Couldnt agree more.

And back on the topic of warlock grinding, surely an ok to decent staff + 2 RoLs + SM + vitality absorb +Vamp + energy barrier is enough to make your way. Havent tried it though, the idea just looks good on paper.

I am not sure if I should laugh about or mourn about what this game has become.

It's their vision, end of story. :P

Indeed. But the other warlock spells could need some improvement on the other hand. :P

It's true that you can keep soul keeper from being dispelled by darkness or freeze, but that's not as easy to do as you make it sound.

With soul keeper working as a DoT spell, and the low amount of total HP a warlock has, you almost have to cast it in advance, to regenerate damage as you take it. If you freeze your enemy, he won't be dealing damage. You could wait until you're almost dead and then try to soul keeper and freeze him, but if he resists freeze you just screwed yourself - and freeze is easy to stop (DI, defensive stance, madness)

Casting soul keeper in advance isn't much of a problem if you use darkness on your target instead of freeze, but darkness is range 20, and chances are if you darkness someone who was receiving conju support... they're going to make like france and book it.

I agree we have lots of spells, and I do use quite a lot of them already... however there are certain spells you simply must have to be effective, and that limits the variation on setups. The new skill point progression system will make this even more so. While I'd love to use them, "all of them," I'll actually be able to use less of them. The only upside is I won't need to spend points on soul keeper anymore.

Good :) Now we all come out happy ;P

Timing is not a problem for conj, I play conj too, dispell cd is 10 sec, I use it alot. It's easy to see obvious animations or knocked people or even people running to the back of the group with low hp. You just need the reflexes to click on them, and 10 seconds is long enough to have time for dispell.

On pvp soulkeeper is still efficient with update (except while fighting barbs), but it fails in group.
A lock is an offensive char, his job is to deal damage without dying, knowing that mages are the first targeted classes.
In a small group (anything but zergs), we need to attack the same target to be efficient, mages/barbs always comes first.
Using soulkeeper in those situations will be hard.
If a barb rush on a lock and knock him,if he survives he can use soulkeeper at current state to give him some hp and be able to run while the others help him or kill that barb. DoT won't be useful.

And please don't tell me the lock have to freeze the enemy, it's dumb to freeze an enemy who already got hit while the others are attacking him, or when he's knocked(special note for marksman spamming winterstroke), it usually saves an archers life (sotw/low profile),and you don't have time for that, or even to darkness him before. It's like saying hunters should always confuse their target to be able to win.

It will be like sadistic servants, in theory it's great, but while fighting it will be hard to use, and locks already die fast.

So what's more important, your life or their life? You're a lock, you don't have to put up with that shit ;)

In other words, they're dying too fast. So if they're dying too fast...why the hell are you dying?

You can SK a secondary target, it puts pressure on healers. Spread the dmg around. Focus fire is always effective, but spreading dmg around causes some vital pressure, and healers can't be watching everyone at once. Someone's gonna die.

There is only one spell in Necromancy better than SS and that's SK. SS is a very good spell. And locks, believe it or not, actually have pretty decent survivability, played properly. Yeah, you're a high visibility target. You run around in a dress shooting fireballs. Everyone's still sore over when you terrored them last fight, and they want to kill you really bad. I get that. But that doesn't mean you can't survive, playing well, especially after the update when people won't be able to kill anyone in the space of a single knock.

It's not supposed to be. Don't you get the point? SK is way too much sudden dmg, sudden healing, for a caster class which also has powerful nukes. It doesn't require thinking. It will now.


You don't randomly throw beetle swarms or silences around; you prioritise targets to throw those CCs on. So why should SK not be the same?

I completely agree. Before it was way too good, a warlock had too many defenses for an offensive class.

I like that, now it isnt just another "I WIN!" spell with one click. Now you need to chose who it will be best on, maybe youll have to actually think, maybe it would be better on the person that will be around longer? The knight or buffed marks instead of the person you want dead.

I dont think it will hurt me much, it will just make playing a lock more interesting and requiring more skill. I like it.

Actually the point is to win the fight no matter who dies, and I shouldn't stand in the way to gain some seconds by staying alive.

Because they hit me with 500+ from range, and I play in ignis horus, usually we don't have conj playing regularly (except erika and ori and maybe zord now). If 4 targets hit you, you will die fast, it works the other way round too.

Do you consider crowd control spells as defense? If not, we don't have defense, wind wall is not worth putting points in it now, element conjonction is useless too, most damage dealt is physical.

If this is true, if barbs can't kill a lock in one kick time, if we won't have lost half hp after one ambush, then you may be right, we don't need it anymore.

Edit: just tried it on amun, a knight can hit me 3 times after kick 4. So a barb can easily kill a lock now. Nerfing soulkeeper is bad the way it goes. Maybe you should try it there and check.