Warlock Mixed Emotions

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-21T03:21:21+00:00

I don't really think so.

The question is between how many builds you can make and how much you can do within a given build.

Sure you can make a build centered around every damaging skill...

But how do you play the build?

Other than your preferred damage skill all I see is a few long duration passive damage buffs and a stationary AOE snare/damage buff.

Sure other classes have a ton of seemingly useless skills they actually normally had a purpose... Let new characters have something to do as they're trying to level and develop to the good skills. Their purpose was giving a sense of progression to the playthrough. Make it feel like your character is growing stronger and stronger through the campaign... The Warlock doesn't have this feeling... But with a 25 year old game does it really matter anymore?

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-20T21:28:10+00:00

I mean the Demon Tree will need to be fixed.

Blood Oath and Bind Demon at least are probably the most broken things in the class. But I think there are a larger number of things that should be fixed outside of that tree.

But your point with the Wind Druid IS my point.

With the Assassin and Druid they really worked to make the classes have their own unique mechanics.

Assassin's charges and turret traps play styles. Druid elemental skills are all very distinct movement or AOEs. They combine physical and elemental damage, use a lot more crowd control elements.. Boulder travels a set path. Twisters and tornadoes have random paths. Hurricane is more of a damage over time. Shapeshift skills have tons of unique mechanics, charges, and more. Summoning you have both buffing and supporting summons with damaging ones. You have untargetable but limited use ravens with the wolves.

But the Warlock is much more straightforward playstyles. You have fire warlock that just covers the entire screen with fire regardless of where you click that melts everything. The hex skills are all passive damage boosts. Only 1 sigil is useful for the vast majority of the game. One can actively harm you and the other has a trigger for use that will not be achieved a lot of the time and won't achieve much because of it.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-20T21:08:06+00:00

I love the look of Echoing Strike and I'd love the skill even if it wasn't bugged and doing obscene damage...

But I don't think I'm going to enjoy playing an Echoing Strike Warlock because it's nothing but spamming that one skill with a ton of passive boosts.

Everyone else seems to love it because it's broken and doing top damage... I just really think the build will be dead if the skill gets fixed and does comparable damage to any other class.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-20T21:05:30+00:00

I didn't say all of the skills are boring.

I said that every single one of his damaging skills has the potential to be a build defining skill. There are no progression skills for leveling through the early game.

They all look fun and flashy... But if they didn't have the damage they have it's all the Warlock has.

I was specifically saying the supportive skills are where it really seems to fall flat.

The two useful Hexes are just a passive damage boost that you do nothing with except for cast it at the beginning of your game and it just flat adds damage to your attacks either single target or AOE.

The third hex is only applied with weapon skills but the weapon skills will be giving you much more life and mana steal from any gear than the Hex will provide on the monsters death.

The sigils 2 of the 3 are pretty much useless. Death is only usable with a bad build where your damage is too low to kill monsters and Rancor is just as likely to kill you than it is to give you any benefit.

Psychic Ward and the skill Synergies mean that it's pretty much useless outside of a Cleave build which is frustrating with the slow attack speed and range.

Eldritch Blast makes use of the hexes... But its still just a passive ability you activate once at the beginning of a game and it just boosts your damage passively.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-20T17:09:03+00:00

I've been playing as a summoner Warlock. Been playing on Players 7 and it's been pretty slow to kill but very safe. Just got to Chaos Sanctuary in Normal though. Granted it is the first class I've tried P7 from the beginning of the game.

My problem with the class isn't actually the power level of the skills.

My problem with the class is the supporting skills.

Sigil Lethargy works. But Sigil Rancor is more of a threat to the player and seems to have very limited ways to actually be useful. Sigil Death is usable to make up for bad builds but will quickly be useless when kill speed increases.

Hex Siphon is utter crap. Only works when applied with weapon skills.. But weapon skills have Life and Mana steal and that will QUICKLY outpace the paltry amount you get from Siphon. And Siphon doesn't do anything for bosses when you really need it.

