D&D 4E Guide to the 4e Warlock

Exocist

Villager
Google docs link here, as it might be easier to navigate, but I will also post the content on the forum.

Thanks to AndyP on the discord for helping with this

Guide to the 4e Warlock​

Colour Coding
Standard colour coding, plus an Expected Table Variation (ETV) colour coding for things that are either unclear or won’t be allowed at every table.
  • Gold: Undoubtedly the best option at this level range.
  • Sky Blue: Top tier option. If you’re unsure of what to take, you usually can’t go wrong picking one of these.
  • Blue: Good option.
  • Black: Okay option, might be good depending on build.
  • Purple: Mediocre option, might take a specific build to make it work, usually not worth taking.
  • Red: Terrible option, please pick something else.
  • Pink: GM/Table dependent.

The Warlock has the Striker role, but generally ends up playing more like a Controller. That’s not to say it can’t be a good striker - there are a few ways to build a Warlock to be an excellent striker - but “out of the box” it’s a pretty terrible striker. Its striker feature is one of the lowest damage ones, limited to once per turn with 1/2/3d6 damage, and many of its powers are single damage rolls (which are bad in 4e terms, as damage scaling tends to come from having multiple damage rolls) with very few options for non-standard action sources of damage.

The Warlock enjoys an incredible amount of item and feat support to do practically whatever you want, it’s probably the most supported class in the game. Unfortunately, this also means that Warlocks tend to find themselves fairly feat starved.

One area where even optimised Warlocks can stumble is action economy. As Curse, despite its low damage, tends to be a major part of warlock optimisation (accursed affinity/elemental bonuses/etc.), the warlock can easily get action choked when trying to use their other good minor action things, leading to moving at all being a little bit painful.

Class Features​


Warlock’s Curse: Is your striker feature. And by default, it sucks. It’s as good as Hunter’s Quarry, which is famously bad. However, there’s a lot more support for curse than quarry - ways to change the damage type it does for elemental optimisation, easier ways to spread it than using minor actions, etc. This tends to be a cornerstone of every warlock build, whether you’re trying to get it out to speed out pact boons (student of caiphon, elemental warlock) or you’re using it to add elemental damage riders (most other warlocks).

Warlock’s Curse alone is not good, Warlock’s Curse with support is.

Prime Shot: +1 to hit isn’t worth getting closer to your target for. This is just a random bonus that you get when convenient. The real benefit of Prime Shot is access to Called Shot. The problem with Warlock is that most of their good powers are Close Burst, which means they don’t work with Prime Burst, and therefore also don’t work with Called Shot.

Shadow Walk: At low levels this might feel unreliable - you get stuck in melee, it never turns on. At higher levels this is nearly always on, providing you essentially +2 defense vs melee and ranged attacks, though close and area attacks start becoming more common. Does enable you to use Hidden Sniper, but Hidden Sniper only works on ranged attacks so you might not want it anyway.

Subclasses​

All Warlock subclasses give you two things immediately - a pact boon, and an at-will. There is some ETV on whether you’re allowed to retrain the pact at-will or not, if you can, Charisma warlocks get a serious boost from being able to retrain the (usually) mediocre pact at-will into Echoing Dirge. If you can’t, then oddly Hybrid Warlocks get better power selection than main class warlocks.

Dark Pact
  • Dark Pact is pretty terrible. There’s no way around it. The at-will, pact boon and power riders are all bad.
  • That said, Dark Pact does have one gimmick and that’s restless warlock using a Darkspiral Rod. If you can manage to never take a rest of any kind, you can build up Darkspiral Rod to inflict so much bonus damage that it doesn’t matter that you have no encounter powers or daily powers. You will probably be spamming Echoing Dirge or Hellish Rebuke every round of the day.
  • To make this build work requires some way to substitute for healing surges (Vampire MC, friendly artificer, friendly party willing to comrades succor their surges back to you, Revenant with +9 bonus to death saves, etc.) and will likely also involve some Meliorating Armor + Ring of Agile Thought/Ring of Enduring Earth/Ring of Unfettered Motion combo to achieve unhittable defenses.
    • Spiteful Glamour: This power will often be worse than eldritch blast. At least it targets Will, I guess.
    • Darkspiral Aura pact boon: There’s just so much wrong with this pact boon. It’s not an implement power, so it’s not going to be easy to get damage bonuses to it. The scaling is flat out awful, it can do a lot of damage at low heroic, but as you climb up in levels even a “big” darkspiral aura doing 5d8 is just not a lot. The trigger is melee or ranged only, which makes it less consistent as you level up due to the quantity of area/close attacks going up. Finally, what if the enemies just… don’t attack you once you have this “built up”? It does far too little, far too late.

Elemental Pact
  • There’s two massive benefits to Elemental Pact. The first is being able to retype your powers to Thunder for resounding thunder. This requires the ability to add force, necrotic, poison or psychic damage to your powers without the ETV of a total converter. Usually this is achieved through the Mindbite Scorn feat, but you can also achieve it with a Necrotic/Lifebane weapon, a Sorrowsong Blade (though its level 29), a Mindiron weapon (using Moonbow Dedicate) or some other jankier means.
  • This tends to require you to use your Second Wind out of combat to switch the elemental affinity type, which means some possible healing surge inefficiency, but the benefits are worth it.
  • The second benefit is Accursed Affinity, which provides a massive 5/10/15 vulnerability until the end of the encounter. Elemental Warlocks tend to take Bloodied Boon to get this online as quickly as possible.
  • That said, it has no power riders at all, Chromatic Bolt is a mediocre at will, and usually you only start seeing big benefits from this by Paragon, so this is more of a prime twofold pact choice than a 1st level subclass choice.
    • Elemental Affinity: This pact gets three things because it’s WotC’s favourite. If this didn’t have Thunder on the list, it’s likely that no one would care, but it does. Thunder is hard to get on powers, Thunder is good because of Resounding Thunder. This makes it much easier to get Thunder.
    • Chromatic Bolt: It can always be retyped to whatever your elemental affinity is, because it's psychic, meaning it can always make use of your pact boon. The damage to a creature within 5 squares of the main target can pop a minion (useful for rod of corruption stuff without having to commit an entire attack to a minion) or damage yourself if you have self-damage things.
    • Accursed Affinity: Vulnerable 5/10/15, end of encounter, is nuts. You can use this at heroic, but it will probably be on an easier damage type for your party to all have like cold or lightning, rather than Thunder. Works with Wand of Thunderous Anguish insanely well.

Fey Pact
  • Fey Pact has some nice riders and paragon paths, you mostly take this if you want to make a Feyslasher build of some variety (Long Night Scion or Feytouched with lots of teleports). The pact boon isn’t always good outside of those builds, and the at-will is fairly average.
    • Eyebite: Most of the time this is just going to feel like a vanilla attack, because that’s pretty much what it is. Invisible only to the target of your attack when this is a ranged power limits its usefulness. Start of your next turn as well, so you can’t even benefit from the CA for your next turn. You can, of course, hit someone with this then walk up next to them to threaten OAs.
    • Misty Step: It’s nice but not always useful, you really need paragon paths and hellfire teleport to make this amazing.

Infernal Pact
  • Infernal Pact’s draw is Hellish Rebuke and the rider on Howl of Doom. Hellish Rebuke, combined with any easy method of self damage (such as a Shadowrift Blade) is a two damage roll on a single target at-will. Which is pretty great for the Warlock, who usually lacks such things outside their dailies.
  • You can choose Gift to Avernus instead of Hellish Rebuke. If for some reason you’re playing a cha-warlock with infernal pact this is worth doing.
  • Dark One’s Blessing has weird scaling in that it technically keeps up with enemy damage (usually 8+level) as it scales purely off level, but its pretty worthless for the first few levels as it has no +stat added to it to make it start out higher.
    • Hellish Rebuke: Double tap at wills are great, and this is no exception. Might be hard to consistently make it a double tap at heroic, but once you hit paragon and have a shadowrift blade, it should always be a double tap.
    • Gift to Avernus: Rated assuming you’re a CHA-lock, in which case you should take this over Hellish Rebuke every time. This is actually a very good at will for low levels, the self-damage infliction is not much to get essentially a roll-twice-take-better attack, when you might not have all the accuracy stuff you want.
    • Dark One’s Blessing: Starts out very poor, scales to be okay. Should block about half of a hit by high heroic, or two thirds of one by mid paragon.

Sorcerer-King Pact
  • Usually, people take this for Mindbite Scorn, either for Elemental Warlock or to add Psychic Lock and that’s about it.
  • Fell Might itself is not great, just buffing a bad at will to still be bad by default, and it doesn’t stack if multiple cursed creatures drop before you use it.
  • Pact feats are fairly expensive for a Warlock to take, two feats where the lesser one usually doesn’t add a whole lot.
  • Sorcerer-King power riders are not very good until 17th level.
    • Hand of Blight: You will very often have nothing to spend your Fell Might on, so this can be read as a 2d8+mods at-will. That’s probably good enough for low heroic. Don’t expect to use this much past there. Can be buffed with pact feats.
    • Fell Scorn: So, so many problems with this pact boon. Chiefly being that there’s not really much to spend Fell Might on until 17th level, or if you invest two whole feats. It doesn’t stack either, so you’ll be getting pact boons that do nothing.

Star Pact
  • Although Fate of the Void is not very good, this pact provides access to the excellent Student of Caiphon paragon path, which is an insanely good pact boon.
  • Dire Radiance has some ETV on if the damage on movement is extra damage, or a separate damage instance (and therefore applies all your damage modifiers again), the wording is “an extra 1d6+... damage” rather than “1d6+... extra damage”. Although its not forceable like Hellish Rebuke is, melee enemies will usually not have another choice, meaning this is virtually guaranteed to be a double tap against melee opponents.
  • Star Pact also has some good power riders with Arms of Hadar and Strand of Fate.
    • Dire Radiance: As mentioned, the wording is ambiguous as to whether this is a double tap or not. Blue if it is, as its pretty easy to trigger this at heroic (enemies are mostly melee and have to move closer), if not its still probably fine at low heroic when your mods won’t be that high so the difference between 1d6+cha+mods and 1d6+cha is not that much.
    • Fate of the Void: Honestly hard to notice this doing anything. The timing is extremely ambiguous, so if your DM says this can be applied post-roll it’s obviously much better, especially when AoEs are involved.

Vestige Pact
  • The base vestiges are not very good at-will or pact boon wise, and with only three dailies, Vestige Warlocks will not be able to do their cool thing in every encounter as the extra vestiges only last until the end of the encounter.
  • The base King Elidyr augment on the at-will is okay but it can be a bit janky if you’re trying to remove certain conditions as it requires your ally to hit the target. The worst conditions are the ones which make your allies unable to hit the target, so it doesn’t help at all in those situations.
  • You can fix this with Vestige Adept or Vestige of Vistan. Vestige Adept’s problem is that the dailies don’t have great pact boons until level 15 with unknown arcanist - Mount Vaelis is useful but it will probably take a while until you have enough Thunder damage to make it worthwhile. Eyes of the Vestige augments fair slightly better, with Baatar and Shax being good options at level 5 and 9 respectively… but they require you to not take Ugar or Onyx Queen at those daily slots. Vistan’s issue is taking 2 feats, although the Pact Boon is very good.
  • This pact does give you access to the Astral Ascendant paragon path, which can be very good depending on if your DM agrees that the f11 is supposed to be once per turn instead of once per round as it was written before warlock’s curse was updated, and references the old limitation instead of the new one.
    • Eyes of the Vestige: The curse-spreading effect will be useful for low heroic before you get a rod of corruption. The base vestige effects both have problems. This can become a whole let better if you have Vestige Adept and better augments from vestige dailies.
    • Vestige Pact Boon: The base effects are extremely mediocre, and the good at-will bonus is the bad pact boon (and vice versa). This can become very good later with Vestige Adept or Vestige of Vistan.
 
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Powers​

Warlocks have a lot of powers. They don’t have a lot of good powers, and being a V class (two primaries - Charisma and Constitution - one secondary in Intelligence) they will often be missing some good power selection regardless of which primary stat they choose.

Common consensus is that Charisma Warlock has good encounter powers and bad daily powers, whereas Constitution Warlock has bad encounter powers and good daily powers. This is not true, the best warlock dailies are the damage roll zones as you can abuse them for huge amounts of damage, and at worst they’re an AoE double tap. Charisma warlocks use them less effectively than Constitution warlocks (as the initial attack miss more due to the off-stat) but they are still probably the best daily powers for Charisma warlocks if your party has any forced movement, as they will rack up far more damage than other daily options.

Constitution warlocks may get a bit of a lifeline from a generous DM, as WotC was in the process of changing all Star Pact powers from one of Constitution/Charisma to be usable with both Constitution and Charisma, but never finished due to 4e entering end of service.

Powers affected by Pact feats will be discussed in the feats section.

At-Will Powers​

Most Warlocks don’t have much choice here, unless your DM agrees that you can retrain your pact at-will. In which case there’s still not much choice. Pact at-wills covered in the subclasses section.

Forced Choice:

You should almost never use either of these powers outside of them being a basic attack. Between the two, Eldritch Strike is more likely to see use outside that context because you don’t want to provoke, or you need the slide. Eldritch Blast can be used in place of your pact at will if you need vs. Fort instead of vs. Will. Most of the time, these will simply be used only when granted a basic attack though.

Eldritch Strike: Warlock is a close burst/blast heavy class, although it does have a few ranged options. Combined with concealment from Shadow Walk and defense bonuses from Aversion Staff/Armor of Dark Majesty/Warlock’s Wrath/Ethereal Stride/etc. you can become very hard to hit. Unfortunately, enemies can often avoid OAs fairly easily by just shift-charging or using any number of other abilities they tend to pick up by paragon, so your likelihood of ever getting an actual OA despite the fact that enemies don’t want to attack you is low. Still, there are many more MBA grants than RBA grants, meaning its usually going to be better for your leader if you have this, and having the ability to threaten a real OA comes up sometimes. Good for hybrids that are lacking a basic attack, such as Battlemind hybrids.

Warlock does not have any weapon-implements by default so you will need to multiclass to pick up daggers or staves if you want to use this most effectively. You can also use a Pact Blade at low levels.

Eldritch Blast: If your party has RBA grants or general Basic Attack grants (say, a Shaman) you might use this. Otherwise it’s probably just going to sit unused. Weirdly required for a few feats. Sibling to the Stars would probably be reasonable if it didn’t require this, but alas it does.

Actual Choice (potentially):


Charisma​

Echoing Dirge: For some reason they decided to give this power a level, which means its legal to take as an at-will on a normal warlock instead of forcing you to play Binder. If you can take this, its by far the best at-will that Warlock has. Two targets, close blast 5 (meaning it doesn’t care about concealment and doesn’t provoke), damage roll, push 2, default psychic damage for elemental pact. Pretty much everything you could want in an at-will.

Shadow Claws: It’s pretty meh. Probably better than some of the other Charisma powers such as Eyebite, Chromatic Bolt and Spiteful Glamour, but nothing amazing.

Constitution​

Unfortunately there is no Binder con-power to retrain to here. Hopefully your GM will let you retrain into Dire Radiance or Hellish Rebuke?

Encounter Powers​

Level 1:​

Charisma​

Grasp of the Iron Tower: Good damage with a good CC added on top of it (most of the time this completely blanks a melee monster’s turn) and the ability to take a trivial amount of damage to attack someone else if you miss.

Unseelie Sprites: Worse than Arms of Hadar but you don’t have that option as a Cha-lock. It’s friendly, at least. A close burst 2 damage roll is still good. This will likely start out worse than Grasp, but scales to be much better as you start picking up damage roll bonuses. You should definitely have retrained grasp to this by the point you’re looking to replace your e1 at 13th.

Shadow Tentacles: You don’t have Wizard Privilege so you have in your e1 slot what wizard gets in their at-will slot with Stone Blood. It’s still a fine enough power - slow can be crippling at this level against melee enemies, and it’s an AoE damage roll which you otherwise lack.

Witchfire: Rated only if you have the fey pact rider, otherwise it’s pretty bad. -6 to attack rolls is quite large, even if its only single target. If you can land this on an elite or solo before they do their AP turn that -6 can mean a lot, otherwise it’s still not a high likelihood to do something.

Cursebite: Do not take this power at level 1. You need a Rod of Corruption to get any mileage out of it, and even then there will be times where it just doesn’t work, which is really not what you want out of an encounter power. Without the Dark Pact rider or a significant amount of damage roll bonuses, you will be at the mercy of RNG for how much damage this does, it could hit like a wet noodle. With all that said this power can pop off pretty hard, hitting virtually the entire map for good damage when it works.

Flickering Venom: At level 1 the damage is decent - you should be looking at 20.5ish with the CA conditional and curse, which is not that much more than Grasp. Scales badly past there.

Dreadful Word: Called that because its dreadful. Take only with the Star Pact rider, and even then you need a couple of will-targeting allies for this to be worth it.

Hound of Dark Omen: Pretty terrible power, push 2 single target is not a lot. Honestly baffling this is on Gloom Pact when its usually going to be worse than using Echoing Dirge for them.

Darkworm Feast: Yuck. Take Shadow Tentacles instead, you lose 1.5 (average) damage in return for it being an AoE instead of a single target attack.

Glow of Ulban: Did the devs price Radiant damage as a positive or something? Does nothing without the rider, and even with the rider it only does something 10% of the time. Awful power.

Sprite War Call: Somehow a worse Darkworm Feast.

Constitution​

Arms of Hadar: Feels silly to rate this power so highly when the Wizard guide rates Glorious Presence, a better power, worse than this. You don’t have Wizard privilege though, and this power is good. Much better if you have Star Pact. Fairly sizable burst for the level with added push (which is great for CONlocks due to their zones, or just as setup for ally AoEs).

Chains of Levistus: The damage is fairly significant at level 1 - a total of 4d6+CON damage - but it scales pretty badly from there once you start picking up damage roll bonuses. Probably does worse damage than Infernal Rebuke or Dire Radiance (ETV) by level 6ish. Does trigger off forced movement so might become better if your team has a lot of it.

Diabolic Grasp: Rated black only if you have Infernal Pact. The weird size restriction isn’t too likely to come up at the levels you use this, and you probably don’t have all that much to slide enemies into, but it can still be used to set up AoEs (or slide enemies into your daily zones).

Life Bind: With the vestige pact rider the damage is only slightly less than Chains (17 instead of 18) but the rider is almost completely meaningless as most enemies do not regain hitpoints or gain temporary hitpoints, and (save ends) effects at this level are very limited.

Vampiric Embrace: 9 temporary hitpoints is actually a lot at level 1 - it’s the average damage of a level 1 monster. Scales terribly, though.

Clarion Call: Here to remind you that Deafened is an effect that exists in this game. Warlock doesn’t actually have AoE at-wills unlike say, Sorcerer or Monk, so there’s some use for just having an AoE, but you really should just take Arms of Hadar instead.

