In what ways is the warlock class op?

departure wrote: 1 day ago

kerph wrote: 1 day ago

If i die i die

If you invest a lot of time and effort into getting a high damage output demon with specific rolls, the "if I die I die" feeling gets replaced with "I never want to die". Deathmark is a fantastic skill and I really wish the necro could have it.

This seems like it would be a huge QoL upgrade for necro. That said, Death marking >20 revives and >20 skellies over walls or telestomping Ubers seems like it moght be too effectivs :+)

departure wrote: 1 day ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

I play ES

Nova Sorc and WL

Ring of Fire / apoc. I think the

Ring of Fire WL has a slightly faster clear speed than the ES

Nova Sorc against both mobs and single target and the exact same playestyle. And is even tankier.

How do you manage this? It looks like

Ring of Fire tops out at about half

Nova damage. So I guess

Apocalypse is picking up the slack?

Good question. I should say I "feel" like it is slightly faster, but that feel should count for something. Note, my characters are not 100% optimized for damage, they balance magic find also and both carry Gheeds. I also optimize for negative res over stat sheet damage. Looking at the stats.
- My ES Infinity

Nova sorc is 3500-4600 damage, with -95 neg lightning res (I could go -100, but I use a

Cham) before Infinity
- My RoF WL is 3700-4400 damage, with -70 neg fire res (-110 for apoc) before Infinity (but I use Insight so no Infinity)

Base damage is the same, but sorc has 10% faster TP and attack, and more negative res before Infinity (which my WL doesn't even use). So sorc should be somewhat faster based on stats.

I think the difference is:
- RoF gets bonus damage for enemies hit the further out they are from the center. Not sure the calc on this, I haven't seen sources say consistent things. One source/comment said 5% per yard traveled, but don't know if this is correct.

- I can mix in apocolypse and

Flame Wave as needed, even if my base attack is RoF 90% of the time. Apoc is great for large groups or tanky groups, and also to hit a one side of a big room with a delay and then I instantly turn to tp to RoF the other side.

Flame Wave has a smaller delay but is also good for certain setups.

- The defiler shared damage. I'm not sure how it works on spells that are AoE already, but I think it does help and multiplies the damage further. Not positive.

- The demon. Demon lancer with defiler does a ton of damage on her own that is also AoE. The defiler also makes the merc damage AoE as well.

- For P1, Infinity isn't super helpful. There is a 0-2 second delay for Infinity to proc, so the majority of the time the enemy is dead before it can help.

I wouldn't say it's super faster against mobs, but if I had to say it is slightly faster for me. And then it is tanky against everything, somewhat better against single targets, so Heralds are no stress, versus an ES

Nova Sorc can have trouble with gloam heralds.

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Good question. I should say I "feel" like it is slightly faster, but that feel should count for something. Note, my characters are not 100% optimized for damage, they balance magic find also and both carry Gheeds. I also optimize for negative res over stat sheet damage. Looking at the stats.
- My ES Infinity

Nova sorc is 3500-4600 damage, with -95 neg lightning res (I could go -100, but I use a

Cham) before Infinity
- My RoF WL is 3700-4400 damage, with -70 neg fire res (-110 for apoc) before Infinity (but I use Insight so no Infinity)

Base damage is the same, but sorc has 10% faster TP and attack, and more negative res before Infinity (which my WL doesn't even use). So sorc should be somewhat faster based on stats.

I think the difference is:
- RoF gets bonus damage for enemies hit the further out they are from the center. Not sure the calc on this, I haven't seen sources say consistent things. One source/comment said 5% per yard traveled, but don't know if this is correct.

- I can mix in apocolypse and

Flame Wave as needed, even if my base attack is RoF 90% of the time. Apoc is great for large groups or tanky groups, and also to hit a one side of a big room with a delay and then I instantly turn to tp to RoF the other side.

Flame Wave has a smaller delay but is also good for certain setups.

- The defiler shared damage. I'm not sure how it works on spells that are AoE already, but I think it does help and multiplies the damage further. Not positive.