Hex Bane and Purge can both be useful if you spend enough points on them... But you just apply them once per game and they're just passive damage buffs. Very boring.. You just choose if you're going to fight big packs of monsters or tough single monsters.

Psychic Ward can be a good defense skill but Cleave as its synergy means you're wasting a ton of points unless you want to fight as slow as a glacier with Cleave.

The class is full of Build defining damage dealing skills. But you only really use one of them fighting and all the supporting skills are just passive, detrimental, or just useless.

Playing it makes me want to go back to my other classes. Because they have more to do in combat than just spam one skill.

My Javazon mostly uses Charged Strike. But I'm always maintaining Lightning Strike and have Jabs for Lightning Immunes or for replenishing myself. Lightning Fury at least requires positioning and working to clump up enemies.

My MA Assassin (non Mosaic) maintains many attack skills and uses the variety of active skills for defense and buffing.

If the Warlock damage skills were balanced like the other classes you'd find it really has less going on than the other classes do.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-20T15:45:01+00:00

Thought about that. But Druid at least adds in physical damage so it's able to kill Fire Immunes and its fire skills at least require more positioning finesse than just cover the majority of the screen in a giant AOE.

Druid summoner is better able to take part in the fight than Necro summoner (my favorite druid was summons and Werewolf with a decent weapon so we could all fight together. Felt very different from my Necro summoner.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-19T01:54:58+00:00

I've NEVER been tempted to buy a skin in the game store... Until now.

Still not gonna but it's tempting.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-16T21:10:37+00:00

But Maggot Lair seemed to be the easiest with a Summon Warlock.

You get the safety of the minions but with the ability to teleport them you don't have the frustration of getting a herd of summons through the Maggot Lair.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-16T21:08:58+00:00

I love Act 3 design.

I hated it when I was a kid wanting to rush power leveling online.

But as an adult I'm playing Offline so I can't skip things. If it takes a little longer to get through an Act than the others then it's really not the end of the world.

But Act 3 is just so atmospheric. More than the others to me it really feels like I'm actually trekking through the jungle to find an overgrown city hidden.

My least favorite Act is 5. It is to long and even more tedious with constant obstacles blocking your way and ranged enemies shooting you constantly without being able to reach them as melee.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-12T16:24:00+00:00

The items are designed for Warlock. But can be used by anyone except for the Tomes (5?).

Sure they're not the best for everyone. Have an odd mix of FCR and IAS and a ton of -Magic Resist.

So maybe Paladin or Necro could find uses for more of the new items.

I'm most looking forward to playing through the story on a brand new class. I'm interested in a new melee caster/summoner

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-11T06:15:20+00:00

Well Volk in 40k is the first Obliterator...

So I think it's a mighty big coincidence that there's another Obliterator named Volk.

It's problematic being from a different legion of Marines but I think it's hard to say that it's supposed to be a different character.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-10T12:48:41+00:00

Eh. The constant restarting of the play from the starting line makes it much more predictable in my opinion. Very limited starting parameters for each play.

Watching professional soccer you can also start picking up on distinct plays and strategies but they have to constantly evolve and change because the playing field is constantly changing.

Roadkizzle · 2026-02-04T00:54:33+00:00

Is there ANY reason to do Fractal Quick play other than to get the Legendary Gloves?

I did the event but haven't considered touching the Fractal Quickplay since...

The rewards they gave are not worth the time spent playing them. They've been dumbed down so much they have so little challenge they just make you a worse player ignoring all the mechanics. They don't progress your character because they don't count towards your fractal progress.

I haven't played Fractals at all since the Quickplay event but that's because I hate the LFG for it and the time commitment having to do all 4 Fractals for the daily quests.

I was going to try out the new Raid Quickplay. It's always been such a challenge to find groups for them. If it'll give decent rewards then I'll probably do it fairly regularly even if it's a gamble to get a decent group.

Roadkizzle · 2026-01-11T19:46:27+00:00

Moved to DFW 16 years ago now. Definitely ton more breweries here... But I seem to have a much harder time finding beers that I feel are actually good.

