Rzyman wrote on Sep 12
th, 2018 at 10:23am:
Yet if you are talking about heroics, its mostly true. Lower level sorcs are not that great, And even mid-levels, when sorcs start to shine, they can 2-shot or 1-crit everything, while warlock 3-4 blast things, which is fast enough. On heroics tentacles do significant damage also, and with consume+stricken+focused blasts you may kill any immune guy pretty fast.
In heroics, it is very hard for any casting class to compete with warlock's free dps.
A level 15 warlock deals a minimum average of 900~ from wave, and almost 200 from just a single cone hit.
332 radiance lv 15 [pact powers 338]
wave applies metas, 225 + 332 = 557 light power meta'd
wave scales 1.5 spell power, 557x1.5= 833.5 light spell power on wave hits.
563x1.5= 844.5 pact spell power on wave hits
spellpower multiplier
(833.5 + 100) / 100 = 9.335 multiplier for light power damage on wave
(844.5 + 100) / 100 = 9.445 multiplier for pact damage on wave
wave base dice
4d6 light =12 avg dmg. 12x9.335= 112.02 avg wave light damage
11d4 pact =22 avg dmg 22x9.445= 207.79 avg wave pact damage
112.02+207.79 = 319.81
three waves = 319.81x3= 959.43 avg minimum damage per wave activation
cone is 5d6 light dice 11d4 pact dice but scales with only 130% power and doesn't meta making it worse than wave, aura, and bursts on a per tick avg.
(note how pact damage is almost double the base damage for non-ES/aura/burst builds)
130% (cone) of 332 = 431.6 radiance power
130% (cone) of 338 = 439.4 pact power
(431.6 + 100) / 100 = 5.316 radiance multipler x 5d6 avg of 15, 15x5.316= 79.74 avg light damage per cone
( 439.4+ 100) / 100 = 5.394 pact damage multipler x11d4 avg of 22, 22x5.394 = 118.668 avg pact damage per cone
79.74+118.668= 198.408 total damage per cone tick.
That is nearly 1200 damage for free, in the first 2 seconds of combat, and it is the average minimum. meaning criticals are not calculated in. Evards is a few hundred damage, so say 1600~ aoe damage ( non-crit).
If going single target, then stricken + consume deal an additional 1k~. In the first 3~ seconds of an encounter, warlocks can deal over 2.2k minimum average damage for free, at level 15.
fireballs need to crit to get to that damage. And even in the case of crits, the fireball still only manages to match the non-crit value of a wave activation. SLA fireball alleviates some of the sp strain here, but it still is behind wave in damage.