So I started up a Warlock for the first time yesterday. I had been tempted to play one for sometime but there had been various critiques online on how the visuals were poor, the class felt clunky compared to the “smooth” barbarian or how people would get killed by the annoying sword that gets dropped on your head from time-to-time. There were a few builds that caught my eye but the main one I was interested in motivated me to give this class a shot, despite how this particular build probably was the guiltiest with regards to the visual eye sores.
Leveling was very smooth mostly because I had gone through a few characters already and had all the Runes I would need to start off quickly as well as max starting skill points. Again, for alt leveling, skills being capped based on your level feels crummy and almost pointless just because constant re-spec’ing already is a miserable experience. Here, I think if you have the skill points available and you have an alt character, you should be able to access any level on the tree. If the idea is to slow down leveling, then it makes no sense as many players will probably just use the Whisper Cache trick to power level up alts. In my case, I saved a few excess season caches once I hit around level 40. I found that for alts, one you do the majority of the strongholds and get to roughly level 40 or so, the last 20-30 levels feel more like busy work. So that’s when I use some spare caches just to finish off or get close to where I need.
For the early part of the leveling experience, I ended up doing a Minion type of build that uses the Command Fallen and Bombardment combination. Warlock minions drastically differ from other summoning builds as their minions mostly are temporary, thus forcing you to re-summon them. They function more like a demolition crew which makes the Warlock summoning style less passive than a Druid or Necromancer. On the other hand, the AI seems slightly better as these critters act more like a heat seeking missile. Also, there’s a Rampage greater demon that smashes enemies or rather a spot and continues to do so until you cast them onto a different spot. The most impressive summon though is the monstrous sword wielding Fiend of Abbadon, which reminded of Ragnarok from Thor.
Once I hit level 70, I altered the build slightly using a variety of boss trophies to get the build enabling uniques. I was missing an aspect or two so the build might’ve been a little off. Also, I never managed to acquire the Talisman set for this build and only found two pieces. Oddly, I managed to quickly scrape up the Apocalypse Talisman set instead (which was the build I was aiming for). The Minion build was fine and many people described it as tanky. However, I found that the lack of AoE and the funky swapping between forms was off. Some of it reminded me of the old Chicken build for the Diablo 3 Witch Doctor. I simply didn’t care for it here as I tend to dislike builds that swap context and UI. I think the experience is bad because of how you build a certain muscle memory which builds like this defy.
Right now, I’m running the Apocalypse build. What interested was the Umbral Chain skill in seeing these odd chains rotating around in the battlefield as well as the giant nuclear explosion that goes off periodically. I have the basic gear setup (included the Helm of Perdition). So far it’s a very impactful build that effectively one shots almost everything if you can get your Apocalypse spell off. It is a slower build compared to other ones I’ve played because you need to combo certain skills together to really max out your DPS. But it really isn’t that bad at this stage.
I think the real issue for the Apocalypse build comes once you begin pushing Pit levels or higher torments. The main comment I’ve read is its squishiness. You do emphasize getting a lot of life and have some defenses like employing the Endurant Faith as a charm. Where I think most people have issues is the double whammy effective of a brief pause during a cast then having too much indistinguishable screen clutter. Since on death effects now plague the game, the excess visual clutter prevents someone not paying attention to see things like the Executioner Sword effect. However, I think Blizzard is going to have a very difficult time fixing this issue for Warlocks because of how they made the class vastly messier than others.
I really think the solution is simple though where they need to remove the excess effects and go with a light opacity. Even if they were to remove the on death effects, you still have too much screen clutter interfering with other visuals like chests that lack clear outlines. But I think the positive in this is that hopefully it forces Blizzard to have a deeper examination into the visual design portion of the game because that part needs a lot of work.
I am glad that I gave this build a try though. I don’t think it’s something I will stick with for the rest of the season. Maybe I might try to push her glyphs to max and see how much gear I can improve upon. And while the big explosions does provide some satisfaction, the class itself with the two key flaws doesn’t provide a compelling enough reason to go further at this stage. I might either return to my Barbarian and attempt to aim for an immortal setup (which honestly seems boring and silly) or I might give my Druid a second shot. The three remaining classes of Spiritborn, Necromancer and even Paladin don’t really have any special builds that entice me at this point. I’d really prefer that Blizzard fixes up the main bugs from various classes then have a kick ass Season 14 with some new end game content that becomes permanent additions to the game and expand on the War Plans activities.
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