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