And you know what else, there is no prerequisite for Pact of the Blade in the playtest. You could go straight Paladin and take eldritch adept at lv 4 to pick this up and still get to Aura of Protection at lv 6.
@@alanmaxwell9105a 1 level warlock dip is still less expensive than a full feat my man, you will not be able to raise your charisma to 18 till level 8 if you use the feat, which hurts aura of protection much more but also, why play paladin when you can straightclass warlock? with this playtest, warlock is waaaaaay more powerful even without aura of protection
@@nyanbrox5418 its funny how bg3 has made me realize how respeccing whenever you want changes how you approach a build haha. I feel like if I want to play a paladin but I just want that charisma based attack, then I would play warlock level 1. then at level 2 i'd respec into paladin 2 so I could play with smites and feel like a paladin. then level 3 id grab warlock 1 to get the charisma casting. but then level 4 I'd respec into paladin 4 with the eldritch adept feat. Then level 5 and 6 I'd stay with the build. but then level 7 I'd respec again into paladin 6 warlock 1 XD. - It would be particularly funny if you were playing a table that didn't allow respeccing, and just simply found a way to get your character killed every time you wanted to respec haha.
@@nyanbrox5418 You can always go variant human or custom lineage for the feat at level 1, and being able to focus on charisma as both casting and attack stat means aura will be way stronger than most other straight paladins, and getting aura a level earlier rather than a 1level warlock dip is huge considering the level ranges that most campaigns go through and how leveling slows down the higher you go. But that's just my two cents. Either way will make a strong effective character.
baffled? why though? to me that seems perfectly in line for WotC's design approach.. they made a full caster the best martial dps for absolutely no reason and directly stole parts of fighter to achieve this. makes perfect sense to me that WotC would do that.
@@_claymore It isn't the 3rd attack thats the problem, its lifedrinker and spirit shroud more than doubling the per hit damage. Lvl 13 cleric can cast a 7th lvl spirit guardian and run around with war cleric and pam with 18 strength and do 80-150 dpr. Is it the best melee?
@@rotm4447 I'd disagree. Without the third attack, the average DPR seems like it drops to something more like 40ish, which seems in line considering the warlock is also a full caster.
@@ilovethelegend Sort of, if you have your full caster concentrating on a bad spell to do mediocre single target melee damage, assuming around 44 dpr, instead of a myriad of infinitely more useful control spells, then its not a full caster anymore. It needs changes certainly though.
Warlock is not a full caster because everyone cried about Pact Magic. Still a decent spell caster though when they cast their two to three spells a day.
Just one more attack bro, trust me it'll fix everything. Just one more attack. But seriously having 3 attacks is cool but it feels weird that amongst all the classes that actually train as martials (excluding fighters), the full caster is the one receiving a third attack.
The problem isn't the extra attack. It's Spirit Shroud accounting for a full 1/3rd of the total expected DPR in the calculations. 65.84 expected damage per round with both spirit shroud and 3 attacks. Drop spirit shroud and it brings the dpr down to 43.59. Drop the extra attack instead and it brings dpr down to 44.96. Spirit Shroud quite literally is more mathematically impactful than the 3rd attack.
@dontmisunderstand6041 I don't think the WARLOCK getting more benefit from a spell than a third attack is that wrong. And I would rather that they drop the third attack as that still puts them in line with every other martial right now.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 Your damage is basically the same either way, so obviously you'd prefer not to have to waste the bonus action, spell slot and concentration (and the risk of losing concentration). Keep in mind that if they weren't relying on Spirit shroud they could have some other concentration spell up that dealt damage, pushing your thirsting blade calculations higher and over the spirit shoud numbers. The problem is definitely the extra attack.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 It is like using shadow blade. Why nto use eldritch knight with green flame blade and shadow blade then. I asure you that cone out damage any other marial. The blade lock NEED some kind of damage boost in lvl 11 or the EB is gone be just better jsut like 5e (except the hexblade and they are a busted subclass)
For a fighter maybe. But should it do more for the wizards blade singer. Not really, imo. IMO warlock is closer to wizard than fighter in that spectrum. Maybe pact of the blade should do more damage but not by much especially when a invocation bakes in a self heal which counters a large part of the weakness of melee.
@@AhglockA bladesinger should never out damage a fighter, that's horrible balance. It is a full caster, a wizard, at that. Having the most damage on top of that would be ridiculous balance.
@@Veristelle- I wasn't meaning out damage a fighter. I was saying a blade singers melee should not out damage a blade singers ranged attack as they are full casters not martials. And warlocks are imo in the same boat. And if a warlocks melee out damages their own ranged it should be by a fairly small margin. Pure martials should out damage both of them.