- The demon. Demon lancer with defiler does a ton of damage on her own that is also AoE. The defiler also makes the merc damage AoE as well.

- For P1, Infinity isn't super helpful. There is a 0-2 second delay for Infinity to proc, so the majority of the time the enemy is dead before it can help.

I wouldn't say it's super faster against mobs, but if I had to say it is slightly faster for me. And then it is tanky against everything, somewhat better against single targets, so Heralds are no stress, versus an ES

Nova Sorc can have trouble with gloam heralds.

Maxroll puts

Nova dps at about 30k/s for a fully geared

Nova sorc. I'm not sure it takes into account

Conviction from Infinity for this calculation. I don't know if I geared him correctly, but I was seeing more like 15k/s

Ring of Fire damage from maxroll for a fully geared warlock. I was also seeing 50k from

Apocalypse, but at 0.5 casts per second, the DPS on that skill is still less than

Nova.

Defilers might be doing something interesting to the damage. I can never seem to predict how defilers are going to spread things around. My intuition with them always turns out to be wrong.

For comparison, maxroll puts a fully geared out

Blood Boil warlock at 48k/s. And also there is a demon running around that can do up to 80+k per hit, which gets spread around using defilers for AOE.

departure wrote: 1 day ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Good question. I should say I "feel" like it is slightly faster, but that feel should count for something. Note, my characters are not 100% optimized for damage, they balance magic find also and both carry Gheeds. I also optimize for negative res over stat sheet damage. Looking at the stats.
- My ES Infinity

Nova sorc is 3500-4600 damage, with -95 neg lightning res (I could go -100, but I use a

Cham) before Infinity
- My RoF WL is 3700-4400 damage, with -70 neg fire res (-110 for apoc) before Infinity (but I use Insight so no Infinity)

Base damage is the same, but sorc has 10% faster TP and attack, and more negative res before Infinity (which my WL doesn't even use). So sorc should be somewhat faster based on stats.

I think the difference is:
- RoF gets bonus damage for enemies hit the further out they are from the center. Not sure the calc on this, I haven't seen sources say consistent things. One source/comment said 5% per yard traveled, but don't know if this is correct.

- I can mix in apocolypse and

Flame Wave as needed, even if my base attack is RoF 90% of the time. Apoc is great for large groups or tanky groups, and also to hit a one side of a big room with a delay and then I instantly turn to tp to RoF the other side.

Flame Wave has a smaller delay but is also good for certain setups.

- The defiler shared damage. I'm not sure how it works on spells that are AoE already, but I think it does help and multiplies the damage further. Not positive.

- The demon. Demon lancer with defiler does a ton of damage on her own that is also AoE. The defiler also makes the merc damage AoE as well.

- For P1, Infinity isn't super helpful. There is a 0-2 second delay for Infinity to proc, so the majority of the time the enemy is dead before it can help.

I wouldn't say it's super faster against mobs, but if I had to say it is slightly faster for me. And then it is tanky against everything, somewhat better against single targets, so Heralds are no stress, versus an ES

Nova Sorc can have trouble with gloam heralds.

Maxroll puts

Nova dps at about 30k/s for a fully geared

Nova sorc. I'm not sure it takes into account

Conviction from Infinity for this calculation. I don't know if I geared him correctly, but I was seeing more like 15k/s

Ring of Fire damage from maxroll for a fully geared warlock. I was also seeing 50k from

Apocalypse, but at 0.5 casts per second, the DPS on that skill is still less than

Nova.

Defilers might be doing something interesting to the damage. I can never seem to predict how defilers are going to spread things around. My intuition with them always turns out to be wrong.

For comparison, maxroll puts a fully geared out

Blood Boil warlock at 48k/s. And also there is a demon running around that can do up to 80+k per hit, which gets spread around using defilers for AOE.

Was the maxroll calc using self wield Infinity? You can get higher DPS using a magic orb and Spirit shield, but then your negative res suffers and you probably have mana problems.

