The Warlord

[Blastyswa]

you can change titles if no one has commented on the thread

otherwise you have to ask cordo to change it for you

I sent a PM to Cordovan asking if he could change the title from "The Warlord, a Chest-Blessing DPS Warlock Tank" to "The Warlord" (That way 2 years from now when this build is 12 levels warlock 8 levels unicorn trainer and is a yuan-ti race wielding a spear in one hand and wearing a flaming do-rag of lasers the name still applies correctly.

[Blastyswa]

Throwing a bump to this thread, because I finally updated it for u34. If Racial Reincarnation looks remotely attractive this character will probably jump on the hamster wheel, so while this build is now completely up to date it might not be updated again for a few updates.

[Jetrule]

I sent a PM to Cordovan asking if he could change the title from "The Warlord, a Chest-Blessing DPS Warlock Tank" to "The Warlord" (That way 2 years from now when this build is 12 levels warlock 8 levels unicorn trainer and is a yuan-ti race wielding a spear in one hand and wearing a flaming do-rag of lasers the name still applies correctly.

I want that do rag. Question, a month or so ago I respeced my GOO pact warlock into something similar Going tier 5 and capstone in T.S. and a few in S.E. and 32 in E.S. Ran in Exalted Angel and went for more d.c's and dps., at the cost of some surviveability. I went back to the original 44 points in E.S. and rest in T.S. still running in EA. Because the eldritch ball seemed weak and slow and I died too easily resulting in much less effective dps.. My lock is first heroic life with some (5?) epls and full destinies and is running a 5 piece legendary slavers endurance set and 2 piece legendary green Steele set that does extra acid damage dot. Triple earth ethereal dominion. What am I messing up that I cant seem to enjoy or survive/kill as much with my lock in what was basicaly your new enhancement config? It looked good on paper to me too especialy for reaper. Is it the lgs set? The lack of pastlives? wrong slavers set? Guy behind the keyboard?

[Blastyswa]

I want that do rag. Question, a month or so ago I respeced my GOO pact warlock into something similar Going tier 5 and capstone in T.S. and a few in S.E. and 32 in E.S. Ran in Exalted Angel and went for more d.c's and dps., at the cost of some surviveability. I went back to the original 44 points in E.S. and rest in T.S. still running in EA. Because the eldritch ball seemed weak and slow and I died too easily resulting in much less effective dps.. My lock is first heroic life with some (5?) epls and full destinies and is running a 5 piece legendary slavers endurance set and 2 piece legendary green Steele set that does extra acid damage dot. Triple earth ethereal dominion. What am I messing up that I cant seem to enjoy or survive/kill as much with my lock in what was basicaly your new enhancement config? It looked good on paper to me too especialy for reaper. Is it the lgs set? The lack of pastlives? wrong slavers set? Guy behind the keyboard?

My experience with Eldritch Ball has been that it provides some incredible damage, while also casting fairly quickly (A little faster than hellball; I also have quicken on it, if you didn't have quicken it's fairly slow) although stunning blast is a much slower cast, although it's still easily my favorite ability in the entire game. That trade off of survivability by going Tier 5 scholar is accompanied by +3 DC's and Eldritch Ball scaling with 150% spellpower, making it very powerful. I'll just go through the questions sequentially so I don't get lost.

Now I personally have tried, and immensely disliked, the heavy souleater/tainted scholar split. It adds very little additional DPS, and drops survivability significantly. If you're thinking "But I didn't ask about souleater", then know that Souleater is my relation to your issue with tainted scholar; there's a point where the survivability tradeoff becomes too much for too little DPS, and that point is different for different players. If you're consistently dying with Tainted Scholar, and surviving much much more in enlightened spirit, you can certainly do a different enhancement split. As a benchmark though, I tend to die about once every 5 full slavers runs or so due to pulling too much aggro for my CC, or just being cocky (Letting displacement run out or not casting CC at all). I wouldn't say it's LGS set, because I've unequipped it for runs before to see if I'm still able to play without it and have no problems. I also wouldn't say it's the pastlives, because realistically you're probably only about 100 HP and some PRR behind me; significant, but it wouldn't account for two entirely different experiences. The only way I could see slavers set being an issue is if your CC isn't working near 100%. Guy behind the keyboard shouldn't be an issue; if you've ever seen any of my videos, I have old-man reflexes and tend to go "Oh hey, I think I'm low on HP" about a minute after taking damage.

