[E-spec idea] Warlock

I like to imagine that Anet take the 4 horsemen as the core of the design behind the necromancers e-spec. Thus, the reaper represent Death while scourge represent Plague. Here is my take at an e-spec which is supposed to represent War.

Warlock :

A group of necromancers that chose to etch terrifying curses on themself in their path of power, bending them to the material world and, often, weakening them physically.

Traits :

Minors traits :Adept minor trait : Warlock's beaconDeath shroud is replaced by warlock's warbanner which do not lock you out of your utilities nor did it protect your hit points. You also gain access to curses and off-hand axe. LF drain per second : 5%.

Master minor trait : Cursed soulWhen you wield your warbanner deaths around you grant you a stack of soul essence slowly refilling your life force every second.Soul essence : grant 1% LF / second. Last 10 seconds and stack up to 5 times in intensity.

Grandmaster minor trait : Cursed lifeUpon taking your warbanner, gain barrier due to the sudden surge of life force. Barrier gained : 2500.

Upper traitline : This traitline revolve around the idea that war is brutal (full of ferocity and hard hitting) and leave marks hard to recover from (poison).

• adept trait : Vicious axes : Off-hand Axes skills now also poison foes. Wielding and axe grant ferocity (75 per axe)
• master trait : Beacon of decay : Dark pond and summon madness now also poison foe on hit.
• grandmaster trait : Deal more 10% damage against poison foes, while wielding the warlock's banner this bonus is doubled.

Middle traitline : This traitline revolve around the idea that the warlock's body, riddled with curses, adapted to this state

• adept trait :
• master trait : Spitefull curses : Each curse slotted grant you 30 point of ferocity and 30 point of precision (bonus doubled while wielding the warbanner). Using a Curse grant you barrier : 1000.
• grandaster trait : Cursed flesh : Reduce incoming condition damage by 30%. For each condition on you 2% damage reduction is added.

Grandmasters traits : This traitline focus on the idea that the warlock have a powerfull presence on the battlefield. (This is the line that I feel is the weakest and need work)

• adept trait : Sorrow bringer : whenever you kill a foes, a ripple expand from this foe weakening foes around it.
• master trait : Overflowing essence : Your soul essence stacks also heal allies around you 32 + (0,03* healing power)
• grandmaster trait : Cursed madness : sacrificing your beacon of madness also heal ally in the area.

Warbanner (shroud) :

F1 : Warlock's warbanner : Summon a warbanner in your hand and gain new skills. CD : 10 seconds

Warbanner#1 : Life ball : cast a ball of life force that explode on impact and hit multiple foes. Cast time 1 second. (basically elementalist's fireball)

Warbanner#2 : Dark pond : summon a pond of darkness at the targeted area. (Damages and modus operandi are the same as elementalist's lava font, fire field is replaced by dark field. Path of corruption only trigger on first tic.)

Warbanner#3 : Lich form's ripple of horror and march of undeath goes here.

Warbanner#4 : Summon madness changed to a necromancer's style meteor shower with corpse appearing from the floor and exploding instead of meteors falling.

Warbanner#5 : Beacon of madness : summon a beacon (considered as a minion) at the targeted area that draw to itself allies conditions every seconds until it die or is sacrified. CD : 40 seconds.Condition drawn : 1/ally/3 seconds on up to 5 allies.Radius : 300

→ Sacrificed madness : Destroy your beacon, dealing damage and spreading the conditions affecting it. 5 targets, radius 300.

Utilities : Curses. Each curse slotted reduce the warlock's max health pool by 10%.

Heal : Undying curse : Flare the curse, regenerating life every second. (work like ranger's troll unguent base CD 20 seconds since there is no trait reducing the CD)

Locust's curse : Summon a cloud of locust at the targeted area, continuously dealing 24 impact. Last 6 seconds CD 30 seconds radius 240.

Gnat's curse : Summon a cloud of fly on your target, continuously draining life to up to five foes around it every ½ seconds. Last 6 seconds CD 10 seconds radius 240 Stealed health 32 per hit.