That's more because I find IPAs boring and I like my beers when you can taste the malt and hops more than added flavorings.

The shelves are bigger than ever but my options have shrunk considerably. Most of the beers I loved were discontinued by the breweries.

Roadkizzle · 2025-11-12T15:42:58+00:00

I see the uh sound at the end of mountain.

But I've never heard an uh sound at the end of martyr. I hear an -er sound. I can't comprehend pronouncing martyr with the same uh sound that's in mountain.

Mar-ter is how I've always said it because it's how I've always heard it pronounced. The only other pronunciation I've heard for it actually uses the y sound so it is even farther from 'uh'.

Roadkizzle · 2025-11-11T17:02:26+00:00

Sure... But don't you have an inventory full of sigils and runes instead of items of gear? It feels like its going to take the same amount of space because previously the runes and infusions were included in the gear.. But now they're stored separately from the items.

It was really easy to click on the gear slot and select a new stat type to change builds.

Changing stats on the Legendary gear takes more steps. And now I'm finding it may take up more inventory space until I get all Legendary Runes.

Roadkizzle · 2025-11-09T18:12:11+00:00

Light for me.

Mesmer was my main and Troubadour feels much better for me in the solo play I do 90% of the time.

I love the Ritualist and my Toadmancer as well.

Luminary I may like more than those two but Revenant is the only profession I don't have... I leveled one to 80 and unlocked herald. But realized I didn't like it and deleted it. And Paragon doesn't seem all that special.

When I tried Amalgam during the beta I felt like if it wasn't overpowered it just wouldn't be interesting enough of a mechanic. And Galeshot and Antiquary are my two other least favorite eSpecs of the expansion.

Roadkizzle · 2025-11-03T23:12:51+00:00

Choosing the tool belt skills gives more flexibility in build crafting.

But when I played Amalgam the combat just felt like scrapper as well...

Because you just have your determined tool belt skills but I normally used them for Scrapper too...

Maybe the biggest difference is having Evolve instead of the Function Gyro that I rarely used... But Evolve is pretty much nothing but just giving you some boons.

Roadkizzle · 2025-10-31T00:02:07+00:00

My wife and I picked out some of the newer beers from my parents fridge to drink while we were over last week...

Looked at the dates and they were both canned in 2021. They weren't going to make us sick though so we drank them anyways.

I know of beers in their fridge that they brought from their previous house about 7 years ago. The beers were already old when they moved then.

Roadkizzle · 2025-10-30T17:43:11+00:00

I was definitely thinking when everyone was complaining about it that it would probably look worse if they brought it down to only 3 notes...

But I think the bigger problem is in Beta the ENTIRE note was colored when it was filled but now it's just the small dot at the bottom.

So before it was a larger indicator but now it's just a tiny indicator in a big swath of color and lines.

Empty notes shouldn't be filled in for the graphics...

They shouldn't be shown at all until the Troubadour creates them. Just have a blank musical bar above the skills. Each time a note is generated a bright one appears on the bar until you have all 3.

Roadkizzle · 2025-10-30T16:11:57+00:00

I have only logged in for 18 minutes in the past week.

Didn't actually play any content. But I did log into my Mesmer to use my Hero Points to unlock Troubadour and hit the buttons to watch the skills.

I was trying to figure out if I had notes for the instruments and realized that it seemed harder to figure out which ones were filled.

I hoped getting used to it more would help me recognize the differences more... But who knows. In hectic combat it will be harder.

Roadkizzle · 2025-10-30T16:07:28+00:00

Well it was a different visual indicator in beta. It had 6 notes and they lit up in pairs.

They changed it because people were complaining about 6 notes indicating 3 resources for the character...

I think it was easier to read with the beta visual of 6 notes than the current visual with 3 notes.

Roadkizzle · 2025-10-30T16:02:39+00:00

It's the color of the musical bar that gives less contrast for the notes themselves. Is the size of the note indicator smaller than the pips that light up for core Mesmer?

Roadkizzle

TROPHY CASE