Pandorym’s Cry: Somehow worse than Darkworm Feast, needing a pact rider to do what Darkworm Feast does normally. And Darkworm Feast is already a terrible power.

Constitution or Charisma​

Cruel Bounty: The bonus will hardly be noticeable, even with the SK-Pact rider, making this mostly a vanilla 2d6+stat e1 attack.

Level 3:​

Charisma​

Delban’s Deadly Attention: Warlock has a lot of standard action powers and very few immediates, making any immediate power a lot better than it would be on something like a defender. Non standard action damage is good, though this does require an enemy to hit you with a melee attack, so it can be a bit hard to trigger as you go up in levels.

Otherwind Stride: AoE damage roll, good CC, teleport utility. The dream scenario in which you’re surrounded by melee enemies and get to immobilize them all while teleporting to safety almost never happens, but this power is still good. Just walk up to a couple melee enemies, pop it and teleport away.

Lure of Loyalty: Rated assuming you’re some sort of defender hybrid warlock. This is one of those powers that can do a lot but its incredibly inconsistent. Forcing an enemy to charge an ally and eat a whole bunch of OAs on the way there is great. Unfortunately the DM has total control over if and when it triggers short of investing more resources into forcing an enemy to attack you, which makes it very hard to use.

Eldritch Rain: Vanilla two-target attack.

Lure of Minauros: First the ETV - being a dragon magazine power this is horribly worded, as written the target gets to choose who to make the attack against. Which means that trying to force a defender punish just gets your defender hit unless they’re a reach 2 warden. You can use it on an isolated target to get around this making it a pseudo double tap. Then comes the second problem - even if you get to pick, this is a table dependent power. If you have a Warden, Assault Swordmage or Fighter it’s quite good. You hit an enemy, force them to attack themself which triggers a mark punish for another attack. Enemy damage is not too dissimilar from your own at this level, so this is effectively a triple tap e3 which is very good. If you have a Paladin, Battlemind or non-Assault Swordmage, this is a lot worse. Blue power if you get to pick the target and have someone capable of punishing.

Pipes of Winter: It does have reasons to exist relative to Otherwind Stride, ranged 5 can be easy to immobilize a far away enemy, though I still probably wouldn’t take it over Otherwind.

Void Blast: Looks better than it is. Most of the time this just messes up your allies without affecting your enemies too much. It even blocks your line of sight so you can’t use it to get an opportunity attack. Needs to be combined with prone or daze to do anything.

Upsetting Onslaught: The 2d8 should benefit from your damage mods. Unfortunately, as an “enemy chooses” power, this means it’s whatever is better for the enemy between a single tap that dazes and a double tap. Most of the time, this will just be a single tap that dazes.

Ebon Claws: This is warlock’s fourth single-target slow power. And its just as bad as the rest.

Hands of Ibhar: A fifth single-target slow power has entered the building.

Shared Agony: Just a vanilla single damage roll.

Your Delicious Weakness: The problem with this power is that not many enemies have vulnerabilities, and of the ones that do the vast majority are radiant vulnerable. If you really care about vulnerability, find a way to do radiant damage, and don’t take this bad single damage roll power.

Constitution​

Frigid Darkness: Rated only if you have Star Pact and a decent number of AC-targeting allies. Otherwise an awful power.

Fiery Bolt: The worst AB1 you’ve ever seen, this is likely to only hit two targets at best, and most of the time it will only hit one.

Fortune Binding: Nearly all of the worst effects will prevent you using or hitting with this power, so it’s much worse than it reads. The best you’re going to be able to do is transfer daze. Also it only works on save ends effects rather than “Until End of Next Turn” effects. It can be good but it’s too specific for the encounter power slot, and when it doesn’t have an effect to consume it’s just a vanilla single target attack which is horrid.

Worms: Rated solely for the Star Pact rider as 7 hitpoints can probably save you some healing surges over the day, but the power is genuinely terrible otherwise.

Cloud of Flies: Horrible power. Single target, bad damage, bad effect, bad pact rider.

Vestige’s Calamity: It does four types of damage and precisely none of them will matter much at the level you get this except to trigger accursed affinity (which you could do with a better power). It’s a terrible power, even with elemental synergy considered its still just a single damage roll.

Constitution or Charisma​

Sinister Extraction: If you told me this was an at will I’d still say its pretty mediocre. As an e3 this is laughably awful.

Level 7:​

Charisma​

All the Sand, All the Stars: Star pact rider doesn’t add much, AoE damage roll daze is quite good.

Far Realm Phantasm: Unnamed cc means that later printed elites and solos aren’t immune to it. Sort of a half-stun, enemy can still move, use minors, use immediates, use APs, etc. but it does blank their standard and has the added upside of triggering a defender punish.

Touch of Command: This power can be awkward to use. It’s melee 1, and only triggers on adjacent enemies attacking you. Fortunately, they only need to attack, not hit. That said, the effect is so unbelievably broken that its worth the clunkiness. Like all dominate powers, you can simply force your enemy to charge along a path that provokes opportunity attacks from you and your allies, getting essentially a stun alongside 2-3 attacks. If you have a zone up, you can make them charge directly into the zone as well. Make sure you have Eldritch Strike if using this.

Confounding Laughter: Much like Lure of Minauros at e3, this is good if you have a Fighter, Warden or Assault Swordmage. It is notably better due to the slide (and no ETV on if it works), allowing you to put the enemy next to your defender before they attack themselves (or group up enemies for AoE), and the slide is effect line which is always nice. Unfortunately the competition is much tougher, including Far Realm Phantasm which kind of does a similar thing with forced punish.

Lash of the Long Night: Slow and push a melee enemy away. Loses value as you level up and this tactic doesn’t lead to turn skips nearly as often. The push utility still lets it be used for setting up AoEs.

Mire the Mind: A single target blind but written weirdly. Held back by being single target, blind is a fairly good condition.

Sign of Ill Omen: Rated black assuming you have the Star Pact rider, otherwise the cc is worse than Mire the Mind. Even then, it’s just worse than Far Realm Phantasm, so you should probably never take this.

Death’s Commands: Slightly better than a vanilla damage roll because it has daze. Still not very good.

Influence of Acamar: Pulls are, most of the time, going to be less flexible than pushes and the pact rider is very strange considering the targeting is “the enemy closest to you”. This can’t even help you set up a burst because of the targeting. Probably close to being red, honestly, that targeting just ruins it.

Cyst of Darkness: Another vanilla damage roll. You can’t make use of Star Pact (Binder) riders, not that this power would be much better if you could.

Deathboon: It’s a slightly more accurate vanilla single damage roll with some other meaningless text added to it.

Nypacian Serpents: Single target single damage roll, that does the same damage as your e1s. And its Poison.

Pain to Pleasure: Yep its another slightly more accurate vanilla single damage roll. This will hit something considering the quantity of rolls it makes. Doesn’t make it good.

Shadow Strangler: Vanilla single damage roll.

Constitution​

Howl of Doom: Rated blue assuming you have the infernal pact rider. Huge push for grouping up enemies or getting them into your zones, essentially a second Arms of Hadar, which is still great.

Elder Constellation: This power is okay, the teleport swap effect can do work sometimes, other times this is mostly just a two target attack.

Infernal Moon Curse: ETV comes when you start sliding around the creature that is held in the air. Pick them up, slide them off a cliff - do they still get a save to avoid going over, or do they not because they’re airborne when it happens? Still probably too specific of a situation to matter much, and this is just a funky single damage roll + immobilize power otherwise. That’s somewhat okay at this level, there is still a significant amount of melee enemies who will get turn skipped by it, but it will lose value as you get higher level.

Mordnant Rain of Dis: A single target blind but not written weirdly. Held back by being single target, blind is a fairly good condition.

Maggot Conduit: Plus side: It’s a burst. Minus side: Aside from the 2d8 damage, instead of 1d8, this would not be out of place as an at will. Rated purple solely because its better than the garbage single target powers. This zone has no damage roll, and the damage is on ending your turn there.

Acrid Decay: You should never take this power over Elder Constellation.

Hero’s Arrow: This is just not enough hitpoint recovery at this level. Might save one surge a day. Does technically double heal with the pact rider, still not worth it.

Constitution or Charisma​

Sorcerer-King’s Decree: This is not a “Howl of Doom that doesn’t need a pact rider”. The push is good, but “target and all adjacent creatures” is worse than close blast 3, and this does no damage to the other creatures (the pact rider doesn’t help much there).

Level 13:​

Cha-locks don’t have great options at this level, consider another e7.

Charisma​


Dark Reach of Xevut: Rated assuming your party has sufficient (save ends) effects for this to reliably trigger every combat. It’s an immediate action damage roll on a class that doesn’t have many immediates, so there’s a limit to how bad it can be. It’s party specific due to the save requirement, and could be better if your party is regularly tossing out save end stuns or unconscious or other nasty conditions. The problem is mostly that you have very little control over when this goes off, and if any enemy will be in range to take the condition.

Fleeting Call: At least it does significantly more damage than CaGi, despite the “two creatures” restriction. Warlock does have a number of close bursts, and can have very high defenses, so pulling enemies adjacent to you can be beneficial.

Cursegrind: Cursebite hit the gym, and now 12 levels later it does… 7 more damage. It’s better than Cursebite but is it better than another power you could be taking?

Devouring Dark: It’s a vanilla AB1. There’s not much else to say. That makes it better than a lot of other powers at this level unfortunately.

Korred’s Tune: This power is actually not very good. Yes its a double tap, but the condition for it to be a double tap is not that hard for opponents to avoid, and it only triggers at the end of their turn so they’re getting a full turn before the damage can kill them anyway. Technically can be a triple tap with the fey pact rider, which is some way approaching decent but it still has the same clunky restrictions unless you combo it with a restrain, immobilize or stun. This will likely be worse than Dire Radiance, for instance, in terms of preventing damage to your party.

Ice Blades of Levistus: Charisma infernal pact power. I can’t really see the second tap on the rider working out that well, and even if it does the enemy still gets to attack who they wanted to with only a -2 to hit from the mark. A double tap that gives the enemy a full attack before the second tap comes in is much worse than one that kills them before they get to take a turn, and one that isn’t even remotely guaranteed to be a double tap is extra bad.

Wraith’s Shadow: It’s a single tap with weaken added on, which makes it better than a single tap with nothing added on. The pact rider makes the power worse if you choose to use it. Thank you dark pact.

All Must Sacrifice: This is a horrifically awful power. The damage you do to your allies? That’s a damage roll. That can easily be 20+ damage you’re doing to your allies to get 1d8 extra damage per. And if no one chooses to take the damage its just a single damage roll.

Bewitching Whispers: Powers like this never work out the way you want them to. 90% of the time you use this power, it will be a single damage roll. The other 10% of the time, you’d have been better served by a generic AB1.

Blaze of Ulban: Cool at-will. E13? You gotta be joking.

Haunting Shadow: It’s almost identical to Blaze of Ulban in usage. Probably better, but not by much.

Constitution​

Killing Flames: Immediate action damage roll with an easy trigger on a class that has very few immediates. It’s good enough.

Coldfire Vortex: Is a creature adjacent to itself? Lure of Minauros seems to think so. If your DM agrees, this is a double tap on the primary target with AoE component, which is actually quite good and would probably make this a sky blue power. If your DM does not agree, this is a bad AB1.

Harrowstorm: It’s a huge slide… on a single target power. With no CC.

Skirmisher’s Volley: When I started writing this guide I never thought I’d put “Hand of Radiance but e13” at purple, but this is legitimately better than most of the red powers. That’s sad.

Soul Flaying: Weaken is good. A single target weaken at e13 is meh.

Maw of Atropus: Way too high level for what it does.

Constitution or Charisma​

Break the Will: Daze is evergreen but a single target daze is in the realm of an e1 power. It’s not just a vanilla damage roll so its not completely awful, but you should still probably never take it. The Fell Might spend might do something in a dream scenario, but in any situation where it does you’d have been better served by an AB1.

Level 17:​

Charisma​

Strand of Fate: Vuln 10 all is pretty massive, the Star Pact rider makes it even better. This is only vulnerability to attacks so some item-based instances of damage will not trigger it.

Delban’s Eye: Rated assuming you’re star pact and have lasting frost. The base effect of this power is pretty worthless, i’m not sure why we have a random single target mark at e17 but who knows what dragon magazine writers were smoking. The Star Pact rider is why you’re here, with lasting frost this is adding an extra 1d6+12 cold damage to your allies attacks against the target, which can add up quickly. You will need to slap this on an elite or solo for maximum benefit.

Dire Portents of Malbolge: Does the Infernal Pact rider include the primary target? I’d assume not as its not possible to slide the primary target to a square more than 2 squares away from the primary target. Rated assuming you have the infernal rider, it is a fairly significant slide in a large area even if the power itself is not great on hit.

Claws of the Magpie: They can’t all be winners in unnamed effects. For a single damage roll, this doesn’t debuff the enemy nearly enough to be worth taking. At least it’s Effect line. Elites and solos can still double attack, AP, double attack while under it.

Despair of Zhudun: Yes the 2d8 is a separate damage roll but it suffers the same problem as Korred’s Tune and Ice Blades - the enemy has control over if and when it happens. They can just choose to remain prone and now you’ve effectively cast a single target, single damage roll, -2 to attack and they grant CA power. Enemies at this level will often have range, area or close attacks and so won’t actually need to stand that often.

Devouring Death: Cool name, but acid and necrotic aren’t common damage types for anyone to do naturally as they lack feat support, and even if they were this is completely outclassed by Strand of Fate anyway.

Devouring Tide: With Gloom Pact (Binder) it’s still fairly mediocre (too high level to do just that), without it this is basically a vanilla close blast 3. Which is still better than the single damage roll powers at least.

Greater Void Burst: All the problems of normal void burst, with 1d6 more damage and its now an AB1 within 20 instead of a Close Blast 3.

Song of the Siren: You are unable to get the Fey Pact (Binder) rider, which would make this something like an upscaled Lure of Loyalty (i.e. very specific and still likely bad). Instead its just bad.

Thirsting Tendrils: It’s level 17. You have better ways to spend healing surges than wasting a power slot on a single damage roll.

Unholy Glee: Yep its terrible. The target should almost never take the 4d6 to end the OGD 10 unless they’re trying to get a bloodied trigger (yes this power can help them), the damage is pitiful either way for this level.

Constitution​

Sea Tyrant’s Fury: I hope you like this power because your other prospects in constitution powers at this level are grim. Luckily it is at least a good power. Close Blast 5 is a reasonable size, it has a massive push, and the prone is nice.

Life Force Reclaimed: It’s a chunky amount of temporary hitpoints, sure, but you know what makes you take lose less hitpoints than gaining your HS value in temps? Using a power that does more than a single damage roll.

Llymic’s Frigid Prison: Far too late for this effect. At this point, immobilize won’t be a turn skip very often, and this is just a single damage roll otherwise.

Warlock’s Bargain: Seriously just use Hellish Rebuke. It does less damage to you to do more damage than this.

Your Delectable Pain: All the same problems as Your Delicious Weakness, except its 14 levels higher while only doing 2 dice more damage. Hooray.

Constitution or Charisma​

Obedience’s Reward: If you have a charger character and they can replace their charge attack with an at-will and you have the pact rider this… might do okay damage. Otherwise for an e17 you are getting slightly better than a leader at-will worth of value which is awful.

Level 23:​

Charisma​

Unwilling Betrayal: Slightly better version of Touch of Command. The problems of “adjacent enemy attacks you” are even more apparent now, but that doesn’t make it any less broken when it actually works.

Web of Lies: Its kind of like a single target stun. The unnamed CC effect means it can’t be purged like stun, nor can enemies teleport out of it like immobilize and restrain.

Blades of Vanquished Armies: Why is this missing stat on the damage? Who knows, who cares. AoE weaken with damage roll, fairly small AoE for epic, the extra rider is fairly worthless.

Dreadtheft: Might have been a cool power as an e11. As an e23 this slightly more accurate two target attack is just not good enough.

Thorns of Venom: Frigid Darkness, but Cha and 20 levels later. Also penalizes ref I guess. Still not good for the slot.

Umbral Radiance: A single target blind, 16 levels later than Mordant Rain of Dis and Mire the Mind. The Gloom Pact (Binder) rider is kind of useful, but you can’t have it.

Dark Transport: I’m confused as to why you’d need this. I suppose you could be flying 10 squares in the air, swap places (not a teleport) with the rare non-flying creature at this level to get 5d10 fall damage + prone. Otherwise I don’t really see this being better than a single damage roll.

Inner Void: All that flavour text and they just fall prone? What a let down.

Maddening Whispers: Same issue as Frigid Prison. Immobilized is unlikely to do much at this level.

Swarm of Fangs: Yet another single damage roll. If you have the pact rider, it does have AoE… but the AoE is flat damage so pass.

Constitution​

Spiteful Darts: Rated assuming you have Infernal Pact rider. Sea Tyrant’s Fury 2, now with more push and less prone. Without the rider, it’s probably just blue.

Awaken the Dragon: Vuln 5 all is not as big as it was 16 levels ago when your invoker was using Rain of Blood, and this is awkward to use as it needs the creatures to be cursed. It’s not terrible but it is clunky.

Pandorym’s Prism: Confounding laughter, but its e23. And worse.

Starless Void: Frigid darkness, but 20 levels higher with slightly more damage. The int to AC penalty is basically auto hit by now, but its not really better than an e3 power.

Arrow of Arcane Light: Doing what other powers were doing 20 levels ago.

Constitution or Charisma​

Command of Execution: Is that a real double tap, with other upside? You are unlikely to have two charger allies (or even one considering you’re at epic) but this can output a good amount of damage against one target.

Level 27:​

Charisma​

Supplication of the Worms: Warlock CaGi 20 levels late, or Warlock champion’s call but worse. Whatever you want to call it, it’s still by far the best charisma power at this level.

Hungry Void: At the very least its an AB2.

Umbral Swap: Single target remove from play. It’s okay enough.

Curse of the Fey King: Funny effect. What does “bonus to the stolen result” mean? If this can force natural 20s you could probably use it with crit stuff, but its still far too high of a level and too bad of a power otherwise to be rated more than purple.

Soul of the Treant: Much like Coldfire Vortex this has the “is an enemy adjacent to themself” ETV. Becomes a lot better if your DM rules yes, though the Fey Pact rider would make no sense in that case, otherwise a very mediocre AB1-like power. Yes the slide is good but you’re probably using that slide to push people into an AB1, which defeats the purpose if they were already in an AB1 for this power.

Envoy of Nihal: Wow its uplevelled Thirsting Tendrils.

Inevitable Undercut: Single damage roll with slightly more accuracy.

Constitution​

Zutwa’s Incandesence: Word of Blindness is e13? Yeah but you don’t have Invoker privilege. This is still good enough at this level.

Grasp of Ragnorra: It’s a single target remove from play, and with the Star Pact rider its better. Nothing that’s going to rock your socks off at e27, but acceptable.

