage via evade for as long as they remain in the field and have not attacked a target. Opponents in the field may or may not get blinded, depends on how strong the concept is in action.
This creates a very Necromancer-style ability, in which the Necromancer is simply stronger than the opponent through area denial and the mitigation of the evade, however it gives Necro a pseudo-stealth capacity to attack an opponent precisely when they feel the timing is right.

Another concept which could use help is Hellfire. In your tooltip, this appears to be a ranged ability with no windup, no projectile, and multiple strikes of increasing coefficients.
The thing to understand is that for abilities like these, to offset the extremely high damage potential of the ability, you need to make sure it has a “tell”, so that players can have time to react and counterplay such an important cooldown. Also, being that you want this spec to be for burst-style play, that means this ability should have low base values and high scaling. With that in mind, you really need to obey that balancing rule. It could be that you meant for the 1/2 second cast time to be preparing the ability, and the strikes come after, but that remains unclear. The AoE and fire field aspect of the skill also feel overtuned, as an ability that tracks a target shouldn’t really create a field, and an ability that tracks a target shouldn’t be able to cleave out the people next to him, especially if the actual target is dodging the ability, but those ideas are mostly just my opinion with no real backing.

As for traits, there are some pretty real issues:
Intimidation is too strong as an adept trait, and its effect is erroneous given that a large number of Necromancer CC is already unblockable, such as Wail of Doom, traited Reaper’s Mark, corrupting Stability with Corrupt Boon, and any combination of abilities with “Nothing Can Save You!”. Also, it doesn’t make sense to make fear unblockable, but not the actual ability that applies fear.
I like the idea of Mantra of Fear applying Torment instead of fear, but with this trait, it also fears for a very short duration, pretty much long enough to be a daze.
Shadow Fury scaling is too high for an adept trait.
Otherworldly Immunity seems too strong with your idea of stealth, but I think it could be workable after tweaking the durations with the above listed idea for Death Veil.
Ghostly Avoidance doesn’t need to exist, since Necro already has Reaper’s Protection.
Unbound Soul vigor has too long of a duration, probably shoot for something like 6 seconds.

For mantras:
Mantra of Corruption is a little over the top when combined with a lot of the baseline Necromancer corruption that has been added in recent time.
Refer to above for Mantra of Fear.
Blaze should be single target to make coefficient balancing easier, however the burn application being AoE could be something to play with.

“Reaper’s only big weakness will be that you have to play Necromancer to use it”
~Bhawb.7409

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Silverkey.2078

Silverkey.2078

I’ll be honest with you, the concept looks very fun, but both offkey and too strong as it is on paper.

Thanks for taking your time going through this
I did spend some time trying to think this through, so many of the critics you give me are actually things I had thought of. So below are the reasonings to my choice.

In general, I just want to mention that the loss of death shroud has very strong consequences on the sustain of the class. Try to take a PvP fight as a necro without using your shroud, it would be difficult to win it!
This is why I think it is very hard to know how strong or not this elite spec would be, and why I may (or may not) have overturned some defensive elements.

For example, Necromancer as a class just doesn’t need to have stealth; it’s not in our flavor chart. However, there are fun ways we could create pseudo-stealtkitten to Necromancer’s flavor. For example, imagine if instead Death Veil put down a 900 radius smoke field. Instead of stealthing the Necro, the Necro turns into a shadow, which is still targettable and visible (kind of like the Strawberry Ghost food), however immune to all damage via evade for as long as they remain in the field and have not attacked a target. Opponents in the field may or may not get blinded, depends on how strong the concept is in action.

This creates a very Necromancer-style ability, in which the Necromancer is simply stronger than the opponent through area denial and the mitigation of the evade, however it gives Necro a pseudo-stealth capacity to attack an opponent precisely when they feel the timing is right.

I actually felt that stealth was not off-theme at all. As you said, being in the shadow. When designing death veil, I had in mind for example the reaper being invisible to all and appearing to you only when it is time to collect your soul.

But there are definitely many ways to play with the theme with a similar effect.

Another concept which could use help is Hellfire. In your tooltip, this appears to be a ranged ability with no windup, no projectile, and multiple strikes of increasing coefficients.
The thing to understand is that for abilities like these, to offset the extremely high damage potential of the ability, you need to make sure it has a “tell”, so that players can have time to react and counterplay such an important cooldown. Also, being that you want this spec to be for burst-style play, that means this ability should have low base values and high scaling. With that in mind, you really need to obey that balancing rule. It could be that you meant for the 1/2 second cast time to be preparing the ability, and the strikes come after, but that remains unclear. The AoE and fire field aspect of the skill also feel overtuned, as an ability that tracks a target shouldn’t really create a field, and an ability that tracks a target shouldn’t be able to cleave out the people next to him, especially if the actual target is dodging the ability, but those ideas are mostly just my opinion with no real backing.

I obviously was not clear enough in my description. The reason I settled for a short cast time is because the skill DOES NOT track the target. It appears at its feet and then stay there, so by simply stepping away, the enemy avoids the bulk of the damage.

