Soul keeper
 

this new update has nerfed it i like to tell NGD why it should not be nerfed and why it supos to effect mobs. let me put it in simple terms. soul keeper is the back bone of a warlocks grinding with out it the warlock would not grind as long as it used to be. NGD nerfing it will make it very unplesent for the warlocks leveling efforts. i like it to be put back the way it supos to be or make the vampish spell suck more hp then it is now. i hope you other warlocks agree with me other wise im gona keep my lock at a noobish level.

It is one of the most over powered spells a warlock has. In a PvP it essentially does 2000 dmg, -1000 to enemy, +1000 to warlock. Its crazy stuff.

And for grinding, Try vamp, lower cd, id say its better (despite lower health suck).

I rarely use SK while grinding. Vamp is used on the cooldown, and you should only worry about losing hp when you amb sac (keep barrier up 100% of the time).

Of course you can't do that as well before lvl 37 or so but vamp should be draining enough hp for you not to worry too much about resting.

When I grind, I usually max mental for arcane missile and blaze, get lvl 4 vamp (sk too for emergencies) and get meteor, stalagmite and crystal blast to lvl 4. You can do that at lvl 38 or 39. It's the most mana efficient method of grinding I've seen before, and it is affected less by resists due to the low cooldowns of arcane missile and blaze.

Yes, but when a pet hunter can kill you in about 10 seconds, the majority of which you're ambushed for... it's a pretty important spell. Hopefully with all the other nerfs in the update it won't be.

I agree with DB 100%. And note to you DB, i would rather try to grind your lock ASAP _before_ they introduce those changes instead of keeping him on noobish lvl.

1-st, if you advice people to use energy barrier in lock grinding you are completely wrong. Damage dealing is what matters the most in grinding, always was, always will be. Putting points in non damaging, non stopping spell is a waste. I see your grinding setup is set on direct contact (crystal blast, blaze) and you say that this is most mana efficient, it isn't. The most mana efficient style IMO is staff mastery setup with max mental stopping abilities (WD, ivy, beetle). To SoulKeeper. It will have an impact on lock grinding, because having SK lvl 3 or 4 is often a matter of having to rest or not. Vampirism drains enough only on higher level, so you have to put points in necromancy tree anyway, why not to put points into SK as well then? If they make SK not able to drain mobs, points put into necromancy tree will be wasted somehow. I thought that we want to make warriors grinding easier not screw up other classes.

Not to mention when you're fighting an archer in sotw, sometimes the only way to survive is to cast soul keeper... on a mob! Just sayin'

Edit: Also, disagree with both of you on grinding. A setup based on mentals is too slow to kill, and requires too much attention to continue doing it for hours on end. Staff mastery and CCs are fine, but you need to be able to find good gear for it, and you're a lot less likely to survive encounters with realm enemies while you grind.

I always used a pretty even balance between arcania, elements, and necromancy; Meteor, Crystal Blast, Lightning, Fireball, SK & Vamp (mostly at lvl 4, until I was high enough to take arcania to 19). It's not too difficult to manage the mana costs, you've got life drains, and your CDs are only 15-20 seconds. Not to mention if someone attacks you, and you do get a chance to fight back your setup isn't some crazy grinding-only BS, and you might be able to defend yourself.

I would say it is THE ONLY way without "sometimes".:biggrin:

I disagree. Of course, you need decent staff (hey I used 33 lvl staff for till lvl 41), but, at current level of mob resistance to spells, you spend to much of your mana into air (resists), believe me it is much faster with SM, mentals are only auxiliary to keep mobs away or prevent them from hitting you. Requires more attention? Yes! This is why it isn't so boring type of grinding, you have to move. Surviving encounters. I guarantee you that you are more likely to survive with heavy mental, necromancy and SM, than with other setup. Survive, not kill. And this is another argument why SK should be left as is.
SK can be used to grind and to pvp. With SK not being able to cast on mobs, locks won't skill it for grinding, and they will be more vulnerable while grinding in WZ.

So we have totally different philosophies of skilling, I rather skill one or two trees good. You have noticed(made bold), they just want to cut you life drains at least half, IMO more.

Resists say hello.

In theory, an elements/arcania setup without any defensive spells 2-shotting mobs would be the fastest, most efficient and most effective setup.

In practice, it's not. You have 4 dmg spells with the ele/arcania setup: stalagmite, lightning, fireball and meteor, with crystal blast as backup. Standard rotation would be something like stalagmite/lightning -> meteor/fireball. What happens if just one of those spells is resisted? You're screwed. You'll be forced to cast SK (which you no longer can), and it'll take a chunk out of your effectiveness by having to use another dmg spell and wait for a cooldown.

Arcane missile resisted? No problem, blaze and arcane missile again.

