Torment warlock is an awesome class, I’m having a lot of fun with it despite it being 0.1% of representation corruption wise this season, and despite knowing it’s a hard capped class scaling wise.
Torment is the only Warlock damage curse that can’t stack - one instance per target, however many spirits hit it. That is crazy, as it’s supposed to be the dot class. That single rule is why Torment builds cap out around 350–400 corruption while hit-based builds (Lich Rip Blood, most of S-tier) keep scaling.
The practical effect: once every enemy has Torment, spirit frequency, cast speed and most of the Fissure tree do nothing for damage. The only levers left are “more” multipliers (Twisted Waves, the ailment node, Grim Tide’s crit multi conversion), and those are finite tree points. Pack clear is fine; single-target is a wall. I’m at ~170 corruption on a fully-slammed Torment setup and can see exactly where this will stop.
Proposal: let Torment stack up to a small cap - 3 to 5 instances per target - either natively or via a Chthonic Fissure node that trades spirit count for stack cap. Keep the per-stack damage as is.
Why this is “one easy step”:
It reuses a mechanic that already exists (Spirit Plague / bleed / poison stacking).
It gives spirit frequency and cast speed a reason to exist on the tree.
A hard cap keeps it from becoming unlimited DoT scaling.
It doesn’t touch the ward engine, self-curse, or any of the stuff that actually needed nerfing in 1.0.x.
Even a 3-stack cap would turn the single-target wall into a slope, which is all Torment needs to be competitive without being S-tier.
Doesn’t need to wait until season 6. Let’s unlock the potential of warlock and double representation to 0.2% or above!
Nope, it just pushes the can down the road. If current torment can do X single target damage then a cap of 3 means I’ll do 3X damage. That’ll allow it to push further, clearly, but it’s still a hard limit.
What if they borrowed some time rot juice & had passive nodes or baseline functionality where torment gets x% more damage per chance to apply other ailments, such as damned or ignite, or having overloads give torment a buff, more damage, tick rate, even stack cap per overload (& yes, I know I’ve just said stack cap is a crappy solution).
I agree with the sentiment. Like all other forms on non-infinitely-stackable DoT, torment just needs an interesting way to scale damage. Witchfire and time rot, like you mentioned, or Scathing Light from Radiant Lance.
But I agree with you that increasing the stack limit is not a good/interesting way to scale it at all.
You’re right that a cap is still a limit. 3X is a higher ceiling, not no ceiling. I’d still argue it’s worth doing first: it’s a tiny change, it reuses existing stacking code, and it gives frequency and cast speed some value right away instead of none.
Your idea is the better long-term fix, though, because it scales with stats rather than a hard number. More Torment damage per chance to apply other ailments, or Overload feeding Torment (damage, tick rate), would let gear keep pushing damage up indefinitely.
So maybe both: a small stack cap now as a stopgap, and ailment-chance or Overload scaling as the real fix next season. Either way, Torment’s damage should grow with the stats the tree asks you to build.
Well Warlock overall is lagging a couple of seasons behind. It’s “the” DOT class yet it’s almost the worst class with DOTs in the game currently. Warlock needs a full refresh.
My first ever lvl 100 char was a Warlock when it was released. I got a full poison build to 400c and I was so happy about it then. Even with all the new items and power creep I can’t really push it much further today. LEO should bring a proper refresh to all classes though, so let’s be patient.