I disagree with the sentiment that a bladesinger should be better at range, at least in terms of cantrips and low cost attack options. The entire point of the subclass is that it is a melee combatant, hence its called a 'blade' -singer rather than an arrowsinger or spelldancer if you just care about the AC bonus. I would almost say there should be more encouraging bladesingers to head into melee but I cannot think of a way to do that that wouldn't make them overtuned.
I love that you did the calculations. When I looked at the damage, I didn't think it was doing too much. (Maybe I watch Colby too much.) When you showed it against the other classes, I thought, well maybe those aren't doing enough. I think one of the things that needs to be done to reduce the divide between martials and casters is to start allowing martials to do more damage. They generally are only doing it to one creature anyway, not AOE. And comparing it against a Cantrip, albeit the most powerful damaging cantrip, I feel like weapons SHOULD do more damage. It's a Cantrip, after all. Not a leveled spell.
I'm torn because on one hand the new bladelock is so so cool, but on the other I can agree it very much outshines all other damage dealers. I'm just concerned with how swingy WotC can be when it comes to balancing that they'll just gut it completely and make it worthless and not something cool and powerful but not broken
There are a few options to fix it. The simplest one is either remove the 3rd attack from Pact of the Blade, or give every martial and half-martial a 3rd attack at level 11.
the beautiful thing about this hobby is that you can just save these documents and use them yourself. Once the idea has been created and shared with you, it exists and you can use it haha. If you are concerned about balanced, then flex your own game designer muscles and take a crack at balancing it yourself. It is MUCH easier to tweak things that exist to make them work, than to make something completely from scratch yourself. that's a big reason I'm following these play tests imo. I really like a lot of the ideas that they've thrown away. They might have given up on those ideas, but I haven't.
@Ahglock that's fair. Gish is my favorite character archetype in all of fantasy so being able to be a bladelock and tomelock at the same time really speaks to me. I'd absolutely be playing a warlock with a blade in one hand and a spellbook in the other regardless of optimization, but I get how it would feel bad as a non-blade loving warlock.
@@AhglockI kind of think we should have the pacts as invocation to split the builds up a bit instead of everyone picking blade by default because if they want something else they can still get it. There should be some commitment.
@@Codarius as a Gish fan too, I'm right there with you. I definitely love how awesome they feel but I also kind of wish everything was balanced in such a way that it doesn't seem like I'm doing it straight for the optimization
On one hand, this needs to be toned down to not outshine basically every other melee option. On the other hand, at least there's a reason to use POTB over EB?
I feel that if they brought non-spell casting martials up to this POTB as a damage/ weapon utility baseline, it'd be pretty cool. Imagine a barbarian with a feature like lifedrinker instead of brutal critical.
Problem is, now there is no reason to use EB. Both fulfil the same role and have the same or very similar costs (invocations). One is quite superior to the other. Previously, the mutual exclusivity with other Pacts made it a choice. If they go with this new route they need to differentiate the benefits and costs in some fashion. Example: Remove the Agonising Blast and Repelling Blast invocation taxes and build them into EB directly (probably modify RB a little, maybe something to do with size and how far they are pushed). Another example: Make Pact of the Blade be melee only, no magic ranged weapon - this forces a choice between safer but weaker EB or stronger but riskier PotB.
>On the other hand, at least there's a reason to use POTB over EB? The difference is that now you don't have to sacrifice anything to get POTB. Before, it locked you out on the utility of the Tome and Chain Pacts, so it had to compensate for that with damage, which it didn't, as a Tome or Chain warlock with EB could be as good or better. Now, as Chris pointed out, you're only losing one Invocation slot (compared to what you would've taken for EB build) for much more utility than EB, and can still freely access any other Pact. The whole context of POTB vs EB has changed. Before, POTB should've been stronger than EB. Now, they should be roughly equal.