This is my standard grinding rotation: meteor -> arcane missile -> blaze (takes a bit of practice to get a blaze without taking dmg) and stalagmite -> arcane missile -> blaze, crystal blast as backup. 3 spells per mob, and I've been able to grind nonstop pretty fast even if one mob resists 3 or 4 of my spells. When vampirism is off cooldown, replace arcane missile with it. Note that mental setup, with energy barrier is highly effective if someone tries to gank you - usually you'll have max mental, so that means TM, silence, will domain, beetle etc. which you put excess points in.

SK is not overpowered, its a spell that perfect match warlock. Most of warlocks spells are debuffs or capable of changing battle scenario.
Sk do a lot of damage is true but you can only have total damage of SK if you are almost half hp, its a risky spell.

It is perfectly fine. In theory. But these days there are 3-4 resists in a row. So with your setup it may happen that you won't kill anything at all(thanks NGD) while you make full rotation of your spells. SM+mental is more secure because mob evades are still less likely than resists. So with staff maginications maxed, arcane acceleration you're sure to kill mob relatively fast even if all your mental spells fail, and you won't blow so much mana into the air. Often i'm able to kill CHG+~10ish-+~20tish without using any offensive spell at all, 6-7 staff hits(range 30) thats all, maybe some kiting. This is also good antiganking setup.
But we are talking about SK being castable on mobs or not. Locks need it, without it they will be highly nerfed grinding wise. But, maybe is it something that NGD wants, i can only ask then, to make sure that we will be able to cast SK on pets.

I know. Blaze and arcane missile have low enough cooldowns and hit hard enough to counter this. I leveled my Horus lock from 36 onwards (40 now) using this method; no chain of resists ever dropped me below around 1k hp.

But back to the topic, I agree, SK should be castable on hunter pets, otherwise there truly will be no way to counter SotW other than hide behind obstacles.

Why this change is bad:

100 per tick is easily overhealed by enemy conju, 100 per tick will NOT save your life and shift some minor battles to your favor just by providing those 2-3 extra seconds you need to cast defensive buffs or kill the enemy that is endangering you the most. Having 100 per tick renders soulkeeper useless in wars imo, because friendly conju can heal you after 2-3 ticks and spell is lost. What, are you going to say "DONT HEAL GOT SK TICKIN KTXBYE"?

What Soulkeeper is/was, if you haven't understood from the paragraph above, it's a LIFE SAVER, atm it's just wasted points. Don't expect to get that extra few seconds from SK when you'll need 'em, it's more of a chance that you will die by trying to hide/idle somewhere until sk ticks at least 7-8 times.

Not to mention that it will be Dispelled on sight! Most support conjurers will be left will likely have 2 Dispels on high level after this update. Expect to see more Dispels.

A change to DOT isn't needed IMO. I do not see this spell causing trouble in the live servers.

sk and vampirism should remain as they are now
they only should be made to cannot be used on another players, only on mobs

no i don't think so, a conj can heal himself too, so locks (who are the destructive part of magic) need something to heal themselves to, in there own way, so i think it should stay as they are but castable on both mobs and players.

regards

I do, my lock can get to half hp by a good player, get a resist or hes out of cc, and i go will domain sk vamp beetle and hes done >.>, the only problem would be a hunter with pet under sotw, i can still vamp the pet kill it with 1 or 2 spells and recast barrier. And if he uses confuse, damn hes just lame and he cant uncamo with pet on you anymore anyway, just like a conj a lock isnt supposed to be the grinding beast that never has to sit down like they are now with hp drains, sm and some mental.

right ........:thumb_up:

Can you be more precise? You are just giving a situation which happens once in a while. Usually if a spell gets resisted, the enemy can counter easily. He has cc spells too, not as much as locks but he do have some to use.

Those situations never happens, if the hunter saw you kill the pet he will ambush you or use stunning fist, his job is to protect the pet who's doing most of the damage. That if he didn't cast defensive buffs on the pet.
Of course he will use confuse, it's not lame, they must take advantage of every spell they have. Plus, it's not because it's lame that we need to do nothing about it.
A hunter can kill a lock without a pet while playing safe(camo, sotw, confuse, ambush,distract stunning fist), but he needs a decent gear for damage.

As for vamp, its only 500 hp. 500 hp is one hit from a marks with good gear, half a hit by a barb, it won't give you time to do anything. And it's only 20 range.

Not many locks use sadistic servant, but many use energy borrow. Because sadistic fails if the enemy is killed, this will be the case of soulkeeper. And with animation, he will easily get dispelled

I can acctualy reasonably fight a warlock as a barb on Amun now, new SK is fine, in the current balance a 1kdamage+1kHeal spell is to much, no matter how much you talk about mana cost or range.

If you add it to Barriers 40 Cd then in most 1v1s a warlock can recover 2k of his Hp during the fight.