Also bear in mind with apocolypse you can run RoF and

Flame Wave in between. So in 2 seconds, I can use 5/6 of my casts on RoF for 5/6 * 15k = 12.5k/second using the maxroll calc and then add the 25k from apoc so it is greater again.

I don't know how accurate maxroll is also, not saying it's not accurate, but just reporting what I see in game on my own characters with reasonably BiS gear as far as I know (aside from the

Cham/gheeds factors I mentioned for QoL and magic find). But BiS for self wield Infinity, not if you go the magic orb route.

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Was the maxroll calc using self wield Infinity? You can get higher DPS using a magic orb and Spirit shield, but then your negative res suffers and you probably have mana problems.

Also bear in mind with apocolypse you can run RoF and

Flame Wave in between. So in 2 seconds, I can use 5/6 of my casts on RoF for 5/6 * 15k = 12.5k/second using the maxroll calc and then add the 25k from apoc so it is greater again.

I don't know how accurate maxroll is also, not saying it's not accurate, but just reporting what I see in game on my own characters with reasonably BiS gear as far as I know (aside from the

Cham/gheeds factors I mentioned for QoL and magic find). But BiS for self wield Infinity, not if you go the magic orb route.

I spec'd it with mephistos and mang songs with facet and jewel. Self wield Infinity is interesting but probably worse all the way around. All you get from self wielding Infinity is the

Conviction aura, which you could give to your merc. Honestly if you have to pick one to hold - Infinity or Insight, you hold the Insight because it has FCR.

The reason sorcs do so well with self-wielding Infinity is the -55 lightning res that Infinity can roll with. That is no use to the fire warlock, so Infinity should be on the merc.

With absolutely perfect play it does seem like fire damage could get up to the

Nova sorc damage. But it requires hitting the skills exactly on the cooldown, and even then it's not really an improvement, just even.

Blood Boil by comparison is outpacing the

Nova sorc easily for DPS.

That being said,

Nova still ends up feeling faster for trash mobs somehow.

departure wrote: 1 day ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Was the maxroll calc using self wield Infinity? You can get higher DPS using a magic orb and Spirit shield, but then your negative res suffers and you probably have mana problems.

Also bear in mind with apocolypse you can run RoF and

Flame Wave in between. So in 2 seconds, I can use 5/6 of my casts on RoF for 5/6 * 15k = 12.5k/second using the maxroll calc and then add the 25k from apoc so it is greater again.

I don't know how accurate maxroll is also, not saying it's not accurate, but just reporting what I see in game on my own characters with reasonably BiS gear as far as I know (aside from the

Cham/gheeds factors I mentioned for QoL and magic find). But BiS for self wield Infinity, not if you go the magic orb route.

I spec'd it with mephistos and mang songs with facet and jewel. Self wield Infinity is interesting but probably worse all the way around. All you get from self wielding Infinity is the

Conviction aura, which you could give to your merc. Honestly if you have to pick one to hold - Infinity or Insight, you hold the Insight because it has FCR.

The reason sorcs do so well with self-wielding Infinity is the -55 lightning res that Infinity can roll with. That is no use to the fire warlock, so Infinity should be on the merc.

With absolutely perfect play it does seem like fire damage could get up to the

Nova sorc damage. But it requires hitting the skills exactly on the cooldown, and even then it's not really an improvement, just even.

Blood Boil by comparison is outpacing the

Nova sorc easily for DPS.

That being said,

Nova still ends up feeling faster for trash mobs somehow.

Sorry i was clarifying self wield Infinity for the ES

Nova Sorc, not the WL, as much higher theoretical DPS numbers can be achieved by on

Nova sorc with magic orb + Spirit (but at a cost). That's the only way I can see a calc coming out at 2x DPS, if the calc is accurate.

I'm trying to bridge between maxroll's theoretical calculations and the numbers my in-game screen is showing me - as I don't see anywhere near double the DPS on the

Nova sorc. I see even DPS per attack, with a 10% faster attack (based on online sources for FCR to attacks per second by character), and I see -95 negative res vs. -70.