Warlock has been my favorite class since 5e came out. (Favorite in 3.5 also, but it was like being a “Monk Lover” in 5e!… great idea, terrible design) The last play test destroyed me. I hope you did not just help light the fire of mass-hysteria (6th level spell?) with this video. What I mean is, I’m sure they plan on tweaking the warlock anyway, and I don’t disagree with it. My all consuming fear is that now, everyone else will start shouting “OMG, MOST POWERFULLY BROKEN THING EVER!!!!!!**”causing WotC to OVER correct them into Monk-dom! In closing, I wish it were “Warlocks of the Coast”, and everyone turned a blind eye to the fact that wizards are the most powerful class in the game, probably since the first edition. And how do they combat that, you ask? (I know you didn’t!) Let’s just ignore it and keep giving them more and more power! WIZARDS: Hey, they just gave the druid a good 2nd level healing spell**! Let’s shut the s#ît down, and fast!! I’m obviously being very cheeky… but the general dread/worry is still there. 🫥
Let's hope it gets nerfed to an appropriate degree, and not into the dust. I don't have a lot of experience with Warlocks. I want to say that the UA Paladin's blend of utility and DPR are a good generalized target for the Warlock, aiming for respectable combat capability mixed with spellcasting. However, the Warlock presents interesting design challenges. The Warlock has to support a good experience for the Bladelock, the Eldritch Blaster, and even the occasional Warlock who does neither of those. So, maybe the Paladin could be a reasonable, "ballpark" target for the Bladelock. (Again, I'm not a Warlock guy, so maybe not.) If so, though, they also still have to simultaneously thread the needle on the Eldritch Blaster, and get the right amount of general utility. And they have to do those things without leaving too many abusable synergies. Maybe I'm making it seem deeper than it really is. 😄 I hope they get it right. I know many love the Warlock; but I'm hoping they can do something with it that apppeals to me. The concept is cool, but I just can't get into the mechanics. (Genie Pact is the only one that's ever intrigued me.)
@@freman007 The Pact of the Blade grants proficiency with your bonded weapon. You bond with a halberd or glaive. Now you can use those features. They need something to close this loophole.
@@freman007this is true. Not sure if the fact they gain proficiency with their pact weapon means they are therefore proficient with a martial weapon. Worst case, you take an elf and problem solved though.
I will say, I really like the GENERAL changes to the warlock, how they're handling the pacts and boons, and making a distinction between a more weapons and more spellcast-y warlock. But for sure they need to tune the bladelock down a bit, and tune the spellcasting warlock up a bit to match.
Third attack at level 11 for Pact of the Blade is kind of absurd. With just two attacks, about 20dpr lower than they'd currently be, looks like they'd be on par with a Paladin, which is still very good since Warlocks are closer to full casters than to half casters. Granted, I feel like the Smite on Crits assumptions are a little overgenerous since you only have two slots to use... but just barely. If we never smite, it seems like crits would add only about 1 DPR rather than 3.7 DPR, which would lower the total to about 58, about the same as a Barbarian. While having Pact Magic for 6th and 7th level spells.
At the levels we're talking about (11+) warlocks have 3 pact magic spell slots. But still, reducing the dpr by 2.7 because of not using eldritch smite is not going to shake the core takeaway. Berserker Barbarian is miles better than any weapon user was before, and bladelock now blows it out of the water without even using all eldritch invocations or many of their spell slots. That's not ok.
@@lagg1e Without question, Bladelock early impressions are problematically good. That 3rd attack seems absurd. I just think that broadly speaking, smites on crits with so few slots (for Smiting you have two not three, since one is used for Spirit Shroud) is a challenging assumption for DPR. That's not particularly sustainable, and a pretty big decision in game. I personally wouldn't include it in a round-per-round DPR calculation, since it does add 8 DPR over the three attacks, which more than a 10% increase. It's important to know that you can get a 12d8 spike critical, and I'd note that and leave it off this chart.
I like to do the math for smites on a per rest basis and divide by 3 round combats, 6 encounter days, and 2 short rests per long rests. I feel like that's more reasonable.
They do at least have to use one of their few spell slots to achieve that damage It's made me think, if you/I were designing who you think *should* do the most damage, who would it be? The barbarian? The fighter? Or someone else?
You shouldn't look at this like a tier 1 warlock. Level 13 warlock has 3 fifth level pact slots plus a 6th AND 7th level arcanum.slot the warlock has had more slot gains than any other caster for quite a few levels at that point and can expect to continue that trend of matching slot gains with arcanum plus improving what pact magic recovers from a short rest
Fighter for sure, since barbs just get resistance to the most common damage, extra mobility (if you are doing unarmored) and multiple defensive advatages. Fighter should be the single target damage expert.
My opinion: 1. Push the variable damage types from the 1st level Pact of the Blade Invocation to the 5th level Thirsting Blade or the 9th level Lifedrinker. That way PotB won't be as front heavy. 2. Change the 1d6 variable from Lifedrinker to match the weapon damage. 3. Drop the 3rd attack all together. Not even half-casters get a 3rd attack, why should a full-caster get it?
Life drinker has always done a different damage type than the weapon, it’s necrotic in base 5e. Variable damage types are really not that beneficial, I’m not sure why people are making a big deal about it. Thirsting blade definitely needs to be nerfed though, a 3rd attack should be much later than 11th level
@@josephwilliams5292 Putting the variable damage on the 5th level PotB option would put it on par with the damage variable choices of the 5th level option for Pact of the Chain.
