06-01-2004, 09:47 PM
Because there's just SO much posting going on around here (*cough*), where all the beta-testing Lurkers are sharing their experiences and thoughts on their classes (*cough*), I felt I'd join in (*cough*) with my thoughts on the Warlock thus far. *wheeze* *gag* What sarcasm?
After playing 2 mages - one to 23, another to 39 and awaiting the lifting of the level cap in the next phase - I felt like seeing something new. I started a Warlock about 2 weeks ago and have been enjoying the differences between the two classes since. I love spellcasting classes, and Warlocks provide a fun diversion from the pressures a Mage faces with each and every monster encounter. My Warlock is now level 20, which is the level when I find that characters start to get interesting. In general (at least at this point in game development), it's between levels 20 to 30 when your characters fill out their spell abilities and become fully mature. By the time you're 30, you have access to every spell in your arsenal. Of course, all this is subject to change, especially with the Talent system still hiding in the shadows. I consider levels 1-20 to be the "child" years of a character, since your character has a limited spell collection and has yet to realize its full potential. 20-30 is the maturing decade.
So anyhow, I just hit level 20 and I'm working on obtaining my third minion. Blizzard has not developed the Warlock to the same level as the other classes, since the Felhunter minion (apparently to be obtained at level 30) is not in the game. So currently, there are only 3 minions that can be obtained. I currently control 2 minions (not simultaneously, of course) - the Imp and the Voidwalker.
MINIONS
Blizzard's goal with the Warlock's minions was not to have them be replaced by better minions as you played on and advanced in level. Their goal is to give you a line of options with your minions so that you can pick the minion that fits the situation best. They're pretty close to this right now. Your minions, whether or not you use them, level up with you. Inexperienced players automatically assume that the Voidwalker is "better" than the Imp and never use it again, but I have found this not to be true.
The Imp is the basic minion you get when you're level 2-4. Imps are physically weak but perform a ranged fireball attack of decent damage. But what makes Imps really good in parties for which an additional tank is not needed (i.e. if you already have a warrior) is the spells it casts - Blood Pact and Fire Shield. Blood Pact will raise the stamina of everyone in your party by a significant amount. At level 20, it raises Stamina by 12 - which is a ton. It also casts Fire Shield on you and your mates so that any creature that hits you takes a minor amount of fire damage. It's not much, but it adds up. While the Imp is not the best choice when you're soloing and you need a tank to protect you, it's a highly useful party minion since it buffs and attacks.
The Voidwalker, "accessible" (haha) at level 10, is your super-tank. With gobs of hit points, its purpose in life is to get beat up. Unfortunately, inexperienced Warlock players are griping to high hills about the Voidwalker's damage - it stinks - because they don't understand its role. Hopefully, Blizzard will ignore the whiners and keep the Voidwalker like it is. Voidwalkers do NOT assist you with actually killing anything, and they shouldn't. Think of a Voidwalker as Diablo II's Iron Golem with reamloads of hit points. Voidies also possess one crucial ability: they "Torment" their targets, which is just another fancy word for a warrior's Taunt ability. Yes, Voidwalkers hold aggro away from the Warlock, a blessing that makes any Mage player drool. Those who complain about the Voidwalker's lack of damage usually aren't playing correctly.
I laughed above when I said the Voidwalker is "accessible" because the quest to obtain the Voidwalker, received at level 10, is totally impossible to do solo at level 10 and still very, very difficult in a group. I believe this was not intended, but we'll see in later pushes if it's tweaked. Any Warlock player will be able to tell you of their pains trying to get that Voidy at level 10, requiring you to make a foray into a cave filled with enemy Warlocks packed so tight you can't breathe...
There are still many, many Warlock players who start out every fight by attacking the mob themselves and waiting for the minion to react to its master being threatened. This is NOT how you should play the Warlock! There is a reason why Blizzard states clearly that Warlocks are NOT for newbies - you need to understand how aggro works and how to manage it, or your career will be very frustrating.
First of all, there are three minion "states" - aggressive, defensive, and passive. In aggressive mode, the minion will attack any mob it sees (read: gets close to). In defensive mode, the minion goes after anything that attacks it or you. Finally, in passive mode, the minion will only attack when you tell it to.