Since it's none of the above, I'll just toss out some general tips and you can see which ones you already do. If you're already doing all of these, I don't know why your experience is different; after making the swap to tainted scholar I haven't wanted to go back to enlightened spirit for a single second.

1. What's your CC look like? I tend to drop webs, evards, mass holds, soundbursts, and dancing balls all with 80+ DC very frequently. If you aren't doing this, or if you are doing this and they aren't catching mobs, you probably just need to drop more/better CC and you'll be fine. I have yet to die from being attacked by a mob that isn't attacking me.

2. What's your Constitution score look like? I ask mainly because of brilliance. With around 60 constitution most of the time, I find that 120 PRR with 120 temporary HP every 2 seconds and displacement is invincibility in easier contents. Even in higher content it can reduce significant amounts of incoming damage.

3. Are you keeping buffs up? If you're dying because you let displacement drop, especially if you don't have some form of blur on underneath, or because deathward wore off and you don't have deathblock, there's not much you can do. Based on your info it sounds like you're probably fine on this point, but I find myself forgetting displacement every once and a while so you can never be too careful.

4. Are you watching aggro at all? I love bursting and blasting the heck out of stuff, but I also make sure that if I'm pulling aggro I'm controlling aggro. If you're in the situation where you're probably about to pull off aggro from someone, drop a web or evards first.

5. Considered investing in clickies/swap-ins? I use a Hood of Unrest (Not possible to get outside of Revels though, so don't worry about it if you don't have) and an LGS affirmation swap-in quite a bit. Not only does the affirmation have a solid chance of giving that +1000 temporary HP, but if you craft it right it's +120 hamp and +150 spellpower, which means you can cocoon/mass moderate with much more power.

6. Saves/MRR/PRR? With the values I have in the screenshot, I don't have many problems. If your PRR/MRR is below 100, or your saves below 60 (My will shall be going up soon, waiting for the next update to know how to setup my gear first) then you probably want to jack those up a little.

[zehnvhex]

SE/TS is significantly more dps then an ES/XX build. 20% more damage from consume vuln alone. 8% more spell crit. Don't have to worry about alignment damage so can focus solely on boosting force/pact spell damage (though I still slot utterdark for helmed horrors on the rare occasion we do deathwyrm). Feed on magic means you can stack arcane pulses like nobodies business. Shiradi conelock probably the best dps lock option right now. Personally I dropped hellball for 20 more force spellpower as well. Hellball sucks now with nerf and not worth interrupting spamming cone.

I wouldn't overlook the confusion proc either. It's not a stance/shape so it's always on. Between LGS ooze, LGS salt, faltering stance and confusion proccing most mobs just end up standing in a giant ball waiting for me to cone it down. Most days I don't even CC anymore because everything is frozen in place attacking each other.

In the unlikely event something gets within melee range of you that might actually damage you, use staunch. 10 second cooldown, 50% of your health in temp HP.

I like brilliance aura but always felt it was sort of a crutch you can get over by not trying to facetank things.

[Blastyswa]

SE/TS is significantly more dps then an ES/XX build. 20% more damage from consume vuln alone. 8% more spell crit. Don't have to worry about alignment damage so can focus solely on boosting force/pact spell damage (though I still slot utterdark for helmed horrors on the rare occasion we do deathwyrm). Feed on magic means you can stack arcane pulses like nobodies business. Shiradi conelock probably the best dps lock option right now. Personally I dropped hellball for 20 more force spellpower as well. Hellball sucks now with nerf and not worth interrupting spamming cone.

I wouldn't overlook the confusion proc either. It's not a stance/shape so it's always on. Between LGS ooze, LGS salt, faltering stance and confusion proccing most mobs just end up standing in a giant ball waiting for me to cone it down. Most days I don't even CC anymore because everything is frozen in place attacking each other.

In the unlikely event something gets within melee range of you that might actually damage you, use staunch. 10 second cooldown, 50% of your health in temp HP.

I like brilliance aura but always felt it was sort of a crutch you can get over by not trying to facetank things.

I would disagree. Souleater vulnerability is only a factor if you don't have an LGS vacuum swap-in or ender set, and is for a single target anyways. 8% more spell crit isn't a major concern; I have about 50% currently without a golden orb of death and without deep souleater investment. I also don't use utterdark, at the moment I'm using faltering blast. It really doesn't do too much for the build though aside from minor additional CC, so no extra stance would probably work fine as well. I have no SP issues with the build in it's current form; I didn't use a single potion in the run (Which will be seen if this video ever actually processes) and don't have a mysterious bauble or a EROSS on this toon, nor do I have vile blasphemies. I do use a shard trinket a couple of times in phase 1 to do portals quicker, and I use it again in phase 4, although that ended up being unnecessary. Damage from the cone isn't worth not being able to cast spells while having the passive aura ticking; I commonly use hellball (Still hits 10k+ on helpless, 5k on non-helpless), eldritch blast, eldritch ball, and CC spells often enough that I have little downtime between attacks. On bosses I have basically no downtime.