@@Battleguild ah, thats a fair parallel to draw then. It’s not like it will be missed at level 1 anyways, that kind of thing is very situational unless you’re facing like a black pudding or something with resistance to nonmagical damage
I don't understand how things like this make it into the playtest in the first place. They talk about having internal tests, but this not only can't have been tested even once, it can't have been read by anybody but whoever wrote it as a first draft.
This assumes they are using the same metrics, the same type of testing and have the same information we do. We *know* the later isn't true, since we're working only with the released material, and they both know and are making content we just don't have. Like there might be monster reworks or magic items that dampen warlocks over fighters, or boost the fighters much higher. As for the metrics, we're using math. Its possible they're using like a campaign benchmark instead making it more feels good than math good. Like we have this scenario, this is the level players should be for it and this is how many rounds it should roughly take. Or they have a series of scenerios where this is one the class should do well, and this is one where they shouldn't do as well, and if those conditions work out, they pass the metric. Its very easy for a different set of metrics to produce a vastly different end result. Now, that doesn't mean their metrics aren't flawed, and given play and DM style also plays a factor...
I dont think they had lots of internal tests. I Think that they have some tests. And I think that they dont have otimizers players in the test sessions. Otimizers look for every gap to achieve more and more for the options and rules. I really wish that all warlocks pacts was improved. And wish more... Pact Magic still a problem to me. I wish that instead of that weird class feature to recover some spells slots that, the warlock spell slots are linked with the proficiency bonus. This change will make warlocks start with the same spells per day that other full spellcasters. In Multiclass cases, the character will get more spell slots, but will not improve the caster level or get high level spells. Even if the spell slots are'nt linked to the proficience bonus, they could use the same numbers for the class progression. Ex: 1st - 2 spells; 5th - 3 spells, 9th - 4 spells, 13th - 5 spells, 17th - 6 spells
There is one excuse that consistently explains a lot of the headache inducing wtf of warlock and refusal to do something about short rest spam. Someone high up is forced to participate in those playtest by actually playing d&d and warlock is their "my guy", just apply standard "dating the gm/gm's girlfriend" type stuff and adjust for "employing the gm"
I feel like they just wanted to "hype" the warlock up and get a higher score by making it OP. I'm nearly 100% certain the devs KNEW that a 3rd attack was OP and that it would be reverted. They just wanted to create more buzz.
I think they sometimes intentionally test multiple features at the same time to gather popularity data to guide which parts they tone down afterward. Other times, I think they don't realize how good something is because the way they test doesn't uncover it. I also like to think that sometimes they nerd out as power gamers and live their overpowered dreams!
I love the new Warlock :D In terms of balance, it would be best to remove the third attack so Warlocks can benefit from all those juicy invocations and pacts (or even delay it for later levels).
At first glance, losing the 3rd attack takes away about 20dpr, which would still put the Warlock around the same place as the Paladin, which is still incredibly good, considering that you'll have much higher level spell slots.
Yeah, actually. • Thirsting blade (invocation) at 5th. • Lifedrinker (invocation) at 9th. • Devouring blade (invocation) at 13th. • ??? (invocation) at 17th. If you rejigged the invocation levels, maybe all the pact boons could work like this.
Can always tell if Chris found something dubious by the tone of the "Hey" in the opening. One issue I have is with Great Weapon Master since you don't actually have proficiency with a martial weapon (Pact of the Blade only gives proficiency with one specific weapon, not all weapons of that type). You'd need a dip or a half feat. However, even without that (and even without Eldritch Smite), the sample warlock is still hanging out with the barbarian on the chart. Thanks for the spot on analysis illuminating how the parts fit together. The question for balance, is it the mechanics or the numbers. The third attack is either too much or the riders really need trimming (both would probably be too much). Also for fun, use your 6th level slot for summon fiend and see the numbers balloon. Cheers!
Interesting interaction there. The original hex warrior limited the CHA attack stat to non two handed weapons but you could still get the pact of the blade later to bypass the restriction. Removing a once per turn proficiency bonus amount of damage isn't what is breaking the upper limits of the damage calculations though. As you say its the combination of third attack and the on hit riders that a warlock can select that increases damage faster than other classes can at the level 13 mark.
