Pure Casting Warlock DC Eld Blast Build

[Mooshinator]

ES is great.
Feats: you want maximize and empower for the burst / blast. You can take 3x shield feats for more survival. Heighten / Spell Focuses if you want to do DC casting. Extend if you're lazy.
Spell power: For the main blast, you need Force/Impulse, unless you take Utterdark Blast, then it's Radiance. For the pact damage.. depends on the pact. I guess LRing from a monk restricts your options.
DC: Eldritch Blast is treated as a ninth level spell - and so is aura. The burst/blast are probably lvl 9 as well. Consume and Stricken (if you grab those) are treated as lower level spells. Yes these all are evocations. The main eldritch blast damage cannot be saved against. The additional elemental pact damage does offer a save. If you have spare item slots, I guess some Blasting of Evocation item cannot harm. I wouldn't stress it though.
Concentration vs Perform - I don't have an opinion. Bursts are not subject to concentration checks.

Thank you so much for clearing that up! Do you recommend taking Shield feats since my gear won't be that good? I see also magical training feats are a possibility? Are there any must have items while leveling, ie. Divine artillery for gxbow users?

[Clacker12]

Heyo!

i was wondering if it was possible to get a list of gear that doesnt come from raids for the end game gear? I havent played in like a year or two so i don't have any of the new raid stuff..

thanks for this guide!

[jalont]

Heyo!

i was wondering if it was possible to get a list of gear that doesnt come from raids for the end game gear? I havent played in like a year or two so i don't have any of the new raid stuff..

thanks for this guide!

These builds aren't really raid-gear dependent. The main thing you'll want is the lantern ring from Haunted Halls. You can get one of the ASAH and the black stones to upgrade it for cheap if you don't want to farm it. Still, getting the actual ring is a rather quick and easy farm. Beyond that, random gen items will work fine. Just get the highest random gen stat items you can find, and you'll tear up all EE content.

[KoobTheProud]

You don't need top end gear on a Warlock beyond the Skyvault Shield and Orcish Privateers Boots. Everything else can be filled by a good piece of random loot gen gear that interlocks with your other gear. The Skyvault Shield gives you good PRR and the boots keep you from being CC'd 99% of the time and the rest is gravy and hoping you don't roll a 1 at a bad time. The Mysterious Cloak is the only other slot where I felt a named item gave me a substantial upgrade in survivability.

[Clacker12]

These builds aren't really raid-gear dependent. The main thing you'll want is the lantern ring from Haunted Halls. You can get one of the ASAH and the black stones to upgrade it for cheap if you don't want to farm it. Still, getting the actual ring is a rather quick and easy farm. Beyond that, random gen items will work fine. Just get the highest random gen stat items you can find, and you'll tear up all EE content.

Oh thanks! So my goal right now is to get the lantern ring.. Now I gotta figure out the best way to farm that in the hh..i gotta learn the dungeon I guess.. It's huge

[kalaka]

Why not go soul eater capstone and tier 5? If you're pure DC get two fingers and devour the soul...

[jalont]

Why not go soul eater capstone and tier 5? If you're pure DC get two fingers and devour the soul...

These are two different builds with two very different playstyles.... At this point, I probably prefer a soul eater build myself, but they aren't for new players. Maxing warlock DPS kills warlock survivability. For 99 out of a hundred people, the OP's build will be higher dps because it's more forgiving.

[kalaka]

These are two different builds with two very different playstyles.... At this point, I probably prefer a soul eater build myself, but they aren't for new players. Maxing warlock DPS kills warlock survivability. For 99 out of a hundred people, the OP's build will be higher dps because it's more forgiving.

The title of this thread is pure DC casting warlock.

[Mooshinator]

according to the description enervating shadow should increase the scaling of ES sla bursts by 30%. Just want to make sure this is the case?

[Morroiel]

according to the description enervating shadow should increase the scaling of ES sla bursts by 30%. Just want to make sure this is the case?

NO. The scaling for eldritch burst and spirit blasts from ES are 100%, this is inclusive of the eldritch blast damage. The enervating shadow blast shape would only effect the scaling for the auto-attack damage you do. If it works any other way, then it is clearly not WAI. From my own personal testing, I think it works exactly as it should with 100% scaling.

[jalont]

NO. The scaling for eldritch burst and spirit blasts from ES are 100%, this is inclusive of the eldritch blast damage. The enervating shadow blast shape would only effect the scaling for the auto-attack damage you do. If it works any other way, then it is clearly not WAI. From my own personal testing, I think it works exactly as it should with 100% scaling.

All of these descriptions are ridiculously confusing, but I agree, and that's what my testing shows too.

[yasz73]

To echo the sentiment of others, I've really enjoyed following this thread, thank you for the frequent updates! I'm running your 17 warlock/pally build and just hit 24, so I have some time, but wondering why you have opted for Scion of Fire over Scion of Celestia. Was it mainly for the PRR/MRR increase?

