So yesterday I took my level 6 Warlock -- Fey Pact, Enlightened Spirit enhancements -- into Searing Heights to try some things out. For this go around, I decided to turn the aura off and to use the (sonic) Blast instead. Wow, what a difference!

With the Aura, I was using Master's Touch and a greatsword and it seemed like the aura wasn't doing all that much damage and I had to do most of the work with the sword. With the Blast, however, I could pew pew things from a difference and most everything seemed to go down much more quickly -- and because it was from a distance I wasn't really taking all that much damage, except from things like archers. I have never played a ranged character before, so maybe I don't have the right frame of comparison and all ranged combat is like this, but the actual Eldritch Blast just seemed much more powerful than the Aura. I don't have any concrete numbers to back this up, but that is how it felt to me.

This is kind of disappointing, actually, because I wanted to like the Aura. Maybe it will be tweaked. I also don't know how effective the Blasts will be in quests like TOEE where you tend to get swarmed and surrounded by tons of enemies in tight quarters. Perhaps they are perfect thing for slayer areas, where you can get long line of sight to enemies before they are upon you. Another worry is that perhaps the Blast will get kind of boring after a while -- the constant pew pew made me feel a bit like a one-trick pony (my spells at level 6 are hardly worth anything, to be sure, and I can't use my weapon while Blasting).

Looking forward to the next build on Lamannia.