@@ASUbuckaroo15 It's actually factoring Spirit Shroud into the damage calcs that's doing it. It's accounting for even more damage than that 3rd attack is. Without it, dpr for the greatsword bladelock is only 43.59 using the same calculation process as the rest on the chart in the video. For comparison, keeping Spirit Shroud and ditching the 3rd attack results in a dpr of 44.96. Keeping everything else the same but replacing Spirit Shroud with Hex results in a dpr of 55.1, which is high, but still lower than the Berserker Barbarian. Which is a good thing considering this entire discussion is about a barbarian who chose the warlock class instead for mechanical reasons. In short, it's an outlier spell that's the main issue at play. Turns out doing roughly Fireball damage every round for free with no saves is a bit much. Or maybe it's the entire concept of a martial that gets to cast spells to buff themselves. Who knows. Point is, it's not the extra attack that's actually doing it. It's not even lifedrinker or eldritch smite. It's all of these in combination with a spell that seems weaker on paper than it actually is when you do the math.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I was making the point to OC that the nuanced language of the GWM feat prerequisite might not allow for a pact of the blade warlock to pick it up, but limiting that that for the bladelock wouldn't fix the disparity of its damage output compared to other martials. Weapon type and a once per turn 2-6 damage increase doesn't make a large enough difference to matter so if a warlock wanted to get it and could only use its features while conjuring/bonded to a heavy weapon then I'm cool with that. I agree with you that spirit shroud makes up a big portion of the damage here but I dont think it is a poorly designed spell. Eldritch knights, paladins, and warlocks have been able to cast it before UA7. And Hexblades could do this with Polearm master before the UA so its not some "new thing". It's the combination of reliably upcasting this spell AND getting another attack with minimal investment that pushes the bladelock past the other classes. I think your math actually makes the point that the third attack is what is too good. With it the bladelock is on par with other martials at the cost of an invocation. Add a low level hex spell and they are almost as good as a berserker barbarian. All while having the flexibility to other spells and invocations. I rather like the idea that a bladelock would need to cast a very powerful spell to match or come close to the damage of a dedicated martial but not having the same discipline/training/ability as a fighter who has dedicated themselves to attacking. That's kinda the main theme of the class right? You're not a fighter you rely on the power of your patron to do fighter things.
Devotion Paladins in shambles as half their 1 minute Channel Divinity: Sacred Weapon feature changing the weapon's damage type is just a perma buff for a Pact of the Blade Warlock. Hell, Warlock even got to keep the better no-fail Eldritch Smite in this UA.
The lvl 11 scaling option should be the ability to replace an attack with a cantrip. Maybe make that its own 11th level invitation or something, I love the replace with a cantrip mechanic and I'd like to see more classes have access to it
Only problem with the "replace one attack with a cantrip" mechanic with warlock is that they have eldritch blast as an option unlike Eldritch Knights and Bladesingers.
Extra Extra attack on something that isn't a fighter feels almost sacrilegious. Can you imagine the horror of an oathbreaker paladin with this multiclass?
It seems like you're better off sticking to Warlock. Buffing every fiend or undead you run into, while having weaker spellcasting, seems just worthless for plate armor and an aura of protection.
Note, Pact of the blade gives you proficiency with the pact weapon when you summon it. It does NOT give you proficiency with martial weapons for the purpose of grabbing the weapon feats. So you can not have any of the weapon feats as part of this warlock, great weapon master included. Also Pact of the blade specifies MELEE weapon. As a Bonus Action, you can trace arcane sigils in the air to conjure a pact weapon in your hand-a Simple or Martial MELEE weapon of your choice with which you bond-or create a bond with a magic weapon you touch
"or create a bond with a magic weapon you touch" is a separate clause. That's why Chris talks about finding a (barely) magical longbow. You can bond with any magic weapon, or you can conjure any melee weapon.
@@LuxTheSlav I said "feels" and "probably" I am going to put it in the survey so they know if it was unintended or not. Feels unintended on hexblade too considering there is an entire invocation for ranged attacks. Just because unintended gets through and they go ya that is how it works doesn't mean it wasn't unintended. Just look at the invisibility rules for that, ya it works that you still get advantage even if they can see you, but they are admitting now that while the rule is written that way, it was a mess up on their end.
