SoundBlaster - Blast your enemies all the way back to 1990!

[Maelodic]

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Do you like holding left click but also want to play a caster? Do you like the idea of charms but they're just too dang annoying since you can't damage the enemy? Do you want to be mediocre at everything but somehow still super useful?

I have a build for you!

The SOUNDBLASTER. The ultimate throwback to a product released before I was born but somehow still have nostalgia for!

Use synergies that somehow make too much sense to turn your feylock into a monster of death and despair! Bosses getting you down? With the new and improved Soundblaster Feylock Omega Supreme, you have many ways of debuffing even the peskiest of bosses to be absolutely sure that every number that appears over their heads gives off that sweet sweet damage enhanced color and grows larger and larger as you continue to pelt them with the supple sounds of whispers escaping your fingers.

Mobs get you down? Throw out a max damage Evards and Arcane Tempest combo and watch their HP fall faster than you can say "oops I'm doing force damage now"

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This build is focused on using the great many synergies between the Fatesinger tree and the Fey pact of Warlock. It focuses intensely on damage via blasting, boss debuffing, and a variety of CC. This makes extensive use of the Tainted Scholar tree and the debuffs in Soul Eater to ensure that everything goes down. Enclosed is the build, gameplay commentary, and a new player friendly recommended gear set that performs well in endgame (no raid items)

The build outline given below will be geared at players unfamiliar with Tainted Scholar, and assuming no past lives are in the mix. I will note variations at the end of the build that more experienced players might be interested in.

This build can solo low to mid reaper at cap with proper gearing and play. The abundance and diversity in control options along with the very good boss damage (for a warlock) make this a versatile powerhouse that has a different focus than the builds currently posted. This may also be the best ruin caster in the game - with an intense focus on force damage as well as crit damage buffs, the ruin numbers will be large.

Build (this post)
Tanky Build Alternative
Build Justifications
Gameplay Guide
Racial AP Versions

THE BUILD

Tiefling or Dragonborn
True Neutral
20 Warlock
Max out CHA, then CON
If you have INT tomes, you put it to 10- if not, take it to 12 (14-16 CON and 18-20 CHA are all fine)

Skills
Spellcraft
Use Magic Device
Perform
(Bluff)
(Diplomacy)

Feats
1 Maximize
3 Quicken
6 Force of Personality
9 Past Life: Wizard
12 Spell Focus: Enchantment
15 Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment
18 Spell Penetration
21 Epic Blasting
24 Burst of Glacial Wrath
27 Ruin
30 Greater Ruin

26 Epic Arcane Blasting
28 Epic Spellpower Sonic
29 Epic Spellpower Force
31 Spell Specialty: Enchantment

30 Scion of Feywild

Spells (First two are chosen, others are granted)
1: Shield, Jump, Feather Fall, Obscuring Mist
2: Invisibility, Sleet Storm, Web, Blindness
3: Displacement, Dark Discorporation, Crushing Despair, Slow
4: Evards Black Tentacles, Teleport, Death Ward, Greater Dispel Magic
5: Finger of Death, Undeath to Death, Greater Heroism, Otto's Sphere of Dancing
6: Hold Monster Mass, Charm Monster Mass, Otto's Irresistible Dance, Energy Drain

Enhancements


Epic Destiny


Gear
Gear if you don't plan on raiding (~R1 solo gear)
The numbers here are pre-stat squish but this set still works well



I have a quiver of alacrity for Striding 30, but if you don't, you can get a striding 30 augment from Chor Blast-Horn in House K fairly easily and slot it into anything with a Yellow or Green slot.

Endgame Gear

[Maelodic]

Race
Tiefling was chosen just for the +2 to CHA and having no other drawbacks. Dragonborn and Drow are also fine here - Drow having innate spell resistance can help newer players in earler leveling, and Dragonborn's elemental resistance is kind of neat too. Tiefling has immunity to fear, however, which is a lot more likely to cause new player death.