Experienced and/or intelligent Warlock players realize that 95% of the time, you should be using the passive state for your minions. Occasionally, you will use defensive to enable a faster-reacting minion to acquire targets quicker. But especially when using a Voidwalker, all fights should be initiated by ordering your minion to attack the target and waiting for it to Torment the foe and build up aggro. I've seen quite a few Warlocks play, and at the low levels they're getting slaughtered while their Voidwalker tries SO hard to pull aggro and can't because the Warlock is wailing away on the mob.
Anyhow, being a good Warlock player requires a high understanding of aggro and how much you can do to a monster without pulling the aggro towards yourself. Warlocks do NOT kill things quickly, but we DO kill things safely. I'm at level 20, and I've had to stop to eat and drink perhaps 5 times total so far. Comparing that to my Mage, it's not even close - he would be beat up constantly.
From what I hear, the level 20 minion is one that does more damage than the Voidwalker, but does not nearly have the hit points and tank ability. This would put the minion in the range of the Imp, in that it's good to have her along to kill things, but you can't count on hiding behind it while it takes the punishment.
So you can see that I'm in love with the Voidwalker - the ultimate soloing minion. It simply holds a monster's attention while my damage-over-time spells and various attacks whittle it down. Under most fights, I never take a lick of damage. The price I pay is in killing speed, but then again nobody likes those long walks as a ghost!
SPELLS
Warlock spells consist of curses (only one of which can be active on a mob at a time), direct attack spells, damage-over-time spells, and other life/mana management spells. Curses range from Curse of Agony, which does a little bit of damage per second over a LONG period of time, to the VERY useful Curse of Weakness, which reduces the damage done by a mob per attack. Shadow Bolt is the primary attack spell, along with others like Immolate which does burning damage over time. At level 20, I just now got my first Area of Effect spell, Rain of Fire, which is self-explanatory.
Utility spells include things like Underwater Breathing, Summoning (in which any 3 players can summon someone in your party to your location from anywhere in the world), and the making of Soulstones (can resurrect you when you die) and Healthstones (can heal you).
Something I wish my Mages had is the Life Drain ability, which simply transfers a chunk of your hit points to your mana. This is valuable when you're in a pitched battle and you run out of mana - your minion's taking a beating - and you can get a quick blast of mana by sacrificing your hit points. Who cares about the pain since you're not taking the beating, anyway? Also, you have the ability, via Health Funnel, to transfer your life to your minion's. This can be dangerous, since it tends to gain a lot of aggro on you. If you were a monster and you saw that some jerk in the back was healing the guy you were fighting, you'd want to go kick his butt too.
But these spells are difficult to use properly. You need a lot of situational awareness while playing the Warlock - more on that later.
Soul Shards are the bread and butter of a Warlock. They're used to raise any minion other than the Imp, along with being the reagent for the creation of Soulstones, Healthstones, and more. Soul Shards are obtained by stealing the souls of your victims as they die. You have to cast a spell on them, which is "channeled" (meaning not interruptable by normal attacks, and you have to stay still while casting) as they are killed. The catch is that you can't farm Soul Shards by killing wimpy monsters - you have to get experience off a monster to get its soul. That also means you can't grab one off of someone else's kill, either, unless they're in your party.
What has everyone complaining is Blizzard's design decision to make each Soul Shard take up one slot in your inventory. In order to prevent the stockpiling of Soul Shards, this was done, but it could be overkill. Since currently, Soulstones use 2 Soul Shards and I hear the upper spells use even more PER cast, you can easily be forced to sacrifice a huge chunk of your inventory space just to carry around Shards for use by a party. Five players times 2 Soul Shards per soulstone = 10 Soul Shards, ouch! Add that they can be difficult to collect when playing solo, and I can understand this gripe. Perhaps the Shards should be allowed to stack - lemekim was suggesting 5 Shards per slot - but I'll comment more on this later as I get access to the better spells.
Warlocks, like Mages, can only use cloth items and have few hit points. We have to be protected, and generally, if our minions die, we either run away or die. The only crowd control we have is Fear, a spell that causes a mob to run away from you for about 10-15 seconds. This sounds better than it is, since the mob can easily run off to another mob, say "hey Bob, you know, there's this guy over there who cast this spell on me - let's go kick his pitooter" and come back to you with a buddy or two. Thus, if the minion dies, I run 90% of the time. At least if I die, I have a soulstone to bring me back. :) But a Voidwalker should only die if you bit off more than you can chew or got piled on by added monsters during a fight. Since a Voidwalker is so good at pulling aggro, it makes fleeing easy - just tell the Voidy to sacrifice itself attacking whatever's bothering you while you high-tail it outta there. Poor guy.