I don't really worry about confusion proc either. I used it instead of having chain/enervating shadow for a while, but 90% of the time the mob just ends up going for me anyways, or hitting me with AoEs that do nothing to the 10k+ HP mobs around me. In the remaining 10% of circumstances, I just have to hunt down the random troglodytes duking it out in the corner. Staunch is something I never use, ever, in any circumstance. I literally don't think I even bother having it on my shortcut bars, and I definitely do have space to put it in. Losing 3% of my HP (so about 50 hitpoints) to gain half my HP as temporary (so around 800) is just such a bad tradeoff. Every use you do increases the chances that in the next encounter you get one-shotted (A very valid concern in high skull reaper where one-shots become an issue with 120 PRR and 1800 HP including temp, 2800 with affirmation). I also have typically been able to recover fine with an LGS Affirmation if both heals are on timer, which has the additional benefit of not giving my character a survivability deficit after that one next hit.

Brilliance aura I view as just too awesome to give up. It's not just something for facetanking; as you can see in any of my non-sentinel videos (In fairness, there isn't a lot up right now, I don't really make videos too often) I tend to move around a decent bit. Even in sentinel I move around quite a bit. If there's enemies attacking a non brilliance build with 1500 HP for 100 damage every 2 seconds after displacement/AC/Dodge/PRR, that character will die in 30 seconds without heals. If that same enemy attacks a core 5 brilliance build with 1500 HP for the same damage, that character will never die. Expanding further, if you're taking 300 damage every 2 seconds, the non-brilliance takes 10 seconds to die, while the brilliance takes 16 seconds. That's 60% longer. Brilliance becomes less effective when you take more damage in a short period of time (Both builds when hit for 2000 damage total are killed in the same amount of time) but against smaller quantities of damage, like basically all elite content and most low skull reaper, higher skull Tempest Spines Sorjek Call Lightning, and other effects. That's not even getting into the benefit it has for other characters in your party.

[KoobTheProud]

After a lot of Warlock play I tend to agree that Brilliance is the best single Warlock enhancement.

The other ability that is deceptively strong is Feigned Health although it is nowhere near as strong as Brilliance. The two combine with Cocoon, Displacement, Protection from Elements, Invisibility and anything else you cast on yourself regularly to give a nice cushion of health. If you cast group buffs everybody gets the extra cushion for 3 minutes or until gone. It's a nice synergy.

[Blastyswa]

After a lot of Warlock play I tend to agree that Brilliance is the best single Warlock enhancement.

The other ability that is deceptively strong is Feigned Health although it is nowhere near as strong as Brilliance. The two combine with Cocoon, Displacement, Protection from Elements, Invisibility and anything else you cast on yourself regularly to give a nice cushion of health. If you cast group buffs everybody gets the extra cushion for 3 minutes or until gone. It's a nice synergy.

I actuall ended up dropping Feigned health, although I could pick it up again at some point. Even on a close to maxed cha build (I'm missing 4 extra if I went drow, and I haven't twisted any charisma, so 100 is totally possible) I'm only getting 92 temporary HP on those casts. Sure that's nice, but the only spells I cast on myself semi-regularly are heals, displacement, and clickies. Realistically I'd probably be getting that extra temp HP about once every 10 seconds or so, and at that point I decided having +90 spellpoints and all the different blasting shapes was more important. I could definitely see dropping some stuff to try and get it though.

[GrantAnderson]

I am newly returned to DDO, so I'm intrigued by the 'solo LN Shroud' in the first post. Legendary Shroud is a raid like regular Shroud, right? I used to solo rather than raid (timezones, offspring, etc) so being able to get the new Green Steel gear solo would be very much of interest to me. If so, next life will definitely be Warlock (possibly Dragonborn because new and shiny).

[Blastyswa]

I am newly returned to DDO, so I'm intrigued by the 'solo LN Shroud' in the first post. Legendary Shroud is a raid like regular Shroud, right? I used to solo rather than raid (timezones, offspring, etc) so being able to get the new Green Steel gear solo would be very much of interest to me. If so, next life will definitely be Warlock (possibly Dragonborn because new and shiny).

