After having messed around with a shiradi warlock I really wanted to give a melee warlock a shot before I decide which I want to invest more time in and grind out epic destinies with. I've come to the conclusion that the more warlock levels the better and taking only a few levels of something else would net you the most.  Take too little warlock and you might as well not take any, but at the same time they could use just a little help in the melee damage department.

In "my" theory, if the missing warlock levels and added melee power </= what you lost from warlock then it's not worth taking.

After hammering it out a bit my 2 main options are pure warlock 20 picking up the capstone in ES which gives the 20% hp, melee and light power, full bab, etc.. It also very importantly gives me the core 5 ES for a 2 second aura. I'd be playing as a PDK with the CHA to hit and damage for a paltry 2 AP. I would take the SWF line and use an orb in my offhand. I'd still be able to swing max/emp/quicken, precision, 3 SWF feats and probably force of personality. I'd take most of the important ES tree, enough TS to grab utterdark blast and the core 2 for 10% crit, and then I'd be putting the rest into SE. There is an easy 6 melee power in the first 2 tiers, +4 melee damage from the 4 cores and then I'd focus on consume/stricken and their debuffs. Strickened form adds 1% vulnerability for every spell/melee attack and stacks to 20. With how fast a SWF fighter swings combined with eldritch burst/spirit blast and the aura I imagine on single targets I could stack that to max and keep it that way fairly quickly.

The other option would be warlock 17/bard 3 with the fey pact. Hear me out! While I'd lose on what I mentioned above, I'd be gaining the ability to use the swashbuckling stance with a buckler which gains me the 10% dodge. I'd pick up resonant arms which gives 6d6 sonic power on crit that scales with spellpower, of which I'd have due to the Fey pact. Combined with spiritual retribution I now have 2(the only 2) weapon procs that scale with spellpower. I'd have sworddance for free sonic damage that scales with spellpower, and with dodge and SLA displacement I'd have a bunch of free damage(in theory...). Elegant footwork with the high miss chance seems also worthwhile for free crowd control. Also due to having the shield prof, I could pick up shield mastery and later benefit from legendary shield mastery. Also, I'd be stuck in light armor meaning I lose a bit of prr/mrr overall.

With either option I'd probably be going divine crusader or exalted angel when I hit epic.


I also know that I could probably squeeze in 2 fighter to easily get both shield mastery feats and have 15 warlock without losing too much, though at 17 I do get disco ball(which probably won't work much in EE should I survive at that level).

At any rate what it boils down to is if I am gaining enough to overcome what I lose when I multiclass. Is the extra dodge with bard levels enough to make a difference in survivability compared to sticking in medium armor and having a bit more PRR? Assuming I use a high crit range shortsword, is it possible all the extra sonic damage will make up for the 1 sec aura and EB damage lost from those levels?

I admittedly haven't played much melee in this game so I don't know where most of a melee's damage comes from. In PnP D&D it's mostly related to your damage mod. In DDO it seems a lot comes from doublestrike proc`ing in general and crits. Which is why I'm having a hard time theorycrafting how useful the benefits would be in taking a few non warlock levels vs just staying pure and getting all the goodies.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/464199-Melee-Dworflock

im not sure what youre really looking for? Charisma is for cone/chain fey pact damage dc and mass hold or necro? I guess you get energy burst, but meh. Your warlcok bursts ignore saves and even a low dc energy burst is good vs non-evasion mobs. Zoda's build is pure 20 warlcok so it is still a warlcok. If you wanted something more melee then add bard levels for orb/buckler and swf in swash stance for crit expansion. 6 fighter 2x would be less damage. Either way those would be worse than what zoda is doing.

TYWA isnt the only thing in that tree. There's a minor amount of dps(+4) and a ton of moar hp obviously.

Rubbinns wrote on Aug 26^th, 2015 at 7:03pm:


The bursts ignore saves completely? I never really paid attention, but I had assumed that the pact damage portion of bursts and aura are still bound to the same saves that regular EB has. If this isn't true, then indeed dumping DC makes a lot more sense.

As to what I'm looking for? Maybe it's just theory crafting, but I'm mostly wondering if adding some amount of melee capability to an aura based warlock can become greater than the sum of it's parts. Your damage mostly comes from the aura and 2 bursts, leaving you time in between to do more. I guess in Epic you can twist in energy burst or whatever else you want, but there is still free time. Consume and stricken are good though they are more built for single DPS, not zerging down groups giving us free time for another source of damage. Melee seems the easiest to accomplish since you're already in melee range and can swing your weapon.

If a pure Warlock has "x" power, then any levels lost to something else(call it y) has to make up for it or it's a net loss. It's hard to quantify exactly how much is lost since it's not just about DPS, but also utility, defense, etc.. So let's say any loss of warlock levels makes their total power (x-z), z representing lost power.

So I'm mostly wondering if it is possible for a warlock with a splash of some melee would at a minimum make:

(x-z)+y = x

Or simply that they balance out. I'm trying to gauge if it is possible that:

(x-z)+y > x

Meaning can the right melee splash actually end up ahead of just going pure 20 warlock. For most classes I think we can agree that it's possible and even required in most cases, but since Warlock is a strong class on it's own it stands to lose out if the multiclass isn't chosen carefully.

When I watched the dorflock he wasn't really doing that much melee damage, it was mostly coming from the aura and blasts so I question whether or not he would be doing even more damage by just focusing on his EB and SLA's. The build definitely worked, but with a 3-5 level splash could it be done better?

I guess I'll report back with my experience if anyone is actually interested.