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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Exocist" data-source="post: 9848237" data-attributes="member: 7044810"><h2>Paragon Paths</h2>[SPOILER="Paragon Paths"]Warlock PPsAstral 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 noteDemonskin 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.[/SPOILER]<h2>Epic Destinies</h2>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.[SPOILER="Epic Destinies"]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.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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