Almost any race is fine here. This build does not take racial points so it doesn't make much of a difference. (See build alternatives if you do have racial points)


Skills
Concentration is not needed here as everything is quickened. I consider bluff and diplomacy very useful for a warlock that uses confusion, as you can use it to either bluff and confuse a tanky mob who then draws agro and tanks for you - or you can use diplo to drop a mass confusion, pop diplomacy, and then not be targetted.


Feats
There is a distinct lack of Ruin/Greater Ruin/Arcane Pulse. This is because I found it to be a wash as far as DPS compared to blasting+Soul Eater debuffs since casting interupts your attack chain. It is possible to out-perform blasting on this build, however that uses a lot more spell points than the alternative.

Otherwise it's intended to be a good mix of things, nothing crazy here.

Enhancements
Mass Confusion super good, works on a ton of things, very fun.
TS capstone so good for damage.
Eldritch Ball is a DPS boost (for single target) since it hits twice and can be weaved in-between the 3 blast rotation- however it's not a significant enough DPS boost to give up extra DCs or color spray. It's good but it's also clunky, takes away stacks for Staunch, Tainted Spellcasting, and Mass Confusion - and it's kind of super boring.

Going for just cone in Soul Eater and getting the extra spell crit and spell power and CHA in Feydark is a viable route to take, but you'll eat more than you'd expect in boss damage because the debuffs are very strong.

Epic Destiny
Lots of options here, don't feel the need to copy my build exactly.

Fatesinger is used here for all the goodies with spell DCs as well as greater shout. An alternative route to take here is using Draconic as the main destiny with something like the Legendary Ring of Winter's Chill for both force and cold spell power. This gives you dragon breath as well as a better ruin.

Primal Avatar is used for the epic strikes, healing, as well as more DCs. An alternative route is to take shadowdancer for evasion and energy drain immunity and spell cooldowns.

Exalted Angel is used for the healing, damage, and better wings. You can put on a Legendary Ring of Summer's Heat to make the passive hit harder.

[Maelodic]

In this short gameplay guide, I'm going to focus on the things that make this build play differently than Slarden's excellent builds and Nachomammashouse's tank warlock build.

----What CC do I use----
Let's just respond to some basic situations:

I have agro and...
They're on top of me!
Use mass hold, or burst of glacial wrath if they're immune to mass hold. If they are tanky, use evards to bolster damage.

My CC doesn't work!
If they're immune to mass hold and are saving your evards or burst of glacial wrath, use staunch, throw a panic mass confusion followed by diplomacy and dark discorporation and/or misty escape to disengage. If any one of them got confused, they'll reset agro and you should be able to wade back in

They're spread out, but are coming at me!
Use Otto's Sphere if you don't need extra damage to kill them, and evards if they do. If Otto's cast time getting you too owie'd then cast dark discorporation, find a spot to not get beat up so bad, and then cast Sphere.

They're archers or mages and won't come near me!
You have many single target crowd controls. Confuse one, daze one, make one dance, finger one, burst the others down.
Alternatively, confuse one or two of them, hit diplomacy, and run away. They'll eventually agro onto each other and you can burst them down in peace.

I see them and they don't see me, and...
I have enough damage to take care of them easily without evards
Approach, pop mass hold, use greater shout and eldritch wave, hold left click

I have enough damage to take care of them, but only with evards. I am not worried about spell point usage
Approach, pop evards, pop mass hold, use greater shout and eldritch wave, hold left click

My party ran ahead and I still wanna be helpful!
Long range mass hold babyyyyyy

My party ran ahead and I hate all of them
Long range mass charm babyyyyy


----How do I bosses----
Use Consume and Stricken
Use eldritch wave
Use evards
Use arcane tempest
Use greater shout
Use ruin
Use greater ruin
Blast until your Frenzy (20 second movespeed timer) is almost out, then use consume and stricken again- start the casting BEFORE the third hit of the blast animation comes out or you'll restart the animation and lose DP


----Extra Bits----
Dark Discorporation combined with Staunch will get you through pretty much any trap or gauntlet.

Use Peircing Blast and Utterdark Blast to bypass resistances if needed, otherwise use Faltering.

Cone is a lot larger than you think it is.

