Warlocks, Part 2

So, continuing on with the warlocks...

4) Rhyas, Sigil of Everblight - Sigh. I'm depressed with how she's turned out. Everyone likes Rhyas. I'm including non-Legion players there, too. Everyone was rooting for her. But with how she stands...

Well, she's more playable than she was at the beginning of the playtest. She's definitely a fun caster to play. But competitive she ain't. She's far too easy to shut down - terrain shuts her down. Melee hosing shuts her down. Camping Focus shuts her down. She can kill medium-armored targets, but that's about it. Anybody else pretty much hacks her up or shoots her to pieces, depending on the army. In addition, she can only really shine against Hordes, because she just can't generate enough attacks to close the deal most of the time. Her ability to reave the Fury from warbeasts she kills is nice, but there should be some kind of analogue against Warmachine, frankly (kind of a recurring theme in my criticisms, honestly). As it stands now, though - fun caster to play, not one to play if you care about winning that much. She's just not competitive enough to stand with the big boys in high-level competition.

5) Saeryn, Omen of Everblight - Now here's the stuff. She's fairly ferocious, mostly due to her incredibly irritating level of denial. Her Feat also makes her a pretty good assassin with a couple of Angelii to cruise on over to say hello to your opponent's caster. Her spells synergize with this focus a lot. Apparently she's not much fun to play against. I haven't found that when I've played against her, but there have been lots of complaints about her from my gaming circle. I only really break her out when I need to punish someone. I've proven that I can push her to her limits (or as close to her limits as I can get her and still retain people who want to play me) and frankly, I just don't feel like I need to very often.

She was a little surprising to me. From the sheer amount of complaining that she inspired in Mk. I, she didn't really change at all. I like that, because it shows that PP didn't cave to people being irrational after getting curbstomped. I have a niggling sensation that something needs to change on her, but I'm not sure what you'd change without changing her fundamentally. I mostly get the impression that her Feat needs changed, because of how easy it makes it to slingshot a pair of Angels into somebody's face region, but I don't know what you could change without changing the Feat entirely, which would be a bad thing, as it's part of her flavor. Other than that, I think she's beatable. Very strong, but you just can't depend on your usual tactics to beat her. I've found she's a lot of fun for me to play, but I respect my gaming group enough that I don't break her out very often, as they don't have fun with her. Oh well, I have other casters.

6) Thagrosh, the Prophet of Everblight - Thagrosh1 is a caster I find kind of weird. I REALLY like his spell list - Draconic Blessing is absolutely one of the best buffs in Hordes, and Mutagenesis assassination runs are still as viable as they ever were, which is to say that they work sometimes. But he's totally let down by his incredibly awful defensive stats. DEF 14 ARM 15 is a huge letdown, even considering that Death Shroud is always on now. That just means he's always ARM 17 against melee, which is okay, but not great. It's not melee that you should worry about - he's Thagrosh, man, he WRECKS dudes in melee. Take a Harrier and some auto-hitting POW 16s to the face! Good stuff!

No. Not really. My (admittedly very limited) experience playing Thagrosh involves getting CRA'd in the face and dying horrendously. He's got a weak Feat that looks really strong on paper until you realize that it won't be coming into play until turn four most games. Turn four! Who has four turns in a tournament? Not me in general, because if I've gone to turn four I've ceded my army's biggest advantage, the lightning alpha strike. And worse, it'll be turn five before your beast can even do anything. The ability to bring back Typhon seems really beefy on paper until you realize how limited it is. It may help if your opponent gets freakishly lucky and offs him early, but in general, it's a weak Feat. Tie that in to his awful defensive stats and even with a good spell list and the awesomeness of Rapture, he just doesn't have the juice.

How would you fix him? Good question. Death Shroud in Control rather than Command would help, so that you don't have to mess around with trying to pack all your stuff in his relatively small control area. Either a DEF increase (not likely) or an ARM increase (more likely) would be tremendously helpful. He's a warlock that kind of has to lead from the front, so anything that helps him do that more successfully would be nice.

One more post after this one and then the warlocks are done.