Voodu Warlock: A Pure Warlock Enlightened Spirit Tank Project companion thread

[ThomasHunter]

Hello again!

Was planning out my toon and thought I would try it as a Morninglord Sun Elf. Do you think this could be viable?

Currently, my toon is a PDK and I was just going to ITR into another PDK. However, for something different, I thought maybe go with the Sun Elf. I like the idea of that all-in-one SLA that casts Aid, Spell Resistance, and Death Ward. There is also some additional Light Spell Power which seems good/important.

I know you made yours as a Drow, so this seems possible. Just curious if I should do this!

Thanks!

[Vooduspyce]

Hello again!

Was planning out my toon and thought I would try it as a Morninglord Sun Elf. Do you think this could be viable?

Currently, my toon is a PDK and I was just going to ITR into another PDK. However, for something different, I thought maybe go with the Sun Elf. I like the idea of that all-in-one SLA that casts Aid, Spell Resistance, and Death Ward. There is also some additional Light Spell Power which seems good/important.

I know you made yours as a Drow, so this seems possible. Just curious if I should do this!

Thanks!

If you're planning on making an ES warlock as a final build then 3 sun elf lives is a must!

That said, if you just want to do sun elf ES warlock just to try something different, I personally didn't find it as useful as I was hoping. There are a lot of things in the tree that seem like they'd be really good at first glance, but turnout to be not very good options imo. I'll break it down a bit by tier...

Core- intelligence and accuracy are not very exciting for ES warlock

Tier 1- nothing that exciting to an ES warlock

Tier 2

• Blessing of Amunator - not that useful on a warlock imo because they already get Deathward in core Tainted Scholar, and I already had SR on the drow and the amount of SR gained is basically meaningless in epic levels.
• Enchantment Lore is nice, but I already have on drow.
• Arcanum - not a very useful option for an ES warlock because extra sp and spell pen just aren't needed, at least not for a con based tank build like Voodu. Could be more useful on a more caster focused warlock.

Tier 3- Light of the Sun God is the only thing that seems useful but you have to spend a total of 13 AP to get it, which pulls a lot of AP's away from other trees. If you're Sun Elf and keep the cleric level then you have access to cleric enhancements and you're better off getting light spell power there for less of an investment.

Tier 4 Sunburst SLA seems like it would be nice, but long cooldown and blindness doesn't hit well (not sure if this was because I use a con build or if level is based on cleric levels). The amount of damage I saw on this when I tried it with my build was shockingly low and I'm not exactly sure why but I suspect it was because caster level is based on cleric level, which is only 1.

I hope this helps. Would love to hear from others if they've had different experiences with ES Sun Elf.

[Chewychunga]

Was looking at your gear and noticed you dont have a Con item.. is there any reason for this? or am i just missing it?
Also looking at tForged weapon it seems useless with the legendary gloves. Is there a better weapon you suggest?

[QueenOfTheHook]

How does one go back to being a normal toon after this build? I've thoroughly enjoyed this build following it almost to a T (except the gear as I don't have it all). This is the first life that I have even tried getting to lvl 30 on (2 arti and 1 monk PL) and I reached my goal yesterday! I plan on doing an epic tr to finish filling out the ED trees (gimping yourself to do this before running legendary level stuff was a really bad idea). After that though, I will switch to another class to get a few more PLs before I rebuild this one again.

However, everything seems squishy now! I've watched barbs fall while my temp hit points occasionally drop to zero before I can hit the buttons to remedy it. I have died this life but way way fewer times then my past 3. Do you have any suggestions as to which class/build (I'm a purist) to tackle next that might help this build in the future? I foresee her being this build every few lives if for no other reason than to be able to survive to lvl 30.

Thank you for such a wonderful forth life!

Revi

[Vooduspyce]

Was looking at your gear and noticed you dont have a Con item.. is there any reason for this? or am i just missing it?
Also looking at tForged weapon it seems useless with the legendary gloves. Is there a better weapon you suggest?