You have enlarge on everything. Use it for long range Fingers and Mass Holds.

Things that tend to have high reflex also tend to go down when you wag your Finger of Death at them.

Sleet storm when you have FoM boots on is still really good. You can fairly easily kite mobs around the storm especially with faltering blast and bewitching blast.

[Maelodic]

The only variations on this worth mentioning are (unfortunately) Iconic, and I would only consider worthwhile if you have a significant amount of racial points extra and are willing to use a +1 heart.

Bladeforged is good for defensive purposes:
-Fatesingers can suffer no arcane spell failure if you take the mantle, so you can just take adamantine plating (swap out empower for this.) Legendary Glass Heart (the Feywild set docent) has the spell crit on it, which means you can get the full benefit to heavy armor as well as the maximum damage. This makes gearing great.
-Communion of Scribing is very good for self healing through a lot more reaper difficulties.
-Communion of Warding (12 PRR) and Soulbound Plating (5% HP) are also super nice to have
-Bladeforged is immune to a bunch of stuff and has extra slashing damage reduction

This route should also be considered if you want to build a rather tanky version of this. Giving up the power meta-magics for large shield proficiency, shield mastery, and improved shield mastery allows you to twist in the epic shield mastery and grab perfect shield mastery. Combined with heavy armor you should be able to make a rather tanky blaster that only is giving up a bunch of spell power on Stricken, Consume, and Evards. The metamagics don't effect blasting, and since this is a blasting build, you can very easily make a solo monster that does a ton of damage, has great control options, has great self healing options, and never dies.

This defensive variation uses many mechanics (especially abusing fatesinger's lack of arcane spell failure) to allow it to focus on damage in a huge way without sacrificing much as far as DCs or spell power or spell crit.
The requirement for this is too large for me personally, as I don't have racial AP and am still working on eTRs and farming up more reaper XP before I hop back on the rTR train. I don't suspect I'll get to play anything like this on live before the epic destiny pass. I also hate playing as a warforged.

Tiefling Scoundrel is the best version of this build offensively and for CC:
-35 extra sonic SP in the cores
-Ash imprisonment adds another single target CC spell that also causes helpless - super good
-With the endgame gear being a rapier, you can get an extra 2 DC in the 4th tier enhancements. You can technically get an additional 2 if you're fond of obscuring darkness but I find the gameplay of that to be horrid

If you're willing to use a +1 heart and have some racial AP, I'd highly recommend the Tiefling Scoundrel version of this build.

The races I'd consider for this if you don't want to spend a +1 heart and have racial AP are:
Drow
-Darkfire for early leveling
-1 extra enchant DC
-15 stacking spell resistance

Dragonborn
-Breath for leveling
-Extra defensive goodies
-Extra conjuration or evocation DC
-Extra spell penetration
(You can't take all of these, but you have choices)

Tiefling
-4 extra spell crit percentage
-Fear immunity

The optimal race here is Dragonborn - you just get more out of the tree than the others.

[Tilomere]

Hi!

Maybe swap to https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Vivace,_the_Dreamcarver?

[Maelodic]

Hi!

Maybe swap to https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Vivace,_the_Dreamcarver?

Hey there.

The gear mentioned is specifically non-raid loot so that newer players find it more accessible.
https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Hyrsam%27s_Fiddle would be a great pair with that rapier as well.

I'll do a uber-mode gear setup for this particular build once I get optimal sorted, but I wanted to get it out here because I've been wanting to discuss it for a while.

[Noir]

*Snip*

The optimal race here is Dragonborn - you just get more out of the tree than the others. If I had racial action points, I'd be playing drow only because I like them more aesthetically.

I have this build currently on a 3rd Life Dragonborn.
How would you change up the gearing to include a minor artifact that is not the fiddle from the D&D Raid?

[slarden]

With the spellpower boosts, vivace and the 50% sonic vulnerability this has strong potential to be the highest dps warlock build in the game while also providing nice debuffing for the rest of the party. Nice build!

