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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Destil" data-source="post: 5009765" data-attributes="member: 1980">Actually, it's 'not like WoW' for a number of fairly technical reasons, and I mean that as an assessment of the combat mechanics on a whole of both games, rather than a snide side-jab. WoW's combat is quite different than 4E and at the end of the day in large raid situations at max level (which is the only thing the game is balanced for, aside from a nod towards arena PvP) almost every DPS member of your raid is pretty easy to qualify by the little bar that shows you how much damage they do.There are fights that require more from your damage guys than being awake at the wheel and reacting to gimmicks, but with groups as huge as a WoW raid (10 or 25 people currently) it's not really an issue, someone in the raid will generally have the ability to deal with things like dispels. The limited stacking mechanics mean that most buff/debuff 'slots' can be filled by any of 2-3 classes.With a few hours of parsed log data I can pretty easily tell a breakdown of a raid's DPS members and with real world data it's not generally much more than 'bigger number is better.' Especially as coming in at high DPS generally means that a raid member understands the mechanics of a fights and basics like maneuvering and positioning well, since doing poorly with gimmicks will generally result in lower DPS (more time spent moving into/out of safe areas, more time spent with a fight-changing damage buff, poor aggro management requiring you to burn cooldowns on defensive abilities or just spending time dead et cetera). Tanks need a lot of skill and ability to control a fight, healers need good instincts and reflexes to balance mana vs cooldowns vs throughput vs risk (though like DPS raid/area healers are pretty easy to judge with total healing numbers, especially effective heal, though there are cross healing concerns that DPS ratings don't share), but DPS you can almost always rate by number with good accuracy.Now, D&D, on the other hand, offers players a much smaller group. There's still some load balancing, but it's not on the same level when you need to fill 11 buff slots with 25 people from 9 classes. Parties will have strengths and weakness, and they will be far more pronounced than looking at two raid groups. Things like target selection, slipperiness, resilience and whatnot are much more common.In WoW if your non-tanks take two hits they die; maybe one on a crit, which is around a 25% chance. Non-tank damage is usually a sign of something very wrong, or intended to be hitting non-tanks (and thus designed to be survived by them). In D&D it's a lot more common. You tend to deal with more opponents at once, and your tanks don't get a free ride just because they can pump out threat numbers. Positioning and similar things matter a lot.So what's the warlock got going for him?Pact Boons, which can be pretty sweet. Feypact warlocks are terribly hard to ever pin down in a real combat; infernal warlocks are actually pretty resistant to damage between high con and the free temp HP; starlocks get a nice boost to whatever they want next turn. (I haven't had any experience with Vestiage or Dark warlocks, myself). They're also right there next to the sorcerer as one of the strikers most happy to see minions in a fight.Decent options for Fort/Reflex/Will selection. Not as versatile as as a wizard, but better than most other strikers and some controllers. Using these well can have a strong effect on accuracy, in a way idealized DPR vs. 15+level defense spreadsheets don't show. Infernal warlocks miss out a bit here (both their at-wills hit ref).Shadow Walk. This is a fantastic power, it's pretty much an always-on +2 to defenses for non-area attacks. Granted starlocks who do an even split are screwed on AC; but it's more of a flawed build option rather than an underpowered class.Respectable single target damage. Some builds (those that fall closer to controllers) may get out damaged by a damage inclined member of another class (fighters, I'm looking at you). They also tend to have better area damage or screw the enemy over options, however.Interesting options. There's a lot of appealing curse-related feats and items.In actual play I've seen some very successful warlocks who contribute to combat in useful ways. The class isn't in the upper half of the power curve, but they're not so far below that I'd call them underpowered. If anything the starlock is an underpowered build, since they have some flaws in defenses and their pact boon isn't that great, their feat and paragon path support are both rather strong but primarily from Dragon. But that's the build, not the class.</blockquote>

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