Sightless has 12 con. I am currently on a TR binge and will be for a few more months before I can get back to Voodu as a warlock. I'm trying to knockout my IPL's and a few heroics like pally, barb and cleric. As a result, my gear list is not as up to date as it could be. You're spot on about the t-forge. I may replace it with a triple positive legendary affirmation green steel, which is probably what I'd be using right now playing the build. I have a feeling it will change by the time I get back to warlock, but that's what I'd use atm.

[Vooduspyce]

How does one go back to being a normal toon after this build? I've thoroughly enjoyed this build following it almost to a T (except the gear as I don't have it all). This is the first life that I have even tried getting to lvl 30 on (2 arti and 1 monk PL) and I reached my goal yesterday! I plan on doing an epic tr to finish filling out the ED trees (gimping yourself to do this before running legendary level stuff was a really bad idea). After that though, I will switch to another class to get a few more PLs before I rebuild this one again.

However, everything seems squishy now! I've watched barbs fall while my temp hit points occasionally drop to zero before I can hit the buttons to remedy it. I have died this life but way way fewer times then my past 3. Do you have any suggestions as to which class/build (I'm a purist) to tackle next that might help this build in the future? I foresee her being this build every few lives if for no other reason than to be able to survive to lvl 30.

Thank you for such a wonderful forth life!

Revi

Hey Revi, grats on 30! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed playing warlock this way.

I am also struggling with what you're referring to. I have a list of past lives in front of me and after having played through just a couple of them I am feeling the long slog of classes I don't really want to play. I have recently altered my roadmap of past lives to try to do them all as 11/9 warlock splits or 10/9/1 for iconics, and just play them as close to my normal build as possible. So you may be seeing Voodu back as a warlock hybrid soon as I work through these lives. I am currently level 25 working on a pally life and will start on this new path after this life, so I hope to produce some videos and have some feedback about it in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you for commenting

[Jetrule]

Hey Revi, grats on 30! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed playing warlock this way.

I am also struggling with what you're referring to. I have a list of past lives in front of me and after having played through just a couple of them I am feeling the long slog of classes I don't really want to play. I have recently altered my roadmap of past lives to try to do them all as 11/9 warlock splits or 10/9/1 for iconics, and just play them as close to my normal build as possible. So you may be seeing Voodu back as a warlock hybrid soon as I work through these lives. I am currently level 25 working on a pally life and will start on this new path after this life, so I hope to produce some videos and have some feedback about it in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you for commenting

I would be interested in hearing about or watching a video on how that works out. I just dont see the same playstyle being possible with 9 warlock. My tanky lock is so easy and generally relaxing to play due to his high passive and active defenses, but the weak spot is damage output. It is entirely manageable with 20 warlock. I just cant figure out a good build except fighter with 9 warlock splash that doesnt make the damage out put so low It would take forever to run quests. and I dont want any fighter past lives for my warlock tank. I want cleric, sorc and wizard pali morninglord and pdk and deepgnome. What do you think of sorc or wizard shiradi spammer types?

[Vooduspyce]

I would be interested in hearing about or watching a video on how that works out. I just dont see the same playstyle being possible with 9 warlock. My tanky lock is so easy and generally relaxing to play due to his high passive and active defenses, but the weak spot is damage output. It is entirely manageable with 20 warlock. I just cant figure out a good build except fighter with 9 warlock splash that doesnt make the damage out put so low It would take forever to run quests. and I dont want any fighter past lives for my warlock tank. I want cleric, sorc and wizard pali morninglord and pdk and deepgnome. What do you think of sorc or wizard shiradi spammer types?

I do expect performance to be significantly down, but I'm hoping I can just come up with something palatable to get me to 30.

Regarding shiradi sorc/wiz, are you asking in regard to the past lives you're wanting or just in general? They are very strong for sure and relatively easy to play, it's basically run backwards and pew pew similar to a blasting warlock. Voodu was a first generation shiradi caster and I had fun with it for a few months but then it got boring for me just spamming mm all the time. It was also a bit demoralizing that as a capped sorc my most powerful spell was mm lol. Sorc was my fav class when the level cap was 20, but things changed quite a bit after MOTU when I started transitioning to druid.

[Jetrule]

I do expect performance to be significantly down, but I'm hoping I can just come up with something palatable to get me to 30.

