Radiance or Force

[Thame]

SO My warlock uses force/sonic (Fey) prob change to GOO for acid damage but always hearing about how radiance damage using utterdark is better then force. My sp. Power for force is at 590. SO if radiance is better, how much higher can I get the Sp. Power for Radiance and how?

[cru121]

Some things (probably missing several):
- Radiant power - T1 Exalted Angel +30
- PL Morninglord +30
- Enlightened Spirit spell power enhancements / capstone

[slarden]

I use alignment spellpower which is impact by light (utterdark) on my ES blasting warlock which has synergies with light from Exalted Angel and Enlighted Spirit.

My necromancer warlock SE (tier 5/Capstone + TS) uses force and only would ever switch to utterdark for force-immune enemies. Force has nice synergies with tentacles, wave, eld blast, ruin, greater ruin, arcane pulse, etc. Since so much gear is devoted to DC and spell pen it's nice to focus on just force.

There is no right or wrong answer.

[Blastyswa]

SO My warlock uses force/sonic (Fey) prob change to GOO for acid damage but always hearing about how radiance damage using utterdark is better then force. My sp. Power for force is at 590. SO if radiance is better, how much higher can I get the Sp. Power for Radiance and how?

If you're playing a pure enlightened spirit warlock, you're going to be at 20-50 more light spellpower than other spellpowers. If you go Exalted Angel as a destiny that's +60/160 light spellpower depending on if you're using reborn in light at the time, or you can get +30 light spellpower twisted in a different destiny. An additional benefit of using utterdark is to have more of your attacks based off of one spellpower. I personally still use arcane pulse, so dumping force spellpower still isn't a great idea, but I'm only able to fit one 27% spell lore on my own build. Options then end up being either going acid lore (Pact, Hellball, LGS), force lore (Non utterdark damage, arcane pulse) or light lore (utterdark damage, LGS, bursts, celestial spirit, spiritual retribution). Using utterdark blast thus allows me to not only have a little extra light spellpower on my warlock blasts, but also 12% additional crit chance.

[elvesunited]

-- if your light/alignment boosting equipment ( power and crit ) + enhancements + favorite destiny + twists is better than your force boosting equipment ( power + crit ) then go evil utterdark damage.

-- If you have strong ES investment (31+ AP) but don't have the equipment to do both light/alignment and force boosting then go evil utterdark damage so you can boost the two +3d6 light damage additions to all of your blasts.

-- If you're going to make extensive use of Consume and Stricken from SE tree but don't have the equipment to do both light/alignment and force boosting then go evil utterdark damage so you can boost those abilities.

-- If you are twisting Empryean Magic from the Divine Crusader destiny. You can build up +20 light spellpower +10% light crit very quickly. Then go evil utterdark damage. ( Unless the additional light damage from ES enhancements is enough to trigger it. I haven't tested )

-- Otherwise go force damage. Though you may want to get the Utterdark enhancement anyway as a backup in case you ever want to fight helmed horrors. ( force heals them )

And if you get some powerful item ( like the Legendary Earthen Mantle ) that changes everything. Changing your AP choices is cheap.


I personally still use arcane pulse, so dumping force spellpower still isn't a great idea
Don't you find the long cast time for Arcane pulse to be disruptive to your DPS?

[Blastyswa]

Don't you find the long cast time for Arcane pulse to be disruptive to your DPS?

Going to just do one response so I don't derail the OP too much, but here's my numbers for why to use Arcane Pulse, all of which anyone can calculate themselves if they wish to check me:
Average Base Damage: 16.5
Average damage over 8 ticks (Casting it once): 132
Average damage over 8 ticks while 5 stacked: 660
Average damage over 40 ticks if 5 stacked and allowed to run out: 1980

With 950 spellpower including 300 metamagics, not including spellpower boosts/wellspring of power:
ABD: 173.25
AD8: 1386
AD85: 6930
AD405: 20790 (32068 with crit factored in)

Each Arcane Pulse takes less than a second to cast (I tried to time it once and got 0.75 seconds, but I didn't test it very accurately so lets just go one second), and the spell is a DoT so it deals damage while you're doing other things. Therefore, by taking 1 second out of every 5 seconds for 25 seconds to cast the spell, you're dealing 4158 damage/time spent casting, without counting crit chance/multiplier. If we factor in a 35% crit chance with a 55% crit multiplier bonus, which is about what a typical empyrean magic using Scion of Fire warlock with tainted scholar would have, that damage/time spent casting goes up to 6414 on average. Dealing 32,068 damage for 5 seconds of time is significantly more damage than 5 seconds of bursts, which, while I could show it mathematically, would take quite a bit longer to show and is something I probably won't end up doing. I will say though that I tend to avoid using arcane pulse on mobs; typically I 5 stack it on bosses at the start of a boss fight, and then don't replace it unless I notice it completely run out. People that spam an arcane pulse every time it's off cooldown get decreased damage/time spent casting, but then again I find it fairly easy to fit it into my attack rotation without having any opportunity cost.

Summary: Arcane Pulse is pretty solid.