Chris, seeing Blade pact in the last playtest: "This is underwhelming, they don't even get Weapon Mastery." Chris, seeing Blade pact in this playtest: "Wow, ridiculous that Bladelocks can just get whatever Mastery it wants." I agree that Bladelocks have a bit too much going on but a few counterpoints (beyond some math issues with Eldritch Smites in DPR calcs others have mentioned): 1) They removed Medium Armor and Shield proficiencies out of the gate for warlock, meaning trying to wade into melee with a d8 Hit Die in leather is risky to say the least. So you have spend either a feat or invocation just to get some degree of early defense back, on top of already having to be much more MAD to keep up with the new Heavy property rules. 2) As flimsy as it is, the ranged weapon build is dependent on your DM providing a magic bow for you to bond with; otherwise you are locked into only melee weapons with the Blade pact. Plus this is working off of feats from multiple playtests ago when the "meta" of the UAs has shifted drastically, and that bonus damage from GWM being 100% an oversight imo not specifying melee weapons when the cheese of combining Sharpshooter and GWM with a longbow/heavy crossbow exists with those feats. I wouldn't be shocked if the next UA has updated feats. And 3) This is all under the basis of a level 13 character...and going by your videos rating/ranking each subclass but cutting them off after a certain level and weighing higher level abilities less, reaching this pinnacle after all of this heavy investment in feats and invocations at a level the majority of players/campaigns don't reach....it's worth talking about, but this much, and when the caster-martial divide is still firmly a thing and this just being a not-so-new wrinkle? By that level, casters are already invalidating DPR with what they offer to combat and non-combat scenarios. I think there are aspects to the Blade pact that are problematic, sure, but only when compared to martial classes. I think Bladelocks can be toned back but shouldn't be gutted and, if anything, it should just be an indicator that martial classes can and should receive more buffs.
I agree that the new Pact of the Blade is superior to the current Hexblade, within the context of going straight Warlock. I do think dipping Warlock for CHA-based attacks is much less attractive now, which is a big win. I’d like to see them tone down EB within multiclassing. I think the real issue is that Fighters, Barbarians, Monks, and Rogues need to be stronger, and DMs should structure their adventuring days so that casters aren’t getting as many long rests. I will say, I’m saddened to see Warlocks returning to Pact Magic. I liked the 2/3rds caster progression.
I think Spirit Shroud + Eldritch Blast build not mentioned here is worth considering. You can run the standard EB build most of the time and switch Hex for Spirit Shroud when you want to trade safety for intense damage. EB gets way more hits than a bladelock normally would, at level 17, an upcast SS would deal 9*4 = 36 average damage per turn before accuracy considerations, doubled on a crit. Also worth considering is the Sorceror/Fighter multiclass to do that twice in one turn.
Agreed, they should tune it down, but not overly so, I would chuck the warlocks access to masteries, cause he should be using the weapon in an unnatural way and not be "skilled" They should pick 1 extra damage type that they can elect to do, when they get thirsting blade, which should probably just give THP instead of being able to heal. I really like the third attack, but feel it belongs to the ranger over warlock so maybe have it to be an extra investment? or be at level 12 or 13?
interesting. I did not run the numbers myelf, but that heavy 13 str looked debilitating that I had an emotional reaction to it. I personally have never played at a table where point buy was allowed, it was either standard array or just rolling (and then complianing about characters being strong), so I asumed standard array, and with it an inability to reliably achieve 13 str while retaining 14 dex and 14 con. I appologize for my outburst, and I thank you for doing the math
It would definitely be a harder build with standard array. I think in that case I would dump strength and use a non-heavy weapon - switch GWM for Charger for the bonus damage.
"Oh, boy, here I come playing the best holy smiting machine I can." "What class of paladin?" "No, Celestial Warlock." Oh yeah, they saw that people were saying bladelock was underpowered compared to EB spam and definitely went in the other direction entirely.
I am 110% behind this, I always hated that I could not do a celestial (or infernal, or fae, or GOO) bladelock. I always thought Celestial could be an interesting Paladin-style gish if only the "use your CHA to hit/damage" wasn't locked behind another patron entirely.
@@jspangler5003 Yeah, it's great. Now hopefully they replace Flame Strike with Summon Celestial on the spell list. Maybe buff the level 6 ability to work on any roll of Fire or Radiant damage once per turn. After they nerf Bladelock a little anyway.
@@ZeoffArcaneOfficial My DM let me take Summon Celestial for my Celestial Warlock in a Curse of Strahd game... it was both thematic and incredibly useful.
Food for thought. Subtract just Spirit Shroud from your math and your greatsword bladelock ends up at 43.59 damage per round. Spirit Shroud does not specify melee attacks, so Eldritch Blast on its own should trigger the damage as well. If you were to take just a basic 20 charisma warlock using eldritch blast and agonizing blast, with Spirit Shroud, it comes out to 1d10+5, plus 2d8 spirit shroud for 19.5 damage per hit. 60% chance to hit means 11.7 damage per attack, criticals are a 5% chance to add 1d10+2d8 damage, or 0.73 for a total of 12.43 damage per attack expected, 3 times per round for a dpr of 37.29. You'll notice that's significantly above the baseline you calculated with a warlock spamming eldritch blast, despite it just being a warlock spamming eldritch blast.