Shattering of the Sword: Single target stun. Stun is more resisted by elites and solos than Remove from Play is, but stun also lets you attack them where remove from play does not. There’s benefits and penalties to both. Ultimately I think Ragnorra is slightly better, especially with the rider.

Manipulating Thunderbolt: The combination of slide int and immobilize might actually turn skip someone, but its very inferior to just a stun.

Banish to the Void: Removed from play until the start of their next turn, returns in the nearest space of the enemy’s choice and makes the attack against the nearest creature (not enemy). Why WotC?

Hellfire Curse: Looks huge, is really not a lot of damage at this level.

Hellfire Fury: You’re probably imagining some combo with War Wizard’s Expertise and missing your entire team to get +20 to the damage. It’s not worth it, the end result is still not very much damage.

Constitution or Charisma​

Price of Defiance: Rated assuming you have the pact rider and spend Fell Might on it. It’s a triple tap that can also do some sliding.
 
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Daily Powers​


Warlock has a lot of “Zone” dailies. To avoid repeating myself, these are dailies which make a zone that does a damage roll when a creature enters the zone or starts their turn there, like Vestige of Ugar. These are usually very good, able to rack up a huge amount of damage rolls with any forced movement, and even at their worst will usually be an initial attack + start of turn damage for an AoE double tap. Most of these powers have therefore been put in the “Constitution or Charisma” section as their effectiveness, while they can be reliant on your stat for the initial attack, is mostly based on how much you can force move enemies in and out of it - and has no bearing on your attack stat at all.

Level 1:​

Charisma​

Mists of Madness: AoE is a little small, but unlike Decree of Khirad you get the damage roll and the forced basic rather than one or the other. The lack of miss effects (unless you miss everything) does hurt it somewhat, but being a daily you can wait for a good situation to arise for this close burst 1 to catch a few enemies.

Star Shackles: Sustaining Cloak is cheap and makes this power a lot better. Still a great power even without the sustaining cloak, large friendly burst and the grab does actually do things if you grab melee enemies at 2 spaces away.

Web of Shadows: AoE, decent damage roll, immobilize save ends. This is already very good for heroic, the zone it leaves behind is fairly whatever as enemies need to willingly enter it to get immobilized.

Armor of Winter’s Grasp: The slow on this probably isn’t going to do much given its a close burst 1, unless you use it with Mirror Darkly much later, but it does have some synergy with Eldritch Strike at least.

Hellfire Blast: We’ve moved up in the world from vanilla single target attacks to vanilla AoE attacks. Likely going to be better than any of the single-target options, it does almost the same amount of damage but in an AoE.

Yan-C-Bin’s Breath: This is basically just acid hellfire blast with a lot more meaningless text. Not really worth sustaining unless you have nothing better to do with your minor actions.

Crown of Stars: You may not have amazing things to do with your minor at D1 (though warlocks tend to have a bunch of things to do by level 5), so this is a second chance for curse damage at levels that you might be hurting for accuracy.

Curse of the Dark Dream: Rated higher than the other bad single target dailies solely because it does something approaching real damage for level 1 at least. Will not scale well, and the effects otherwise are pretty minor.

Dread Star: Single target immobilize, can probably get a turn skip out of it.

Fortune’s Reversal: The trigger may not be the most reliable, but its a daily so you can cut the trigger some slack, it’ll probably show up once in a day. Immediate action on a class that doesn’t have a lot of them. The problem is that this… just doesn’t really do much? It’s a pretty weak damage option for your d1 slot.

Hateful Shade: Does marginally more damage than Curse of the Dark Dream. Still suffers the same issues.

Malicious Shadow: The comparison here is to Dread Star, which immobilizes on hit. Shadow doesn’t do that, instead it creates a creature that gives an II immobilize if enemies move away (even by shifting as its not an opportunity attack). The problem is that, being an II, it only works once a round, so unless you force move enemies back into it you can’t really catch multiple enemies with this all that well. The effect of it will likely be the same as Dread Star over a combat - immobilizing one enemy.

Prophecy of Zhudun: Daze is really just not a great condition at low levels. Many enemies don’t have any immediates or minors going on, so they can just charge. It still can be useful against some enemies, and being a daily you only need that to show up once a day.

Contagion: Wow this is awful. There’s a real chance you spend your daily and do 10 damage because the target passes the save or dies. Classic Dark Pact power I guess.

Your Glorious Sacrifice: Just a single target damage power.

Constitution

Vestige of Mount Vaelis: Rated assuming you have Vestige Adept. Power itself is not great - “Can’t walk or run” does not prevent shift or charge. Walk and Run are defined move actions, one which Charge doesn’t reference. The Pact Boon and Vestige Augment are not bad, you’ll probably be using Eyes of the Vestige a lot at low levels so the extra d6 thunder and the vulnerability do help.

Vile Brand: The -2 penalty to attack rolls makes this scale better than the other single target damage powers, but its power is still mostly loaded into the big single target damage roll which doesn’t scale very well.

Armor of Agathys: Technically a power that can be used by both Con and Cha warlocks, but given its lack of an Implement keyword you’re going to find it difficult to get much of a damage bonus to this. Standard action daily that does nothing immediately is always going to be a hard sell, and Armor of Agathys likely won’t give you enough value over the encounter to be worth the daily slot and the standard action.

Flames of Phlegethos: Damage is probably decent at level 1 and 2, rapidly falls off a cliff past there.

The Lash’s Bite: Immunities and resists aren’t too rare but it’s rare that this power’s effect will matter when you need it to, especially because its a save ends effect. Big boss that resists your damage? They have a +5 to saves and will save out of it immediately.

Tyranny of Flame: Prones before the attack, so it’s effectively at -2 to hit. Prone and can’t stand is, for the most part, going to be worse than immobilize. It does give CA to your melee allies, but they can flank. It also gives a -2 to ranged characters. This power does have effect line prone, but missing is going to sting and many monsters at this level will have no issue doing stand+charge if you miss the power. It’s not so much worse than an immobilize that it deserves a lower tier, but it is still very meh.

Vestige of Khaeleth: You need so many allies next to you for this to outdamage Flames of Phlegethos. The vestige pact boon and eyes of the vestige augment are not any good.

Vestige of Thaxter: The large shift is weird, technically useful for ranged characters as you can shift all the way out of melee, but warlocks aren’t really ranged characters in the first place so its just weird to have.


Constitution or Charisma​

Decree of Khirad: Wait isn’t this a Charisma vs power? Yes, but its unironically better for you to miss with it, as it will likely do more damage than hitting. Will probably do no damage for CON-locks at level 1, however they might want to retrain one of their otherwise awful single target dailies to this once they have sufficient damage bonuses. The effect line slide 2 is pretty nice, but the AoE is quite small.

Ashen Scourge: Not really enough impact for a daily.

Level 5:​

Charisma​

Deathly Conduit: Blind is a fairly evergreen condition (even if monsters do start getting a fair number of area and close attacks at later levels), AoE damage roll, and the teleport can be useful if you want to AP into a close burst afterwards.

Roaring Storm of Cania: Although not as immediately devastating as conduit, it’s a bigger area, with effect line slide. Great for setting up your allies for future AoEs, or yourself if you AP. The prone is a small, nice bonus.

Crackling Fire: This is at the level where your party could reasonably have a fair amount of lightning damage if there are multiple Mark of Storm users. It’s still not great, owing to the small AoE, you can likely get better value out of other powers without needing the party optimisation, but it can work.

Crown of Madness: The base effect is pretty bad (you can’t make the target attack itself, so it has an adjacent ally, which means you’d almost certainly be better off with an AB1 or CBlast3), and while it might be able to repeatedly get defender punishes, the positioning requirement is too steep, and the enemy might just save out of it or die before you get much value.

Forceful Assault: Not even a daze UEoNT on a miss? Wow. This is basically Prophecy of Zhudun with 1 extra damage dice.

Well of Shadows: Unlike the damage roll zones, the zone is friendly. Also unlike the damage roll zones, it doesn’t work with forced movement. Or have a damage roll. Most of the time this is just going to be an AB1 damage roll and slow save ends, which is not very good for a d5.

Curse of the Bloody Fangs: Yes that is a damage roll attached to the power on the minor action. But starting on your next turn completely kills this power, there’s a 55+% chance the enemy just saves out of it and all you got was a vanilla single tap.

Curse of the Bloody Fangs: Yes that is a damage roll attached to the power on the minor action. But starting on your next turn completely kills this power, there’s a 55+% chance the enemy just saves out of it and all you got was a vanilla single tap.

Lure of Gibbeth: Single tap with a repeatable pull is not good.

Nightshade Dreams: Worse than Forceful Assault.

Shard of Darkness: Please take an immobilize power instead if you’re thinking about taking this. Yes it doesn’t expend on a miss, but it’s really not worth your daily slot.

Tentacles of Cryonax: It does come with two immediate instances of 5 damage + AoE slow but using it past then is action inefficient. You can be doing better things with your standard actions than this.

Twilight of the Soul: Terrible single target damage power.

Venomous Webs: Terrible single target damage power.

Well of Death: “Additional” is not “extra”, so there’s a reading that makes the effect line of this a separate damage roll. It’s awful either way, but its less awful if its a real double tap I guess?

Constitution​

Tyrannical Threat: Close burst 3 damage roll that also curses everything you hit. Useful to get out curses if you can’t wait for rod of corruption or need the minor for something else, and large burst damage rolls are always good. The EoE effect probably won’t matter all too much.

Vestige of Baatar: Rated Black assuming you’re a Vestige Warlock and have Vestige Adept. If so, the Eyes of the Vestige augment on this can be useful for some parties. The power itself is fairly mediocre - yes it can inflict unconscious, but its first failed save unconscious, and unlike Sleep this is a single target power, so its fairly likely that all you get out of this is a single damage roll.

Avernian Eruption: If you told me this was an E3 I’d believe you, as a D5 this is lacking in area and damage.

Blistering Torrent: This is worse than Avernian Eruption (deafened isn’t a real condition) without the Infernal Pact rider, and even with the Infernal Pact rider it’s not worth a D5.

Vestige of Xandor: It’s better to miss with this power than hit with it (does that make it a secret Charisma power?), the enemy should almost always choose to take the damage over being dazed unless being dazed does not affect their turn in any way, and looked at in that context this is just an awful single target damage power if you hit. The augment and pact boon are similarly not good.


Constitution or Charisma​

Vestige of Ugar: It’s a CON initial attack which means CHA-locks are going to be less accurate with it (and that does hamper the damage slightly) but if you’re building for zone abuse this is still the premier damage roll zone at this level. Area Burst 2, and perhaps equally importantly it does not need to be sustained which helps immensely. Much better if you’re a Vestige warlock and can move it around. The only thing stopping this power from being gold is that you need some party synergy to get the most out of it, otherwise its “merely” an AB2 double tap.

Hellsworn Blessing: Rated blue assuming you have a party that can actually use it. You need a character capable of making multiple melee attacks per turn to get mileage out of this - twin strike melee ranger, rain of blows fighter, rogue, etc. and maybe a leader granting them more attacks. Melee attacks only, this does not work on close attacks. Not worth it if used naively (i.e. on a character only making 1 melee attack per round).

Hunger of Hadar: Isn’t this a CON power? Well, yes, but the sustain attack roll is the least important part of it. It’s a damage roll zone. Rated blue solely because most warlocks will be better off with Vestige of Ugar. That’s not to say that Hadar doesn’t have its merits - higher base damage, which matters at this level when you might not have insanely high damage mods, and the line of sight blocking is a double-edged sword as it can mess up your party as well as the enemies, but it can be useful if your party has mostly area/close attacks that don’t care about such a thing.

Emerald Shield: Doesn’t do enough for a daily. If you get attacked 10 times in the encounter, this will make one of them miss, and the IR doesn’t do a lot of damage either.

Flames of the Smoking Crown: Effect line damage roll is good, but this barely does anything else. Maybe it’ll clean up some minions, but there’s so many better options you could be taking.

Fury of Gibbeth: One of two Intelligence vs. powers on Warlock, so its technically usable by either Con or Cha and it should be as accurate if not more accurate than your main powers. Unfortunately its just a single damage roll and prone, so its pretty bad.

Level 9:​

Charisma​

Horrifying Hatching: Rated assuming you have Dark Pact (why do you have Dark Pact?), in which case this is a double tap if you just immediately end the ongoing damage. Red power otherwise.

Curse of the Black Frost: Would you like a D9 that is a single damage roll with immobilized (save ends)? No? Well this power is worse than that hypothetical because the target can still choose to move, they just take damage if they do. Yes its a separate damage roll, but it still gives them the choice. You can use this with effects that force the target to move on their turn like Fortune-Spurned Smite, but its still a very mediocre end result.

Thief of Five Fates: With 4 pings of vulnerability and a -4 to the enemy’s attack roll the effect of this power is… mediocre.

Consuming Ray: Awful single target damage power, but wait! You can make it worse by spending a healing surge for a whole FIVE ongoing damage!

Death’s Fond Caress: Awful single target damage power.

Ring of Pain: Awful single target damage power.

Storm Countess’ Kiss: Power is just awful, even with the fey rider. Yes the enemy will drop and take fall damage+prone after it finishes, but it does very little upfront aside from restrain one person. Really not what you want out of your d9.

Constitution​

Vestige of the Onyx Queen: There are problems with this power - Poison is the big one, it won’t work on undead or constructs. The Pact Boon and Augment suck. With all that stated, it’s an AoE petrify with a damage roll and immobilize aftereffect, that’s a stand out amazing power.

Ooze Incarnate: It’s not the worst as far as AoE shapes go, and at least its an AoE power unlike most of the other drek on this list.

Vestige of Shax: Rated assuming you have Vestige Adept. The base power is good enough for grouping enemies (though it being a close blast 3 hurts that, and it takes a daily slot - the same slot as your zones), and the augment is actually very good. Issue is that it shares a slot with Onyx Queen.

Iron Spike of Dis: Oh hey its the hypothetical single target damage and immobilize power. It’s still not good for a d9.

Summons of Khirad: Can be used to set an enemy up for AoE, drop them into a zone (meaning you spent a second daily) or attempt to teleport them midair for fall damage+prone. Is it worth a daily? No.

Brood of Hadar: Why does this power need Constitution for the primary attack and Charisma for the secondary attack? Who knows. If it could keep chaining and was one stat it might have been interesting, but alas it can’t do its just an awful single target damage power with the potential to sometimes be a two target damage power where the second attack is at -5.

Infectious Curse: There are much better ways to spread curse than using this awful single target damage power, and that’s assuming you have the Infernal rider.

Vestige of Ilmeth: Awful single target damage power. Pact boon and augment aren’t worth speaking about.

Constitution or Charisma​

Feast of Souls: Yes its a constitution attack and hitting the attack actually helps this power a lot as it makes it that much more painful for enemies to move out of the zone. Also it adds Con to the zone damage. However its still a damage roll zone and a moveable one at that. Cha-locks may decide to take Hadar over this if looking for another one.

Command Insanity: Dominate is good, dominate with aftereffect daze is great. Needs MBA capable allies to really abuse (hope you took Eldritch Strike) but it’s still okay as an SE stun with daze aftereffect otherwise.

Kalak’s Burning Sands: Please take Command Insanity instead if you want a real CC power. Prone and can’t stand is not good for a daily, and while this can inflict removed from play, it needs a failed save to do so, and its single target.

Summon Warlock’s Ally: Air Archon Grunt and Earth Archon Grunt have useful attacks… but not for a d9 that you have to spend additional actions to get them to do things. Dark Pact warlocks can’t use this at all.

Level 15:​

Charisma​

Dark Rain of Mutuz-Vot: Large area of damage roll + blind. You can also slide enemies back into it to re-blind them if needed.

Dream of Mual-Tar: At least its an AoE damage roll. Parties may have thunder or lightning to make use of the zone by this point, as thunder is a popular type to grab for Resounding Thunder, and lightning for Mark of Storm.

Kimmeriel’s Smile: If used correctly, this can be dazed (end of encounter)... but it needs other stuff supporting it. Can cripple a solo or elite, but if that solo or elite is with other enemies, your party members might have to devote attacks to the target anyway to ensure the daze sticks. Which is the exact opposite of what you want a CC power to do.

Menacing Shadow: It’s very expensive action economy wise to keep this thing working, you probably need to devote your move action to moving it around, and the minor to attack. That’s quite extreme for a warlock. That said, it is off action damage and daze until the end of the encounter, which can keep an enemy daze-locked.

Oubliette of the Void: At least its an AB2 damage roll. The zone is not one with a damage roll, don’t mistake this for a better power.

Armor of Summer’s Glory: Buff doesn’t protect against area or close attacks, attack is very mediocre even for a minor action. 10 damage is not a lot when the average standard has 144 hp at this level.

Curse of the Golden Mist: It’s a single target semi-stun but unnamed cc effect so solos and elites can’t ignore it. It’s fine, but its probably not going to have the splashy impact you’d expect from a d15.

Far Realm Glimpse: It’s a double tap (probably, assuming you or an ally gets next to the target to threaten an MBA if they do move their full speed away, but they’re dazed so they’re likely just going to use a standard anyway) that’s extra accurate and can daze for two turns at least. That’s better than a normal double tap but still not particularly impressive for 15th.

Vortex of Fire: AB1 damage roll with the bad type of zone. Take plague of frogs instead.

Whispers of the Void: Single damage roll. 33% of the time you get a stun (1-2), 33% of the time their turn is weaker but mostly unimpacted (3-4, the charge here is against the closest creature so it will never net an OA), and 33% of the time this functions how you’d want a dominate to function. I’d just get an actual dominate, go back and pick up Command Insanity.

Dark Lady’s Gift: Wow, another awful single target damage roll.

Darkening Fetch: A single target damage roll that is probably meant to be used against artilleries, rather than brutes and soldiers, to immobilize them next to you for OA purposes. Enemies will almost certainly have a way around this by 15th, and even if they don’t, the artillery using their melee attack against you instead of a ranged attack is not a big loss for team enemy. You using your d15 for a single damage roll is.

Constitution​

Blasphemous Utterance: Close burst 3 damage roll with minor effect tacked on. Infernal Pact rider might do something if you have another person doing psychic damage (for psychic lock e.g.) but is unlikely to do all that much.

Tendrils of Thuban: Immobilize is not a reliable CC at this level, and while this can in theory be an AoE double tap (enemies are hit, immobilized, can’t leave the zone meaning they’re stuck there for the sustain attack), in practice this is usually just going to be worse than other zone powers because of how delayed the second tap is.

Vestige of the Unknown Arcanist: Remove from play (save ends) is always nice, and the pact boon is decent as well if you have Vestige Adept, able to move enemies around the battlefield for aoe setup or you can try teleporting them into the air for fall damage.

Caution of Dispatar: It’s a double tap, albeit an init dependent one. Wouldn’t expect to get more than two instances of damage out of this, your allies should probably finish off the creature you used your daily on. A double tap is not terribly impressive for a d15.

Evil Explusion: Go back and pick up Tyrannical Threat.