And then separately when in actual action, I find the fire sorc very slightly faster than

Nova sorc, perhaps due to the reasons i mentioned (fire

Nova DPS boost per yard, defiler damage boost on fire

Nova, demon damage, defiler damage boost on demon and merc, mixing in apoc and

Flame Wave)

Question on

Blood Boil WL for those who have played it:

How much time do you have to waste engorging your demons to counter the 5% damage lost per cast?

Also - how does the radius compare to

Ring of Fire or

Nova? From what I can see online, it appears to be radius 7 versus 9 for the other two. Not sure how limiting this is in practice.

varangium wrote: 23 hours ago

Sorry i was clarifying self wield Infinity for the ES

Nova Sorc, not the WL, as much higher theoretical DPS numbers can be achieved by on

Nova sorc with magic orb + Spirit (but at a cost). That's the only way I can see a calc coming out at 2x DPS, if the calc is accurate.

Yea I was using a self-wield Infinity for the sorc numbers.

varangium wrote: 22 hours ago

Question on

Blood Boil WL for those who have played it:

How much time do you have to waste engorging your demons to counter the 5% damage lost per cast?

Also - how does the radius compare to

Ring of Fire or

Nova? From what I can see online, it appears to be radius 7 versus 9 for the other two. Not sure how limiting this is in practice.

Well there are really 3 ways to play

Blood Boil.

1) 3x

Tainted
2) 2x

Tainted 1x defiler
3) demon + 2x defiler

The 4th way, demon+

Tainted, is no good. The demon gets stuck.

In each version you generally

Engorge between kills, not during the killing. That's because things die too fast to really worry about it. You tele in, maybe you deathmark in, and then the demons start doing tons of damage, you hit a couple of bloodboils, everything is dead. Then you

Engorge if anything is yellow and tele to the next spot.

In version 1, you might

Blood Boil a long time before you actually

Engorge because if you over do it who cares? You just make another

Tainted. If you're super optimizing this, you don't play that way because you need to pre-buff your tainteds for max dmaage. But I don't have good enough gear to pre-buff so I don't play that way. I drain their lives down pretty far, quite a few packs killed, before a single

Engorge. Same for version 2.

For version 3, the demon is very expensive. Usually takes hours to find a good one. So you just don't let them die down nearly as much. That being said, they're generally pretty tanky so it kinda evens out.

Engorge is not something you do after ever kill, and certainly it would be unusual to do during a single kill.

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

......
- My RoF WL is 3700-4400 damage, with -70 neg fire res (-110 for apoc) before Infinity (but I use Insight so no Infinity)
......

Would you please enlighten me how to get the -70 fire res before

Apocalypse (-40)? I am struggling to get correct gear to lower the fire res, I only reached -31 shamefully.

Without getting into the design of the class (I wouldn't say that how flexible and error-free the builds are is OP, exactly; nor the omnipresence of the demon), the main reason the class was OP at launch was just numbers.

His skills dealt damage that was way out of the ordinary, with basically no gear restrictions. To the point that it compared (perhaps even surpassed) the Mosaic assassin, a build that is agreed to be pretty much broken, but without the need for a specific item.

After tuning, the class is much more in line with the rest, even if still powerful. The fact that that is true should tell you how completely nuts it was at launch.

departure wrote: 21 hours ago

varangium wrote: 23 hours ago

Sorry i was clarifying self wield Infinity for the ES

Nova Sorc, not the WL, as much higher theoretical DPS numbers can be achieved by on

Nova sorc with magic orb + Spirit (but at a cost). That's the only way I can see a calc coming out at 2x DPS, if the calc is accurate.

Yea I was using a self-wield Infinity for the sorc numbers.

varangium wrote: 22 hours ago

Question on

Blood Boil WL for those who have played it:

How much time do you have to waste engorging your demons to counter the 5% damage lost per cast?

Also - how does the radius compare to

Ring of Fire or

Nova? From what I can see online, it appears to be radius 7 versus 9 for the other two. Not sure how limiting this is in practice.

