Sorcerers too powerful?

[Otterscrubber]

I have a buddy of mine, who likes his warlock, who thinks that sorcerers are completely broken. His reasons are:

1) They get to add their extra damage to every attack rather than just one/round.
2) They have some amazing defensive abilities, such as the ability to add their Str modifier to ALL their defenses as a daily abilities for the entire encounter.
3) There is a feat that lets them add temp HP every time they hit an enemy with an at will

These are great, but has anyone crunched numbers to see if they balance out with the abilities from Warlocks or other strikers?

 

[RangerWickett]

Warlocks, in the estimation of my group, are just weak compared to most other classes. An easy fix is to change them to be based entirely on either Con or Cha.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Arguably almost any other striker looks broken compared to the warlock

On the positive side for the warlock though - their curse which starts as 1d6 ramps up to 2d6 and then 3d6, so at paragon it is as good (and better on a crit) and at epic it is better (and much better on a crit) than the sorcerers bonus when tackling single targets.

Pact boons for infernal warlocks and starlocks can be quite strong.

The warlock ability to gain concealment any time they move 3 or more squares can be pretty good too.

However, in general I freely admit that I'd rather have a sorcerer than a warlock, it looks like they can do the basic striker "do lots of damage" schtick better than warlocks can.

 

[chitzk0i]

What level is that "amazing defensive ability" that adds your strength mod to all defenses? I haven't read all the powers, but I have tried building a few sorcerers. Even with leather armor proficiency, their AC is still pretty bad, and dragon sorcerers have a giant, gaping hole instead of a reflex defense.

Warlock at-wills have defensive benefits like temporary invisibility or punishing monsters for moving closer to or hurting you. Sorcerers get straight damage at-wills. Most warlock attack powers have control or debuff effects coupled with mild damage. Most sorcerer attack powers are high damage with occasional special effects.

The downside of playing a warlock is that your damage is just not as hot as other strikers. The upside is that you have ready access to defensive abilities (including moving three square for an effective +2 to all defenses) and you have a large number of single-target control powers.

This is the kicker: when do you need to control multiple monsters? They're either going to be regular monsters or minions. In either case, your striker(s) and defender(s) can DPS them down quickly enough that it's not worth the bother to catch them all in a control AoE. However, when you're fighting a solo or elite, you will really regret it if you don't apply some control affects like push/slide/pull, debuffs, or slow/immobilize. A control-oriented warlock can have access to all of these and make that guy's life hell.

 

[keterys]

There's no tier at which the warlock is all that better off with his dice as far as I can tell -
Dex at heroic is 3-4 vs. 1d6
Dex+2 at paragon is 6-7 vs. 2d6
Dex+4 at epic is 9-13 vs. 3d6

If a feat existed to up warlocks to d8s, that'd help, and warlocks do better with crits... but sorcerers also do better when dazed or hitting multiple people or using an AP.

But, yeah, I fail to see how that shows that sorcerers are too powerful.

 

[Obryn]

Sorcerers do a lot more damage. If that's what you're looking for, go with sorcerer.

I think Warlocks have much more interesting special effects, however. You can't underestimate Pact Boons. Shadow Walk rocks pretty hard. And really, at most levels, you can manage to find Warlock powers that do just about as much damage. More, against single enemies, in many cases.

Also, I don't think they're so underpowered that they're an albatross on the party. Heck, I think their added coolness and fun RP capabilities make them a more attractive choice than sorcerers - for me, anyway.

-O

 

[Otterscrubber]

Good feedback, I pretty much agree with everything said here. Thanks for the alternate perspective forumers

 

[Blackbrrd]

We have a Infernal Pact warlock in our party and he generates quite a lot of temp hp for himself, which gives him great survivability.

It should be mentioned that our DM rarely rolls lower than 15 on his D20, so our fights are really deadly. In addition he "surprises" us just about every encounter and then wins initative, so the monsters always start with 1.5 rounds of actions before we start.

The warlock loves his survivability as you might understand

 

[Plane Sailing]

There's no tier at which the warlock is all that better off with his dice as far as I can tell -

Good point, I forgot about the +2 and +4 kickers at the higher tiers.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, to me the warlocks are better at single targets like elites and solos. They can daze, stun and take away actions better than most classes. Sorcorers are great at just plain hit point damage. They have a bit of control, but it is not much, and most of that is jsut kicker damage as well.

I like both classes, but they are different strikers. So far I have been impressed with WOTC's ability to differentiate strikers from each other. The Rogue, Barbarian, Avenger, Warlock and Sorceror do not play at all the same way. That is a good thing.