Fireswarm: Single target damage roll that lets you use bad AB1s at-will for the rest of the encounter as your standard. Pass.

Hellfire Soul: Single target damage roll with some other text that won’t do much. Enemy at-wills aren’t great when used against enemies, the big benefit of dominate is making enemies provoke OAs, which you don’t want to do with this. Also it has 1 hit point, it might just get cleaned up by a stray AoE.

Thirsting Maw: This can probably recover a healing surge, maybe two, worth of HP. You’d also not lose a healing surge or two worth of HP if you picked a power that did something other than a single damage roll.

Vestige of Leraje: Single damage roll. The augment might be nice with Vestige Adept, but you probably shouldn’t be using Eyes of the Vestige much at this level.

Vestige of Solis: Single damage roll with bad AB1 daze and deafen (no damage roll) attached. Pact boon and augment are both bad.

Constitution or Charisma​

Plague of Frogs: Damage roll zone. This is the Charisma version of Vestige of Ugar, 10 levels later, without the need for a vestige pact rider to move it, higher damage. And it’s still just as good. Again, at worst, this is an AB2 double tap, and at best the sky is the limit in terms of how much damage this can put out over an encounter. Con-Locks might choose to take the other of Hunger of Hadar or Feast of Souls instead of this if they’re zone-maxxing, but this is bigger even if it won’t hit with the initial damage roll.

Visage of Zhudun: Damage roll zone. It’s charisma based, but much like Hadar the damage only comes on the sustain. This does the same damage as plague of frogs (3d10 vs 2d8+cha) for cha-locks, slightly more for con-locks, but the smaller area and the fact that you can’t move it will make many warlocks prefer Plague. Similar to Hunger of Hadar, this also blocks line of sight, which is a double-edged sword.

Touch of the Two Moons: The damage is not good, the push is why you want it. Close burst 5 push a bunch of enemies 6 squares is a good opener for AoE characters to lay down the hurt afterwards.

Level 19:​

Charisma​

Wrath of Acamar: At worst a double tap remove from play (save ends), with the possibility of more damage rolls if the enemy fails their saves.

Baleful Eye of Imix: The damage from entering the center space and teleporting is not 1/turn limited meaning this can create a semi-infinite with 9 fire resist and Fiery Blood, as you can teleport yourself 1 square above the center, fall into it, take 1 fire damage, repeat. Without being an infinite, this power has problems. The eye cannot be moved, and enemies can use it to teleport unless you Feyslaughter Weapon them. Rolling a 1 on the sustain probably isn’t a real problem, as you’ll already have gotten 2 turns of value out of this. If you can keep enemies in the close burst 3 (such as by pushing them back in after they inevitably teleport out) this can give great value over two rounds, but the power having such anti-synergy with itself makes it hard to rate that highly.

Darklands Eclipse: Technically forms an infinite with Lines in the Burning Sand or Storm Pillar because those lack once/turn on them. Aside from that, it’s reasonable enough - AB2 damage roll and you can teleport (or try to teleport) enemies into the air every time they take damage for a 45% chance of 2d10 damage+prone. The line of sight block zone is a double-edged sword as usual. ETV on whether the ongoing damage caused by this attack triggers the “damage from an attack” clause.

Shadow Mire: AB2 damage roll. The zone effect preventing any means to leave the zone (including teleportation) 55% of the time can do some work, particularly because its EoE and doesn’t need to be sustained. You can push enemies back into the killbox even if they do manage to escape. Rated lower solely because enemies will typically have things they can do even when stuck in the box at this level.

Delusions of Loyalty: Bad version of dominated (save ends), probably a sidegrade to stunned (save ends). Go back and take Command Insanity.

Passionate Betrayal: It dominates but there’s so many restrictions that it might as well be a bad, damageless save ends stun. First, it has to target bloodied enemies (already a bad sign for a control power as you typically want to control enemies that your allies aren’t damaging, and kill the ones they are). Second, the enemy gets a save against the domination if targeted by an attack from you or your allies, making the “charge through a conga line of MBAs” strategy much worse. There could be enough enemies remaining that the target has a -10 to the save anyway and that’s not a real concern.

Rain of Lead: Close Blast 5 damage roll with a cc added on. Restrain might not do all that much at this level, and it could just get broken easily by an ally (your allies are very likely going to do 20+ damage with any attack at this level), but it is better than a vanilla close blast 5.

Dark Side of the Moon: Unclear what the effect does, on if it restricts attacks the enemy can make to only basic attacks, or the actions the enemy can take to only basic attacks. Interesting implications (but still worse than a single target stun) if the former, terrible if the latter. Just take a better control power.

Dread Briars: Nice e7. That’s a d19?! Darn.

Explosive Contagion: Awful single target damage power.

Force of Nature: Awful single target damage power.

Maelstrom of Despair: Awful single target damage power.

Memory of Blades: Off-action but the damage is so low and the trigger bad enough for this level that it’s not worth your d19.

Nightshade Cloud: Really just a close blast 5 damage roll. Does not compare favourably to Rain of Lead, let alone better powers.

Star of Death’s Omen: Awful single target damage power. Adding a dazed (save ends) is not going to cut it at d19.

Constitution​

Vestige of Amaan: Rated assuming you have Vestige Adept. Vulnerable 10 all on the base attack is quite good, and both the augment and pact boon are good (a rarity), though you probably won’t use the augment much at this level.

Vestige of Kronata: Rated assuming you have Vestige Adept. Base power is bad. Pact boon is bad. What you’re here for is the augment, it’s not once/round limited, nor is it limited to willing movement, so each time the target is slid closer you get another tap, making the power very good.

Hellfire Eruption: Awful single target damage power.

Malicious Guide Star: Awful single target damage power. It does have another benefit with the aura teleport but its not worth a d19. The fact that you have to spend both move and minor using that benefit is an insult.

Vestige of the Burned Emperors: Base power, pact boon and augment are all bad.

Void Star: 99% of enemies do not regain hitpoints. Those that do… can typically simply just choose not to regain them until they save out of this, making this an awful single target damage power.

Constitution or Charisma​

Voice of the Dictator: Dominated (save ends) is still good but this is worse than Command Insanity. Why?

Minions of Malbolge: Once per enemy per round? Can’t even really abuse this with forced movement, nevermind the fact that 25 hitpoints is less than the average damage of a single attack at this level (19+8=27) so this will get popped easily if enemies care to. Oh and it’s a Standard Action startup to boot.

Level 25:​

Charisma​

Curse of the Twin Princes: A single tap attached to “for the rest of the encounter you take half damage”. Monster damage is typically far less than PC damage, and their health is far more, leading to half of monster damage against monster HP being not much. Unclear if the damage split happens before or after resistance, if before you might be able to do some janky infinites with Dimensional Hoops or other methods of infinite self-damage. They are technically attacks so they will add curse damage and other extra damage.

Instruction in Darkness: Single tap attached to a remove from play (save ends). The AoE afterwards is so incredibly unreliable at hitting anything more than the primary target that it might as well just have Aftereffect: Blinded (save ends).

The Prince’s Horde: Basically just a double tap with a possible AoE component. Not worth a d25.

Invisible Death: Awful single target damage power.

Ring of Torment: Awful single target damage power.


Constitution​

Vestige of the Land’s Soul: Rated assuming you have Vestige Adept or Vestige Mastery. The base power is terrible, but the pact boon can be a lot of damage and healing surges saved (of course it works really well if the GM is still using minions at this point, but they probably aren’t), and the augment can also add a lot of damage if the party has one common damage type.

Tartarean Tomb: This is just a weird version of removed from play (save ends), but you can still attack them. You probably don’t want to if you use this power, because you’re removing a threat so you can focus on the other ones, but you can! Might show up if they’re in AoE formation with other enemies.

Thirteen Baleful Stars: Damage roll and stun. Nothing else.

Infernal Chains: Grab? At d25? Really? Awful single target damage power.

Vestige of Vykolad: Base attack doesn’t cut it, pact boon is okay but not worth taking this power for, augment is bad.

Vestige of the Queen of Namhar: Bad attack. Pact boon is not great given the inherent unreliability of when you get to use them, and if you get multiple of them they’ll all daze the same enemy, augment is okay but not good enough to make Eyes of the Vestige worth using before you’ve used 4 encounters and a daily.

Constitution or Charisma​

Word of the Sorcerer King: AoE stunned save ends is practically evergreen and this is no exception. With damage roll, and friendly too. Word of Bewilderment? Compel Action? No idea what you’re talking about, you don’t have Invoker privilege.

Gibbeth’s Embrace: Awful single target damage power. Another Intelligence vs. power.

Level 29:​

Charisma​

Draining Void: “Creatures inside the zone cannot attack creatures outside the zone” is good text to have. Even if this zone is just flat damage and not a damage roll, if your team has sufficient daze/prone/immobilize/etc. cc (and they should, its level 29) this can just make enemies that are put inside it unable to play the game. And you can move it!

Drawn to Darkness: AoE damage roll and remove from play (save ends). Close burst 2 is a bit small by epic standards, but still removing a quantity of enemies from the game for a round or two is great. Aftereffect daze is neat icing.

Fury of Ogremoch: This is a strange power. It does almost nothing immediately as immobilize won’t do much at this level, and relies on whoever got hit by it passing the save for the damage roll to occur (so it takes a while before this does anything and enemies get turns). If that was all, I’d rate this black or worse. However, there is a trick here - Aftereffects should work if the target dies, which means you can likely just pop one of the enemies caught by it and cause a chain reaction killing every enemy in the blast. If your DM does not agree that dying causes the effect to end, thereby triggering the aftereffect, this power is much worse.

Arrangement of Disorder: Good sized (by epic standards) friendly burst with damage roll that groups up all the enemies into a nice area burst 1 formation for your allies to unload on.

One Final Sacrifice: Wow, they finally wrote one of these powers correctly. Allies take flat damage, the enemy takes an extra damage roll for each ally that took the damage. In an average 5-person party, this is a quintuple tap, which is probably about what you’d expect from a d29.

Curse of the Dark Delirium: So it’s like a dominate, but the target is “prohibited from using suicidal actions like attacking itself”. Presumably this will also prevent it from charging through a conga line of MBAs. However, this can still be used as a stun (end of encounter) if you just tag a solo with it and keep sustaining.

Spread the Corrosion: Rated assuming you have the Dark Pact rider (why do you have it?). If you do, the area on this is actually fairly sizeable and it can probably attack every creature in that area considering your int mod is likely +8. Still probably going to attack less enemies than Arrangement of Disorder, and it has no utility otherwise.

Armor of the Void: The power is way better than the passive buff so really this is minor+standard to use the power. Decent sized (by epic standards, close burst 3 is not that big anymore) damage roll with teleport to group up the enemies. You just shouldn’t take this over Arrangement of Disorder.

Caiphon’s Abominable Melody: Single target double tap with… I guess blinded might still be relevant maybe. The end of encounter 55% chance to ignore damage buff is nice. But you better pray that this kills the target or they save out of the effects or die before the round ends, because that special is one of the most crippling lines of text I’ve ever seen on a power. Inflicting an entire unavoidable damage roll to yourself (well I guess you get the 55% chance to reduce it to 0) or an ally? Hard pass.

Eyes of the Victim: Lets be real. It’s a single target damage roll with blind (save ends). The contagion is funny and all but it’s not gonna do anything.

Soul Cutter: You can’t actually use this due to lacking a pact weapon. It’s awful anyway, so you don’t want to use it.

Constitution​

Hurl Through Hell: Single target removed from play (basically end of encounter) with an aftereffect of stunned (save ends). Nice to remove a nasty solo or something while you and your party clean up all the support.

Forbiddance of the Ninth: There’s some ETV on the damage here. Is a creature in the wall’s space both in the wall and adjacent to the wall, making this a start of turn double tap? If so, this power is a lot better. You will probably need an architect’s staff to make use of this, and even then you’re likely just better off picking up any of the damage roll zones at earlier levels, though it is way easier to move this around. If your DM does not agree that this double taps creatures in the wall, don’t take it.

Doom of Delban: It’s not enough that this is an awful single target damage power, but you also have to do a damage roll to yourself every time you want to use a standard action to sustain this trash.

Vestige of Zuriel: Awful attack, awful pact boon, awful augment. This could be d5 and I wouldn’t blink.

Vestige of the Earthen Maker: The only hilarious part about this is using it with Master of the Starry Night’s u12 for resist a million. Unfortunately that’s not really good enough. The attack is terrible, the pact boon is meh (when enemies do 37 average damage, resist 10 isn’t a whole lot), the augment is actually good but why are you using eyes of the vestige at this level?

Vestige of the Master of the Hidden Flame: Awful attack, awful augment. If the pact boon was regular fire damage instead of ongoing it would still be bad, but might have been at least slightly funny sometimes with minions, instead its just awful.

Constitution or Charisma​

Dregoth’s Ashen Curse: You thought the awful single damage roll powers would stop because its d29? Hah.

Shadow Legion: This power is pretty awful. Monster MBAs aren’t gonna do much damage relative to enemy health pools at this point, and the shadows, as far as I can tell, don’t do anything else after that initial attack aside from a pitiful 5 necrotic damage.
 
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I will rate skill powers even if they aren’t for Warlock skills. If you really want the skill power, you can get training in the skill by background or MC. I will, however, only rate skill powers of note because most of them suck.

Level 2:​

Warlock powers​

Ethereal Stride: Gets you out of melee (or into melee if you’re trying to get between enemies for a close burst) and a minor defense boost. 3 squares is a bit short, which is its only problem, but its enough to trigger Shadow Walk at least.

Spectral Fade: Rated assuming you have good stealth. This power does a couple of things - lets you avoid OAs and gives you CA. End of your turn is not a good duration, but you can use that temporary invisibility to hide after moving, and then shadow walk should maintain your hidden state because you have concealment. Otherwise it’s just a minor action CA this turn power.

Assassin’s Bane: Daily U2s usually have issues in the fact that utilities usually fill your action economy, and a daily U2 doesn’t really do that because its your only utility, so once you use it, its not filling your economy for the rest of the day. A daily U10 or U16 is much more acceptable in that regard. The power itself is fine if you layer it on top of another zone to prevent enemies shifting or teleporting out, but for a daily its not great.

Caiphon’s Leap:
The trigger is awkward (melee attack only and the enemy has to be cursed as well), it reduces the damage by an insignificant amount, it’s IR so the teleport doesn’t negate the attack. This can work against melee double taps by teleporting you away before the second attack.

Devil’s Trade: It’s called Devil’s Trade because you’re getting screwed. “Minor Action” is the killer here - most of the worst conditions you want to save out of won’t let you use that minor action in the first place, and do you really want to be using this as your one action while dazed? Vuln 5 all is a nasty downside. It can be offset by e.g. also boosting your defenses with Warlock’s Wrath, but the upside of this power is not particularly good even without that downside.

Fey Bargain: Doesn’t do enough for the minor action. +2 to one attack roll is a 10% chance to do something every time you use this. The downside might not show up, or it might suddenly cripple you when a monster whips out the stunned (save ends). Even if this didn’t have a downside it would still be purple.

Spider Scuttle:
This should probably be rated as a non-combat power, I can’t imagine needing this in combat. Can technically be used in combat, moving at full speed when you crawl might show up.

Stony Roots: You don’t really need this unless you’re a defender hybrid, and even then you probably have more generically useful options. This is just too specific and too weak at what it does to be a daily.

Wrathful Aspect: Doubles as a skill boosting power (see Beguiling Tongue). The damage when enemies hit you with a melee attack starts out low and just gets worse rapidly from there.

Charm of Hearts: Take Ethereal Stride, it will do almost the same thing for you most of the time, but as an encounter power instead of a daily.

Eyes of the Spider Queen: I assume this is meant to let you see invisible creatures that are adjacent to you, rather than just creatures that are adjacent to you (something you could presumably already do). Warlock has close attacks, those don’t care about invisibility, so the benefits of this are marginal. Especially for a daily.

Fiendish Resilience:
5+CON temporary is probably a healing surge worth of value for CON-Locks when you get this, and rapidly gets worse from there. As an encounter power this would be great, as a daily its terrible.

Shade Twin: Daily power that has a 55% chance of ending whenever it does the miniscule damage. Pass.

Shadow Blend:
You have shadow walk, you don’t really need this.

Beguiling Tongue:
This is going to be a standard rating for all of these skill boosting powers. Unless your GM lets you use the “Intimidate to Surrender” option in which case this is probably somewhere past gold because that option is broken, then the only use for this is out of combat. 4e non-combat DCs are typically not very high, and this only affects skills you’ll likely already be good enough at to pass moderate DCs on a 1 and hard DCs on an 8, but if you find yourself making hard checks often enough you might want something like this.

Ruinous Phrase: Can’t really see a situation where you’d need something like this and couldn’t just hit the thing? Rated pink for being a non combat power.

Shadow Veil:
See Beguiling Tongue. Stealth is not a skill you’ll typically be good at because you don’t want high dex, so this might be more beneficial, but applying to one skill instead of 3 is worse.

Favored Certainty of Caiphon: See Beguiling Tongue except this is a daily applying to all skill checks.

Skill Powers​

Fast Hands: One of the best powers in the game if your DM has banned the Disembodied Hand/Rakshasa claw method. Warlocks have a lot of items they’d like to have in their off hand, and using two minors to stow, then draw is just too expensive.

Stay Back:
You do need to be holding a sunrod which limits the usefulness of this to just a few levels before you really want an offhand item instead, but this gives a close burst 20 of enemies taking a -2 to attack rolls.

Iron Resurgence: This is expensive to use, no doubt, but the ability to spend healing surges in combat is very limited at low levels and this can save your (or an ally’s - particularly your leader’s) bacon.

Inspiring Fortitude: For CON-locks this might be okay for a few levels at least. That much temporary hitpoints can really turn the tide of a fight at this low level, even if it needs a standard to use. Definitely retrain it by level 5ish at most.

Arcane Mutterings: See Beguiling Tongue. Might be considerable for CON-Locks, CHA-Locks should probably have these skills at a decent range already and not need this power. Though you could have boosted Arcana with High Imaskar background or something.

Secrets of the City: See Beguiling Tongue. Though you should have three of these skills be reasonable already because you’re an INT class, and its a bit more specific because it needs you to be in a city.

Level 6:​

Warlock Powers​

Mirror Darkly: This power does a lot of things - you can pop it in the middle of a cluster of enemies for close burst or close blast targeting, it makes you insubstantial so its a defensive power, and the teleport aftereffect, while probably the least impactful part of the power, can also be quite helpful.

Fate’s Frayed Threads:
If you often find yourself minor action choked this effectively trades an immediate for a minor, which is fine. It can help your tempo, particularly if you can manage to use it before your first turn.

Iron Aspect of Dispatar: Resist 5 all is a decent amount at the level you get this, but falls off pretty quickly. This is fine for level 6, but I’d retrain out of it by level 10 at the latest.

Racing Fire of Ulban: It’s a lot of movement.