GAMEPLAY
Warlocks are HARD for those new to MMORPGs. As hard of a time I had with my Mage on my first run through in Phase 1, it would have been much worse playing a Warlock. I hinted before about situational awareness - as a Warlock, you're not just playing yourself, you're playing your minion as well. Good Warlock players keep total control over their minions and can manage two sets of actions at once, as well as issue commands during a heated fight. Lately I've been playing in parties of 2, and I use the Voidwalker exclusively as a tank to keep mobs off my party member and myself. If we're fighting a mob and another one spawns by us or comes along, I immediately assign my Voidy to attack the newcomer and draw the aggro off my partner and/or myself. With 2-3 mobs pounding exclusively on my Voidwalker, my partner and I are free to concentrate attacks on each mob in turn and kill them in safety. Did I mention I love the Voidwalker? :) I hug him and squeeze him and call him George. And when he gets in trouble, I give my life (literally) to him by casting Health Funnel.
So in every battle, I need to be aware of:
1) My hit points (duh)
2) My mana
3) My minion's hit points
4) What mob(s) possess aggro on my minion
5) What mob(s) possess aggro on me or my party members
6) My party members' hit points
7) What curses are active on all mobs
8) What mobs are low on life so I can swipe a Soul Shard from them, if necessary
Sometimes I feel like a priest, because I'm not doing much attacking myself! :)
SUMMARY (so far)
Through my experiences with my Mage, each and every fight carried the threat of imminent death. If a monster managed to resist 3 or 4 attacks in a row (and it happens from time to time, just bad luck of the draw), I'd usually bite it. As a Warlock, that's reduced to an inconvenience rather than a direct threat to my life. That about sums up the difference between the classes. Warlocks are much safer with that fat tank out there. We're not flashy like those Mages with their massive damage instant attacks. Most of our damage comes from long-running damage-over-time spells and boring curses, but at the end of the day, we don't get killed by a little bad luck during a fight. Not that I'm complaining about the Mage - playing one is basically living life in the fast lane - doing gargantuan amounts of damage in what usually amounts to very quick fights, because either the mob dies fast or you do. For a more tactical experience, I heavily recommend you try the Warlock. Whole strategy guides could be written on how to effectively manage your minions for every situation, and I'm finding that the survivability of a party goes up when an expert Warlock player is around.
More to come as I go farther up the experience-grinding ladder... :)
-Bolty
After playing 2 mages - one to 23, another to 39 and awaiting the lifting of the level cap in the next phase - I felt like seeing something new. I started a Warlock about 2 weeks ago and have been enjoying the differences between the two classes since. I love spellcasting classes, and Warlocks provide a fun diversion from the pressures a Mage faces with each and every monster encounter. My Warlock is now level 20, which is the level when I find that characters start to get interesting. In general (at least at this point in game development), it's between levels 20 to 30 when your characters fill out their spell abilities and become fully mature. By the time you're 30, you have access to every spell in your arsenal. Of course, all this is subject to change, especially with the Talent system still hiding in the shadows. I consider levels 1-20 to be the "child" years of a character, since your character has a limited spell collection and has yet to realize its full potential. 20-30 is the maturing decade.
So anyhow, I just hit level 20 and I'm working on obtaining my third minion. Blizzard has not developed the Warlock to the same level as the other classes, since the Felhunter minion (apparently to be obtained at level 30) is not in the game. So currently, there are only 3 minions that can be obtained. I currently control 2 minions (not simultaneously, of course) - the Imp and the Voidwalker.
MINIONS
Blizzard's goal with the Warlock's minions was not to have them be replaced by better minions as you played on and advanced in level. Their goal is to give you a line of options with your minions so that you can pick the minion that fits the situation best. They're pretty close to this right now. Your minions, whether or not you use them, level up with you. Inexperienced players automatically assume that the Voidwalker is "better" than the Imp and never use it again, but I have found this not to be true.
The Imp is the basic minion you get when you're level 2-4. Imps are physically weak but perform a ranged fireball attack of decent damage. But what makes Imps really good in parties for which an additional tank is not needed (i.e. if you already have a warrior) is the spells it casts - Blood Pact and Fire Shield. Blood Pact will raise the stamina of everyone in your party by a significant amount. At level 20, it raises Stamina by 12 - which is a ton. It also casts Fire Shield on you and your mates so that any creature that hits you takes a minor amount of fire damage. It's not much, but it adds up. While the Imp is not the best choice when you're soloing and you need a tank to protect you, it's a highly useful party minion since it buffs and attacks.
