Illiterate wrote on May 16
th, 2016 at 8:24pm:
Fran gives his opinion on balancing classes and enhancement trees even though he's unable to do EE quests he can't do basic math.
FTFY
That's the issue with most of the people who wail about some change: They don't know math, and therefore can't see that 3 is simply a larger number than 1.
When that basic fact escapes you there's no hope of you managing to balance anything at all, including a checkbook.
Look at the guy in the OP. He makes a pile of assumptions about the class and then critiques the class based on his assumptions.
The Warlock was designed to do in melee exactly what it does: Turtle up and let the blasts and aura kill stuff dead. Making the assumption that it was intended to do significant, actual 'beat stuff with a pointy thing until it is dead' melee DPS is the failed assumption which causes the arrival at a failed conclusion. And then the proposals for how to
fix the class to do what it was never meant to do in the first place are also failures.
Look at his opening paragraph:
Quote:As we know, the warlock PrE enlightened spirit was meant to provide the platform for a tanky warlock that could combine melee with magic. This design intend is all over the tree: extra HPs, PRR, initially heals (now nerfed to just hamp), light damage on hit, passive eldritch burst (hence not needing to pew pew), AoE debuffs, and melee power. There is absolutely no doubt that this is all stuff that is meant to make melee viable.
Aside from the fact that starting an argument with an "as we know" is presumptuous and treads close to being a logical fallacy, look at his list of things that "as we know" make Warlocks in the ES tree melee combatants:
"extra HPs, PRR, initially heals (now nerfed to just hamp), light damage on hit, passive eldritch burst (hence not needing to pew pew), AoE debuffs, and melee power."
Of that list only "damage on hit" and "melee power" actually apply. The rest are present in piles of classes and enhance trees and destinies that are not intended to do melee damage.
Then he turns around and lets us know that he actually does know how the ES Lock plays best.
Quote:Soon most players have realized that melee is absurd with a warlock ES. A typical ES build plays in unyielding sentinel, turtles up and blasts the enemies to death.
But he just doesn't like it.
I'd respect an argument that began with that accurate summation of how the ES Lock is played and then delved into what he doesn't like about it and his suggestions for changes much more than the disingenuous "It's meant to work this way, so here's how to make it work that way" BS that he actually went with.
But in the end it's a pointless exercise, because Turbine isn't going to change the class or the enhance tree into some kind of "Does the same exact DPS overall, just in the way I'd prefer" pointless waste of their time. They can't sell more of them just because they are different but just the same. They already got their "initially OP" sales under their belts, and now they are just going to get trickle sales of VIP subs which give access to the class or TP purchases of access to the class.