I know I’m a bit late posting, but here’s some of my thoughts on the PTR changes. Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to play the PTR to begin with, so I mostly played Abyss/Miasma lock, and only briefly got to play the other builds, so I don’t have much to say about stuff like Echoing Strike.
I think it goes without saying that this is not meant to be en exhaustive list.
Miasma Bolt
“Reduced cloud damage by 50% and slightly reduced direct hit missile damage as well.”
”Added a delay before the cloud missile spawns.”
These changes should be reverted. I don’t see any rationale for reducing either the direct hit damage or the cloud damage. It’s quite low, and the delay just needlessly weakens the skill and makes it feel awkward to use. Miasma Bolt was never even close to OP, even with the apparent bug that caused it to deal double ticks of damage.
Just fix the tick damage bug and don’t change anything else.
Miasma Chain
I do like the changes overall. No cast delay and being able to cast 5 Miasma Chains is awesome, and makes the skill a lot more useful and fun. However, I think the 50% reduction is too much. I think some reduction in cloud damage is fine due to the changes, maybe ~25% at most, but I don’t really think it needs it.
Note: The Miasma skills only ever felt OP during early leveling, but never late game. Fixing the tick damage bugs seems to be more than enough, but you could also just adjust the damage scaling at lower levels.
Also, this isn’t unique to the PTR, but Blade Warp removes any Miasma Chains you’ve cast. I’m assuming it’s a bug since it doesn’t happen with teleport, but this can be annoying if you don’t have Enigma and want to try and reposition yourself using Blade Warp.
Sigil: Lethargy
“Removed the Damage Taken stat.”
I think a better solution would be to just reduce how much increased damage enemies take, rather than get rid of the stat entirely. Currently, it starts at 20% and gets higher from there, but perhaps 20-30% should be the maximum so it’s more in line with Decrepify or something.
Ring of Fire
”Damage reduced to be more similar to Frost nova damage.”
Revert this change. There’s just no reason to make the damage so low, especially since it didn’t do a crazy amount of damage to begin with. It was only a bit OP early on, but the mana cost prevented you from spamming it. If anything, just change how the damage scales at lower levels.
Flame Wave
15% Damage Reduction.
Another change I think should be reverted. It’s a good spell, but I just don’t see a reason for nerfing it.
Echoing Strike
So a lot has changed with this skill but, as stated, I didn’t play it on live and only briefly played it on the PTR, so I can’t comment too much about the changes.
That said, I do think the synergies should remain at 5% if all the other nerfs are kept.
Also, idk if it’s just me, but I find it odd that this skill scales with FCR (so ignores weapon speed and is immune to effects that slow, like holy freeze, decrepify, etc.) yet works with certain melee stats, like enhanced damage, deadly strike, etc. It makes way more sense to me for it to scale with IAS instead, and work with CB, OW, etc.
Most melee weapons, aside maybe Fort and Insight, also don’t have stats like FCR, and they tend to have a lot of other stats like CB that aren’t useful for Echoing Strike.
Demon Changes
I am 100% on board with requiring hard points into the skill and replacing auras like conviction.
As far as the reduced chance to proc amp damage, I think it’s good for Echoing Strike, but not so great for summoning builds. It would make more sense if Death Mark also increased the chance for cursed demons to proc amp (even if it’s just a hidden bonus), so that summoners could still benefit from it without making other builds OP.
It seems like bound demons die really quick, which should not be the case especially if you’ve invested a lot of hard points in the skill.
I’m also not clear on why the nerf to Summon Goatman, this one seems unnecessary to me.
“Warlocks can now only equip a two-hand weapon in one hand if the other hand is using a grimoire class item, not a shield.”
This makes sense to me. But, I do think we need some better Grimoires. Ars Dul’Mephistos is great for Abyss and I know it’s used for Echoing Strike builds, but the other ones aren’t as good.
It wouldn’t hurt to add some more uniques, but it would be nice to see some runewords. Maybe allow elite and exceptional bases to have three sockets, since this allows for more rune combinations.
General Notes
I think the Warlock could use some form of passive resistances. This isn’t an issue for Chas builds, but it seems difficult to get max (much less stacked) resistances on Eldritch builds like Echoing Strike. Other melee characters tend to get skills that buff resistances, like the Barbarian’s Natural Resistance skill, or maybe a better comparison would be the Paladin getting various resistance auras or the Assassin’s Fade skill.
If not a skill, then maybe Warlock specific items (e.g. a Grimoire focused on melee builds) should have higher resistances than normal for those items.
Other notes (not Warlock-specific)
I’ve seen others mention this, but Heralds should not spawn immediately upon entering a terror zone. It’s way too easy to get t2 heralds. I do think they are too rare on live, but you should have to kill some elites first, and definitely shouldn’t be getting t2 heralds within like a minute of doing a chaos run.
I’d also like to see increased monster density in terror zones. Can be annoying when certain places become terrorized because they’re either small and have few elites, or are large with elite scattered about. This would also end up helping the drop rate of sunders.
On a similar note, I think elites and bosses should do more damage than they currently do in terror zones. Bosses maybe heal a bit faster as well. Just something to make them more challenging, especially as you keep leveling up.
The cap on stackable items needs to be increased, at least to 499. It would also be nice if potions stacked in inventory, even if it was a smaller number like ~20, just to help with inventory management.
I know I’m forgetting some stuff, but that’s about all I have for now. Some people may disagree with certain things and that’s fine, but I just wanted to put this out there.