Well there are really 3 ways to play

Blood Boil.

1) 3x

Tainted
2) 2x

Tainted 1x defiler
3) demon + 2x defiler

The 4th way, demon+

Tainted, is no good. The demon gets stuck.

In each version you generally

Engorge between kills, not during the killing. That's because things die too fast to really worry about it. You tele in, maybe you deathmark in, and then the demons start doing tons of damage, you hit a couple of bloodboils, everything is dead. Then you

Engorge if anything is yellow and tele to the next spot.

In version 1, you might

Blood Boil a long time before you actually

Engorge because if you over do it who cares? You just make another

Tainted. If you're super optimizing this, you don't play that way because you need to pre-buff your tainteds for max dmaage. But I don't have good enough gear to pre-buff so I don't play that way. I drain their lives down pretty far, quite a few packs killed, before a single

Engorge. Same for version 2.

For version 3, the demon is very expensive. Usually takes hours to find a good one. So you just don't let them die down nearly as much. That being said, they're generally pretty tanky so it kinda evens out.

Engorge is not something you do after ever kill, and certainly it would be unusual to do during a single kill.

Point of clarification: bound Urdar do not get stuck when using

Death Mark. I can't tell of the

Tainted get stuck in the Urdar or not, but the Urdar is very active, so they wouldn't be locked for more than a second and can still shoot anyways. I haven't checked Lister yet to see if he gets stuck, but my hypothesis is that the bound demon needs a hit box the same size or larger than the

Tainted.

Also fun note: I like running Lancers, but they definitely get stuck inside the

Tainted after

Death Mark. On the flip side, when I'm hunting a Lancer upgrade, I keep a nonbuffed

Tainted out (respecced to non-

Tainted build now), and I

Death Mark to freeze the psycho spearlady in place so I can check if unique Lancers are worth binding before she kills everything.

Flyhorse wrote: 21 hours ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

......
- My RoF WL is 3700-4400 damage, with -70 neg fire res (-110 for apoc) before Infinity (but I use Insight so no Infinity)
......

Would you please enlighten me how to get the -70 fire res before

Apocalypse (-40)? I am struggling to get correct gear to lower the fire res, I only reached -31 shamefully.

Flickering Flame = 15

Consume

Tainted = 15
Mang song + 5/5 fire jewel socket = 20
Diablo book + 10 neg res jewel = 10
Fire sunder = 10

Total is 70.

Fcr at 125 via 2x fire

Opalvein = 20,

Magefist 20,

Arachnid Mesh 20, mang song 30, Diablo 25, and 10 Fcr ammy = 125

Maxing resistance with this build is tough, it requires good res on the ammy and good tri res

Boots, plus lots of 5 all res small charms. Although if you

Sacrifice a skiller or two it’s easier.

Also, regarding the effective speed that I notice, it's worth mentioning that my fire WL has super run/walk speed versus my sorc:

+113% FRW from items and charms
+40% from

Consume

Tainted
+~40% from

Vigor aura on demon.

Also note that the FRW stacks much better and w/o diminishing returns on

Vigor and

Consume.

How does this make my runs faster?
- Better, quicker positioning. I can get to the proper center of enemies I want faster. I play on console so I cannot precisely TP, but even on computer being able to run the final bit to get to the right spot versus wait for another TP is better.

- Faster item and

Gold pickup - I pick up all

Gold and have extra

Gold charms

- Faster town trips.

That said, the maxroll calc claiming 2x DPS on

Nova sorc is wrong. By my calc, it is 18% higher on non-immune (assuming average 30% starting lightning res), 33% higher on immune BEFORE all the factors I mentioned in my previous post that boost the

Ring of Fire effective damage (yards damage boost, defiler damage share, apoc/

Flame Wave mix in, demon)

varangium wrote: 19 hours ago

Flickering Flame = 15

Consume

Tainted = 15
Mang song + 5/5 fire jewel socket = 20
Diablo book + 10 neg res jewel = 10
Fire sunder = 10

Total is 70.

