While i havent played EVERY magic in AO, I’ve managed to play almost every stat distribution you can think of.. both the good and the bad. I am basically Prometheus’ strongest clover blender
Ive enjoyed every build including even regen spirit cfist savant (gemerald btw) but out of all the builds ive played i can say Warlock is easily the most butt out of all of them
In every build ive played it always felt like I was using all of my arsenal to fight, but with Warlock i could not think of a worse combination to run than Magic and Strength together.
With magic, you have moves that have a relatively higher startup than Strength these moves are ranged too. Ideally one would think that this would synergize well with Strength but oh nonono. The most you are getting out of Warlock is a Zerker reskin minus the cool moves alongside the power to use blast and beam and placed explosion (which does like 2 damage)
And yes, i did it. I even played magic heavy warlock. What a mistake. Not only do you barely get more moves for ur magic investment compared to what fighting styles get for the same stat investment inversed but your tiers also suck too
The only feasible reason why anyone would play Warlock is just to have a slightly better synergy on their attacks. That is it. However, this is very lame… savants just naturally have great synergy potential.. all weapon classes have grease… by playing Magic-Strength you are just locking yourself down to a very narrow and basic synergy duo
Also, warlock just has the least amount of content. The only cool thing you get as a warlock is to imbue your magic into your fighting style.. ok? All the other hybrids have this.. but they also have other exclusive stuff. Despite them sucking ass, Conjurer at least has Arcanium weapons… Knights are true VVEAPQNGQDS.. Warlords have Strength Weapons.. and you just have what exactly? imbues?
All of this info combined makes me realize that the reason why I or anyone switches back to Warlock is for one reason only: it kinda just looks cool. That’s about it. But even in comparison to the other builds it also lacks aura
I really think most of the warlocks that play are still riding hype from release in that “bro its like zerker but cooler o algo” but now with extra content they basically just have no leg to stand on
main problem with warlock right now is that they have very few standout, super good general use abilities between the 175 to 210 stat range of magic or strength (range that savant can’t use but 2 ways still can)
weapons has dragon song for amazing mobility to spam (and seismic rift if you’re comparing warlord with savantlord), spirit has nichtethesis which is obvious because it’s beam.
magic and strength notably lack anything that is really good and savants can’t use while warlock can. hopefully chapter 10 update warlock will get to use blitz and great jump or blast shapes and array to alleviate that.
i honestly think warlock is the most fun when not caring about synergies at all
light cannonfist (given, you can do this with savant too since its just m1s, but doesnt stop you from doing it on warlock either) can shred through bosses and the m1 speed is just silly
shadow literally anything is fun, especially sailor style because big damage and big size (vanishing style too, it can shred close-range bosses like amelia)
personally ive been having more fun on spirit hybrids (mostly paladin) but i still think warlock is cool, and hopefully it’ll get cooler once cestus weapons get added
imo next update knight is going to reign over the meta just because of wep hybrids getting waaaay more variety and regen being busted, but honestly if warlock got its well deserved buff then id see myself returning back to the mantle of one.
i think i already said this before but AO really expects you to be a cheeser with how much damage you get slapped around with by being close to enemies, with classes that thrive on long range dominating, its really sad and goes to show how little everything is balanced
sure, theres signs of vetex atleast giving it thought, with interesting techniques and a relatively higher base damage pool, but i dont think thats really enough. if vetex wants to explain away strength not making the character physically strong and strength being retconned into “magic punching and kicking” then embrace it, give fighting styles inate damage resistance while using techniques and skills to chalk it up as “trace magic”
also i think its weird to me that weapons have waaaaay better synergy (as in compatability, not literal synergies) with fighting styles when the answer is staring us at the face. in my personal opinion, i believe the better of the fighting style hybrids should be warlock, as the whole magic explanation vetex changed it to would make better sense (im not hating on strength weapons i love them but oh my gosh they are really overtuned and it SHOWS, love you warloooord)
im not gonna control what classes people pick, have ur own fun guys, but i just think its crazy how a metal iron leg does 80 base damage less than a iron leg warlord. anyways yeah warlock is currently not the best and im really interested in playing with it, just not right now lmao
im switching off my mage to go knight once the update drops
shot up from bed for one last question, does poise break make any difference? i forgot they added that cause ive literally never seen it go anywhere in pve OR pvp
its really overpowered in pve since it does percentage damage, you can easily do like 1-2k damage with a single poise break on most bosses
poise-break is the win-con for most fighting style in PVE, only exception is cannonfist since its ranged
unfortunately i dont think vetex balanced poise-break around anything like damage based (if he did then he didn’t do it properly) so its simply better on faster fighting styles like vanishing style, saw someone able to kill amelia in about 3 seconds with shadow vanishing style abusing poisebreaks
I wouldn’t recommend picking solid/heavy magics for warlock, but even if you do I know a guy who runs ruby warlock and still packs a hit at gangs, it is just hard to use it in Elysium or Arena due to sheer empty space and high fps low ping.
Personally I had a lightning warlock with vanishing style, despite awful damage it was quite good thanks to high speed and invisibility (yeah it makes huge difference when fighting people who can shoot into future). I really struggled against aoe weirdos such as savantlords, heavy warlocks and warlords because it was hard to outdamage them.
By far looks the coolest, also you just get to spam a lot of ranged stuff. Spirit hound
Ill just warn you that you better make your build niche and about regen because i have like almost 200 power and my knight felt like it wasnt doing a lot of dmg in pve. Gotta build it right unlike other spirit hybrids
