Preface
I have been playing warlock a lot since 1.0, simply because its shiny and new. But that doesn’t change the fact, that Lich thematically is still my favorit mastery. Being Death incarnate is the coolest thing ever in a video game for me. Togehter with Harvest, my single most favorit skill in the game it makes the perfect combination. I didn’t create a Supporter Unique for that playstyle for nothing.
With 1.0 out and upcoming patches more frequently on the horizon I think we will see a lot of revisiting older mastery and overhauling and modernazing them.
Warlock, Falconer and Runemaster are just so much better and more interestingly designed (ignoring exploits, bugs and performance)
With this post I wanted to highlight a couple of things that I feel like the Lich mastery is not doing well and some broad suggestions improving them.
This is not meant as a comprehensive improvment post for Lich as a whole, but rather a feedback thread about Melee Lich.
Reaper Form
One of the biggest issues Lich as a whole has compared to any other mastery. It just feels mandatory, because it is objectively so strong, even though the skill spec tree is horrible for the most part. So many uninteresting nodes that do very little paired with some nodes that are simply outshining every other nodes in the skill spec tree.
And even without the skill spec tree Reaper Form mechanically is just very strong, essentially doubling your eHP vs one-shots.
One thing that LE does very well for the most part on other masteries, is that the mastery exclusive skills always feel thematically very appropiate, but you never feel forced to use them, if you want to take the build into a different direction.
With Lich Reaper Form feels thematically on point, but you also are kinda forced to take it, simply because it is that good.
I think what needs to be done to make Reaper Form less mandatory are two things:
- Remove some of the raw stat nodes and make nodes more interesting. Reaper Form essentially is a glorified Stat Stick Buff Skill for the most part.
- Create a lot of strong nodes in other skills that are incompatible with Reaper Form (I have one suggestion for that later in the Harvest section)
Reap (subskill of Reaper Form)
This is a skill that you either ignore, or when you have a couple of points spare you can make it not share a cooldown with Transplant and then use it as an additional mobility skill.
Damage is simply not there, even if you would invest everything into it.
What Reap needs is way better base damage and way more damage scaling options, so it feels worthy of being a cooldown skill.
On top of that it needs an entire branch within the Reaper Form Skill Spec Tree, that transforms it from a movement skill into a damage orianted skill. Make it a Big Circle PBAoE or Giant Cone, so its Harvest 2.0 on steroids. (Maybe it can even scale with Harvests Skill Spec Tree)
All the small nodes that affect Reap in small ways are good and all, but they will never compete with things like Global AS, Crit Multi or Inc. Dmg/Crit.
All the Reap Nodes need to be individually way stronger per single point invested, so you don’t need half your skill points to make it even remotely better.
Harvest
Baseline it is an underwhelming skill, it needs scaling and I think that is ok. With Int giving flat necrotic damage the sky is the limit in terms of ceiling.
What hurt Harvest A LOT was the change in 0.9, that made Melee Damage adaptive in the same way Spell Damage always has been.
This took away the most unique aspect of harvest, the Elements of Death node, that converted all added damage to necrotic.
This made lose Harvest the single Unique thing it had above every other melee skill in the game.
A long time ago I created a thread with some suggestions. Harvest has changed slightly but I think most of my suggestiosn are still valid, so I will use a lot of the stuff from that post here.
Good things about Harvest:
- Strongest Crit Node in the Game, giving 10-50% Base Crit with a serious trade off (10-50 HP lost per use)
- Int gives flat Melee Necrotic Damage, which helps a lot with the endgame scaling
Problems with Harvest:
- Depending on what archetype you want to play (Hit/Crit, Ward, Minions, Ailments), the branches are very narrow and don’t offer a lot of variety within each of that archetypes.
- No attack speed scaling in the skill tree
- Very few more multipliers (they did added Death Inside, which is a good step, but it needs more)
- No cool interactions with other skills (they did added one interaction with Spirit Plague which is cool though)
So here are some more generic suggestions for existing nodes and for potential new nodes in the skill spec tree:
Learned Weakness: simply to weak, even for a global buff. I do like things that globally buff your character, to incentives combining it with other stuff, but also 5 point node is too much, change it to 0/2 or 0/3 with like 20-25% crit chance.