Unspeakable Bond: The benefits of this are pretty nice - +2 to attack, +5 to damage is better than what Warlords are giving with Adaptive Stratagem at this level. Unfortunately, the duration being until the end of your next turn makes this init dependent, as the buff can just wear off without doing anything if init order is unfavourable. It is also reliant on an enemy damaging you rather than something that can be used proactively. Spreading the damage around the party helps with surge economy.

Dark One’s Own Luck: Rerolls are good, even daily, they can help landing an important attack.

Fey Switch: Being ranged 10 (therefore provoking) instead of close burst 10 makes this a lot worse. Can’t really swap your defender into position, instead you can only swap yourself into position for your own close attack… by putting your melee characters out of position. Mirror Darkly will often do what this does but better.

Shadowslip: It’s a bit better than Caiphon’s Leap - better trigger condition (melee or ranged, enemy doesn’t need to be cursed), bigger teleport. You need to be missed by an attack anyway, so IR vs II doesn’t matter here. Best used to cancel the second attack of an elite or solo double tap, can be used as repositioning in a pinch.

Life Siphon:
Rated assuming you have either pact rider. It’s a 10% chance to do anything every time you use the power. The temporary hitpoints (or real hitpoints) aren’t that big, might save a surge or two over the day if you use this every encounter, but they don’t scale well.

Chaos Armor: Resist 10 to one damage type EoE is not worth a daily. The other effect only works if enemies hit you during your turn so if you take an OA for 14 damage, you get to do 4 damage in return to one enemy. Great trade…

Mercurial Form: Being un-markable is kind of whatever, the second benefit might show up once in a campaign at best, and escaping grabs is easy by just teleporting (like with Ethereal Stride) or pushing the attacker. All that to say nothing this power does is particularly useful or warranting of a daily.

Red Leeches of Nihal:
At best worth one surge per day. I like how the flavour text implies you will use this on a foe, but 95% of the time an ally will be the one triggering this.

Shadow Ride: I can’t imagine a situation where you’d want this? Unless you specifically need to be on that enemy’s space for the best close burst/blast targeting, but even then there’s a downside - the enemy chooses where you’re going to end up on their turn, which is a bad idea. And it’s a move action not a minor action.

Shroud of Black Steel:
The benefits are not that big, the penalty can be a problem. Using a power and a daily to sidegrade yourself with minor effects is not a good idea.

Spider Climb: Aside from being a non-functional power as written (it costs a move action to use so… you aren’t moving, which means it doesn’t actually do anything), even assuming it works how the author presumably intended it to, its just worse than Spider Scuttle.

Spider Queen’s Caress: +2 to stealth and saves, EoE. Yuck.

Walk Through Darkness: Its effect is technically better than Racing Fire of Ulban, but not better enough to warrant being a daily instead of an encounter power.

Astral Eyes: See Beguiling Tongue.

Rending Fear of Khirad: Yeah its the classic Zone of Truth spell. Campaign specific on if it’ll be useful.

Sand Shape:
Technically can be used in combat but you shouldn’t. This is an out of combat utility scouting power because you can’t attack while you’re sand.

Skill Powers​

Prescient Maneuver:
More for defender hybrids, but works for all warlocks that took Eldritch Strike. Being an immediate interrupt means you can use it to either move to the space where an artillery is shifting (thus cancelling their shift) or move adjacent to an enemy the moment they start moving, getting a free OA.

Timely Dodge:
An attack misses you, encounter power. Oh, and you get some free movement too. Great power.

Everybody Move: AoE push to set up other AoEs and push things into zones. Can’t really enhance the push distance easily though.

Swift Recovery: This is usually a good power to pick up early and retrain later but the melee distance and minor action requirement makes it very painful for you to use.

Level 10:​

Warlock Powers​

Destiny Inversion: Rated assuming one of three things: you have Strength of Enduring Pain (probably from Secrets of Belial), you have things that let you save against OGD before taking it (Silver Sky Tabard/Blood Jewel/etc.) or you have allies who can grant saves (Mark of Healing/etc.). This can effectively negate all the damage from a single attack, or give you a massive damage bonus in the case of Enduring Pain, once per encounter. Which is quite good.

Ethereal Sidestep:
Rated assuming some teleport optimisation, base power is not that good. With an incisive dagger and eladrin boots this can easily teleport you more than your base speed, and with a Cloak of Translocation you’ll have a near-permanent +2 AC and Ref from doing that.

Troublesome Aid of Caiphon: This is straight up just an extra healing surge every encounter. The “downside” shouldn’t matter.

Bridge of Shades: Power is better than it looks, as it works on any movement including forced movement, meaning easier enemy grouping by using portals. This power also goes infinite with a number of other things (e.g. Summon Hell Hound) by putting the portals vertically aligned with each other. Otherwise its a neat movement power to get your melee combatants into place easier, though be careful as enemies can use it too.

Brimstone Caress: The strangely common warlock leader power. The ally damage is not that high, if you often find yourself needing to reposition your allies this is not too bad.

King’s Step: It’s like mashing together Fate’s Frayed Thread and Shadowslip with a better trigger. Yes the movement does provoke but enemies can’t OA on their own turn so you should be safe when using this. Unfortunately 10th is a much more competitive level.

Transcendent Dance: Okay its a pretty big bonus to speed and saves but it can be hard to know when to use this proactively for the save bonus (again most things that you’d want to save out of prevent you using it in the first place), so most of the time you’re just popping this for the speed and hoping the save bonus comes up, and in that case its not great. There are much cheaper movement options available to you.

Accursed Souls: Might be marginally good if you can group up a bunch of cursed enemies 1/day, it’s a free action so you can’t expect too much, but being a free action it doesn’t work on the triggering creature as free actions are reaction speed.

Curse of Nessus: Just a strange power. -5 to saves is in the realm of getting big enough to care, but the trigger is weird. Most powers only inflict save ends on hit (dailies will tend to inflict UEoNT on miss) and this requires you to miss with a power to use it so… when exactly are you thinking this will work?

Duelist’s Dance:
IR so it can’t avoid attacks, teleport 3 only, at a very competitive level. Also a daily.

Shade Dance: Might as well read “you become insubstantial until the end of the encounter”. The question is “how many healing surges does this save you” and the answer is… probably not a lot.

Shielding Shades:
This is probably one healing surge worth of value per day, can be more if you use it on a crit or an encounter power. Also it can extend your health bar better than Bond of Brotherhood can, but you should still take Troublesome Aid or Destiny Inversion instead of this.

Smothering Darkness:
You pop this and stand in it, the enemies proceed to ignore you. Not at all worth a daily slot.

Spined Devil’s Boon:
The melee retaliation is not worth much. The fly speed might still see some use for getting you out of range of enemies who only have melee options. Still not very good.

Bond of Brotherhood:
One surge worth of value per day, take Troublesome Aid instead.

Darkest Mirror: Take more area/close attacks and you don’t need this power.

Murky Deep: Probably one of the worst movement powers I’ve ever seen, it does slow enemies in a fairly sizeable burst but slow is rapidly becoming irrelevant.

Shadow Armor: +2 to all defenses EoE isn’t worth a u10 daily, and everything else it does is not good either.

Warlock’s Leap:
Daily teleport 6, you have better options available to you at this point if you find yourself needing this sort of thing.

Ambassador Imp: You should probably just tell your ritual caster to use Sending. If you don’t have a ritual caster, someone should take the feat for Comrades’ Succor at least.

Shadow Form:
Similar to Sand Shape, this is purely an out of combat power. Go back and take Sand Shape, then take a better power at this level, if you’re seriously considering this.

Skill Powers​

Stall Tactics: The “win initiative” power. There’s not much to say about this one, it’s popular for initiative optimisation as it practically always lets your entire party go first to lay down some degenerate combo on the enemy side before any of them get to do anything.

Time Out: Your friendly warden will love you (don’t take this without one).

Level 16:​

Warlock Powers​

Hero’s Defense: This usually reads “make an attack miss you” which is great as an enc power.

Offering of Blood:
It’s expensive health wise, but an encounter reroll is still an encounter reroll. If you have important attacks that need to hit, this has you covered. Also its not irreducible damage, though its untyped so its not going to be easy to reduce it.

Painful Transference: No Action is what makes this a winner. The health cost is not that high either - getting rid of stun, unconscious, dominate, whatever is amazing. Downside? It only works on (save ends) stuff. Won’t help you in the slightest against EoNT.

Vile Resonance: Rated only assuming you have the pact rider to add a slide 1 to all your attacks and you’re abusing zones. The tradeoff is not worth it otherwise, you do 7 (maybe 9 if you have the feat to make your curse dice d8s) more damage once, and take 5 more damage a bunch of times.

Diabolic Escape: Fairly sizeable teleport, and vuln fire can be good if your party has fire optimisation (you might also have some fire stuff), though most of the time you’re going to be using this to get somewhere rather than get out of somewhere.

Fail Me Not: Another leader warlock power. Only to melee and ranged attacks sucks a bit - nearly all of your melee and ranged attacks are bad, so this is rated assuming your party has enough melee and ranged attacks with multiple damage rolls to make good use of this. Sustain minor is a sting.

Guise of the Laughing Fool: This is more for Paladin hybrids or other defender hybrids than normal warlocks, forcing enemies to take mark punishes as they can’t attack you. Unfortunately area and close attacks start getting significantly more common and this does nothing against those.

Heart of the Storm: Due to the lack of keywords on this, it’s very hard to make the push distance any more than 1. Most of those only work on powers with specific keywords. Would be great if you could enhance it, without the ability to do that its merely okay.

Infuriating Elusiveness: Smaller teleport than Diabolic Escape which makes it worse as an engagement tool unless you stack some enhancers, but invisibility can still be nice for CA, even if the prevalence of AoE on monsters makes the -5 to hit you less reliable. You do go invisible before the teleport if you want to hide.

Death Shroud Aspect: Not bad but usually going to be worse than Destiny Inversion or Hero’s Defense.

Caiphon’s Disquieting Liberty: Realistically none of these conditions should matter to you all that much. If they do, Ethereal Sidestep with +teleport also works against all of these conditions.

Reaper’s Vengeance:
Cool power but IR makes this worse for engaging enemies than it should be (Diabolic Escape or Infuriating Elusiveness will be fair more consistent) as it relies on that far away enemy damaging you with an attack first. The obscurement zone can be a big help if your party is stacked up on area or close attacks, or it can hinder them.

Amaan’s Continuance:
Not that this can’t do something, but there’s better ways to achieve a similar effect to this, and it doesn’t prevent you from dying. GMs targeting downed PCs is usually considered bad form unless they’re free to catch in an AoE, but this power leaves you up so the same thing may not apply to you. Even if you assume the GM won’t target you, its still a very specific power whose effect can be achieved by items or other powers (take defensive stuff to not get downed in the first place).

Cloak of Shadow: Skip your next turn. Pass.

Eye of the Warlock: Duration is questionable on this one. The only listed duration is for the third eye, which is in a separate sentence so the save ends might just be for the third eye and not for the other effects. RAW, the entire power is (save ends). If your GM rules the entire power is save ends or end of encounter, its pretty bad. If your GM rules it’s until extended rest, then this is actually a great power that you can slap on your defender to use close bursts from their space. If your GM rules the duration is forever then I don’t know what is happening in your game.

Ruinous Resistance:
If this just gave you resist 15 to one damage type EoE it would still be red. The fact that it also makes your ally vulnerable sucks. Maybe better for hybrid defenders but still pretty awful for them.

Soul of the Void:
It’s better than Amaan’s Continuance. Does that make it good? No.

Warp Space: Cool minor action. Wait its a standard? That’s awful.

Skill Powers​

Insightful Riposte:
+3 to the attack roll to force a miss into a hit. Free action so it doesn’t interfere with your action economy.

Level 22:​

Take another u16 at this level.
Warlock Powers​

Cerulean Shield: If you end up in an encounter where enemies are all doing typed damage (somewhat? Common by epic) then this can be reasonable. I still don’t think it’s going to be better for your surge situation than another u16 though.

Entropic Ward:
“Enemies go attack someone else for one turn”. Might be reasonable for Paladin hybrids but this is epic, you can juice your base defenses so high through itemisation that you don’t need this.

Master of Magic: Three options and none of them are remotely close to being u22 daily worthy. Rated better than the red powers solely because its not actively detrimental to use.

Ulban’s Shining Cloak: Way too specific. Ranged attack only, and the “benefit” of reflecting the attack is usually not gonna amount to much. Go back and take Hero’s Defense. If you already have it, take Destiny Inversion, if you already have that too, take Troublesome Aid.

Wakeman’s Invocation: You get to cancel a melee attack against you as an II for the rest of the encounter. Might as well read “you won’t be melee attacked for the rest of the encounter”. Does little against ranged attacks, and nothing against areas or close attacks.

Wall of Inky Night: Standard to move really kills this. The wall’s effects are… well they’re not what I’d call u22 daily worthy, but they’re okay.

Wings of the Fiend: Buy an item to give yourself a permanent fly speed.

Ascension of the Elder: Why in the hell would you want this? It probably gets you out of range of everything but you can just buy a fly speed at this level and do that yourself. Also, it puts you out of range of everything.

Expedient Sacrifice: Go back to U10 and take Transcendent Dance which gives you a bigger bonus to speed, a bonus to saves and doesn’t debuff your ally.

Raven’s Glamour:
Ends if you attack. At u22. Really?

Walk of the Kantarkaran: Skip your next turn, you can’t make OAs so enemies can trivially walk away and attack someone else. Hard pass.
 
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Paragon Paths​

Warlock PPs​

Astral Ascendant: Nearly everything about this paragon path is subpar, and there is significant ETV on the one feature that makes it good - “Your Warlock's Curse deals radiant damage. You can deal your Warlock's Curse's extra damage to a creature affected by your Warlock's Curse when an ally hits that creature, but still only once per round.” This Paragon Path was printed when Warlock’s Curse was limited to once per round, and this feature references that restriction “still only once per round”. In the Class Compendium, Warlock’s Curse was updated to be once per turn instead. If your GM agrees that this feature should also be once per turn, this is a great paragon path. If your GM still limits it to once per round, it’s a pretty terrible one. The Eyes of the Vestige augment on the d20 is also fine with vestige adept/mastery but not nearly enough to carry this PP which otherwise has nothing going for it.

Student of Caiphon: This PP has some problems - it doesn’t do a whole lot until 16th unless you want to do some saving grace stuff with the U12. The E11 sucks, and Sibling to the Stars is not worth getting so you’ll probably be using a Radiant Weapon, which is a total converter, to make use of the F11. You take this PP for the F16, which is such a massively powerful feature that you don’t really need to worry about the strength of anything else. That attack is not a free action attack and it can be triggered by Bloodied Boon so an ally next to a few cursed enemies can just chop chop chop away as they keep getting attack grants from you. The damage is not irreducible but how much do you care really? The U20 is quite good, even at the cost of a healing surge, your entire party recovering their best encounter power (or best daily if they’re lucky) is huge. The crit range expansion on the F11 will come in big with Epic Resurgence and Solitaires later.

Umbral Cabalist: If you’re using the compendium, the D20 is in fact a daily power, not an encounter power like the compendium claims (unlike Luckbringer). This PP is kind of like Student of Caiphon, but you have to wait until 20th to get the basic attack feature instead of 16th. In return, you have a quite good E11 instead of a useless one, the F11 is a big bonus and might show up. You will need Vestige Adept or Vestige Mastery to get the Kulnoghrim Pact Boon, and unlike Caiphon it is a free action so subject to free action attack limits (also doesn’t make the attacker take 5 and doesn’t add 5 ongoing radiant), however, also unlike Caiphon, it is any basic attack rather than just a melee one. Overall this is a very good PP if your campaign will spend any amount of time at 20+.

Avernian Knight: CON-lock only, you’re here for a few reasons. First, the AP feature is actually quite solid - it will do better than all of those +half level to damage features until late epic, and it adds a damage type. Second, the ability to use any melee weapon as an implement allows you to do some shenanigans with spear implements (polearm momentum) or mace implements (dizzying mace), though the stats for the former can be very expensive, and you don’t have great daze powers for the latter. You’re probably going to find it difficult to use the rest of this PP as a main class warlock, though the u12 can always be handy. This is a PP that is better for a hybrid paladin|warlock MC fighter, especially with that F16 as it stacks with Divine Sanction. You probably want to use Bracers of Mental Might for the E11 and D20 (or just forget that they exist).

Entrancing Mystic: Useful for certain parties who have a lot of (save ends) powers, better if they’re charm powers. After WotC gutted pretty much all forms of repeatable save penalties, the F11 here is one of the few repeatable ways to give enemies a save penalty, and -5 is a large penalty. The F16 is not bad either.

Feytouched: Feytouched is a great PP if you never make it to level 16 - the AP feature and F11 are both good (warlocks have a lot of easy ways to teleport, and you have to be fey pact to take this which means your pact boon also teleports you - int mod is not much, but its AoE and it adds up with the number of teleports you can do). The E11 is also quite good, it lets you teleport an enemy into burst formation, or force a defender punish. Similar ETV as other powers as to whether a creature counts as adjacent to itself. Unfortunately, that’s where the good stuff ends, the f16 is… fine I guess? Kinda just bogs down the game with rolling when you’re going to want to teleport most of the time. The U12 is meh, at least its a free action. The d20 is at least a close burst 5 damage roll which is better than you can say about a lot of d20s. Overall, a lot of nice features but nothing truly outstanding.

Long Night Scion: There’s the obvious ETV with this one - Frost’s Favor doesn’t mention a duration so it might be able to convert all of your powers to cold. It doesn’t affect the power of this PP too much, but its nice to have if your GM agrees. Long Night Scion is better for a teleport spammer build trying to do damage… if you get to level 16, because the teleport damage can benefit from lasting frost on this one. Other than that, the AP feature is similarly great, letting you get two standard actions with your AP (the AP itself, and the free cold attack from the AP feature). The E11 is pretty mediocre, considering you’ll probably have Lasting Frost if you take this PP, it’s just a single tap with a redundant effect - you’ll probably just use it with the AP to get vuln 5 on a second enemy. U12 and D20 are both bad, you’re really just in this PP for the three features.

Planeshifter: Ah, Manual of the Planes, creating broken and dysfunctional 4e content since the beginning of the game. The AP feature is great for warlocks - that extra action can help with your action economy problems. The E11 is a remove from play (save ends) which is also great. The F11 and F16 are whatever. The U12 can be good if you shove enemies into the portal and shut it - it’s very expensive to do in combat, and will probably get you slapped by the DM for using what is essentially an instant death trick on the enemies. The d20 has some ETV, the writer didn’t understand what extra damage is so its questionable whether it does 4d8 damage or 1d8 damage, four times (so a quad tap). The first interpretation makes it awful (which is par for the course for d20s), the second makes it quite reasonable for a d20.

