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

[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.

[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

[blackthorn357]

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

Lol The honor is all mine! I loved the game tremendously but had to step away for quite a long time. Things happen and life gets in the way sometimes. Once I got back everything had changed so much it was basically a new game again. I am thoroughly enjoying it just as much this time around even though I'm a born again noob lol. I never posted in the forums back in the day because it was nothing but a non-stop epeen competition. It seems times have changed on the forums as well, much more helpful people nowadays. I appreciate the suggestions and will definitely catch you around sometime. I'm on Orien, but may just copy a toon over to stop by and say hi. Thanks again!