You've added the Smite Crit damage to every attack, spending on spell slot for a concentration spell only leaves 2 spell slots to use on crits. So the higher damage on crits can only be used twice total, not every round.
For melee attacks: If you crit on your first or second attack and use eldritch smite and the enemy is huge or smaller, they are knocked prone and you would have advantage on your subsequent hits. So that would further up the damage per turn of the melee bladelock
Breaking out the numbers on the crit: Eldritch Smite damage with a L5 spell slot: 6d8 (average 27). This gets doubled to 54 for the smite. With a further 2d6 for the base weapon, 2d8 for the spirit shroud, and 1d6 for the Lifedrinker - a further 19.5. So yes, saving a fifth level slot to go crit fishing increases your damage per attack by 2.52 (assuming you don't run out), making it slightly more powerful than hex - but no concentration and not under control. And Spirit Shroud's increase of 5.4 damage per attack (more than twice as strong as hex) is pretty powerful.
I also Hope so, but I'm afraid charisma based attacks Is the party that causes the most problem overall, maybe if It required an extra invocation for that part It could still be in
I’d be ok with them giving (for an additional invocation cost) the ability to use a cantrip and make an attack as part of the attack action like they’re doing with eldritch knight tbh.
Maybe two changes in pact of the blade: First, get rid of the charisma modifier replacing dexterity/strength in pact of the blade. That would encourage to invest in one of the two physical attributes. Second, remove the weapon mastery. If you want such a strong add on, you should multiclass in a martial class. The simple fact of being able to conjure a weapon as a bonus action and replace it's damage by necrotic, psychic or radiant is already hell of a feature. It is also a good base for further improvements through invocations later on. The three attack feature from thirsting blade is still less powerful than the four beams from eldritch blast at level 17.
@@grosdawadu18With how ability scores and their progressions work in 5e, even with OneD&D making them all into half feats at level 4, I don't think it's fair to expect Strength based weaponry on a light armor class. They would need medium armor, and for medium armors to have 12 DEX variants instead of 14 DEX limits. Because 4 pts into a score is just a huge ask, on top of STR and CON and CHA (and God forbid you don't want to be brain dead too).
@@davidecolucci6260don’t kill the charisma attack. As much as people moan and groan about it on paladins, warlocks absolutely need it if they ever want to use heavy melee weapons and not be gimped by stats. Forcing something to be too MAD is NEVER a good balancing decision. Getting rid of the 3rd attack should frankly be plenty. If anything give ALL martial classes that third attack. Fighters shouldn’t be defined purely on that one feature, they should be using maneuvers as a baseline anyway! Instead give warlocks the bladesinger version of extra attack so the gish can cast spells while going ham. Maybe even make it an invocation and at level 11-15 allow the casting of a leveled spell, maybe with a spell level restriction. Also give the life drinker damage to barbarians instead of brutal critical and have it scale!
They should probably give a different invocation instead of 3 attacks. Maybe invocations... When you kill with this pact weapon regain spell slot. When you hit an enemy with pact weapon apply Hex no concentration until turn. Etc
The wording on Agonizing Blast is such that it would appear that you would add your CHA modifier to both the main roll and rider roll for Booming Blade/Green-Flame Blade starting at level 5. Using a Pike (push mastery) for BB or Greataxe (Cleave) for GFB leads to some insanity. But you have to pick one because Agonizing can't be chosen more than once.
Blast... I hate to admit it, but the math proves it. The next question is: what is the most appropriate nerf? Reducing the attacks back down to 2? Making the bond should be more than a bonus action, but summoning the weapon should be just a bonus action.
I have nothing to add about the main part of the video but one of your patrons is named Kvothe, after the main character of "The Name of the Wind". Its pronounced almost like "quoth". Kuv-oath. I doubt that person actually cares but thought it might be worth pointing out.
Yeah maybe its the 3rd attack that pushes them over the edge. But without the 3rd attack maybe the scaling of going blade vs EB dont align at lvl 11, which is why i think the lifedrinker at 11 is good idea from you. Just wondering if it would be okay to then for lifedrinker to work on both hits. Also do you think its RAI for you to be able to bound with a magical bow or maybe it is an oversight? The edge EB could have over pact of the blade is the range.
2 attacks drops them to low 40ish if you swap the build around to find a bonus action attack. It starts to look far less impressive giving the concentration usage. Monk didn't push this build to the most he could get out of it though, as it currently exist.