Evermeet Warlock: I wish this PP was better because the F16 is quite nice for taxi-ing your allies around, but everything else about this PP except for the AP feature is quite bad, and the AP feature alongside the F16 aren’t enough to justify a whole PP. The F11 can give you near-permanent invisibility with planestrider boots. If you like the effect, you can get the 4-set bonus for Offerings of Celestian which does the same thing, but is quite expensive. This PP is justifiable at specific levels, by epic I’d look into acquiring the celestian set instead.

Hexer: A PP for cursing people easier, but it doesn’t really do a whole lot. The E11 is quite good, the F11 can show up sometimes but it isn’t great, the AP11 is okay. Really just a whole bunch of meh except for the E11. Rated because it can set up cursebite/cursegrind very easily which is good.

Nightmare Weaver: There are some good things to this PP - giving all your encounter powers the Rattling keyword is nice, the AP feature is nice. This is a PP that could easily be giving a lot of enemies -4 to hit between those two, or -6 if you add psychic lock in. The U12 is not terrible, the F11 is fine and the E11 is also fine. The d20 is the only really awful thing about this PP (the target can just… walk away from it?), but there’s not much that stands out as strong.

Praetor Legate: You’re here mostly for the AP feature. It’s actually a pretty good one, giving your allies extra APs is very helpful. If you have a friendly Guildmaster Thief, you can give them the extra AP so both of you can effectively spend an AP every combat. The rest of the features and powers are bad or meh.

Darkwalker: The F11 - giving you a bonus to damage rolls equal to your intelligence modifier while insubstantial - is the reason you’d want this PP as everything else about it is rather bad. This does work with Mirror Darkly, Shadowfell Blade, Nibenese Favoured Wife and Vestige adept/mastery for Vestige of Vykolad. That’s not a lot of options. Adding a stat to damage rolls is good. Using a whole PP that gives little else and needing to jump through more hoops for a stat to damage rolls is not good.

Doomsayer: The AP feature can be useful enough if you can quickly curse enough enemies by rod of corruption, the e11 is only useful for abuse with infinites and has some ETV on when the half damage is calculated, the d20 is at least usable which is better than a lot of d20s. You are taking this mostly for the AP feature.

God Fragment:
There is almost nothing good about this PP. The d20 is, at least, a fine enough power with a good Eyes of the Vestige augment for Vestige Adept/Mastery. It turns your Eyes of the Vestige into a heavy discount AB2. Which is okay, its just not a power you should really be using much at this level.

Hellbringer: The ETV here is on the AP11 “When you spend an action point to make a ranged attack, and that attack hits, it deals 2d6 extra fire damage to the attack's target and each enemy that is adjacent to the target.” You can’t add extra damage to nothing, so this is plainly non-functional as written. If the GM rules it as a separate damage roll, it still won’t help much because its hard to add damage bonuses to features, but it can do something. If the GM rules its just 2d6, its a lot worse. Besides, Warlock doesn’t have a lot of good multitarget ranged attacks - you can take Skirmisher’s Volley just for this I guess. Other than that, nearly everything else about this PP is bad. The d20 is quite good, being a close burst 10 friendly damage roll but a d20 does not make a PP.

Master of the Starry Night: There’s one good thing about this PP and that’s the U12. You can do some crazy things with it, using Vestige of Vistan or another vestige pact boon… but that’s pretty much it, the rest of the PP is quite mediocre or bad.

Sea Tyrant Oracle: The F11 not letting you reroll attacks is rough, the AP is not great as well - when using good powers, you probably won’t miss all targets. The F16 can avoid a potential melee attack once an encounter, maybe, its very inconsistent. The E11 does no damage and doesn’t even stun the single target. The U12 is quite good - go first in an encounter. The D20 is also quite good, especially with vestige adept/mastery, both the pact boon and augment are great. Unfortunately that’s a long time to wait to get anything useful out of your PP.

Storm Scourge: If you can catch a bunch of enemies adjacent to each other with, say, an area burst 1 then this can add a bit of damage. 4 targets all next to each other = +18 damage to each target. The situation is already a winning one, at that point, though and nothing else about this PP is good.

Dark Reckoner: There is nothing good about this PP.

Dragonbane Pactmaker: Even against dragons this isn’t good. If you’re not fighting dragons there is nothing here.

Herald of Vezzuvu: This is only nominally a warlock PP, but it’s just a bad PP. The only feature of note is the AP11, and its the worst iteration of that AP11 that exists - one attack only. Yes it can add thunder, but you’re probably not taking resounding thunder when the only thunder you have is off an AP for 1 attack.

Life-Stealer: There is one thing this PP is good for, and its not giving you a headache (it also does that). The fey life spark specifically is quite good, being able to add daze on hit to any attack - but getting fey life sparks is not entirely within your control. Sure you could sign up for a campaign that’s going to feature mostly fey enemies, but then you run into a second problem. It’s when a cursed enemy drops to 0 that you get a spark, and then you need to spend a minor to use the spark - so you’re going to be struggling to get this out round one which is when you need the CC the most. Overall there’s just barely anything going for this PP.

Soaring Rake: There is nothing good about this PP.

Tharos Imposter: There is nothing good about this PP.

Underchasm Darkwatcher: There is nothing good about this PP.

Witchmaster: The only thing good about this PP is the u12 can give an action point, but the trigger is extremely unreliable. If you want to give out an action point that badly, do a divine MC and buy a symbol of victory.

Other PPs of note​

Demonskin Adept:
E11 triple tap, AP feature gives a sizeable attack bonus to your entire party, d20 is an AoE double tap.

Flame of Hope: You can take it. You can’t use the E11 or the D20. The AP feature is so incredibly broken that it makes this PP worth it.

Lyrandar Wind-Rider: CON-lock only. +1 to hit and +CON to damage with what should be all of your powers if you take this. You are actually an implement class so the E11 is quite useful, being an AB2 damage roll with push.

Master of Flame: You can trivially add fire damage to things with Gloves of Eldritch Admixture or Path of the Scarred, meaning it should be fairly easy to have the +1 burst size feature on. You might find it hard to use Fanning the Flames, but it is a good power - a double tap with AoE component. The d20 isn’t bad either.

Epic Destinies​

Epic destinies are a bit of a special case. Most of them follow a similar trajectory - two stats at level 21, an anti-death feature at 24, then the good stuff is at 26 and 30. Most games will stop long before you reach 26, the 4e monster manual simply has very little at level 26+, let alone things at 26+ that can challenge PCs - and most of it is pre-MM3 monsters anyway.

Destined Scion/Indomitable Champion is the black option here. There is almost assuredly something better for you than it, but many EDs don’t provide 2 stats at 21 and don’t provide anything else of significant value to make up for the lost stats.

Radiant One: No stats but far beyond worth it. The F21 adds Int mod damage to anything that deals damage provided you have combat advantage. Using Long Night Scion or Feytouched teleport damage? Add int to it, etc. In addition to adding two damage types that you might care about. The U26 makes you unable to be interacted with for an encounter, but standard action startup can be rough. The F30 is good enough.

Soul of the World: Rated assuming you start at or near epic, not worth playing a Deva for 20 levels just for this. Best or second best ED in the game, competing with Radiant One for the slot. Though the stats aren’t the best for you, you’ll be able to take great powers from other classes (wizard e.g.) instead of some subpar warlock epic powers, alongside feats from another race.

Avangion: Rated assuming you have some reason to care about radiant damage. It’s better than Destined Scion at 21, the 24 feature adds radiant to all your powers which may be useful to you - e.g. for Student of Caiphon or if you have a Morninglord or whatever.

Avatar of Storm: Gives one stat you care about, but also converts all lightning or thunder into lightning and thunder meaning you jump through far less hoops to get Resounding Thunder active. Specific CON-locks may want this.

Champion of Prophecy: If you never hit 24th its better than Destined Scion for CON-locks. Not by much, though.

Eternal Seeker: Take all the best powers from every class. The AP feature at level 24 is great as well. It’s a bit slow to start though, it does nothing at 21st and it only really starts paying off by 23rd or later so you have to be confident that your campaign is going to last that long.

Master of Moments: No stats but will solve all your action economy issues forever.

Sage of Ages: No stats. Rated assuming you make it to at least 24th, though realistically you want to make it to at least 26th. Your aim is to minmax your Arcana to consistently hit the 56-60, if not the 61+, category. That may sound daunting, but it’s not too hard. 13 half level + 7 intelligence + 5 trained + 6 sage of ages + 2 moonstone sphere + 2 rakshasa claw + 5 moran’s eye + 4 order adept + 4 off-hand Tablet of Ad-Baraz/Chronicle of the Dawn War/Staff of the Magi/Emerald Tome of the Devourer + 2 Ikemmu background (or reroll on High Imaskar background) = +48 with a reroll or +50.

Archmage: No stats, but can give two extra uses of a daily like a good zone, or a wizard daily that you’ve swapped into.

Draconic Incarnation: Gives the correct stats for any warlock. The U26 is not great, the F24 depends on how you rate an anti-death feature vs Destined Scion’s F24. The F30 is good.

Feyliege: Rated because it’s the only warlock ED in the game, and it’s not a good one. No second stat at 21, the anti-death feature is fairly standard, the u26 is a two-person Shield, which, while better than Demigod’s u26, isn’t particularly stellar. The F30 can be good… but warlock has no AoE or multitarget charm powers to really abuse it.

Raven Consort: Used only for no-rest cheese builds. Does give +2 CON for CON-locks.
 
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Races & Racial Feats​


Dragonborn: Though they’re Con/Cha (or Dex/Cha) and can’t get an INT bonus, Dragonborn are still a good choice that enjoy a lot of feat support for their breath attack. You likely want to be a Bozak draconian, losing Dragonborn Fury for Arcane Blood and Draconic Heritage for Instinctive Flight. Dragonfear might be of interest if you don’t plan to take any additional support for Dragon Breath.
  • Dragon Breath
    • There are a huge number of these that can boost the efficacy of your dragon breath, the ones you’d probably want are Hurl Breath to make it an AB2 within 10
    • Thundering Breath adds Thunder to your breath, making it apply for Resounding Thunder and also making the Rod of the Dragonborn type your attacks as Lightning and Thunder. You can also add more types with Plagued Breath, Adaptable Breath and Admixture Breath though it will get feat expensive very quickly. Much better for CON-locks who also massively benefit from the push on Thundering breath.
    • Draconic Restoration and Draconic Triumph at epic can let you spam this ability more.
    • In terms of paragon paths you open up Ninefold Master to make your breath do substantially more damage by making it an arcane power and adding your implement to it.
    • Honorable Blade is also an option to just add Lightning and Thunder as additional types, rather than replacing. This also lets you use dragon breath three times in an encounter with the e11 and AP feature.
  • Warlock Feats
    • Curse of Io’s Blood: More for hybrids who can afford to be Str/Cha instead of main class warlocks. The damage bonus can be decent for a heroic feat, though it does need you to be bloodied. You can turn this on with blood fury weapon, but then you also need to curse as a minor. Gets messy.
    • Draconic Blast: Needs eldritch blast and retyping eldritch blast usually doesn’t do all that much.

Human: The lack of one +2 stat is made up for partially by the +1 to all NADs, and the bonus feat is very helpful.
  • Dark pact restless warlocks may want Imperishable Destiny.(though you’ll probably want this by revenant human instead)
  • Heroic Effort is a great power, though there’s a legitimate case for the bonus at-will if your GM says you can’t retrain your pact at-will, purely to get Echoing Dirge for heroic.
  • Action Surge is never a bad option.
  • Path of the Scarred adds fire typing to all the powers you care about adding fire typing to.
  • Adroit Explorer is a great paragon path.
  • Warlock Feats
    • Reckless Curse: Is kind of just a +1 to hit feat, might be hard to fit it in though.

Tiefling: It’s so obviously the Warlock race, how could it be bad? I wish it was Int + Cha or Con, rather than Cha + Int or Con so it was better for Con-locks, but most of its stuff supports Charisma anyway.
  • Even the non-warlock feats can be quite good.
  • Hellfire blood is an easy source of extra +1 to hit and damage.
  • Secrets of Belial will probably be used to fetch Eagle’s Splendour for yet another +1 to hit (and other bonuses) or Borrowed Confidence.
  • Imperious Majesty lets you use cha for initiative plus gives some other bonuses.
  • Dispater’s Iron Discipline gives a huge bonus to Superior Will saves (though you probably want to use a circlet of arkhosia because the feat bonuses are redundant).
  • Plaguing Bloodhunt can add necrotic to powers, and is a decent source of extra damage at 3/6/9, though you might not like the bloodied conditional.
  • Hellfire Teleport is really good for feyslasher builds.
  • Warlock Feats
    • Blood Pact of Cania: Is not a feat bonus to damage rolls, so this stacks with a feat bonus to damage rolls for any CON-lock.
    • Warlock’s Wrath: Power gives you a huge defense bonus for a round, and it also improves your curse damage by a little bit which is a nice side benefit. Yes, enemies will probably just ignore you for that round, but for a minor action that’s good enough.
    • Cloying Shadow of Malodomini: So many easier ways to get combat advantage than this. Too many conditionals - enemy has to make a melee attack and hit you.
    • Hellish Blast: You shouldn’t really care about Eldritch Blast doing fire damage, there’s cheaper ways to add fire damage to eldritch blast, and +1/2/3 damage on an at will isn’t worth a feat.
    • Bael Turath Born: This gives you a staggering amount of fire resist but… why would you ever need that much? 8+level is so ridiculously overkill, 5+half level is usually good enough.

Eladrin: They have both Int and Cha. You might want to take Wizard Implement Proficiency from Sun Elf in place of Eladrin Weapon Proficiency.
  • You probably want to multiclass swordmage and take Eladrin Swordmage Advance, as you have a MBA with Eldritch Strike that is quite good, and a move action to make an MBA is a steal. You can take Fey Escape to use it as an immediate. You can get back longsword proficiency by background if you care.
  • Warlock Feats
    • Renewed by Blood: If you’re using Eladrin Swordmage Advance this is great.
    • Eldritch Blade: +1 to a single at will? Pass.
    • Elusive Hexer: I understand the idea behind this feat being that you can now walk out of melee due to being totally obscured, but there’s much easier ways to accomplish this.
    • Gifted Death Dealer: +Int to damage on eldritch blast. If you’re using Eldritch Blast a lot, because you have a leader that grants you RBAs a lot, you could consider this. But you probably took this race for Swordmage Advance, and therefore have eldritch strike instead.

Genasi: One of the only Con/Int choices available. If you’re here, it’s probably because you’re a BM hybrid and want Shocking Flame.

Revenant: It’s Cha or Con, and you can take feats from another race. You can also use Belt of Sonnlinor Righteousness to make yourself really hard to kill while at 0, though being permanently dazed is terrible for you, and you’ll still need to fetch the relevant death save bonuses from somewhere. Dark warlocks are probably still using this race though.
  • Warlock Feats
    • Death Curse: It can add up to a lot of damage, I suppose, if you use Rod of Corruption, curse a bunch of creatures, use Dark Reaping and hit. It’ll be an underwhelming amount of damage to anyone in particular, though.

Shardmind: Can be Int/Cha. You’re here for We Were Once One + Command Circlet + Twisting Fortune combo.

Changeling: Although the stats line up for a cha-lock and it is very flavourful for a fey pact, changelings have no feat support and their racial power is bad.
  • Gives you access to the Chameleon paragon path which lets you take 3 powers from an ally and use Charisma in place of the stat usually used for those powers. This is actually a fairly solid PP (well, assuming your allies have good powers) as you can cherry pick the three best powers from your allies. Unfortunately the features are a let down.

Deva: Only real reason I can see to take this is because you’re starting at epic and want Soul of the World. It does have Cha, but it’s more a Wis-race than and int or cha race.

Dwarf: Minor action second wind can come in handy, there’s a lot of item support for second wind. Rune-scribed soul, in particular, can add a lot of damage to your AoE powers.

Elf: They have INT, at least. If you’re here, you probably want Elven Arcane Precision and possibly Plagueforged Accuracy. You can also take Aerenal Arcanist to get some extra flexibility with your utility powers, though the warlock list is already pretty good and the good ones are generic enough to see good use in every combat.

Githyanki: It’s Con/Int and if you really plan to do nothing else with your racial choice, it has +2 init and +1 will.

Gnoll: You’re here because you’re playing some sort of executioner hybrid as a charger, presumably. In which case you take their charge feats.

Gnome: It’s on stat with Int/Cha, not really much else going on here though.

Goliath: Also likely for hybrid CON-locks. Probably trying to get Stoneblessed for reasons.

Half-Elf: It’s Con/Cha, no Int, so it can work for either warlock you’ll just be missing an int boost. You are likely here for Versatile Master, possibly requiring Adept Dilettante as well. Cha-Locks are likely better off with human bonus at will for echoing dirge, Con-locks already have a good at-will in Hellish Rebuke, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to get. Can take human and elf feats, but due to lacking Elven Accuracy, they are locked out of the good elf stuff.

Hamadryad: It has Cha, and for really low level games the Hamadryad racial power can do a lot. The +2 racial bonus vs daze/stun/dominate is nice too.

Hobgoblin: It’s Con/Int, the Hobgoblin Discipline racial power is actually quite nice (although it not working vs UEoNT is sucky), as is the racial bonus to init. I would take this over Githyanki for the much better racial power, though some people might find value in telekinetic leap.

Kalashtar: It’s Cha/Int, the free superior will-like effect it gives is helpful. Unfortunately it has no real feats to speak of.

Minotaur: Similar to gnoll, you’re probably some sort of executioner hybrid charger build if picking this.

Mul: It’s Con but not Int, the racial power is really good though and you can take resilience of stone if you have a martial MC or hybrid. It’s worse at doing second wind stuff than dwarves because when Resilience of Stone triggers is not entirely within your control, especially if you’re using it for offensive benefits like Rune-Scribed Soul.

Pixie: It’s Cha/Int, the racial power is fine, and the ability to fly is good. Nothing else though.

Satyr: Cha/Con, the power is really nice. Not much else going on.

Shadar-Kai: No cha or con. You’re here for Darkening Mind+Doom of Jiksidur+maybe Dread of Sakkors/Drowning of Nhalloth. It’s pretty feat expensive though.
  • Warlock Feats
    • Reaper’s Touch: This is kind of a cool feat. Shame it’s race locked and you can just take Eldritch Strike instead.
    • Blighting Power: Not really necessary, if you want necrotic on things, you are probably doing it by a weapon rather than a feat that applies to only a single at-will.

Vryloka: They have Cha, no Int. No racial feats. The power is pretty nice though for a class that can often choke on actions, having a free action movement power is good.

Wilden: They have Con, no Int. I assume you want Wrath of the Destroyer for the power here. No idea what else you’d want, you can’t effectively use Briar Thorns.

Drow: They do have Cha, but almost nothing else you’d find useful.
  • Cursed Advantage: If this didn’t have the bloodied restriction it might be useful, as it stands though, there are much better CA feats than this.

Duergar: Duergar are not Dwarves, they have no feat support, and nothing else you’d find useful aside from the Con bonus.