Regarding shiradi sorc/wiz, are you asking in regard to the past lives you're wanting or just in general? They are very strong for sure and relatively easy to play, it's basically run backwards and pew pew similar to a blasting warlock. Voodu was a first generation shiradi caster and I had fun with it for a few months but then it got boring for me just spamming mm all the time. It was also a bit demoralizing that as a capped sorc my most powerful spell was mm lol. Sorc was my fav class when the level cap was 20, but things changed quite a bit after MOTU when I started transitioning to druid.

I was asking about sharadi wiz/warlock or sorc/warlock in regards to non warlock pastlife builds incorporating the durability of e.s. warlock while still having respectable damage. Pretty sure it would be decent. So that maybe solves the issue for those pastlives. Now for Morninglord cleric and pdk pali hmmm.

[Belgarath22]

Not sure what you read, but the only way you don't have ASF with armor that lists as HAVING ASF is you take the enhancement in ES tree to eliminate it. Otherwise you need an augment to remove it (up to 15%). All proficiency guarantees is action penalty removal.

BTW.. the SLA blasts are also vulnerable to ASF.. no matter what anyone here says. If you want to be free of it, take the enhancement to remove it.

Hello, I think nobody answered this...

You are wrong Largo, it s just a display issue, to see your current arcane spell failure you need to mouse over your spells, not over your armor (the armor will show the inherent asf according to it s type and material)

[Vooduspyce]

I would be interested in hearing about or watching a video on how that works out. I just dont see the same playstyle being possible with 9 warlock. My tanky lock is so easy and generally relaxing to play due to his high passive and active defenses, but the weak spot is damage output. It is entirely manageable with 20 warlock. I just cant figure out a good build except fighter with 9 warlock splash that doesnt make the damage out put so low It would take forever to run quests. and I dont want any fighter past lives for my warlock tank. I want cleric, sorc and wizard pali morninglord and pdk and deepgnome. What do you think of sorc or wizard shiradi spammer types?

I have made my first video on this topic of 9 warlock plus 11 whatever past life. As I stated, I don't really want to play paly and barbarian as melee's, so I'm experimenting to see if I can multiclass them with 9 warlock and play them as my usual Enlightened Spirit playstyle.

My finding so far suggest that with 9 warlock, it would be relatively easy to at least go to level 20, multiclassing the other 11 with whatever you want as a heroic past life. I will be doing at least a couple more videos as I work through epic levels to see if things hold up or if it breaks down. I just took L21 and sadly realized that Epic Eldritch Blast and Epic Arcane Eldritch Blast feats require 12 warlock. I was really looking to those to help boost my dps in epics. So far so good still, but I am not optimistic about performance in epic level content. We will see though, and I will make another video to discuss the experience soon

In this video, I am level 19. 9 warlock, 9 paladin and 1 fighter (from PDK) and I discuss performance from L15-19 and demonstrate performance in elite Enter the Kobold...

[Justicesar]

I'm loving this build. I have been playing melee toons for years and only dabbled with casters here and there. Warlock has the right amount of casting mixed with eldritch that suits me. The only question I have, as I have never really played a lot of casters, is what really stack? Such as with potency, quality potency, universal, resonance etc..... Is there a wiki page on what all stacks?? Half the fun for me is trying to tweek out gear slots to keep Light, Resonance, and Impulse jacked up.

[Vooduspyce]

I'm loving this build. I have been playing melee toons for years and only dabbled with casters here and there. Warlock has the right amount of casting mixed with eldritch that suits me. The only question I have, as I have never really played a lot of casters, is what really stack? Such as with potency, quality potency, universal, resonance etc..... Is there a wiki page on what all stacks?? Half the fun for me is trying to tweek out gear slots to keep Light, Resonance, and Impulse jacked up.

Hey Justicesar, I'm glad you're enjoying it!

You can check out the ddowiki entry on spell power for an overview of what stacks. Generally speaking you just want to look at the type of bonus that is provided. Just plain Potency, for example, is an Equipment bonus, as is Radiance and Resonance, so Potency doesn't stack with those. Quality Potency and Insightful Potency are Quality and Insightful bonuses, however, and therefore stack with the aforementioned because they are a different bonus type.

