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__________________ "Players may blunder through dialog with shocking ineptitude, forget the name of the country they are in, or get confused about which side they are on, but once it comes time to roll for initiative they all turn into Sun Tzu." Shamus Young, DM of the Rings.
A little bit more content to your assertion, perhaps?
There's very little directed to the Fey Pact. There are two generic Paragon Paths and one for Fey that seems somewhat at odds with the direction that a Feylock tends to go, by design. That just reinforces my opinion that I'll have to take a second Pact at Paragon. I think that it's shiny newness syndrome. The new Pact seems fairly well fleshed out.
The Feylock is the Diet Coke of Warlocks. It's the Warlock for people who want to hug bunnies instead of setting them on fire, people who don't want to make any real sacrifice for their power (and you get what you pay for, b/c the Feylock excels solely at teleporting).
You can make pacts with the forces of hell, unknowable entities of madness, or...the courts of the fey? One of these things is not like the other, methinks.
__________________ Of course I wanted Jim to find the mallard. Make him feel safe. Did you really think I would put my primary listening device in a wooden mallard? I'm not insane. - Dwight K. Schrute
Sounds like some people have bought into the Disney-fication of the "Fair" Folk. Changeling: The Lost should set you straight on the horror of Faerie.
__________________ Not all bean-counting is of equal importance. ~Mallus
Sometimes I think people view gaming as practice for law school than as an enjoyable leisure activity. ~Professor Phobos
Some people enjoy building sandcastles. Others enjoy kicking them over. ~Wormwood
A little bit more content to your assertion, perhaps?
Actually, WotC clearly hates warlocks, but it hates the feylock even more than the other warlocks. How come the rogue gets a paragon path that increases the crit range of all its powers and the warlocks paragon paths increase it on powers with rare keywords? How come the rogue and ranger get to improve their extra damage dice and the 'lock doesn't? The sorcerer gets a bonus on every single damage roll regardless of how many targets or when in the round the target takes the damage; the 'lock gets bonus damage once per round, period. The warlock is supposed to be striker but sucks against solos because they do crappy damage but have rider effects against which solos save 80% of the time.
As for why the feylock sucks even worse than the other 'locks:
first level enounters: all do multiple dice of damage and have rider effects except for the feylock one which does one die of damage. The "bonus" you get for being fey pact is that the range is 10...but all the other powers have a range 10 for free.
Level one dailies: the powers that use Cha are weaker then the ones that use con.
Encounter 3: not bad, except that the range is again 5, something that almost no warlock power has had up until this point.
Daily 5: here the cha powers are better than the con powers. I am shocked
daily 9: terrible damage for the fey powers with useless riders (ooh, i can end the damage and slide the target? really??)
daily 15: huh, there isn't even a new power here for the feylock. too bad
that's as far as I have gotten. Oh, and the coolest thing about the feylock, the teleporting? every single class in PHB2 except the barbarian now has more and better teleporting effects.
__________________ "Players may blunder through dialog with shocking ineptitude, forget the name of the country they are in, or get confused about which side they are on, but once it comes time to roll for initiative they all turn into Sun Tzu." Shamus Young, DM of the Rings.
And yes, the above only examines Arcane Power. That is because the feylock was so clearly the weakest PHB striker that I thought it might get some love in AP to make it playable. Instead, it is clearly supposed to die a slow and unmourned death.
__________________ "Players may blunder through dialog with shocking ineptitude, forget the name of the country they are in, or get confused about which side they are on, but once it comes time to roll for initiative they all turn into Sun Tzu." Shamus Young, DM of the Rings.
Yeah, sorry it took a couple of posts. I was reading AP surreptitiously at work and fired off a "first impressions" post.
__________________ "Players may blunder through dialog with shocking ineptitude, forget the name of the country they are in, or get confused about which side they are on, but once it comes time to roll for initiative they all turn into Sun Tzu." Shamus Young, DM of the Rings.
The Feylock is the Diet Coke of Warlocks. It's the Warlock for people who want to hug bunnies instead of setting them on fire, people who don't want to make any real sacrifice for their power (and you get what you pay for, b/c the Feylock excels solely at teleporting).
You can make pacts with the forces of hell, unknowable entities of madness, or...the courts of the fey? One of these things is not like the other, methinks.
Aria Moonfire, warlock servant of the Bralani of Autumn, strongly disagrees with you.
While I yet to have my Arcane Power, I will be getting my book later today, I think judging the power of the Feylock build purely on damage is a poor and misinterpreted ideal. Its a known fact that Feylocks focus on Mobility and Single Target Control over damage. In fact, you can probably say that Feylocks damage enemy Economy of Actions more then any other class, and that is thier niche. A feylock should focus on reduction of enemy actions, starting with effects that greatly hinder actions, then graduating to effects that reduce them, and peaking finally with effects that completely remove actions from the enemy and ADDING them to the parties (ie. Domination, Forcing attacks against other creatures, etc.)