Githzerai: There are good things Githzerai can do, but they’re off stat and none of those things are great for you.

Goblin: It has cha. That’s where the good things end.

Half-Orc: It has con, there’s not much reason to be a half-orc warlock. Arcane fury maybe?

Halfling: It can be Con or Cha, and second chance is fine as a power I guess. Nothing else here.

Hengeyokai: It has cha and literally nothing else.

Kenku: It has cha/int, nothing else.

Kobold: It has Con, at least. Dragon’s Indomitability is nice paired with Superior Will, but Tieflings get an infinitely better feat in Dispatar’s Iron Discipline, and they’re still able to be Con.
  • Warlock Feats
    • Eldritch Momentum: The requirement for this is the same as Shadow Walk so you should often have it. Getting curse out can be slow, though, if enemies don’t die for Rod of Corruption, so you might not have CA against everything in the AoE trying to use this.

Svirfneblin: Smurf gremlins aren’t gnomes so they have pretty much nothing in terms of support. At least they have con.

Tinker Gnome: They don’t count as gnomes for gnome prereqs. They are con/int but aside from their racial power which is fine, they have basically nothing in terms of support.

Bladeling: Bad stats and doesn’t give anything for you.

Bugbear: Bad stats and doesn’t give anything for you.

Bullywug: Contender for the worst race in the game. I don’t even care that it has Con. Don’t play a bullywug.

Longtooth Shifter: Bad stats and doesn’t give anything for you.

Orc: Nothing for you here, even as a charger.

Razorclaw Shifter: Bad stats. People usually take this race for Flamespeed shifting. Be a human and take Path of the Scarred instead.

Shade: Lose a healing surge, get nothing.

Thri-Kreen: Bad stats and doesn’t give anything for you.
 
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Feats​


Essential Feats​


These categories of feat are broadly essential for every character to have one of, as such they won’t be rated with the rest.
1. Expertise - There’s no way around this. You need one of these feats to keep up your attack scaling with the game math. Some games might give you one of these for free, some will only give Versatile Expertise for free. There are multiple options available to you depending on the implement you want to use.
  • Rod Expertise is probably what most warlocks will take for the passive +1 to ac and reflex.
  • White Lotus Dueling Expertise is a way to get another implement type available to you for mainhand use or for powers
  • Dragonborn warlocks may take Draconic Spellcaster so they don’t have to also take a damage feat
  • Warlocks with additional implement selection (from e.g. theme or MC) may take one of the following instead
    • War Wizard’s Expertise can be useful if you have enough unfriendly bursts and blasts
    • Staff Expertise lets you avoid OAs, though this usually isn’t a problem for you it can show up
2. Combat Advantage - Some consistent way of getting Combat Advantage on your attacks is essentially like having a permanent +2 to hit.
  • Most warlocks will take Cunning Stalker here, as written it works even if you are not adjacent to the target - just provided that there is no one else adjacent to the target.
  • Some warlocks may opt for Hidden Sniper as you will almost always have concealment, but it only works on Ranged attacks. Check your powers.
  • Vicious Advantage might be useful depending on your party (hindering shield users)
  • Superior Reflexes doubles as a defense feat, some characters may opt to take this one and rely on conditions that give combat advantage for round 2 or later.

3. Initiative - You are a cha/int or con/int class, so your initiative will not be good. Going before the enemies is good regardless of class as it limits the amount of damage you will take in any given combat by ensuring that you get to spread out and cc the enemies before they spread out and cc you. Generally going before the enemy should also mean they get one less turn in which they can attack.
  • Improved Initiative is your only real non-racial option here, retrained to Superior Initiative at epic.

4. Defenses - You will need a NAD scaling feat at paragon, as NADs start to fall behind monster attacks without it
  • Improved Defenses gives a bonus to all three defenses.
  • Superior Will only gives a bonus to will, but it gives an invaluable secondary effect that lets you save out of dazing or stunning effects at the start of your turn. Daze is disturbingly common on monsters, and absolutely messes up your day considering how much you need minor actions to function.
  • Superior Reflexes is a CA feat that also gives defenses.

5. Damage - Yes you need to take a feat, or multiple feats, to improve your damage.
  • Most damage types have a (+2)/+3/+4 to damage rolls feat which you’ll need to take at paragon. Fiery Blood, Icy Heart, Lightning Soul, Thunder’s Rumble, etc. If you don’t have a damage type that has one of these, you can use Implement Focus instead.
  • Dragonborn can get away with just using Draconic Spellcaster instead.
  • Warlocks can use Dual Implement Spellcaster to add more damage as well, though this feat will only start adding decent damage by late paragon or epic.

Warlock General Feats​

Bloodied Boon: It’s build-specific but good for those builds. Elemental Warlocks, 16th level Students of Caiphon, 20th level Umbral Cabalists, 11th level Feytouched and 16th level Long Night Scions want this feat. Most other warlocks don’t care. ETV on how it works with Rod of Corruption (i.e. if you choose to use Rod of Corruption off Bloodied Boon will that creature get recursed).

Beseech Patron: Rated assuming you have a good pact boon you want to use (that means Caiphon, Vestige adept stuff, etc.). In which case its great, give an ally a basic attack when you AP is a good feat. Unclear how this works with rod of corruption. It seems that you just pick a cursed enemy to trigger Rod of Corruption off of, in which case this can also be used for early curse acceleration.

Cursed Spells: Rated assuming you are an Astral Ascendant and have the favourable ETV. Otherwise a fairly mediocre feat, giving you +int damage once per turn.

Relentless Curse: Works with Rod of Corruption (doesn’t need your pact boon) and not bloodied boon. Rated for Elemental Warlocks so they can get their curse out immediately and give that vulnerability for their allies, rather than having to wait until their turn. Also helps with action economy.

Student of the Athenaeum: A fourth daily zone per day? Sign me up.

Twofold Pact: For a lot of warlock builds, opening up a second rider is good. For a majority, getting elemental pact’s type converting option to open up Resounding Thunder is great. This is significantly better on Hybrids where it circumvents needing to pick a bad at-will, while giving you a better Hybrid talent, but its still amazing for base warlocks.

Curse of the Blind Stars: If you have radiant and don’t need your curse damage (maybe you’re using a radiant weapon or something) this can actually be quite good. Lose 7 damage to make one target of a power blind. ETV on if “forgo” actually makes you lose the use of Warlock’s Curse for that turn. If your DM says it does not, then this feat is ridiculously good.

Dooming Action: If you’re reliant on your curse for damage type shenanigans then you absolutely need this. For other warlocks this is just a bit of damage when you AP, so its not very good.

Flitting Shadows: Good for zone abuse stuff, teleport 6 is a long distance. You can always try to teleport an enemy up to add 3d10 and prone to a power, though there’s a 55% chance it doesn’t work. Can always be used to just bunch enemies up otherwise. Can technically be used to cancel an attack with Delban’s Deadly Attention if the attacker is cursed.

Mind-Numbing Curse: Pretty easy to add psychic, just use Mindbite Scorn. Adds arbitrary daze to one target of your attacks. Still pretty good at epic.

Starfire Womb: Rated assuming you have enough radiant/fear powers to proc this without hampering your turn - usually, that means Starlocks. Not limited to just effects that a save can end, and it doesn’t even have to be “hit with a power that has the radiant or fear keyword” so if you have a zone spawned by a power that has the radiant/fear keyword you will get to save against something every time that power does damage. Does have some issues though - if you’re dazed, you’ll likely have to attack first, which may mean your turn resolves in a bad order. If you’re stunned/petrified/unconscious/whatever and don’t have a zone or some other damaging effect already out, this won’t help you.

Twofold Curse: Can be useful when Rod of Corruption just isn’t cutting it anymore. Hard to fit in. Elemental warlocks definitely do not want this, their boon only applies to one enemy, and they prefer enemies to not be cursed because you can’t curse already cursed targets.

Warding Curse: +2 untyped bonus to all defenses. Good enough for curse-spreader warlocks, though you might find it hard to take between all the other stuff you want.

Killing Curse: Most warlocks will not want this - it’s +1/2/3 average damage, once per turn. Astral Ascendants with a favourable ruling on their F11 may want this as its now +1/2/3 damage multiple times a round.

Primed Curse: Does work with Prime Burst, and its an extra +1 to hit which limits how bad it can be really. That said, it’s still not an amazing feat.

Protective Hex: Weird feat. Close and melee only, needs enemies to be cursed, at least it doesn’t need you to do curse damage. This is kinda like a worse psychic lock that doesn’t need you to psychic retype.

Crimson Fire: It’s more damage than killing curse but warlocks may find it hard to get Divine Challenge and Curse on the same target in a timely fashion.

Crimson Legionnaire: It’s not a feat bonus to damage at least, but applying to only a subset of your powers as a hybrid and not scaling with tier is a killer. Charisma Paladin does eventually get big burst attacks to use damage bonuses like this, but this is not good enough to take.

Shared Pact: For the pact boons you care about, this does nothing. For the other ones, it doesn’t do much.

Sickening Shadows: Melee attack only. You’ll always have concealment from shadow walk, so this might be worth a little bit of damage during an encounter.

Warlock’s Eye: Try to imagine using this for a second. You use curse, which has to be on the closest creature, as a minor. Somehow that lands on the target you want to use Evil Eye of the Vistani on. You use Evil Eye of the Vistani and hit them… all for 1/2/3d6 damage once per encounter.

Warlock Implement Expertise: There is reason to care about critting at epic - Epic Resurgence, Font of Radiance, Solitaires, etc. This is just very very expensive stat wise for any warlock to get, requiring 17 CON and 17 CHA.

Warlock’s Sight: It’s just not relevant enough, especially if you’re picking up area and close powers.

Brutal Curse: Adds 0.5 damage per damage dice to curse. So 0.5/1/1.5 damage, once per turn, to one target. Pass.

Contagious Curse: Doesn’t eat your pact boon like Rod of Corruption, but also adjacent only is a ridiculously tiny range for an epic feat.

Critical Curse: Causes some ruling nightmares by adding damage types on crits. Doesn’t really do enough to justify taking it though.

Curse of Doom Ensured: I hope everyone has their CA situation sorted out by epic. This is a terrible option to give it anyway.

Cursed Shadow: This feat is for assassin MC warlocks, not you. I question why they’d even want it.

Cursed Shot: Just move closer.

Empowering Shadows: Not a feat bonus. Also +1 to damage rolls, barely noticeable.

Ephemeral Stride: There are much better ways to achieve everything this does at epic.

Exultant Shadow Step: Completely out of your control and not a benefit that is generally useful enough to be good whenever it triggers.

Inevitable Doom: What on earth was the writer thinking.

Patron’s Guidance: +2 to 2 skills while you have concealment to shadow walk. What?

Prolonged Curse: Warlock attacks only. This is going to apply to… what? Three bad dailies? Even if it applied to more powers, it’s such a tiny bonus.

Shadow’s Eclipse: Why would you need this?

Shadow Born Warlock: Wow, only int instead of 5+half level necrotic resistance, for a paragon feat?!

Accursed Coordination: This feat is necessary if you, for some reason, have multiple warlocks in your party.

Dark Pact​

Spirit Poison: Unironically makes your powers worse unless you’re trying to use Rod of Feythorns, in which case you’ll need Venom Hand Master and a necrotic/lifebane weapon. Or you could take a Mordnant Weapon rather than this feat, maybe you want the other damage types rather than a total converter though.

Yogrix’s Brutality: Similar to Spirit Poison this actually makes your powers worse. That said if you’re priced into poison for feythorns or you’re dead-set on adding poison as your converter for elemental pact, you still need to figure out the ongoing damage situation.

Demonweb Spiral: You aren’t using Darkspiral Aura.

Improved Darkspiral Aura: You aren’t using Darkspiral Aura.

Elemental Pact​


No feats for elemental warlock.

Fey Pact​

Eochaid’s Lure: A janky zone abuse feat. With Rod of Avernus, you can effectively slide enemies 2 whenever you get your pact boon. Can be a bit difficult to use, but you should be able to be close to enemies if you’ve invested in defensive stuff.

Fey Revel Glamour: You add slowed (save ends) to one target of a daily power. Yes this is on a class with zones that do a million damage, but its still not really worth a feat.

Improved Misty Step: Really this just comes down to the fact that the effect can be replicated by items, and items are cheaper than feats. It’s also not always going to be useful (in fact it rarely is).

Cruel Whimsy: When you give an enemy a save ends effect (rare) and they fail a save against it (out of your control), you can shift 1 square (might not be useful).

Frost Step: Not optional so it can mess your party up. Also not very useful.

Swirling Leaves of Autumn: Same issues as frost step.

Infernal Pact​

Devil’s Favour: Kind of unclear if you still spend the healing surge or not, dragon magazine editing I guess. Second wind is not something you should be using unless you can get it on a non standard action (dwarf, mul, etc.). If you can and your DM agrees this doesn’t need you to spend the healing surge, it can be okay. Otherwise its awful.

Prisoner’s Resolve: Rerolling your Superior Will saving throw or whatever is good, though you could also spend this feat getting a bonus to that save instead. This applies to more things, but has a non-negligible health cost if you use it regularly.

Daughter’s Promises: If this was an additional pact boon instead of a replacement it might have earned black. It can pop off and do a lot if the enemies are clustered in an AB1 formation and cursed already, but it’s just too specific and most of the time it will replace your pact boon with nothing at all.

Glasya’s Rebuke: ETV on if a target is within 5 squares of itself, hellish rebuke is actually a power you will use later and the second damage instance can be forced. If your GM agrees this can hit the main target, it’s a +2.5 non-feat bonus to damage rolls for hellish rebuke. If your GM says no, then its a pretty bad feat.

Offering to the Prisoner: It’s extra damage so it stacks, unlike the base pact boon, and it is optional. Unfortunately it’s also one of those things that by the time this gives any significant returns, all the enemies you want to use that extra damage on are dead.

Dark Thaumaturgy: If you’re doing some sort of rest-free dark+infernal warlock this can give a huge bonus to ritual skill checks. Unfortunately that’s not useful.

Hellbound Heart: Why would you need this?

Hell’s Chosen: You can also just get Gloves of Eldritch Admixture.

Hellfire Hex: Slapping 5 ongoing damage on one target of your daily is not good for a feat.

Improved Dark One’s Blessing: This is probably noticeable at level 1 and 2 (making your pact boon do something instead of nothing) but there’s so many better feats to be taking at 1 and 2. At higher levels you will not notice this.

Infernal Soul: Why would you need this?

Allegiance to the Daughter: This feat was never errata’d to have the once/turn limit like most of these do. If you have sufficient sliding in your party you can simply slide an enemy in and out of the space for massive damage, which makes it pretty good. If your DM thinks this is supposed to have a once/turn limit, its much worse.

Sorcerer-King Pact​

Mindbite Scorn: Rated assuming you twofold elemental pact, but honestly not that bad even if you’re not doing that. Extra 3.5 damage and adding another damage type to your curse.

Psionic Storm: You can hybrid warlock with any of the power point classes, and this is uncapped on how many power points you can restore. Warlock hybrids are going to have fewer power points, so many if you’re a Psion|Warlock trying to spam dishearten or an Ardent|Warlock spamming Forward-Thinking Cut or Ire Strike this could be fine. Battlemind|Warlocks are typically just spamming 1PP Brutal Barrage and won’t realistically run out of PP.

Scornful Denial: Not under your control when this triggers, and even then it’s only against effects that saves can end (so it does nothing against UEoNT effects).

King’s Wrath: Does very little, and nonminion is an extra slap in the face for no reason.

Sorcerer-King Pact Feats​

Be careful with the Pact feats, as many of them are flat out wrong in the compendium and list a version that is a pre-printing. They tend to be a lot better than the actual printed version.
Balican Praetor: Lose 4.5 damage to gain 10 damage. 15 damage at level 8. It’s a pretty good trade, the issue is that you need to use Hand of Blight (something you’ll be using a lot less as you level up), and this is expensive to take at the levels you want to use Hand of Blight the most.

Balican High Praetor: Extra damage stacks, so there’s no risk of “losing” your pact boon here because someone died while your pact boon was already active. The power augmentation is not good, so you’re taking this mostly for the pact boon effect.

Favored of Raam: You can lose 4.5 damage to turn Hand of Blight into Eyebite. This is a pretty terrible feat.

Champion of Raam: The Pact Boon can be funny if you have Pitted Flowstone and might be useful occasionally, but not worth two feats for. The augment is saved by the fact that this has Otherwind Stride as a listed power… but its still not great really. You can immobilize some artilleries and make them unable to attack you so they’re forced to turn skip or take an OA from you, but otherwind stride can already turn skip melees fairly reliably without spending two feats.

Draji Aspirant: If the enemy moved along that path it would be great. Making them shift means there’s limited use to this. Maybe a fighter can punish with Combat Challenge. Also once per encounter for whatever reason.

Draji Devotee: Nothing about this is useful enough to be worth 2 feats.

Yellow Cloak of Urik: Compendium is incorrect, this is once per encounter. The levels where the immobilize is most useful (heroic) is also the levels where this feat is the most expensive to pick up. It gets worse as you level up and immobilize is less guaranteed to turn skip anyone. Still it’s fairly good for heroic if you can stomach the feat cost.

Golden Lion of Urik: Compendium is incorrect, both effects are once per encounter. ETV on if the pact boon effect works with Rod of Corruption. The trigger is “In addition to regaining the use of your fell might, whenever you drop an enemy you have cursed to 0 hit points”. It’s unclear on if this is tied to your pact boon (so it wouldn’t work with RoC but would work with bloodied boon), an enemy dropping to zero (so it would work with RoC but not bloodied boon) or both (so it wouldn’t work with either). If your GM agrees that it works with RoC, this is a lot better but still not great - enemies can usually just pick prone, then stand and charge. The attack grant effect is, admittedly, rather nice and howl of doom is a good enough power to use it with. Worth two feats? Still probably not.

Nibenese Bride: Compendium is incorrect, this is once per encounter. Weaken is a fairly evergreen keyword, so this is useful, it’s just not as good as Balican Praetor is due to the once/encounter. Balican can at least be justified because you’ll be using HoB a lot at low levels, once/encounter hurts.

Nibenese Favoured Wife: Compendium is incorrect, the pact boon effect is one enemy cursed by you, not each enemy. Each enemy would have at least been interesting. Can go off with a Rod of Ulban, but level 25 is a long way away. The only reason you’d want this is because you have Darkwalker and this can give you more insubstantial - that augment is thankfully not once/encounter. Unfortunately nearly every power it works with sucks.

Spirit-Talker of Lalali-Puy: Compendium is incorrect, this is once per encounter. It can be useful to teleport enemies next to an ally for a close/area attack setup, or just to teleport enemies next to your defender. Less impactful than immobilize or weaken that’s for sure, but still okay enough.

