On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

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TheCacklackian
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On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by TheCacklackian »

This is a topic I've thought about a lot, and talked with others about. I would like to propose that 75% of your sorcery be used to substitute ranged combat for attack rolls using raw casts and sorcerous spells. I will go into my reasons for this, as well as why I don't believe it will be too detrimental to the balance of the game, given currently existing mechanics. This is something that primarily affects warlocks, but I think most of what I have to say would also apply to an Arcanist who channels fortourgy.

Point 1-The Mechanics: As written in the game right now, Warlocks are a combat class. I would dare say, they are the only class within the Scholars guild that necessitates personal involvement in combat. There is no efficient way for us to gain soul shreds, which is a primary class resource. Pretty much all of our abilities, find a majority if not entirety of their use, in combat. Warlock non combat abilities have pretty much no real practical application, which is something that cannot be said about the other two scholar class in the game. Both arcanist and primalists currently have methods of interacting with systems that aren't combative in a meaningful way. Warlocks really don't. This means that not only do we require combat, it is the only system in the game we can currently meaningfully interact with in our own unique way. As is there just feels like there is way too much investment skill wise to be viable in combat, and it doesn't feel great that my level 60 warlock specced for viability in combat, is often outdone by my level 10 nightblade in the same areas(though i understand nightblades are one of the stronger classes in the game).

Point 2-The Theme: It feels really jarring to have acts of sorcery not be a show of your spellcasting talent, but instead a feat of marksmanship. There should be little aiming involved in flinging streams or gouts of nether at people, and sorcery should affect your ability to do so. A dedicated sorcerer should be an offensive force due to their channeling ability alone(given nether's properties), with options to supplement it using combative training, but instead it feels more like we get to use our sorcery to supplement the combative training. That should be the nightblade's domain. Not the warlock's.

Point 3-The Balance: 75 percent of our 700 cap would leave us with an effective cap of d625 on our attack rolls. That sounds like a lot, in comparison to our d500 maximum assuming we invest a heavy amount in ranged combat, but this is all before we consider the other benefits ranged combat investment grants. Such as aim bonus, without a high ranged combat score, your ability to target specific body parts, greatly diminishes. Additionally, we would gain no protection against combat maneuvers if we chose not to invest in combat training. These are both a really big deal. I think that these alone are enough to discredit the idea that it would be some great imbalance. Furthermore there is a degree of precedence. If we look at the mining skill, that grants 50 percent of your skill to melee attack rolls using pickaxes. The primary reason I push for 75 percent, is because of the substantial investment, with diminishing returns we have currently in place for sorcery. Investing in ranged combat as is, means that we could get back with only 300 sorcery, and simply never raw cast, only using it for btend and eleech while using a sling for damage, without losing anything. Applying 75% to the combat rolls, would give us reason to invest further. Additionally, it would set us at a cap below what every class of the adventurer's guild is currently capable of (I believe to the tune of 550 instead of the propose effective 525 warlocks would have from this change) all while failing to provide benefits like maneuver defense, and aim ability.
jerc
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by jerc »

I like this suggestion a lot. Especially because, as the most heavily combat-specced warlock around, I'm honestly not sure if it would cause me to reconsider my skill allocations. The lack of benefits to defense rolls and body part aiming makes it feel like there are enough tradeoffs for there to actually be a choice. Do you play the glass canon without other combat skills, dependent on a meatshield but still able to cause wild, uncontrolled damage with nether? Pick up melee and use it for all of your damage, and leave sorcery for aimless binding and leeching? Lean into the ranged spellslinger archetype and take Ranged purely for the aiming and dodge chance? These all feel like viable options if offensive rolls could use sorcery instead of ranged, while only the last one is really viable right now without spending a ton of extra skill points.