[Maelodic]

With the spellpower boosts, vivace and the 50% sonic vulnerability this has strong potential to be the highest dps warlock build in the game while also providing nice debuffing for the rest of the party. Nice build!

Without Vivace the build still does very well as an enchant focus controller with some extra goodies, but yeah - Vivace and Hyrsam's Fiddle bring the whole thing together as far as sound damage goes for higher end content.
---

As far as soloing goes this build isn't so great because of the defenses but in a group where you can be throwing out crowd controls, debuffs, and damage it really does shine. Confusion lasts a *long* time even in mid skulls so it ends up being great for organized parties. I'd stick to R1-R3 solo with this.

As far as adjustments to item build I think there's a lot I could do to improve defenses and solo-ability and I'll definitely be working on that. As long as you have the two raid items (or the discount replacements of the U49 scepter and sound orb) as well as impulse and lore, you're set on damage. I was looking at the Anger of the Avalanche set as a replacement for the feywild dreamer set since it provides the important parts and doesn't take up the armor slot. Then you'd be free to run leaf mail for a bit more defenses with light armor at the cost of 5% crit chance. It's been hard to figure out everything I need to be doing and eventually I'll come up with a perfect gear set, but I haven't found anything better than what I posted yet.

Honestly if you're going to solo as a main focus, you should be doing bladeforged as you can just take adamantine plating and use the feywild docent and you don't even have to worry about spell failure because Fatesinger is lit as hell. If you're focused on soloing the other races pale in comparison by far just because of gearing - and then reconstruct being available is a big deal as well and since there's already a huge investment in enchanting, you can skip the feydark stuff for it if you don't have racial ap. I find myself using mass hold over color spray more and more anyway.

[slarden]

Without Vivace the build still does very well as an enchant focus controller with some extra goodies, but yeah - Vivace and Hyrsam's Fiddle bring the whole thing together as far as sound damage goes for higher end content.
---

As far as soloing goes this build isn't so great because of the defenses but in a group where you can be throwing out crowd controls, debuffs, and damage it really does shine. Confusion lasts a *long* time even in mid skulls so it ends up being great for organized parties. I'd stick to R1-R3 solo with this.

As far as adjustments to item build I think there's a lot I could do to improve defenses and solo-ability and I'll definitely be working on that. As long as you have the two raid items (or the discount replacements of the U49 scepter and sound orb) as well as impulse and lore, you're set on damage. I was looking at the Anger of the Avalanche set as a replacement for the feywild dreamer set since it provides the important parts and doesn't take up the armor slot. Then you'd be free to run leaf mail for a bit more defenses with light armor at the cost of 5% crit chance. It's been hard to figure out everything I need to be doing and eventually I'll come up with a perfect gear set, but I haven't found anything better than what I posted yet.

Honestly if you're going to solo as a main focus, you should be doing bladeforged as you can just take adamantine plating and use the feywild docent and you don't even have to worry about spell failure because Fatesinger is lit as hell. If you're focused on soloing the other races pale in comparison by far just because of gearing - and then reconstruct being available is a big deal as well and since there's already a huge investment in enchanting, you can skip the feydark stuff for it if you don't have racial ap. I find myself using mass hold over color spray more and more anyway.

The fiddle dropped for me tonight and literally nobody else wanted it so I got it.

I am currently bladeforged 20 warlock so I can easily just lesser tr or etr into a sonic build to try it out. I usually solo or shortman with guildies so I find the extra defenses very helpful.

[Maelodic]

The fiddle dropped for me tonight and literally nobody else wanted it so I got it.

I am currently bladeforged 20 warlock so I can easily just lesser tr or etr into a sonic build to try it out. I usually solo or shortman with guildies so I find the extra defenses very helpful.

Omg amazing. Let me know how it performs on the obviously far superior variant.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Ok Maelodic - I have to give you a serious hi-five for the name of your build, thats freikin OLD SCHOOL Cool!!


And while you're talkin' about 1990, I can't decide how to color my flashback...

Should I play the rock riff that has tortured teen guitarist's parents since 1990???



Or should we just try to avoid the Burger King bathrooms that were never the same after this song and do the Humpty dance?