Does Warlock suck?

[alexshiro]

The deck is so bad I consider it the main antagonist. Do others agree or am I missing something?

[Sintonir]

You can always start with a deck draft.
Warlock's main problem is inability to equip Demonic Axe, on the other hand warlock can use throws and grapple like a brawler, if for less damage.

[The Sinless Assassin]

Currently yes. She needs a rework. The ability to equip staves would be nice since her character art shows her wielding one of the best looking ones...a weak grappler with strong magic makes the grappler aspect pretty much useless for her.

Also if you mean by the default deck, then no, it's quite powerful. You just need to manage your curse gambling. Basically you only want to use cards that give you curses if you have a card, or WILL have a card that can consume or discard that curse for an added benefit.

It's a tricky and risky playstyle, but with more curse related cards down the road it can become rather powerful.

[alexshiro]

Disagree with you completelly. I like the weak brawler with strong fireballs playstyle, but all the curse related stuff is utter trash.
I can manage curses all i want, when there's a chance that Cursed strike will give me a bonebreak that increases the cost of consume curse so that i can't remove it. Cursed lightning is only like 2 points stronger than noncursed lightning, and for that you can get a bone break or ouroboros to completelly screw you. Also the curse removers don't remove curses but discard them, so they go back into the deck and screw you on the longer fights. Cursewalker lacks reducing the cost of the movement card so good chance you can't use the card it spawns and it becomes a waste of draw later on.
Imo Cursed lightning should cost less so that it's not a tricky inferior Lightning, Curse removers should remove so they're not tricky inferior Ponder and Cursewalker should have the deft effect so it's not useless.

Speaking of curse management: Cast Cursed Lightning on last enemy, screen changes color, enemy keeps standing... it gave me Apparition and reduced it's own damage...
The mechanic is just not fun or balanced by the measly few extra points of damage, and shouldn't work like that even if it was

[StarlessBB]

Curses generate infinite healing via the discard to heal spell, which is pretty useful. You can full heal your attuned characters most fights by stalling, or even your non-attuned characters if you get cards that grant attuned. It's a little tediously time consuming though.

[PhotoFinish]

I also hate the warlock class because of their deck. Curse cards are useless when compared to fireball and lightning strike when both cost the same and don't have the downside of a curse.

[x_equals_speed]

I'm agreement with the "Curses don't work" case alexshiro puts forward. They're awful in any halfway competent deck, they only really stand a chance in a badly built bloated deck. At which point they're not worse than the other decisions that've led to that point.

However I think that the warlock starting deck is okay. I just think that it's extremely spikey. The top end cards are really good, hurricane is phenomenal in terms fo how much value you get out of a single play. The bottom end cards are really bad and there's more of them - but if you're reliably removing two cards at the first shop node you can start to mitigate that fairly quickly and hopefully get something very decent by the end of the first act.

[alexshiro]

Warlock deck is so bad that now that I finally won, I'm sweeping with the next character so bad I keep doubting I set the difficulty correctly

[Overlord Byron]

Curse decks have a lot of utility and good nuke damage potential if you know how to really build a deck. That's not a humble brag, because I don't really know how to build a deck.

Beyond that, I don't think the warlock's magic bonus and flat melee damage make up for the fact that she can't equip weapons. A regular mage with a little luck at the shops is going to out-damage her, and the really useful magic cards are all buffs, debuffs, and utility, anyway.

[x_equals_speed]

It's true, on the face of it curse cards don't provide any utility themselves since almost none of them move you (and the one that does provides a random move card so is far more likely to get trapped than any of the good movement cards) and almost none of them provide any stuns, trips, pushes or other utility effects. However it is possible to get a lot of utility out of curse decks by following two simple steps:

1) Remove all of the curse cards from the deck
2) Add cards with some utility

[White Noise]

Warlock is basically an attuned grappler. It's great for draft decks aimed at movement/utility while still being able to deal damage via high-damage spells like Fireball and Lightning. Being able to use throws and grapple while also being able to cast spells is frankly pretty OP.