Snake's curse : Remove up to 3 boons on the target, applying 2 poison stacks for each boon reaped off. CD 30 seconds

Bloody curse : Release a dark cloud following you, continuously bleeding foes around you. Last 6 seconds CD 20 seconds radisu 240.

Elite : deadly curse : Curse a single target for 10 seconds. The target affected by the curse see it's toughness reduced by 240 and have 2 stacks of vulnerability applied on it every ½ seconds. CD 40 seconds. Deadly curses do not stack.

Weapon : Off-Hand axe. (no idea for the skills at the moment, just imagine somehow a power damage off hand)

Skill#4 :

Skill#5 :

NB.: It will probably be obvious to most readers eyes, but the survivability is intentionnally low. Most of the design is aimed at making a spec close to a staff fire elementalist. The spec should more or less be able to reach competitive power damage in PvE at the cost of a lot of survivability. (Damages should be slightly lower than elementalist on both small and large target)

the flavor text is as minimal as it gets and the banner is among the most boring elite mechanic i've heard of.

banner 5 sounds good to me. condition control - very very very "anet"-flavour-ish. a nice idea but probably clunky (thinking of wvw and pvp).still like ithowever, i would swap the 5 and the 4. condition control on necro weapons feels like a "4" skill. and big aoes tend to be "5" (doesnt matter really. was just thinking it would fit in the concept of many weapons).

the class mechanic on the other hand, the utilities and the four horsemen interpreatation... i don't know man.summoning the banner and the curses dont fit - like together (imo).the curses are too much of an aoe-based feature too.gnat's curse ... already exists in a form, if you trait blood magic. when you combine both, it might end up as THE life stealing tank arenanet seems to be avoiding for very long now. and i dont want blood magic to be "simplified" (nerfed) in terms of life stealing in favor for the next e-spec.skill/trait effects that scale with enemies dying = nono. arenanet has been removing them slowly, and i think it is a very good move.

however, you have been using a lot of already existing themes (locust, snake, blood, vampiric, the wonky mix of power and condition elements) and introduced curses - and also implemented a function to lower somebodys armor, which is something the community has been asking for a long time now (to make (power)necro being wanted in pve). not too bad of a combination. it just didnt hit the point for me :)

@"Aetatis.5418" said:banner 5 sounds good to me. condition control - very very very "anet"-flavour-ish. a nice idea but probably clunky (thinking of wvw and pvp).still like ithowever, i would swap the 5 and the 4. condition control on necro weapons feels like a "4" skill. and big aoes tend to be "5" (doesnt matter really. was just thinking it would fit in the concept of many weapons).

I pondered on it as well, however, I ultimately decided to put the condi control skill on 5 because all in all it's a minion while the mass damage skill is a long cast time skill (cast time that can be used for proc'ing transfusion)

the class mechanic on the other hand, the utilities and the four horsemen interpreatation... i don't know man.summoning the banner and the curses dont fit - like together (imo).the curses are too much of an aoe-based feature too.gnat's curse ... already exists in a form, if you trait blood magic. when you combine both, it might end up as THE life stealing tank arenanet seems to be avoiding for very long now. and i dont want blood magic to be "simplified" (nerfed) in terms of life stealing in favor for the next e-spec.

I made it like that because life siphon effect don't proc any effect which make the skill only leech up to 300 health point/second. How I envision it blood magic shouldn't be touched due to this skill, but I understand the concern, I also asked myself whether it would have a huge impact or not and ended up with the idea that on a single target a 64 dps is neligible.

skill/trait effects that scale with enemies dying = nono. arenanet has been removing them slowly, and i think it is a very good move.

however, you have been using a lot of already existing themes (locust, snake, blood, vampiric) and introduced curses - and also implemented a function to lower somebodys armor, which is something the community has been asking for a long time now (to make (power)necro being wanted in pve). not too bad of a combination.