As I said, many things may need tuning, but this is not as strong as you understood it.

As for traits, there are some pretty real issues:
Intimidation is too strong as an adept trait, and its effect is erroneous given that a large number of Necromancer CC is already unblockable, such as Wail of Doom, traited Reaper’s Mark, corrupting Stability with Corrupt Boon, and any combination of abilities with “Nothing Can Save You!”. Also, it doesn’t make sense to make fear unblockable, but not the actual ability that applies fear.

As you said, reaper already has many unblockable fears, which is partly why this trait is not that strong. But I agree that this trait mostly came from lack of idea.

Just one detail, “nothing can save you” is a reaper skill, meaning that as it is currently, it won’t be available to the next elite spec.

Shadow Fury scaling is too high for an adept trait.

This is a scaling to only one skill. I don’t know if this is really that strong…

Otherworldly Immunity seems too strong with your idea of stealth, but I think it could be workable after tweaking the durations with the above listed idea for Death Veil.

again, it applies to only one skill and is limited by its cooldown. I am not sure it is that strong. But as usual, I have no idea how this elite spec would fare overall.

Ghostly Avoidance doesn’t need to exist, since Necro already has Reaper’s Protection.

Seeing how little tankiness the elite spec would have without death shroud, we need some CC protection. Having a bit of overlap with another trait is not a problem since not everyone will run death magic. Also, it is quite a bit less obnoxious than a passive fear!

Unbound Soul vigor has too long of a duration, probably shoot for something like 6 seconds.

I did hesitate for this one. My main reason to go for this is that 10s is not much seeing as it only activates on entering shroud. Most of the traits of this type try to arrange for 50% vigor uptime “base”, and I figured 10s in shroud and 10s waiting for shroud will already mean 50%. Stay longer in shroud and you get less than 50%.

For mantras:
Mantra of Corruption is a little over the top when combined with a lot of the baseline Necromancer corruption that has been added in recent time.

I most probably agree with you. In one hand, I would love boons to have as much counterplay as conditions have since they are supposed to be alter egos. On the other hand, I know boon corruption already feels over the top. Maybe boon rip?

Blaze should be single target to make coefficient balancing easier, however the burn application being AoE could be something to play with.

I did hesitate for AOE vs single target. Overall, I see the warlock as a duelist/executioner, so single target makes more sense. I still went for AOE because I know mantra of pain (very similar utility) is AOE and still barely used…

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Zero Solstice.9754

Zero Solstice.9754

In general, I just want to mention that the loss of death shroud has very strong consequences on the sustain of the class. Try to take a PvP fight as a necro without using your shroud, it would be difficult to win it!
This is why I think it is very hard to know how strong or not this elite spec would be, and why I may (or may not) have overturned some defensive elements.

Of course, it’s hard to understand the effects of most design/balance decisions without seeing live implications in a natural ecosystem.

I obviously was not clear enough in my description. The reason I settled for a short cast time is because the skill DOES NOT track the target. It appears at its feet and then stay there, so by simply stepping away, the enemy avoids the bulk of the damage.

As I said, many things may need tuning, but this is not as strong as you understood it.

Ah, much better.

Just one detail, “nothing can save you” is a reaper skill, meaning that as it is currently, it won’t be available to the next elite spec.

Of course, I just listed it as another option in the ways of unblockable potential.

This is a scaling to only one skill. I don’t know if this is really that strong…

The thing to remember is that with raw DPS modifiers, you need the straight DPS increase to not clearly outweigh the other trait options in the same line. Since this is already a DPS-centered specialization concept, you want to make sure that raw DPS increases aren’t the only good options, as it severely linearizes the gameplay decisions and leads to less interactive/more passive gameplay mechanics.

I did hesitate for this one. My main reason to go for this is that 10s is not much seeing as it only activates on entering shroud. Most of the traits of this type try to arrange for 50% vigor uptime “base”, and I figured 10s in shroud and 10s waiting for shroud will already mean 50%. Stay longer in shroud and you get less than 50%.

This is reasonable, but the other thing to remember is that Vigor isn’t necessarily in the Necromancer flavor, and also that with the introductions of Boon Duration foods, gear, and abilities, you don’t want bases to be too high overall so that they don’t get out of hand in the “above average” to “best” case scenarios.

I most probably agree with you. In one hand, I would love boons to have as much counterplay as conditions have since they are supposed to be alter egos. On the other hand, I know boon corruption already feels over the top. Maybe boon rip?

This is kind of a grey area; there are a whole slew of interesting ideas that could slot in here. What about the concept of hexes from Guild Wars 1? Maybe, using the Mantra on an individual with X boons will give you an X-scaled amount of some ability like quickness, superspeed, ferocity, or something new entirely? You’re treading in completely fictional territory, be creative!