If sorcery is just an option for offensive rolls, rather than the only applicable skill, we still have the problem of nightblades being more skillful raw casters than warlocks, but maybe that's somewhat balanced by the reduced DF from only having two channels rather than three. And maybe there aren't any of them who take ranged that high anyway.
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by Tessa »

I also really like this idea.
As someone who first started Cogg with a warlock, it is *hard*. For being a scholarly type, warlocks sure have to do a lot to get that studying done, and that means they either get really good at the sorcery grind in record time or they pick up something just to accomplish a study. There's no way to be balanced, focus on ranged, gather soul shreds, try not to die, all just for some studying.
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Gorth
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by Gorth »

Of course, the idea, as said by Rias, is that Warlocks aren't supposed to be/don't have to be combat-y. This is just kind of..wrong, though? At least as it stands. ETransfer eats energy like nothing, so if you want to viably use it, you need soul shreds anyway, which require combat. Other than that, they don't have non-combat abilities. Anyway, my point is, they don't have rerolls except, I think, two for offensive of Btend? And of course morale, but general affectiveness would go up if Warlocks got ways to gain more rerolls, as well as not having to invest in as much for raw affectiveness with casts.
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darkangel
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by darkangel »

Personally, I love the idea.
I held off on investing in stealth for the sole reason I wanted to play a spellslinger who can still be effective, even if the damage isn't directed.
renn
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by renn »

I absolutely love this idea. As someone who is only just getting used to the sorcery class. I would absolutely love to see this happen, my char is the sneaky type that loves her longbow, but I use sorcery more then none when fighting. It would make for an excellent change.
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Frisbee
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by Frisbee »

Popping in to contribute as someone who has never had a sorcerer PC and with no plans to make one, so perspective might be off, but speaking up anyways!

I think that there are two things to consider. Firstly, that at the end of the day a nether projectile does become a physical object of sorts, once it's left the caster's body, and it would not only be magic which would be controling its trajectory, at least the way I'm imagining it. I believe it is safe to assume this, because the target of such an attack has an opportunity to dodge it, regardless of whether they themselves are magically inclined, in other words, if their dodge/block rolls are high enough, they can deal just fine. On the other hand, it also seems logical that the sorcerer should gradually gain better control of the aim of their attacks the more their raw sorcery skill increases. If, say, someone had 700 sorcery and hadn't invested anything at all into ranged and they were constantly missing because mechanically they were rolling a D100, something just wouldn't add up.

Taking that excessively rambly stream of thoughts into account, it is my proposed solution that a sorcerer's raw casting attack roll should factor in a percentage of their sorcery skill, alongside a percentage of ranged combat, the added resulting cap of which would exceed the current respectable but fairly average 500.

Re. general game meta and how the warlock class specifically interacts with it all, I'm pretty hopeful that more abilities will be added in future which will be less combat-oriented and won't require an excessive amount of soul harvesting, at least not directly, however this is a mere vague speculation.

That is all! Thanks for reading.
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TheCacklackian
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by TheCacklackian »

Frisbee wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 7:35 am Taking that excessively rambly stream of thoughts into account, it is my proposed solution that a sorcerer's raw casting attack roll should factor in a percentage of their sorcery skill, alongside a percentage of ranged combat, the added resulting cap of which would exceed the current respectable but fairly average 500.
I'm not entirely opposed to this idea, though I do have some concerns, namely that if you tilt the percentages too much towards Sorcery, it might harm nightblades who will never have access to that high of sorcery, and will have decreased efficacy in their investment of ranged combat, but if you lean the percentage too much to ranged combat, then it won't fix the problem that in order to play a warlock effectively in current game you need really high stat investment in combat training. Additionally, when you start factoring in both, it makes investment into ranged combat have significantly more diminishing returns, which is why I think a best of the two solution is used. I made some examples to illustrate my point. At anything less than 30-50% sorcery to attack rolls, the change would not change enough for the warlocks who do not choose to invest for me to consider it worth it.

