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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mneme" data-source="post: 5127501" data-attributes="member: 59248">Well, yes.But this -still- ends up being extremely situational.First, all things being equal, ranged attacks are better than melee attacks.   Not going to list the reasons, but they're obvious.  But that said, melee basic attacks have a huge number of advantages:1. It's easier to get extra attacks. Yes, there are now leaders that hand out ranged basics or ranged attacks, but they're still a lot less common than leaders that hand out MBAs, not to mention OAs.2. Doesn't draw OA. (I don't buy the HR argument and don't like sacrificial builds in general, except maybe "I'll get some temp hps and sac them against minions for real damage to a controller or elite" Avenger builds, as the whole point of taking a monster down faster is making them do -less- damage overall, but regardless, having an option to avoid OA is good).3. It's easier to get combat advantage.  Flanking and CA vs prone are both pretty easy.4. Tactically useful -- getting into melee lets you hand out flanking, pin a monster, and charge for that sometimes-critical +1 to hit.Now, your average warlock, at 1st level, with no weapon better than a staff?  Should probably take Eldritch Blast, not strike -- despite, as I say above, EB being a crutch that gives a warlock the equivalent of an arcane longbow weapon which uses CON or CHA rather than Dex -- because all the other warlock at-will attacks are situational. so Eldritch Blast will frequently be the warlock's highest damage attack -- particularly at low levels where the character has to resort to an at-will frequently.However, we're not talking about your average warlock. We're discussing two situations:1. Goliath Warlock at heroic levels: Should clearly take Eldritch Strike -- because she's not going to be hitting with a staff; she's going to be closing in and taking out foes with a greatsword or falchion.  After all, that's pretty clear the primary reason to play Goliath warlock, and +3 2d4hc or +3 d10 melee -is- more damage than 1d10 vs reflex no matter how you slice it.2. Goliath Warlock at paragon levels, having switched to staff for SF/TWP (though we've more or less established that given the stat/feat load, you're probably just better off not going this road).  Here you mght be tempted to switch to EB when you switch to staff - but I'd argue that that's a mistake, if one that probably won't matter.  At paragon levels, you're going to have 3 daily powers and 4 encounter powers.  All of those powers will be Close, Ranged, or Area (and the vast majority of them will be Ranged).  I haven't played at paragon levels yet, but I've gotten into high heroic, and in my experience, with optimized parties, most foes fall over in the first 3-4 rounds.  So most combats, you're not even going to get into at-wills unless you take situational (or immediate interrupt) encounter powers, and when you do, you're just not going to use them that often before the combat is over (even with an action point).  So your second at-will (keeping in mind that your path at-will is going to be ranged anyway) might as well be one that covers the places where you're weak -- which is easily going to be the melee case (or one where you could use an at-will forced movement -- which on many maps will do a lot more than 1 damage on average), not the ranged case where during most rounds in a fight you're going to have an encounter attack that you can use instead, or your path at-will which is good enough (and often, despite doing less damage on the die, better).</blockquote>

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