In war locks are squishy, and since lock damage is one of the only damages not being nerfed it makes sence to make them more squishy ,just cast it when you have taken 1k of damage instead of when your 100hp from death.

Dont scream so much over dispells, there are plenty of spells that conjus dispell, confuse, slows, beetle swarm, other dizzy effects, knocks basically every status effect, its not like every time someone cast SK a conju will instantly dispell it.

Conjus have done the same with mass dispell and sultar for ages as well as dispell and confuse, didnt stop anyone from skilling terror or confuse though did it?

i almost NEVER use soul keeper while grinding, only if i am resisted alot. normally i can just keep on going and vital absorption takes care of any hp issues.

My problem with Dispel is that it's too easy to skill it with the changes in Amun. You'll definitely see more of it in war which will be both good and bad but that's a whole other topic.

In my view, the new SK is too weak in war, specially with the new nerfed heals. It was already pretty easy to kill a warlock in multi-class wars in the current server.

Soul keeper definitely IS overpowered. Compared to other warlock spells. Far too much depends on this single spell...

I really like the change. One step closer to making mages harder to level, (still far away from finishing this task, though xD) and the new version adds new dynamics to combat.
Just a quick question... What was the last balance change, that actually added new dynamics to the game ?! It has been a while. ;P

I don't mind this change actually. I like that you'll be able to pre-buff it when you're expecting to get hurt.

it should be easy to kill a lock if 2 or 3 ppl are hitting him, he wears a tunic and is the offensive class, want defense? Skill wind wall5 and elemental conjunction5, use points for it, a lock can get 1,5k hp and 1k from barrier back in a instant now, simply will domain at any lvl, which takes 0,5 sec with just arcane devo, and then use those 2 spells, recast barrier, meteor ivy stalagmite, spells might get resisted, but even with 2 resists this would prolly work, since you have dmg from elemental spells to, it works for me, and im lvl 45 >.<. After the update, it can still be easy, spend 1 point in freeze and use sk then freeze, no dispell possiblity or counter cc.

i don't mind this change either. in fact, it's even better and more tactic than what we have now. it's more of a attack spell now instead of a defensive one.
the only problem now is that you can't cast it on mobs... so hunters would be harder to kill and lvling a lock would be harder. but that's what ngd want to achieve, to make lvling of mage slower. i think they did a great job. ^^

My mainchar is a lock and i dont dislike this change. Grinding will become a bit harder but it wont be a real problem with vampirism, eb and vitaly absorption and i dont think that this will hurt me in war/1v1, if i have to cast it earlier i will have more time to react if it fails.

And why do we want to make mages harder to level? I thought we were trying to make warriors easier, not make it harder for everyone else. Harder to level = more xim boosters purchased... balancing always seems to promote xim sales. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, yet again.

I do agree no SK on mobs is silly but with the current Amun version you'd be stupid to cast it on a mob anyway. Who wants to wait around 10 seconds to get your HP? It'll be the same in war too unless you do it by a fort where you know you'll be safe.

I see two things needing to happen to make it fair for everyone else and fair for the Warlock peeps.

Skill Change: Instead of taking 1000 HP instantly or the current Amun one where it takes 100 per tick, we mix them into a composite. So now the skill instantly takes 500 HP and for every level you get a dot effect of 100 HP every 5 seconds. So you end up with the old effect but people how have a chance to kill the Warlock before they lose all their HP.

Other Change: Make the new skill work on mobs ;p Warlocks can leave it on level 1 and get their 500 hp from a mob without having to wait forever to get the hp back, allowing them to grind again.

I'll reinterate, the only thing OPed about the current live Soul Keeper is it drains TOO QUICKLY. Warlocks still need this skill and I think the above is the best compromise for everyone. Now we can all have our cake and eat it ^^ I want chocolate cake for the record.

For those saying it's easy to cast will domain+vamp+sk+barrier, you won't have time unless you level it to 3 at least with update, gcd is 2 seconds (lvl 1 is 4sec). Spells will be cast slower and needed to be timed better, so lock will recieve more hits while casting those.

Umaril, soulkeeper with its current implamantation save's the lock in deseperate situations, specially in group.
If you need to wait 10 seconds, you can cast it early in 1vs1, but in group wars, everyone will hit the lock first along with conj, waiting 10 seconds to regain 1khp is too long. Sometimes the only thing that saves us when we get ambushed is soulkeeper (or sultar but we won't spam it anymore after update), now we will die way faster. And we already die fast.

As for dispells, soulkeeper animation is too obvious, that's why conj will dispell it. And with update, they will mostly lvl mana control,heal, sorcery and enchantements.

Nekoko, your idea is great, it's a compromise between both spells.

Timing says hello.

Meteor also says hello.


SK -> Freeze = no dispel.
Darkness -> SK = no dispel.

Come on, warlocks. You have lots of spells. Time to start using them. All of them.

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.