The least realistic of suggestions thus far, would bring that maximum effective skill for a warlock to 625(525 without investing in ranged combat), but would nuke the max effective skill for nightblade to 325
Sorcery 75
Ranged 25


Probably slightly more realistic of an expectation, but still not a very graceful one. Acts as an overall buff to the warlock (effective 550 Max) and a nerf to the nightblade(450).
Sorcery 50
Ranged 50

At this point, sorcery does not add enough for my suggestion to feel like it would have made an impact, without investing at all in ranged combat your effective skill would be 175. Bear in mind this is at 2800 skill points invested. However overall it would still be a 'buff' to warlocks as it increases their maximum effective skill from 400, to 475. However it should be noted, even this formula is an overall nerf to nightblades (700 to 575, and that is AT 700 ranged combat)
Sorcery 25
ranged 75

There are probably ways around this, but overall, given that it would vastly change the 'value' of the points those of who invest in combat skills choose to, I think we should be careful about doing multiple percentages for base attack rolls.

TL;DR Assuming 100% total between the two mentioned skills, doing this actively decreases the value of ranged combat, making it more expensive to invest for the same benefits up to the point where you go over the normal warlock cap. That being said, I like the idea more than nothing changing at all(Assuming nightblades will be uninhibited), so long as sorcery applies at least a decent amount to base attack roll.
Edit:Tried to make it easier to read and clarified my point a little.
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Lexx416
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by Lexx416 »

For something like this, I think it makes sense that Ranged skill is what determines accuracy, given it's a physical projectile being flung through space. However, I think something like this would be better as an Ability that specifically allows Warlocks to use some portion of the Sorcery skill in place of the Ranged skill, as that would mean that Nightblades still maintain accuracy supremacy while giving a boost to Warlocks and allowing them to focus more heavily on Scholarly Things if they didn't want to invest in both Ranged AND Sorcery.

As in all things, I think the Non-Warrior classes DO need more to help them stand out, but I don't really believe that Scholars and Adventurers should have more raw offensive potential than a dedicated Warrior, even when it comes to flinging nether.

That being said, while I understand that Warlocks don't have many non-combat systems to interact with (Primalists don't really, either - they can kind of heal other people, and they can both slow down and speed up the growth of plants in a room), I don't think that just making them better at fighting is a great long term answer.
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TheCacklackian
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Re: On Warlock Sorcery and Ranged Combat

Post by TheCacklackian »

Lexx416 wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 2:33 pm However, I think something like this would be better as an Ability that specifically allows Warlocks to use some portion of the Sorcery skill in place of the Ranged skill, as that would mean that Nightblades still maintain accuracy supremacy while giving a boost to Warlocks and allowing them to focus more heavily on Scholarly Things if they didn't want to invest in both Ranged AND Sorcery.

As in all things, I think the Non-Warrior classes DO need more to help them stand out, but I don't really believe that Scholars and Adventurers should have more raw offensive potential than a dedicated Warrior, even when it comes to flinging nether.
I don't believe the original suggestion would actively make warlocks better at accuracy than warriors, the original proposed change would give us a maximum of a d625 as oppose to the warriors d800. It would instead put us on par with the Adventurer's guild d650 but ONLY on the attack rolls themselves. It would give us the ability to hit something, not necessarily to hit it accurately. We would get no increased chance to hit body parts based on the aim command, nor would we gain the other bonuses to rolls associated with ranged combat. All this being said, I have no problem if this instead requires an ability point, even if I would prefer it be an innate part of sorcery, given that sorcery is the manipulation of nether, and skill in sorcery should have some innate bearing on your offensive capability.

I do agree that scholars and adventurer's need more systems to interact with, but I believe given nether's properties, warlocks will probably always be at least somewhat combatively inclined, especially given the aforementioned requirement of shreds(shadow familiar costs 50, meaning you need to kill about 25ish enemies, assuming you don't fail on any of the harvests) I would love if we had some way to interact with the economy, be it joint enchanting of equipment with arcanists or something to that effect, but that won't change that we are currently, and likely will be for a long time, a very combat centered class.
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