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.
(edited by Silverkey.2078)