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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Exocist" data-source="post: 9848239" data-attributes="member: 7044810"><h2>Feats</h2><h4 style="text-align: center">Essential Feats</h4>These categories of feat are broadly essential for every character to have one of, as such they won’t be rated with the rest.[SPOILER="Essential Feats"]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.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rod Expertise is probably what most warlocks will take for the passive +1 to ac and reflex.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">White Lotus Dueling Expertise is a way to get another implement type available to you for mainhand use or for powers</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragonborn warlocks may take Draconic Spellcaster so they don’t have to also take a damage feat</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Warlocks with additional implement selection (from e.g. theme or MC) may take one of the following instead<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">War Wizard’s Expertise can be useful if you have enough unfriendly bursts and blasts</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Staff Expertise lets you avoid OAs, though this usually isn’t a problem for you it can show up</li> </ul></li> </ul>2. Combat Advantage - Some consistent way of getting Combat Advantage on your attacks is essentially like having a permanent +2 to hit.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Some warlocks may opt for Hidden Sniper as you will almost always have concealment, but it only works on Ranged attacks. Check your powers.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Vicious Advantage might be useful depending on your party (hindering shield users)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Improved Initiative is your only real non-racial option here, retrained to Superior Initiative at epic.</li> </ul>4. Defenses - You will need a NAD scaling feat at paragon, as NADs start to fall behind monster attacks without it<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Improved Defenses gives a bonus to all three defenses.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Superior Reflexes is a CA feat that also gives defenses.</li> </ul>5. Damage - Yes you need to take a feat, or multiple feats, to improve your damage.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragonborn can get away with just using Draconic Spellcaster instead.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>[/SPOILER]<h4>Warlock General Feats</h4>[SPOILER="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.[/SPOILER]<h4>Dark Pact</h4>[SPOILER="Dark Pact Feats"]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.[/SPOILER]<h4>Elemental Pact</h4>No feats for elemental warlock.<h4>Fey Pact</h4>[SPOILER="Fey Pact Feats"]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.[/SPOILER]<h4>Infernal Pact</h4>[SPOILER="Infernal Pact Feats"]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.[/SPOILER]<h4>Sorcerer-King Pact</h4>[SPOILER="Sorcerer-King Feats"]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.[/SPOILER]Sorcerer-King Pact FeatsBe 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.[SPOILER="Sorcerer-King Lesser/Greater Pact Feats"]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.[/SPOILER]<h4>Star Pact</h4>[SPOILER="Star Pact Feats"]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).[/SPOILER]<h4>Vestige Pact</h4>[SPOILER="Vestige Pact Feats"]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.[/SPOILER]<h4>Multiclass Feats</h4>There’s lots of reasons to multiclass - feat access, paragon path access, implement proficiencies. Popular options include:[SPOILER="Multiclass Feats Summary"]<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sorcerer<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Staff & Dagger implements</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Demonskin Adept paragon path</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wizard<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Staff & Orb proficiency & 1/encounter wizard at-will (Beguiling Strands is good for zone stuff)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hellfire Arcanist is a better fire damage feat than Fiery Blood, and works with some of your powers like Howl of Doom</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Swordmage<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Light & Heavy Blade implements</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Eladrin Swordmage Advance feat</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fighter<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hindering Shield feat</li> </ul></li> </ul>[/SPOILER]<h4>General Feats</h4>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.[SPOILER="General Feats"]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.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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