Spirit-Master of Lalali-Puy: Compendium is incorrect, the first effect slides that enemy not each enemy cursed by you which makes it… very questionable how its supposed to work considering they’d usually be at zero unless you use this off Bloodied Boon. The second effect is why you’d want this feat - hit an enemy, force them to attack themself, get a fighter/warden/assault swordmage punish. It’s not once/encounter, and both Eldritch Rain and Mire the Mind are good enough powers.

Tyrant Bureaucrat: Compendium is incorrect, this is once per encounter. Daze might not be that useful early where monsters can just Charge and not really lose much in terms of effectiveness (if any), it becomes better later, but by then you don’t really want to be using Hand of Blight.

Tyrian Ascendant: Compendium is incorrect, the -2 to attack rolls on the boon is only attack rolls against you. It might have been black otherwise. The best thing about this feat is making Spiteful Darts a charisma power and making it knock things prone, the boon is pretty bad and the augment doesn’t have great powers to use it with until Spiteful Darts.

Star Pact​

Ulban’s Flare: ETV on if this applies to the second damage instance of Dire Radiance or not. A useful pickup at low levels where you’ll be using Dire Radiance fairly often. Retrain it later.

Message of Doom Spurned: Immediate Interrupt saves this a bit, but not by much. Unless there is a lot of minions on the map, you just can’t get Fate of the Void very high to make an important attack miss. As such this will likely be used when enemies hit by 1 or 2.

Sacrifice to Caiphon: I would usually say “it’s good if you take bad powers” but that’s not actually true. There are some single target powers that are good - Far Realm Phantasm, for instance. If you have enough of those powers, this can legitimately be a good feat.

Sibling to the Stars: So many hoops to jump through to get this feat. The real killer is requiring Eldritch Blast (no Eldritch Strike!). It probably is still useful for some builds, but others should just spend the divine MC that this feat requires to get dagger implement proficiency and use a radiant weapon.

Veil of Waking Dreams: One target of your daily power gets dazed (save ends).

Improved Fate of the Void: This feat is not likely to even do something once per day. It’s a 5% chance to do something every time you use Fate of the Void, which won’t be every round (you probably can’t use it on round 1).

Vestige Pact​

Vestige Adept: Outside of access to Paragon Paths, I’m assuming this is the reason you picked Vestige Pact. Unfortunately it takes a while to get any good vestiges to use this on, and sometimes those vestiges painfully require you to take a bad daily power over a much better one. Note this is a free action when your pact boon is triggered so it will not work off your first pact boon in any encounter as free actions are reaction speed.

Vestige Mastery: This is just a better version of Vestige Adept, as it doesn’t have the free action problem. Retrain that feat if you have it.

Vestige of Vistan: A great pact boon, hampered by the fact that it needs two feats. Vistani Heritage is okay, it gives you a semi-immobilize power.

Diminishing Spirit Curse: On the plus side its repeatable save penalty. On the minus side, well, the whole point of stacking save penalties is so you can drop a big save ends effect on a full health enemy and not care about them for the rest of combat. Needing you to hit them while they’re bloodied kind of defeats the point.

Bleak Guide’s Return: Way too many conditions. You have to crit with Eyes of the Vestige, a single target power, then use an encounter power and miss every target. This is so unlikely to do anything in a given day.

Multiclass Feats​


There’s lots of reasons to multiclass - feat access, paragon path access, implement proficiencies. Popular options include:
  • Sorcerer
    • Staff & Dagger implements
    • Demonskin Adept paragon path
  • Wizard
    • Staff & Orb proficiency & 1/encounter wizard at-will (Beguiling Strands is good for zone stuff)
    • Hellfire Arcanist is a better fire damage feat than Fiery Blood, and works with some of your powers like Howl of Doom
    • If willing to spend more feats, you can also power swap for Dark Gathering/Crushing Titan’s Fist/insert broken wizard power here, in which case you may want to grab an area burst at will, and 12 starting WIS so you can get Enlarge Spell
  • Swordmage
    • Light & Heavy Blade implements
    • Eladrin Swordmage Advance feat
  • Fighter
    • Hindering Shield feat

General Feats​


I will not rate all the general feats, there are simply far too many. Here are some standouts that aren’t mentioned in the essentials.
Arcane Familiar: This may actually be the best feat in the game. There’s only two familiars of real note here - the Disembodied Hand, and its upgrade, the Rakshasa Claw. These familiars let you draw or stow an item as a free action. No round limit, not even an “on your turn” limit. This allows you to easily cycle through all the off hand items and item powers you could ever want. Rod of Corruption, Rod of Avernus, Aversion Staff, Staff of the War Mage, Staff of Resilience, the list just goes on and on for what this enables you to do. The fact that its not “on your turn” means you can pull out defensive items on enemy turns, then swap to support items on ally turns and keep going. You might as well just have your entire inventory in your hands at all times.

Moonbow Dedicate: It’s both a damage feat and an implement proficiency feat. You might want a bow implement to use Mindiron weapon, a half-psychic converter, for elemental warlock retyping for psychic lock.

Resounding Thunder: If you can apply for it, take it and never look back. If you can’t apply for it currently, maybe you can finangle a way into it.

Called Shot: If your power list is mostly ranged attacks and area bursts, this is a great +5 damage feat.

Mark of Storm: An enabler for shenanigans but still pretty good if you are doing lightning/thunder damage to a bunch of enemies. The free repositioning is no joke.

Resilient Focus: +2 to all saves, a decent thing to have if you can fit it in and your party has save grants (e.g. by Mark of Healing).

Prime Burst: Necessary if you have Called Shot and some Area Burst attacks.

Psychic Lock: A decent thing to add to Psychic powers, but you do need to do psychic to more than one target, which warlock might struggle with as they’re usually adding damage types with curse, which is only on one target.

Quickened Spell: Minor action is mildly painful by the time you get to Epic. Still very good for damage, just might be harder to actually use this than it looks like.
 
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Items​


Damage Types​

This section will list the support for and why you might want each type of damage.
Fire
  • Getting fire typing on your attacks can be a way to provide more to-hit
  • Things that support fire: Hellfire Blood, Infernal Prince theme
  • Things that can add fire: Weapon of Summer, Gloves of Eldritch Admixture, Path of the Scarred

Cold
  • Getting cold typing on your attacks can be a way to add more damage
  • Things that support cold: Lasting Frost, Gloves of Ice
  • Things that can add cold: Gloves of Eldritch Admixture, Frozen Whetstone, Frost Fury Weapon (CONlock only)

Lightning
  • Lightning is usually for Mark of Storm
  • Things that support lightning: Mark of Storm
  • Things that can add lightning:

Thunder
  • Thunder enables Mark of Storm and Resounding Thunder, though it’s difficult to get
  • Things that support thunder: Mark of Storm, Resounding Thunder
  • Things that can add thunder: Rod of the Dragonborn

Radiant
  • Radiant is something that Student of Caiphon cares about, but also might be useful if you have a friendly morninglord or rod of starlight .
  • Things that support radiant: Font of Radiance, Rod of Starlight
  • Things that can add radiant: Crusader’s Weapon, Crown of the Brilliant Sun

Psychic
  • Psychic is usually added for Elemental Pact conversion, but can also use the Psychic Lock feat.
  • Things that support psychic: Psychic lock
  • Things that can add psychic: Mindbite Scorn, Mindiron weapon

Necrotic
  • Getting necrotic typing on your attacks can add an item bonus to damage from life-draining gauntlets, something that implement users can otherwise struggle to find. You can also convert it with Elemental Pact.
  • Things that support necrotic: Shard of Decay, Life-Draining Gauntlets
  • Things that can add necrotic: Necrotic weapon, Lifebane weapon

Acid
  • There is no good reason to add Acid to your attacks.
  • Things that support acid: N/A
  • Things that can add acid: Gloves of Eldritch Admixture

Force
  • Force is another type that Elemental Pact cares about, but there’s no good or easy way to add it.

Poison
  • Poison is a terrible type because Poison is both an effect keyword and a damage keyword.
  • The prime reason to add Poison is for the huge vulnerability from Rod of Feythorns (level 17+, ETV). You may want an assassin MC for Venom Hand Master if you do that.
  • The other reason you may want to add poison is because Elemental Pact can convert it, but this will not remove the Poison keyword from the power, and as such monsters may be immune to it.
  • Things that support poison: Rod of Feythorns
  • Things that can add poison: Serpentine Bracers

Item slots​


I recommend going to my item guide, I’m not going to re-rate items here. This is purely informative for items you might want in each slot.
Main Hand
  • Any damage type converter, though be careful as total converters will overwrite all other damage types. That’s why half-converters are preferenced.
  • Staff of Ruin
  • Wand of Thunderous Anguish for elemental
  • Sword of Black Ice
  • Dragonshard of the mage if no eldritch strike, otherwise you probably want the elemental one related to whatever element you’re doing

Off Hand
  • Incisive Dagger if doing teleport stuff
  • Rod of Corruption
  • Rod of Avernus
  • Rod of Feythorns for poison
  • Rod of Starlight for radiant
  • Rod of the Pyre for fire
  • Rod of Mindbending for psychic
  • Rod of Ulban for psychic
  • Aversion Staff
  • Shadowrift Blade for any, essential for infernal
  • Weapon of Speed if you have Eldritch Blast
  • Mage’s Parrying Dagger
  • Rhythm Blade
  • Shielding Blade

Golfbag
  • Staff of the War Mage
  • Staff of Resilience
  • Rod of Office for SK Pact
  • Quickcurse Rod
  • Staff of the Discerning Watcher
  • Feyslaughter Weapon
  • Cloak of the Chirurgeon
  • Rod of Vulnerability

Armor
  • Summoned Armor if you don’t care or need an armor for the 16+ breakpoint
  • Armor of Dark Majesty
  • Battle Harness
  • Flowform Armor
  • Shadow Warlock Armor
  • Dilatory Armor
  • Feytouched Armor

Neck
  • Amulet of Protection if you’re cheaping out
  • Sustaining Cloak
  • Cloak of Translocation for teleport stuff
  • Timeless Locket
  • Torc of Power Preservation

Head
  • Casque of Tactics
  • Coif of Mindiron
  • Headband of Intellect if using psychic
  • Circlet of Arkhosia if you want to save the feat on Superior Will
  • Ioun stone of Allure
  • Moretta Mask
  • Volto Mask

Hands
  • Gauntlets of Blood
  • Resplendent Gloves
  • Life-Draining Gauntlets if you have necrotic and no other item bonus
  • Gloves of Eldritch Admixture
  • Strikebacks
  • Gloves of Ice for cold
  • Many-Fingered Gloves
  • Hands of Hadar

Arms
  • Phylactery of Action
  • Bracers of Archery for Moonbow Dedicate builds
  • Bracers of Mental Might for weird hybrids

Waist
  • Diamond Cincture
  • Belt of the Witch King
  • Belt of Breaching for teleport builds

Feet
  • Acrobat Boots
  • Eladrin Boots for teleport builds
  • Planestrider Boots
  • Zephyr Boots

Rings
  • Champion’s Ring
  • Ring of Borrowed Spells
  • Ring of Draconic Zeal
  • Eladrin Ring of Passage for teleporters
  • Ring of Free Time
  • Ring of Tenacious Will

Wondrous & Item Sets
  • Elven Chain Shirt
  • Echo of Ty’h’kadi/Pale Tooth
  • Battle Standard of Healing
  • Auspicious Dice
  • Gifts for the Queen set bonus for lightning/radiant
  • Implements of Argent set bonus
  • Fortune Stones & set bonus
  • Power Jewel
  • Elemental Prism
  • Shard of Decay for necrotic users
  • Solitaire Violet
  • Flagon of Ale Procurement

Sample Warlock Builds​

Infernal Pact, Constitution, Level 11​

Dragonborn Warlock, Bozak Draconian (Instinctive Flight & Arcane Blood)
Paragon Path: Honorable Blade
Theme: Pick whatever, primordial adept is good for +2 damage if you have no other idea

Starting Stats
8 strength, 12 dexterity, 16 constitution, 16 intelligence, 10 wisdom, 12 charisma

Current stats
9 strength, 13 dexterity, 21 constitution, 21 intelligence, 11 wisdom, 15 charisma

Feats
1: War Wizard Expertise
2: Cunning Stalker
4: Hurl Breath
6: Resourceful Leader
8: Arcane Implement Proficiency (Sorcerer)
10: Retrained to Resounding Thunder at level 11
11: Thundering Breath

Powers:
At-Will: Eldritch Strike, Hellish Rebuke
Encounter: Arms of Hadar, Fiery Bolt, Howl of Doom
Daily: Decree of Khirad, Vestige of Ugar, Feast of Souls
Utility: Ethereal Stride, Mirror Darkly, Troublesome Aid of Caiphon

Items:
12th: Shadowrift Dagger +3
11th: Gamber’s Suit Leather +3
10th: Incisive Dagger +2
5000GP - Amulet of Protection +2, Eberron Shard of Lightning (Heroic), Rushing Cleats, +200GP

Fey Pact, Charisma, Level 13​

Tiefling Warlock
Paragon Path: Feytouched
Theme: Pick whatever

Starting Stats
8 strength, 12 dexterity, 12 constitution, 16 intelligence, 10 wisdom, 16 charisma

Current stats
9 strength, 13 dexterity, 13 constitution, 21 intelligence, 11 wisdom, 21 charisma

Feats
1: Staff Expertise
2: Arcane Familiar (Disembodied Hand/Rakshasa Claw)
4: Imperious Majesty
6: Warlock’s Wrath
8: Arcane Initiate/Arcane Prodigy
10: Warlock’s Wrath
11: Cunning Stalker
12: Damage feat of choice here (can go fire or cold, eldritch admixture is your retyper)

Powers:
At-Will: Eldritch Strike, Eyebite
Encounter: Otherwind Stride, Touch of Command, Far Realm Phantasm
Daily: Star Shackles, Deathly Conduit, Roaring Storm of Cania
Utility: Ethereal Stride, Mirror Darkly, Ethereal Sidestep

Items:
14th: Cloak of Translocation +3
13th: Staff of Ruin +3
12th: Feytouched Leather +3
13000GP - Gloves of Eldritch Admixture, Incisive Dagger +2, Rod of Corruption +1, Siberys Shard of Merciless Cold, Staff of the War Mage +1, Staff of Resilience +1, Rod of Avernus +1, Phylactery of Action, Aversion Staff +1, 800GP

Elemental/Sorcerer-King Pact, Charisma, Level 18​

Human Warlock
Paragon Path: Master of Flame
Theme: Pick whatever, primordial adept is good for +2 damage if you have no other idea

Starting Stats
8 strength, 12 dexterity, 12 constitution, 16 intelligence, 10 wisdom, 16 charisma

Current stats
9 strength, 13 dexterity, 13 constitution, 21 intelligence, 11 wisdom, 23 charisma

Feats
1: Wand Expertise
BONUS FEAT: Improved Initiative
2: Mindbite Scorn
4: Arcane Initiate
6: Retrained to Thunder’s Rumble
8: Cunning Stalker
10: Superior Will
11: Twofold Pact (Elemental)
12: Bloodied Boon
14: Resounding Thunder
16: Novice Power
18: Relentless Curse

Powers:
At-Will: Eldritch Strike, Chromatic Bolt, Hand of Blight
Encounter: Otherwind Stride, Touch of Command, Dark Gathering/Crushing Titan’s Fist
Daily: Vestige of Ugar, Feast of Souls, Plague of Frogs
Utility: Ethereal Stride, Mirror Darkly, Troublesome Aid of Caiphon, Painful Transference

Items:
19th: Wand of Thunderous Anguish +4
18th: Sustaining Cloak +4
17th: Feytouched Leather +4
65000GP - Siberys Shard of the Mage (Paragon tier), Circlet of Arkhosia, Gloves of Eldritch Admixture (Heroic), Staff of the War Mage +1, Aversion Staff +1, Elven Chain Shirt (Heroic Tier), Phylactery of Action, Diamond Cincture (Heroic tier), 13,040 GP

Star Pact, Charisma, Level 16​

Tiefling Warlock
Paragon Path: Student of Caiphon
Theme: Pick whatever

Starting Stats
8 strength, 12 dexterity, 12 constitution, 16 intelligence, 10 wisdom, 16 charisma

Current stats
9 strength, 13 dexterity, 13 constitution, 22 intelligence, 11 wisdom, 22 charisma

Feats
1: War Wizard’s Expertise
2: Imperious Majesty
4: Warlock’s Wrath
6: Arcane Familiar (Disembodied hand/rakshasa claw)
8: Arcane Prodigy
10: Cunning Stalker
11: Dispater’s Iron Discipline
12: Silvery Glow
14: Twofold Curse
16: Bloodied Boon

Powers:
At-Will: Eldritch Strike, Dire Radiance
Encounter: Otherwind Stride, Touch of Command, All the Sand All the Stars
Daily: Deathly Conduit, Roaring Storm of Cania, Plague of Frogs
Utility: Ethereal Stride, Mirror Darkly, Ethereal Sidestep, Painful Transference

Items:
17th: Feytouched leather +4
16th: Eladrin Boots
15th: Radiant dagger +3
25000GP - Siberys Shard of Radiance (Heroic Tier), Rod of Corruption +1, Rod of Avernus+1, Incisive Dagger +2, Cloak of Translocation +2, Elven Chain Shirt (heroic tier), Staff of the War Mage +1, Staff of Resilience +1, Aversion Staff +1, Strikebacks, Phylactery of Action, 2640GP

Vestige Pact, Constitution, Level 20​

Dragonborn Warlock, Bozak Draconian (Instinctive Flight & Arcane Blood)
PP: Umbral Cabalist
Theme: Pick whatever, primordial adept is good for +2 damage if you have no other idea

Starting Stats
8 strength, 12 dexterity, 16 constitution, 16 intelligence, 10 wisdom, 12 charisma

Current stats
9 strength, 13 dexterity, 23 constitution, 21 intelligence, 11 wisdom, 15 charisma

Feats
1: War Wizard Expertise
2: Cunning Stalker
4: Hurl Breath
6: Retrained to superior will at 12
8: Improved Initiative
10: Retrained to Resounding Thunder at level 11
11: Thundering Breath
12: Vestige Adept
14: Thunder’s Rumble
16: Relentless Curse
18: Twofold Curse
20: Bloodied Boon

Powers:
At-Will: Eldritch Strike, Eyes of the Vestige
Encounter: Arms of Hadar, Killing Flames, Sea Tyrant’s Fury
Daily: Vestige of Ugar, Feast of Souls, Plague of Frogs
Utility: Ethereal Stride, Mirror Darkly, Troublesome Aid of Caiphon, Painful Transference

Items:
21st: Ioun Stone of Vigor
20th: Battle Harness Leather Armor +4
19th: Rod of the Dragonborn +4
105000GP - Rod of Corruption +1, Amulet of Protection +4, Eberron Shard of Lightning (Paragon Tier), Circlet of Arkhosia, Strikebacks, Phylactery of Action, Diamond Cincture, Elven Chain Shirt (Heroic Tier), Aversion Staff +1, 14760GP
 
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