The Voidwalker, "accessible" (haha) at level 10, is your super-tank. With gobs of hit points, its purpose in life is to get beat up. Unfortunately, inexperienced Warlock players are griping to high hills about the Voidwalker's damage - it stinks - because they don't understand its role. Hopefully, Blizzard will ignore the whiners and keep the Voidwalker like it is. Voidwalkers do NOT assist you with actually killing anything, and they shouldn't. Think of a Voidwalker as Diablo II's Iron Golem with reamloads of hit points. Voidies also possess one crucial ability: they "Torment" their targets, which is just another fancy word for a warrior's Taunt ability. Yes, Voidwalkers hold aggro away from the Warlock, a blessing that makes any Mage player drool. Those who complain about the Voidwalker's lack of damage usually aren't playing correctly.
I laughed above when I said the Voidwalker is "accessible" because the quest to obtain the Voidwalker, received at level 10, is totally impossible to do solo at level 10 and still very, very difficult in a group. I believe this was not intended, but we'll see in later pushes if it's tweaked. Any Warlock player will be able to tell you of their pains trying to get that Voidy at level 10, requiring you to make a foray into a cave filled with enemy Warlocks packed so tight you can't breathe...
There are still many, many Warlock players who start out every fight by attacking the mob themselves and waiting for the minion to react to its master being threatened. This is NOT how you should play the Warlock! There is a reason why Blizzard states clearly that Warlocks are NOT for newbies - you need to understand how aggro works and how to manage it, or your career will be very frustrating.
First of all, there are three minion "states" - aggressive, defensive, and passive. In aggressive mode, the minion will attack any mob it sees (read: gets close to). In defensive mode, the minion goes after anything that attacks it or you. Finally, in passive mode, the minion will only attack when you tell it to.
Experienced and/or intelligent Warlock players realize that 95% of the time, you should be using the passive state for your minions. Occasionally, you will use defensive to enable a faster-reacting minion to acquire targets quicker. But especially when using a Voidwalker, all fights should be initiated by ordering your minion to attack the target and waiting for it to Torment the foe and build up aggro. I've seen quite a few Warlocks play, and at the low levels they're getting slaughtered while their Voidwalker tries SO hard to pull aggro and can't because the Warlock is wailing away on the mob.
Anyhow, being a good Warlock player requires a high understanding of aggro and how much you can do to a monster without pulling the aggro towards yourself. Warlocks do NOT kill things quickly, but we DO kill things safely. I'm at level 20, and I've had to stop to eat and drink perhaps 5 times total so far. Comparing that to my Mage, it's not even close - he would be beat up constantly.
From what I hear, the level 20 minion is one that does more damage than the Voidwalker, but does not nearly have the hit points and tank ability. This would put the minion in the range of the Imp, in that it's good to have her along to kill things, but you can't count on hiding behind it while it takes the punishment.
So you can see that I'm in love with the Voidwalker - the ultimate soloing minion. It simply holds a monster's attention while my damage-over-time spells and various attacks whittle it down. Under most fights, I never take a lick of damage. The price I pay is in killing speed, but then again nobody likes those long walks as a ghost!
SPELLS
Warlock spells consist of curses (only one of which can be active on a mob at a time), direct attack spells, damage-over-time spells, and other life/mana management spells. Curses range from Curse of Agony, which does a little bit of damage per second over a LONG period of time, to the VERY useful Curse of Weakness, which reduces the damage done by a mob per attack. Shadow Bolt is the primary attack spell, along with others like Immolate which does burning damage over time. At level 20, I just now got my first Area of Effect spell, Rain of Fire, which is self-explanatory.
Utility spells include things like Underwater Breathing, Summoning (in which any 3 players can summon someone in your party to your location from anywhere in the world), and the making of Soulstones (can resurrect you when you die) and Healthstones (can heal you).
Something I wish my Mages had is the Life Drain ability, which simply transfers a chunk of your hit points to your mana. This is valuable when you're in a pitched battle and you run out of mana - your minion's taking a beating - and you can get a quick blast of mana by sacrificing your hit points. Who cares about the pain since you're not taking the beating, anyway? Also, you have the ability, via Health Funnel, to transfer your life to your minion's. This can be dangerous, since it tends to gain a lot of aggro on you. If you were a monster and you saw that some jerk in the back was healing the guy you were fighting, you'd want to go kick his butt too.