Double Edged-Scythe: One of the coolest nodes in the tree.
The following issue is not something related to Harvest, but a general itemization thing.
There is literally one single way- to coutneract self-bleed currently, which is one specific Item. (Namely Exsanguinous). Cleanse is not viable if you spamming main skill is constantly self inflicting you.
Acolyte has another source of self-bleed affliction; Spirit plague.
Giving us more options to play around that would certainly help with build variety, to utilize these nodes. Especially because Exsanguinous forces you into a very specific playstyle (low health ward), making other playstyle not compatible with it.
Blood Sculptor: Very cool node, if you wanna go the hybrid Self/Minion Damage Route, but when your builds heavily leans towards minions and you just want to support them, it makes this nodes very hard to use, since you actually need to deal the killing blow.
Change it so it’s enemies die within 1-2 seconds being damage by Harvest have a chance to summon a Blood Spectre.
Key Nodes
- Sow and Reap: Harvest deals x% more damage for 4 seconds, after manually casting a curse.
This would incentive a more active playstyle, not using any source of auto-proccing curses on the target - Frenzied Harvest: Gains 1% Attack Speed on hit for 4 seconds, stacks 50 times (each stack has it’s own individual timer)
- Rich Harvest: Harvest deals more melee damage per ailment on a target, up to a maximum of 5/10/15/20
- Exorcising Reaping: Harvest does consume all stacks of Damned on the target to deal x% more melee damage. (Damned stacks consumed that way, will not deal their remaining damage)
- Hollow Harvest: Harvest and all ailments applied by it cannot leech any damage as health. Harvest deals x% mroe damage per y% leech it would have had.
- Straining Swings: Harvest cost +2/4/6/8 Mana, but deals 25/50/75/100% more damage
Now the final suggestion, going back to the Reaper Form Problem from above.
I think some skills need Key Nodes that are incompatible with Reaper Form.
- Invigorating Rituals: Harvest increases your Health Regen by 1 per target hit: Stacks 50 Times, Lasts 4 seconds
Minor Nodes
- Attack Speed
- Damned Chance
- Melee Leech
- %inc. Health Regen, after hitting with Harvest for 4 seconds
Lich Mastery, Passive Tree and 4th missing skill
The Lich Mastery Tree itself is actually pretty good compared to some other classes, it just misses some cool new Threshold Passives.
The only complaint that I have and this goes back to the Reaper Form Topic. Acolyte and Lich does ahve qutie a few % Health Regenration Passives, which I really do like. I love Health Regeneration as a means to sustain. But it is incompatible with Reaper Form, but Reaper Form is just to strong.
These nodes need to be buffed by a large amount to make it a actualy decision going for Reaper Form or HP Regen Build.
On top of that we would need some flat Health Regeneration as well, not only %inc. Health Regeneration.
I would also love to see a threshold passive that gives you % Max Health/Sec (maybe like 2-3% or something).
Couple more generic suggestions for Passives and Threshold passives:
% Endurance and Endurance Threshold. Endurance synergizes so well with what Lich wants to do. We already got tons of new support from the new base types.
Maybe 1 or 2 passives that are very strong, but specifically only affect Melee (So only Harvest and Reap).
Maybe a passive with good melee stats like melee attack speed and the Threshold Bonus: “15% Movementspeed if you hit an enemy with a melee attack recently”
4th missing Skill
With the shift of Soul Feast from Lich to Warlock, this leaves Lich to be the only clas together with Paladin to only have 4 Mastery Skills and only 2 exclusive instead of 3 exclusive ones.
I think this would be a great opportunity to introduce another buff/trade-off skill that would compete with Reaper Form.
So I think something that naturally doesn’t work well in conjunction with Reaper Form would be good, to give it more competition.
I don’t have any concrete ideas, but some rough thematic ones.
I think a skill that has a active and a passive component. Once slotted, it enables you to gather souls of your enemies slain (or on boss/rare hit). Each stack gives you some kind of offensive buffs, but maybe makes you take more damage. Using the active component releases all souls, losing all stacks and deals damage based stacks.
I am not entirely sure how to implement it in a way, that it does not synergize well with Reaper Form though. Maybe if Reaper Form get a rebalance and overhaul it will not even be necessary to make it not synergize.