[PhotoFinish]

Yep best way to play warlock is not to play as a warlock. :)

[alexshiro]

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

Curse decks have a lot of utility and good nuke damage potential if you know how to really build a deck. That's not a humble brag, because I don't really know how to build a deck.

See, no matter how good you build your deck, it's going to unbuild itself because (most*) curses go into the deck no matter what you do, so you're going to get screwed by bonebreak, get screwed by drawing bonebreak instead of whatever card would have been in that spot in the deck if bonebreak wasn't there, then you're going to get screwed by bonebreak again. I have seen no effects on any of the curse related cards that come close to mitigating that, I still have a few levels to unlock, but I doubt it. As I said, Cursed Lightning has just a few extra points to it, Cursewalker is an inferior Deft and the other cards are somewhere between worthless and goofy.

Originally posted by White Noise:

Warlock is basically an attuned grappler. It's great for draft decks aimed at movement/utility while still being able to deal damage via high-damage spells like Fireball and Lightning. Being able to use throws and grapple while also being able to cast spells is frankly pretty OP.

That's how I ended up winning. Recruited a brawler, brawler does the big melee damage, warlock does the big spell damage, in a pinch wrlock tackles or throws somebody to get out of a bind.

[Overlord Byron]

Originally posted by alexshiro:

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

Curse decks have a lot of utility and good nuke damage potential if you know how to really build a deck. That's not a humble brag, because I don't really know how to build a deck.

See, no matter how good you build your deck, it's going to unbuild itself because (most*) curses go into the deck no matter what you do, so you're going to get screwed by bonebreak, get screwed by drawing bonebreak instead of whatever card would have been in that spot in the deck if bonebreak wasn't there, then you're going to get screwed by bonebreak again. I have seen no effects on any of the curse related cards that come close to mitigating that, I still have a few levels to unlock, but I doubt it. As I said, Cursed Lightning has just a few extra points to it, Cursewalker is an inferior Deft and the other cards are somewhere between worthless and goofy.

There are curse effects that are absolutely run-ending. And yeah, there's no curse-spell that makes up for that risk. But the logic is that you don't use those spells unless you have a way to deal with them at the ready. A cursed lightning on a +50% damage warlock followed up by the card that eats a curse for a heal is a very powerful combo. A deck that's built to exclusively accumulate and eat curses and benefit from discards has potential. Is it worth the time and resources to build that deck? Probably not, but that's more a question of balance than mechanics.

Point is, warlock is the curse class; you either empty her deck of cursed cards or you go all in on them. If you don't want to deal with curses as a mechanic, you should absolutely not play warlock.

[alexshiro]

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

There are curse effects that are absolutely run-ending.

There really aren't.

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

But the logic is that you don't use those spells unless you have a way to deal with them at the ready.

You CANNOT deal with them. They go into the graveyard, then the deck, then they screw you later. You can skip using your Cursed Lightning until you have Consume Curse in your hand all you want (bricking your strongest attack), you can still draw it later when you don't have Consume Curse.

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

A cursed lightning on a +50% damage warlock followed up by the card that eats a curse for a heal is a very powerful combo.

Cursed Lightning has 3 extra damage on Warlock compared to Lightning Strike. Consume Curse heals for 2. Neither card is powerful and they're not a powerful combo.

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

A deck that's built to exclusively accumulate and eat curses and benefit from discards has potential.

How much potential?

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

Is it worth the time and resources to build that deck? Probably not

Ah.

Originally posted by Overlord Byron:

Point is, warlock is the curse class; you either empty her deck of cursed cards or you go all in on them. If you don't want to deal with curses as a mechanic, you should absolutely not play warlock.

Point is, it shouldn't be. Spells are cool and unarmed cards are some of my favorite in the game, so an unarmed spellcaster should be awesome. Instead, warlock has the least fun starting deck out of all the classes. Either the curse nonsense should be removed and replaced with something else, like unarmed support like tackle and grapple, or curse support should be reworked so it's not awful

[StarlessBB]

The only thing curse decks have going for them is upgraded consume curse, which heals 5 and isn't consumed. But it doesn't need anything else going for it as healing all your attuned (and potentially all your non attuned) characters to full every fight is extremely useful.