Realistically, you probably won't be able to solo LN Shroud without practicing a bit and getting a lot of gear; my spellpower is darn near optimized for this build (I was using Xachosian Eardweller, Eternal Flask of Coffee, Efficacy Potion, Comm potion, Night Horrors, and full action boosts for harry phase 4, which is a lot of grinding to get) and phase 4 was still barely a one-round kill for Harry. If you're trying to get the Greensteel gear, I'd recommend farming the flagging quests for LShroud for small/medium ingredients, asking people to pass you them, and then joining one LShroud group for the altars and crafting everything you want, although this won't get you the third rank of LGS items. Warlock really isn't the go to solo LShroud class since most of it's damage is focused on AoE and LShroud is largely a boss beatdown, it's the min/max style of this build squeezing out every bit of damage it can possibly find that makes it work well.

Dragonborn would certainly be ok for this build, but if you intend to put any points into the racial tree then you'll have to give up something from the warlock trees; personally I'd recommend dropping everything from souleater, because while feeding frenzy is incredibly nice it's not something that matters as much if you aren't farming quests at maximum speed. If you go any deeper into a racial tree than 8 AP you'll have to start dropping points from enlightened spirit, which drops your survivability and damage output very significantly very quickly.

[GrantAnderson]

Realistically, you probably won't be able to solo LN Shroud without practicing a bit and getting a lot of gear; my spellpower is darn near optimized for this build (I was using Xachosian Eardweller, Eternal Flask of Coffee, Efficacy Potion, Comm potion, Night Horrors, and full action boosts for harry phase 4, which is a lot of grinding to get) and phase 4 was still barely a one-round kill for Harry. If you're trying to get the Greensteel gear, I'd recommend farming the flagging quests for LShroud for small/medium ingredients, asking people to pass you them, and then joining one LShroud group for the altars and crafting everything you want, although this won't get you the third rank of LGS items. Warlock really isn't the go to solo LShroud class since most of it's damage is focused on AoE and LShroud is largely a boss beatdown, it's the min/max style of this build squeezing out every bit of damage it can possibly find that makes it work well.

Dragonborn would certainly be ok for this build, but if you intend to put any points into the racial tree then you'll have to give up something from the warlock trees; personally I'd recommend dropping everything from souleater, because while feeding frenzy is incredibly nice it's not something that matters as much if you aren't farming quests at maximum speed. If you go any deeper into a racial tree than 8 AP you'll have to start dropping points from enlightened spirit, which drops your survivability and damage output very significantly very quickly.

Thanks for the advice!

Because I do usually solo, I don't have much in the way of Greensteel from the original Shroud (possibly it's easier to solo now than it used to be, if you build a level 30 for it?). I am quite willing to build directly for soloing the new Shroud if that's possible! I'll search the forums.

It might be a tight build with Dragonborn, as you say, looking at the AP distribution. 8AP would buy +1 Cha and the breath weapon, but I'm not sure if that's worth dropping Consume, Feeding Frenzy and a bonus feat. +2 Cha might counterbalance the feat, but not the others.

I see you say Fey or Fiend, but not GOO in post 1; an earlier iteration (post 52) was GOO pact - is there something in particular about GOO that doesn't work so well with the current build?

[Blastyswa]

Thanks for the advice!

Because I do usually solo, I don't have much in the way of Greensteel from the original Shroud (possibly it's easier to solo now than it used to be, if you build a level 30 for it?). I am quite willing to build directly for soloing the new Shroud if that's possible! I'll search the forums.

It might be a tight build with Dragonborn, as you say, looking at the AP distribution. 8AP would buy +1 Cha and the breath weapon, but I'm not sure if that's worth dropping Consume, Feeding Frenzy and a bonus feat. +2 Cha might counterbalance the feat, but not the others.

I see you say Fey or Fiend, but not GOO in post 1; an earlier iteration (post 52) was GOO pact - is there something in particular about GOO that doesn't work so well with the current build?

This build has absolutely no problem soloing heroic shroud; I can one-shot the portals with ruin spells, have ruin for the crystal as well, can use wings to move lieutenants around and arcane pulse kill them while split... I commonly can finish in 20 minutes even with the 10 minute water running phase in the middle.