I did hesitate for AOE vs single target. Overall, I see the warlock as a duelist/executioner, so single target makes more sense. I still went for AOE because I know mantra of pain (very similar utility) is AOE and still barely used…

Thing is Mantra of Pain has lower scaling in general, and is also only power damage, while Blaze applies both direct damage and Burning.

“Reaper’s only big weakness will be that you have to play Necromancer to use it”
~Bhawb.7409

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Krysard.1364

Krysard.1364

While some numbers should be tweaked and maybe one or two skills/traits reworked (like the stealh one, or unblockable+instant aoe fear), I really like the concept of a less “intrusive” DS that allows you to have some burst/mobility at the cost of the infamous “second life bar”.

M I L K B O I S

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Posted by: KashimKudal.2961

KashimKudal.2961

Although it could use some tweaking here and there and some testing of key components in the specialization. Overall I love it because it adds a dark battle mage feel to it. You can either go Condi or direct damage. This would really make axe and scepter shine I feel. I love death shroud but I’d love to have a way to use life force and have defensive capability. I hope our next elite spec is something like this.

Imo if we have the “double health bar” make us less mobile as Reaper is now.

If we lose “double health bar” give us defensive capabilities in a necrotic manner and give us enough damage that makes us “less approachable” for fear of burst. All in all good job! I’ll make a more in depth analysis when I’m off work.

Lord Abbadon – Human Necromancer – Anvil Rock
“Abaddon DOES NOT LOSE DANCE CONTESTS!!!”

(edited by KashimKudal.2961)

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Posted by: Dadnir.5038

Dadnir.5038

From my point of view this concept may be attractive but fight to much with the core traits of the necromancer.

Let’s be realist, the whole F key mechansim make useless traits that are specific to the Shroud#1 skill and It also nullify the life saving device that Unholy Sanctuary is (Death defiance would not insure that it work, it would just replace it making the trait, defacto, useless). Beside you need to take one thing in consideration, The necromancer need a lot of HP to use it’s corruptions skill and sustain it’s “role” as a condi-sponge that draw condition from allies. (I wouldn’t mind if they were to delete totally this thing but it’s here and there is even a GM trait that is dedicated to it)

Another point that hurt me is the fact that you say that the necromancer can’t burst. That is a false assomption. The necromancer don’t burst with it’s weapon but with it’s utility that’s the major difference between the necromancer and most of the other profession and this doesn’t make it worse at bursting.

What the necromancer really need is not “burst” but “altruism”. The mindless dps statut of the necromancer is what hurt him the most in PvE. (Un)Fortunately, it’s irrelevant in PvP.

No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.

New ES: the warlock, a burst and DPS spec

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Posted by: Silverkey.2078

Silverkey.2078

From my point of view this concept may be attractive but fight to much with the core traits of the necromancer.

Yes, it is true that this was one of the main trouble I had. Though I think overall, I ended up fixing most issues.

Let’s be realist, the whole F key mechansim make useless traits that are specific to the Shroud#1 skill

Far from it. Being a multi hit attack, we actually get a lot of benefits from F1-traits. If all hits connect, each F1 attack would mean 6 might (Reaper’s Might), 6 vulnerabilities (Unyielding Blast) and/or 6 burning (Dhuumfire). This is a lot of benefits!

and It also nullify the life saving device that Unholy Sanctuary is (Death defiance would not insure that it work, it would just replace it making the trait, defacto, useless).

this one was the most difficult. But death defiance does not make it useless. If unholy sanctuary is not there to activate the shroud at the last second, death defiance will not heal you.

Beside you need to take one thing in consideration, The necromancer need a lot of HP to use it’s corruptions skill and sustain it’s “role” as a condi-sponge that draw condition from allies. (I wouldn’t mind if they were to delete totally this thing but it’s here and there is even a GM trait that is dedicated to it)

It’s a totally different role, so yes, some utilities won’t synergize as well, but for me that is the point of an elite spec.

Another point that hurt me is the fact that you say that the necromancer can’t burst. That is a false assomption. The necromancer don’t burst with it’s weapon but with it’s utility that’s the major difference between the necromancer and most of the other profession and this doesn’t make it worse at bursting.

That can be argued. Though you cannot disagree that necromancer overall is tailored for long fights: slowly filling death shroud, slowly building up might and vulnerability.

What the necromancer really need is not “burst” but “altruism”. The mindless dps statut of the necromancer is what hurt him the most in PvE. (Un)Fortunately, it’s irrelevant in PvP.

I would say burst and mobility is a big missing. As for altruism, I perfectly agree with you. However, I think this is something that needs to be fixed at the core level. For me necro is (or should be) altruistic by its “debuff”. So a necro won’t empower its allies, but will weaken the enemy, effectively increasing the damage dealt by ally. Vulnerability is a good example though unfortunately it has become trivial to max up on it in a group. I have suggested for some time to change “blood is power” to a unique debuff increasing the damage dealt to this enemy by 10% or so (essentially the same thing as classes like ranger with their frost spirit, but as a debuff and not a buff, which fits more the necro theme).

(edited by Silverkey.2078)