I would recommend picking up Utterdark Blast from the Tainted Scholar tree (tier 2), which will convert your force damage into evil damage, thus making it affected by Radiance (which affects light and alignment spell power). Point being that now you only have to focus on your Radiance and Resonance spell powers and no need to worry about Impulse and Kinetic Lore.

Hope that helps

[blackthorn357]

Really enjoying the videos! Any suggestions for this build as a 1st life Human? I mostly quest with a group of 3, but occasionally do some solo here and there. I've played melee and ranged most of the time, but wanted to try something different for a change. Any pointers for leveling stats/enhancements would be greatly appreciated! Cheers!

[Vooduspyce]

Really enjoying the videos! Any suggestions for this build as a 1st life Human? I mostly quest with a group of 3, but occasionally do some solo here and there. I've played melee and ranged most of the time, but wanted to try something different for a change. Any pointers for leveling stats/enhancements would be greatly appreciated! Cheers!

Wow you are a founder and posting for the first time ever in my thread, that is an honor!

With human you'll get the extra feat, so you can just bump all heroic feats up, which means you'll have maximize and empower by level 3 when you get your first burst, so that will be extra valuable on a first lifer. At L18 you can take toughness if you want and if you're going into epics you can take epic light spell power at L28.

The stats and enhancements are in the OP, but if you're curious about the enhancements at any given level you can check out a level appropriate video in the series or one of my current vids as I'm working through Voodu again, though I'm experimenting a bit atm, so my current video series isn't exactly as posted here. The ES side is the same, but I'm trying out Souleater instead of Tainted Scholar. I suspect that I'll revert back to TS, but wanted to try it to 30 and see how it goes since I didn't have any experience with Souleater in epics.

Basically you want to focus on the ES tree at first as far as you can take it. Once you've gotten everything as far as you can in ES, start spending in TS. At L12 dump TS if necessary to get your tier 5 ES Spirit Blast and Shining Through, then go back to TS once you've gotten your tier 5's. Also be sure to pick up t4 Brilliance as soon as you can, it's awesome for maintenance healing. I emphasize because this one is easy to overlook the significance of if you're new to warlock.

If you are totally new to warlock and haven't seen my intro to warlock vid, you might find it very helpful How to Choose Your Warlock for Beginners. The video is designed for people that have no experience with or are very new to warlock. I go over the basics of what a pact is, briefly discuss differences among the enhancement trees, highlight some specific enhancements, discuss and demonstrate the differences between blasting and bursting and the different blast shape stances like cone blast and chain blast and offer tips and advice for warlock newbies.

I plan to make some adjustments to the OP soon, but prob not til after u32 goes live. But I am just now getting back to a capped warlock after spending 6 months on the TR train.

Glad you're liking the vids, I hope you enjoy your own Voodu warlock and I'm happy to answer any other questions you have along the way

[adrian69]

Which of your videos start post last warlock nerf? How much difference can you tell between this one and the previous live version?

[Vooduspyce]

Which of your videos start post last warlock nerf? How much difference can you tell between this one and the previous live version?

Was there a recent nerf or are you talking about the balance pass from October 2015?

[adrian69]

Was there a recent nerf or are you talking about the balance pass from October 2015?

Yeah, back at the end of last year around the balance passes when Bursts were lowered from 120% to 100%.

[Vooduspyce]

Yeah, back at the end of last year around the balance passes when Bursts were lowered from 120% to 100%.

The last video of the Voodu Warlock series was done on February 1, 2016. I've been on the TR train since then and am just now getting back to pure warlock and am level 28. It's been so long ago I couldn't say for sure, plus I'm experimenting with something different so it wouldn't be a fair comparison anyway. Looking quickly back at some of the videos from late in the series the numbers look about the same as I see now.

[adrian69]

Looking quickly back at some of the videos from late in the series the numbers look about the same as I see now.

Yeah, I've watched almost all of your videos, and I couldn't tell where the pass began. I just wanted to see if there was much difference and you've got a whole documentary on the class since it went live.


Nov. 21 2015 is the date I was looking for.