For building for Legendary Shroud, I'd say the name of the game is optimization. A build like 11/5/4 sorcerer/wizard/fvs or 10/6/4 sorcerer/wizard/fvs is going to suit you better for doing with less gear and tactics, thanks to the basic incredibly easy style of that builds passive healing and 4 button attack sequences. That's typically the description people give to warlocks in general, but playing The Warlord build it's very clear to see that you end up only doing that type of cycling for bosses, and for most encounters you have to actually throw out healing spells and the like. I'd recommend going basically for the gear listed on the first page, since it works well for either a sorcerer spammer build or a Warlord. Even the gearing slots are still the same with u35 coming out; I don't see any reason to change gear around on this build until u36 and beyond.

Fey is a choice because of the great synergy with Dashing Gloves and the great CC additions, while Fiend is a choice because of Hurl through Hell and the extra DPS from being able to use an LGS weapon. Basically, Fey is a utility/support role and Fiend is a raw DPS role. The reason I don't include GOO is that it's usual purpose is the best viable pact for a constitution based warlock because it targets will saves, which are typically a monsters lowest save. With a strong emphasis on charisma instead of constitution, that isn't a major concern anymore because fortitude or reflex still lands a vast majority of the time. When you then compare the bonuses between pacts, Fey has Otto's Sphere, Otto's Irresistible, Dark Delirium and Abundant Step as viable useful abilities: Fiend has Fire Shield, Hurl through Hell, Rage, Binding Chains (It actually can be useful, really!), and Howl of Terror, as well as +2 saves as it's level 6 ability: GOO has Entangle if you can get it to work, Knock, Phantasmal Killer, and Power Word: Kill. I don't count Entropic Ward because the build MRR caps easily without it and +25% fortification doesn't matter when you're already not getting critted. Comparing those at a strict number of quantity, we get 4:6:4, which makes fiend look like it's ahead. Honestly though, the situations where I use knock are limited, and I don't usually play too much of an instakill role so PK and PW:K aren't big concerns. Looking back on it, I do think a GOO build would work fine, but I would tend towards wanting Hurl+Howl and the other goodies from fiend or Otto's spells.

[GrantAnderson]

Thanks again! That makes your pact choice pretty clear. I guess I was just being lured by Knock, but that's hardly essential.

As far as I can tell, going Dragonborn would be giving up a skill slot for a little elemental resistance and to look cool, figuring that the +2 Cha replaces a Spell Focus feat). Although I suppose after umpty-three racial reincarnations, you could have the breath weapon and the full Warlord build as well (still a long way off for me!).

[Blastyswa]

Thanks again! That makes your pact choice pretty clear. I guess I was just being lured by Knock, but that's hardly essential.

As far as I can tell, going Dragonborn would be giving up a skill slot for a little elemental resistance and to look cool, figuring that the +2 Cha replaces a Spell Focus feat). Although I suppose after umpty-three racial reincarnations, you could have the breath weapon and the full Warlord build as well (still a long way off for me!).

Pretty much, although a few other factors are:
-I actually very often use Action Boost: Spellpower from human tree. While it's not a game-changer, it is a nice bonus to use while also hitting reaper memento, wellspring of power, and tainted spellcasting.
-+2 Cha doesn't equal the spell focus feat actually, since the main reason for the spell focus is to unlock the magister +3 spell focus, which is very important. If you went dragonborn I'd probably drop mental toughness instead, losing a fair amount of sp in exchange for +1 DC from the charisma.

[GrantAnderson]

Pretty much, although a few other factors are:
-I actually very often use Action Boost: Spellpower from human tree. While it's not a game-changer, it is a nice bonus to use while also hitting reaper memento, wellspring of power, and tainted spellcasting.
-+2 Cha doesn't equal the spell focus feat actually, since the main reason for the spell focus is to unlock the magister +3 spell focus, which is very important. If you went dragonborn I'd probably drop mental toughness instead, losing a fair amount of sp in exchange for +1 DC from the charisma.

Noted. Although if I read your build correctly, not having Completionist, I'd be taking 6 Insightful Reflexes, 15 SF: Enchant, 18 GSF: Enchant - on a nonhuman, I guess everything shuffles up and I have 9 Insightful Reflexes, 18 SF: Enchant, and skip GSF? I'd get to keep Mental Toughness that way.

[Blastyswa]

Noted. Although if I read your build correctly, not having Completionist, I'd be taking 6 Insightful Reflexes, 15 SF: Enchant, 18 GSF: Enchant - on a nonhuman, I guess everything shuffles up and I have 9 Insightful Reflexes, 18 SF: Enchant, and skip GSF? I'd get to keep Mental Toughness that way.

Sounds solid.

[GrantAnderson]

Sounds solid.

I shall find out in about another 600k karma. Thanks for all the advice.