Its moving away from what one of the two playstyles I mentioned used to do, possibly others. There's more than one side to this.
One side that only has one class catering to it and has just had that class have its guts ripped out - and the other that already had two classes catering to it, has had a third tweaked to cater to it in the playtest, and now has a fourth almost entirely sacrificed upon its altar. So yes there is technically more than one side. But only one of the two sides has 100% of the classes catering to it about to have that capability removed. And one side
already has an embarrassment of riches.
Flip that around, and... we already have three other Arcane full casters that effectively do the same thing the warlock does, and can generally do it better than the warlock does.
But we don't. I'm sorry, this is simply not true. We have full casters that have to play book keeper and juggle low level spell slots.
I wouldn't be
quite as against making the warlock into a third full arcane caster as I am against making it a half-caster; I can understand the appeal of sacrificing your soul for full casting. But the simple fact of the matter is that the warlock's casting mechanics are both unique and strongly thematic, in terms of having cheated their way to power and not having the foundations and low level spell slots.
The big draw is that, in both cases... the warlock does it differently. Both as a pseudo-gish and a pseudo-full-caster.
But the warlock
doesn't do things significantly differently when you make them a generic, off the peg half-caster. They do do things significantly differently when they have their own casting mechanics. There quite simply isn't a big difference between Eldritch Blast + Hex and Archery + Hunter's Mark. They just have different spell lists
I think this refusal to acknowledge that there's wildly divergent playstyles and multiple view points here is hurting the conversation.
And I think that the misrepresentations of what the issues are is hurting the conversation.
The artificer's problem is that its a half-caster with just a bunch of random spells, and hasn't bothered to try and integrate them in a similar manner that the Ranger and Paladin have. The point of half-caster is the synergy between the martial and caster aspects. The artificer lacks that.
Congratulations. You've just put your finger on what
another problem with this half-assed half-caster is. It just now has a bunch of full caster spells cast through half-casting and has even
less integration between the two than there was before (because the New Hex works with Pact Magic but not the new casting).
The warlock, meanwhile, has a number of synergies. Needs to be retuned since the 2014 release, but its there.
The warlock, meanwhile,
had a number of synergies. Notably:
- Top level spells are meant to be showstoppers in their own right and thus don't need subtle synergies. Because those were the spells warlocks cast the relative lack of synergy didn't matter. The design was structurally sound
- Invocations are normally low level spells you can cast a lot of. This synergises well with the warlock chassis which has no low level spell slots. Meanwhile (and this is part of why I call this implementation half-assed) the warlock has a lot of low level slots, meaning those plus Invocations are gilding the lilly while it lacks the top level stuff
- Hex (and Armour of Agathys) used to scale with spell slot. This worked with warlocks. But with the breaking of pact magic these synergies have gone
This doesn't mean there are no synergies; for example shield is always good (but not as good as e.g. on an Armourer). The warlock now is actively less self-synergetic than the artificer. This isn't "retuning" it needs but an entire rewrite because the heart of the way those synergies worked has been torn out. (Parts do need retuning; neither
defensive invocation for the warlock works as Mage Armour is pretty pointless and False Life doesn't scale and this has always been the case).
Like I said this implementation is half-assed. And it would take as much work to put in the needed synergies as it would to put them into the warlock.