Fcr at 125 via 2x fire

Opalvein = 20,

Magefist 20,

Arachnid Mesh 20, mang song 30, Diablo 25, and 10 Fcr ammy = 125

Maxing resistance with this build is tough, it requires good res on the ammy and good tri res

Boots, plus lots of 5 all res small charms. Although if you

Sacrifice a skiller or two it’s easier.

Why do you use Insight instead of Infinity? Infi still helps a lot with sundered monsters. And mana is usually no issue if you apply

Hex Siphon. With CtA, of course. If that is not enough, replace an

Opalvein with an SoJ (and 20 fcr amu instead of 10) and get a Renewed Sunder with mana instead of life or just put some stat points into mana (!!! The world won't end.). Your setup is great but I think that missing out on an Infi is not the way to go if you want to deal lots of damage.

mikelessar wrote: 1 hour ago

varangium wrote: 19 hours ago

Flickering Flame = 15

Consume

Tainted = 15
Mang song + 5/5 fire jewel socket = 20
Diablo book + 10 neg res jewel = 10
Fire sunder = 10

Total is 70.

Fcr at 125 via 2x fire

Opalvein = 20,

Magefist 20,

Arachnid Mesh 20, mang song 30, Diablo 25, and 10 Fcr ammy = 125

Maxing resistance with this build is tough, it requires good res on the ammy and good tri res

Boots, plus lots of 5 all res small charms. Although if you

Sacrifice a skiller or two it’s easier.

Why do you use Insight instead of Infinity? Infi still helps a lot with sundered monsters. And mana is usually no issue if you apply

Hex Siphon. With CtA, of course. If that is not enough, replace an

Opalvein with an SoJ (and 20 fcr amu instead of 10) and get a Renewed Sunder with mana instead of life or just put some stat points into mana (!!! The world won't end.). Your setup is great but I think that missing out on an Infi is not the way to go if you want to deal lots of damage.

I play P1, and I just found that Infinity didn't make me go much if any faster, and I didn't like dealing with mana issues. I tried

Hex Siphon using a +3

Dagger (as I currently don't have

Hex Siphon and haven't respeced), and I found I was still running out of mana, maybe just my playstyle where I spam spells. Of course swapping a +3

Dagger with CTA back and forth is not sustainable/fun, but was just at test. But it's possible there was some bug, because when I checked the character stats, it was only increasing my mana after kill to 17 from 13, when based on the

Hex Siphon level it should have increased it to like 27. Not sure why.

One thing with Infinity/

Conviction - it randomly procs within a 0-2 second period. If on average it takes me 2/3 of a second to kill an enemy, Infinity is only helping .67/2 = 33% of the time and on average when it helps it may be only the second hit, so could be closer to 20%-25% of the time depending on delays and positioning between TP and cast. It is also unpredictable, and faster than my reaction time so I may not always save the time even when it does proc early and I then in theory need fewer blasts. I never really thought about this until i questioned / tried to explain why it didn't feel much different to me.

I have considered the 2/20 approach and am kind of building up towards it. The problem is my resistances are so tight, I need an absolutely godly 2/20 ammy (I'm currently running a 2/10/20 resist all / 60 poison res ammy), and also losing the

Opalvein I lose another 7 resist all (or 8 but mine is 7). And even then, yes I get +25% mana (worth about +100 mana on my setup), but it's not completely game changing, and I lose +1 mana after kill (or +3 if I upgrade my lower

Opalvein). So I sort of need my godly 2/20 ammy to have a bunch of mana too.

I could respec also to get

Hex Siphon and/or move some stats from life to mana. For now I haven't noticed much speed improvement with Infinity, I've been waiting until I respec or get the 2 more levels I need to get

Hex Siphon, and see if I like it better when presumably working properly versus the stat sheet bugged siphon I did with the +3

Dagger.

I also just personally like not having to ever think about mana. My current mana level is 630, but I have guestimated that maybe if I can get it to 1000 and have +28 mana after kill on

Hex Siphon that could feel comfortable - not sure.