But these spells are difficult to use properly. You need a lot of situational awareness while playing the Warlock - more on that later.
Soul Shards are the bread and butter of a Warlock. They're used to raise any minion other than the Imp, along with being the reagent for the creation of Soulstones, Healthstones, and more. Soul Shards are obtained by stealing the souls of your victims as they die. You have to cast a spell on them, which is "channeled" (meaning not interruptable by normal attacks, and you have to stay still while casting) as they are killed. The catch is that you can't farm Soul Shards by killing wimpy monsters - you have to get experience off a monster to get its soul. That also means you can't grab one off of someone else's kill, either, unless they're in your party.
What has everyone complaining is Blizzard's design decision to make each Soul Shard take up one slot in your inventory. In order to prevent the stockpiling of Soul Shards, this was done, but it could be overkill. Since currently, Soulstones use 2 Soul Shards and I hear the upper spells use even more PER cast, you can easily be forced to sacrifice a huge chunk of your inventory space just to carry around Shards for use by a party. Five players times 2 Soul Shards per soulstone = 10 Soul Shards, ouch! Add that they can be difficult to collect when playing solo, and I can understand this gripe. Perhaps the Shards should be allowed to stack - lemekim was suggesting 5 Shards per slot - but I'll comment more on this later as I get access to the better spells.
Warlocks, like Mages, can only use cloth items and have few hit points. We have to be protected, and generally, if our minions die, we either run away or die. The only crowd control we have is Fear, a spell that causes a mob to run away from you for about 10-15 seconds. This sounds better than it is, since the mob can easily run off to another mob, say "hey Bob, you know, there's this guy over there who cast this spell on me - let's go kick his pitooter" and come back to you with a buddy or two. Thus, if the minion dies, I run 90% of the time. At least if I die, I have a soulstone to bring me back. :) But a Voidwalker should only die if you bit off more than you can chew or got piled on by added monsters during a fight. Since a Voidwalker is so good at pulling aggro, it makes fleeing easy - just tell the Voidy to sacrifice itself attacking whatever's bothering you while you high-tail it outta there. Poor guy.
GAMEPLAY
Warlocks are HARD for those new to MMORPGs. As hard of a time I had with my Mage on my first run through in Phase 1, it would have been much worse playing a Warlock. I hinted before about situational awareness - as a Warlock, you're not just playing yourself, you're playing your minion as well. Good Warlock players keep total control over their minions and can manage two sets of actions at once, as well as issue commands during a heated fight. Lately I've been playing in parties of 2, and I use the Voidwalker exclusively as a tank to keep mobs off my party member and myself. If we're fighting a mob and another one spawns by us or comes along, I immediately assign my Voidy to attack the newcomer and draw the aggro off my partner and/or myself. With 2-3 mobs pounding exclusively on my Voidwalker, my partner and I are free to concentrate attacks on each mob in turn and kill them in safety. Did I mention I love the Voidwalker? :) I hug him and squeeze him and call him George. And when he gets in trouble, I give my life (literally) to him by casting Health Funnel.
So in every battle, I need to be aware of:
1) My hit points (duh)
2) My mana
3) My minion's hit points
4) What mob(s) possess aggro on my minion
5) What mob(s) possess aggro on me or my party members
6) My party members' hit points
7) What curses are active on all mobs
8) What mobs are low on life so I can swipe a Soul Shard from them, if necessary
Sometimes I feel like a priest, because I'm not doing much attacking myself! :)
SUMMARY (so far)
Through my experiences with my Mage, each and every fight carried the threat of imminent death. If a monster managed to resist 3 or 4 attacks in a row (and it happens from time to time, just bad luck of the draw), I'd usually bite it. As a Warlock, that's reduced to an inconvenience rather than a direct threat to my life. That about sums up the difference between the classes. Warlocks are much safer with that fat tank out there. We're not flashy like those Mages with their massive damage instant attacks. Most of our damage comes from long-running damage-over-time spells and boring curses, but at the end of the day, we don't get killed by a little bad luck during a fight. Not that I'm complaining about the Mage - playing one is basically living life in the fast lane - doing gargantuan amounts of damage in what usually amounts to very quick fights, because either the mob dies fast or you do. For a more tactical experience, I heavily recommend you try the Warlock. Whole strategy guides could be written on how to effectively manage your minions for every situation, and I'm finding that the survivability of a party goes up when an expert Warlock player is around.
More to come as I go farther up the experience-grinding ladder... :)
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.