So while a typical Striker mantra would be 'Kill it with damage before it kills us', the Feylocks Mantra would be 'Kill the Enemies with the Enemy and add a bit of pain on top for flavor.'
If Arcane Power keeps with this power design, having powers that do low damage but have bizare and powerful secondary effects the really make the enemies days difficult... Well, I think it is doing the Feylock a good service.
Last edited by MrAlgothi; 24th April 2009 at 01:24 AM..
You can make pacts with the forces of hell, unknowable entities of madness, or...the courts of the fey? One of these things is not like the other, methinks.
You and I clearly aren't reading the same fey tales and legends. You read the right sources, the "faerie folk" are at least as scary as the forces of Hell...
__________________ Ari Marmell
aka
Mouseferatu
--Rodent of the Dark
Perhaps if the Fey pact had concentrated more on charm and domination and illusion (traditional faerie stuff) and less on teleporting around like Nightcrawler from the X-Men it would have better gelled as 'scary faerie'?
That's just the impression I got, anyway.
Cheers
__________________ Plane Sailing
(Enworld Admin)
If you need to email me click here
"It makes as much sense as having Batman kill his parents and then go on to fight mutants from another dimension." - Rykion
By the way - have you seen the 'Dark pact' warlock from FR? I've not got FR, but I seem to remember hearing that their pact boon was potentially rather overpowered. They might be worth looking at if you've not seen them (and I read somewhere that they use Cha for their powers?)
Cheers
__________________ Plane Sailing
(Enworld Admin)
If you need to email me click here
"It makes as much sense as having Batman kill his parents and then go on to fight mutants from another dimension." - Rykion
Perhaps if the Fey pact had concentrated more on charm and domination and illusion (traditional faerie stuff) and less on teleporting around like Nightcrawler from the X-Men it would have better gelled as 'scary faerie'?
That's just the impression I got, anyway.
Cheers
For that you have to get into the racial Paragon Path from PHB2.
There is one power that favours the Feylock, that I rather like, that seems in keeping with the capricious nature of The Fey; lift the target (10 + (5 X INT MOD) into the air and restrain him, and when he saves he falls. That's at level 9. For my character that would presumably generate 3d10 damage, barring Acrobatics rolls and Curse bonus damage, while possibly taking an opponent out of combat for a round or two.
While I yet to have my Arcane Power, I will be getting my book later today, I think judging the power of the Feylock build purely on damage is a poor and misinterpreted ideal. Its a known fact that Feylocks focus on Mobility and Single Target Control over damage. In fact, you can probably say that Feylocks damage enemy Economy of Actions more then any other class, and that is thier niche. A feylock should focus on reduction of enemy actions, starting with effects that greatly hinder actions, then graduating to effects that reduce them, and peaking finally with effects that completely remove actions from the enemy and ADDING them to the parties (ie. Domination, Forcing attacks against other creatures, etc.)
So while a typical Striker mantra would be 'Kill it with damage before it kills us', the Feylocks Mantra would be 'Kill the Enemies with the Enemies' and add a bit of pain on top for flavor.'
If Arcane Power keeps with this power design, having powers that do low damage but have bizare and powerful secondary effects the really make the enemies days difficult... Well, I think it is doing the Feylock a good service.
That would be a great theory if the rogue and ranger didn't also have rider effects for nearly every power in addition to their better attack bonuses and better damage. Take a look at the first few levels of rogue: slide target, daze, blind, knock prone. Exactly where is the advantage the feylock supposedly has here?
__________________ "Players may blunder through dialog with shocking ineptitude, forget the name of the country they are in, or get confused about which side they are on, but once it comes time to roll for initiative they all turn into Sun Tzu." Shamus Young, DM of the Rings.
That would be a great theory if the rogue and ranger didn't also have rider effects for nearly every power in addition to their better attack bonuses and better damage. Take a look at the first few levels of rogue: slide target, daze, blind, knock prone. Exactly where is the advantage the feylock supposedly has here?
The Rogue is quite good at rider effects I will admit (I play one as my prime character and I always choose powers with effects over damage.) However, Warlocks have range 10 on nearly every power and a damage mechanic that does not require perfect positioning, unlike Sneak Attack. Granted, a crafty rogue player can get CA 90% without much effort and has powers that grant it often, but the Curse Mechanic is a minor action Fire and Forget system that has benefits outside of damage (read: Pact Boon.)
The Rogue has quite a few Stuns, Slides, Dazes and Blinds. It even has the rare Forced Attack.
The Feylock has many powers with the same effects, plus more abilities that Force Attacks, Dominate, and other truly bizarre effects like stealing attack rolls, splitting damage, and so on. Just look at the Fey Paragon Path in the PHB, this is what the Devs thought a Feylock should be doing.
Feylocks just focus less on Damage and more on the other aspects of being a striker: Mobility and Target acquisition. They also heavily focus on Control: Target Action Negation.
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