Honnestly, with this one I just wanted a simple e-spec that other professions can't possibly complain about and which could perform well in PvE. Ultimately, the on kill effects are not necessary and nobody is supposed to stay in banner mode for long, favoring more a proper rotation between weaponsets and the banner, thought it's difficult to make a necromancer weapon (other than scepter) valuable in a dps rotation.

it just didnt hit the point for me :)

Granted the comments up to now, it only hit the point for me ;) So that's not a strange

I dont like that you want it to be like staff fire ele or staff ele period actually.I personally wouldnt want to use an profession mechanic thats as flunky as fire staff ele, I would just go play fire staff ele.

So many thing can be done with the name warlock but this is odd. Why a banner? Ive never heard of warlocks throwing up banners.Reading the first few lines in your spec with the whole concept being based on war with weakened curse afflicted necromancers leading the way I would have expected more minions or something to be doing the fighting for them. Not weak and fragile casters to be going into battle with a banner.

Some of the traits are ok ish but i still feel like overall this spec would be too handy capped by core necro and thats something to really consider. Core necro is already weak. If you put too many limitations on an elite spec (possible you held back a bit when writing this) Then the spec will also be weak.

An example would beMaster minor trait : Cursed soulWhen you wield your warbanner deaths around you grant you a stack of soul essence slowly refilling your life force every second.Why not just have this always active. Thats very limiting to have it only trigger while you are using your F1 which might not be so bad in pve in some situations but there will be many situations where still nothing around to die or you dont have the banner active. Ideally its a wasted trait anytime your banner is not in your hand.

There is not much exciting going on with the shroud skills, traits, or utilities.Much like me you fell into making alot of passive triats that dont account for much I cant find much reason that I would want to use this. Its not suitable for boosting support, damage, or defense by much that other e specs ore core cant already do to an equal amount or greater.

I think perhaps another take on warlock might be better personally thats just my 2 cents.

• Shroud 2 is traditionally movement ability (do you remember same point you made to me?), so where is movement on banner 2?
• Shroud 3 is traditionally fear (do you remember same point you made to me?), so where is fear anywhere on this elite? Oh wait, you get fear by copy lich form ability? * Why? Core necromancer already have this and you just copy-paste existing ability to market as a new one?
• LF drain 5%/sec, master minor trait stack up to 5%/sec LF restoration. So, essentially you can have infinity LF, because it doesn't drain when you take damage. So, endless shroud? Should i common how ridiculous it is?
• "adept trait : Vicious axes" why does it grant conflicting things of conditions and power related stat? That makes no sense. Is axe condition or power weapon?
• "grandmaster trait" endless shroud + 20% damage increase against poisoned foes + "master trait : Beacon of decay" constant poison = ridiculous OP
• "grandaster trait : Cursed flesh" brokenly OP. Corruptor's Fervor (death magic trait) require you to apply 10 conditions to gain 20% condition damage reduction for a limited time, and this this thing offer 30% permanent damage reduction? Can't even describe how broken this. It would make this spec completely anti-condition class as even 3 other condition based player wouldn't be able to kill this elite. And it even stack in power for every condition on you. Pure nonsense.

Overall, this elite is big pile of nonsense and overpowered traits. Adding it would completely destroy all condition specs in pvp, it lacks traditional abilities and steals abilities from lich form. It is super anti-condition spec which specializes in massive condition damage, and that's a bad design.Score: 0/10.

Edit: ohhhh, and "shroud 5" is a minion, so this is clearly aimed concept for death magic. So, essentially no even 5 condition players in pvp situation couldn't kill this elite, because:1) It takes 30-62% less condition damage2) Most of conditions are automatically transferred to minions and minions have increased health3) It itself does tons and tons of condition damage

Also, lets not ignore problems this elite have with other core traits, like:1) How would Unholy Sanctuary work with this "shroud"? Remember how it works, right? Well, your shroud in your own words "do not lock you out of your utilities nor did it protect your hit points". When it will trigger? Also, having endless shroud means you will get continues healing from this trait until you get downed or killed;2) Shrouded removal - you get permanent shroud and you cleanse a condition ever 3 sec, so essentially even more anti-condition options;3) Death perception - endless shroud means that you will get 50% permanent critical strike chance bonus. That's like 800 free precision;

So, not only this elite is completely nonsensical overpowered broken pile of even more nonsense, but it also brakes core traits making them completely and utterly overpowered as well.