Also, if you have the time and could provide your recommended Enhancements for the Pally split build, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm currently setup with your 36 Enlightened Spirit/24 Tainted Scholar build.

[Ligraph]

To echo the sentiment of others, I've really enjoyed following this thread, thank you for the frequent updates! I'm running your 17 warlock/pally build and just hit 24, so I have some time, but wondering why you have opted for Scion of Fire over Scion of Celestia. Was it mainly for the PRR/MRR increase?

Also, if you have the time and could provide your recommended Enhancements for the Pally split build, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm currently setup with your 36 Enlightened Spirit/24 Tainted Scholar build.

I asked the same thing about Fire vs Celestia and he answered here:

Yes some people don't take energy burst and take dire charge instead of arcane pulse. In that case Scion of Celestia is probably better. That reminds me I am missing scion in my spellpower list - ty for mentioning that.

For me I want the 25% crit damage for arcane pulse and energy burst so it's worth giving up 10 spell power and 5% crit damage to go with scion of fire. If Scion of Fire was ever nerfed I would probably go with celestia. The 150 hp is also more useful than 10 prr/mrr to me esp with greensteel equipped - that will end up being over 200 with enough legendary greensteel items equipped.

If you are more heavily invested in souleater dire charge becomes more compelling, although arcane pulse is still the better dot. The biggest problem I find with dire charge is the range is so short. It's hard to group up enemies that closely, but even if you only get some it's a significant dps boost against mobs.

[yasz73]

I asked the same thing about Fire vs Celestia and he answered here:

Thanks Ligraph! I somehow missed that.

Slarden if you have an opportunity to comment on the Enhancements for the Pally split, I'd appreciate it!

[Mooshinator]

what are the maximize and empower feats taken for? blasts/bursts aren't subject to those right?

[Ligraph]

what are the maximize and empower feats taken for? blasts/bursts aren't subject to those right?

The default Aura isn't, but things like Spirit Blast and Eldritch Burst are. As well as Consume, Avenging Light, and the Sun Bolt SLA.

Edit: Arcane Pulse is too, although not cost-free.

[slarden]

what are the maximize and empower feats taken for? blasts/bursts aren't subject to those right?

With this build I am cycling through AOE SLAs so everything except energy burst is boosted by maximize, empower and intensify for a total of 300 spellpower boost. When comparing a soul eater to EA builds metamagic and not having to switch to between SLAs and basic blast is what brings EA/TS builds DPS in line with SE/TS builds. SE/TS still has a slight dps edge, but negligible.

The only reason to choose SE over EA would be to add devour the soul with it's 15 second cooldown on top of hurl through hell. DPS is roughly equivalent and EA has much better intangibles. However since U29 the # of enemies dying from insta-kills is up significantly compared to pre-U29 so a blasting warlocks kill count will be lower in general compared to pre-U29. An SE build will generally end up with higher kill count than an EA build due to the extra kills from devour the soul.

[slarden]

To echo the sentiment of others, I've really enjoyed following this thread, thank you for the frequent updates! I'm running your 17 warlock/pally build and just hit 24, so I have some time, but wondering why you have opted for Scion of Fire over Scion of Celestia. Was it mainly for the PRR/MRR increase?

Also, if you have the time and could provide your recommended Enhancements for the Pally split build, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm currently setup with your 36 Enlightened Spirit/24 Tainted Scholar build.

Thank you. I see your question was already answered - apologies for not responding earlier I've been very busy with work. I will update enhancements and get caught up on this thread in the next few weeks, but there aren't many changes - mainly dropping some 1 spellpower for 1ap options for other things since spellpower in general is so much higher. Squeezing every little bit of spellpower isn't as important now.

With U29 many new warlock paths are now viable which is good.

[kalaka]

With this build I am cycling through AOE SLAs so everything except energy burst is boosted by maximize, empower and intensify for a total of 300 spellpower boost. When comparing a soul eater to EA builds metamagic and not having to switch to between SLAs and basic blast is what brings EA/TS builds DPS in line with SE/TS builds. SE/TS still has a slight dps edge, but negligible.

The only reason to choose SE over EA would be to add devour the soul with it's 15 second cooldown on top of hurl through hell. DPS is roughly equivalent and EA has much better intangibles. However since U29 the # of enemies dying from insta-kills is up significantly compared to pre-U29 so a blasting warlocks kill count will be lower in general compared to pre-U29. An SE build will generally end up with higher kill count than an EA build due to the extra kills from devour the soul.

TS/SE has better sustained single target. ES struggles there IMO.

[slarden]

Why not go soul eater capstone and tier 5? If you're pure DC get two fingers and devour the soul...

That's a really good build with the current Legendary raids and for LE I would think you would always want at least one SE insta-killer, but once you get past hurl through hell and devour the soul it's not as good, but those are really needed against some LE enemies with high fort saves.

So I may spec one of my characters as an SE warlock just for raiding, but in general I think it's a much less versatile build across all content compared to a blasting build.