Instead of giving a third attack, which just causes way too many problems, it would be interesting if Thirsting Blade, on top of granting extra attack, also cribbed a bit from the Giant Barbarian and gave the Pact Weapon the Thrown property (maybe also increasing the range if the weapon already has the Thrown property) and making it automatically return to the Warlock's hand when they throw it. The Pact Weapon returning to the Warlock's hand when they throw it was part of base Pact of the Blade in Playtest 5, which I thought was the most fun part of the Pact due to the types of builds it opened up (especially taking Mastery into account), but they completely removed it from this playtest.
Fair enough. But a player puts in a heavy investment of at least 3 invocations out of 10 total, to achieve the highest result. The Warlock was high up in it's in single target, range damage, with Edritch Blast, Hex spell, and Agonizing Blast innvocation combo. So having them deal the best melee damage, to a single target, using magical enhancements tracks with their role. Especially, since their not flings a lot of spells around in encounters. When compared to the Fighter, for example, the new Bladelock is still lacks in built in staying power. And has to invest more to get a decent AC, and hit point total. So taking the Armor of Shadows and Fiendish Vigor invocations, the tough feat (or armor proficiencies feats instead of Armor of Shadows) all become attractive choices. For a Bladelock that wants to tank better. As does investing more in Constitution, if possible. So you're not getting this extra attack power for free. Also, players now have another mechanical reason, in addition to an RP reasons or personal preference reasons, to stick wiith the Warlock to at least level 11. Given that the Thirsting Blade invocation gives you a third attack at level 11, which I think was a very good idea. So what they did with the new Blacklock, is give a little more mechanical benefit for player who stick with the Warlock class to level at least level 11. One last thing is, since the pact boons are now invocations . The Pact of the Tome and Pact of the Chain, do not need to be equal the power with the Pact of the Blade.
At the very least, the Feat Invocation needs to be either deleted or come with some serous restrictions. Blade Pact should also be limited to melee weapons. I'd even be fine with them straight up removing lifedrinker entirely, since it was originally meant to provide a damage boost to a class that couldn't really invest all of its ASIs into strength or dexterity, which isn't a problem anymore now that you can use Charisma. Thirsting Blade also needs to be reverted to its original state; more than 2 attacks per action is a Fighter/Monk thing, not something a spell caster should be getting access to.
Split up additional attack as an additional high level invocation. Mastery property cannot be accessible with PotB. Needs to be either the WM feat or as an additional invocation, or something else creative. We need to leave some space for full martials...
I 100% agree but at the same time I don't want to lose the ability to change weapons every turn and using a new weapon mastery. It is just too cool and thematic. Hopefully a suitable compromise can be reached.
For me it's the opposite- Your blade is a literal gift from your patron. Are they really going to be hovering over your shoulder switching them out every so often because you changed your mind? IMO blade pact warlocks should be the least flexible class in the game, in terms of their weapon of choice. If your pact weapon is a glaive, and you find a really cool rapier, tough luck. Switching between weapons as the situation demands it or as magic items become available should be primarily a Fighter thing, not yet another thing that spellcasters get to be better at than martials.
Changing weapons on the fly may be fine, but I don't think they need weapon mastery on top of that. I'm not even convinced it is that thematically appropriate; many patrons are magical beings, but not that many of them are also known to be master weapon users. If a bladelock must get weapon mastery, I'd say give it to Hexblades only (which would make the most sense thematically and for balance).
Maybe give warlocks fighting style instead weapon master. Then at level 11 instead of the extra attack give them weapon mastery and say you can exchange mastery when you change your weapon( if to broken once per long rest). Also I believe the pact of the blade is also a gift from you patron but real cool gift. Like you can role play so you change weapons once an encounter( kinda like kite from hunter x hunter). Or the weapon manifests its shape from your inner desire. Maybe your desire is to kill/ stop an enemy who is running away so the weapon manifest itself as a bow. Plus I think you can still switch weapons efficiently as a fighters. Warlocks just do it through magic.
@@bennettpalmer1741 Except you are forming a pact with an entity, not with a blade. Your patron cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows.
Reasonable challenges I've seen to this build: 1) Pact of Blade Warlock does not qualify for GWM, due to lack of actual proficiency in a martial weapon. The only access is a temporary one granted by bonding a weapon, but it's pretty iffy to claim a temporary one due to magic is an actual proficiency enough to select the feat at gaining the level. 2) It's unreasonable to assume Shroud is up 100% of the time and that should be reduced by some meaningful percentage to account for failing a concentration save, and 3) you likely don't have a spell for every possible crit and the calculation should assume three battles between short rests with the odds of a crit every two battles meaning the odds a spell slot will be available should be reduced by about 1/3 or so. -Mistwell
Hexblade bladelocks are my favorite way to play dnd in general, but. That third attack is wild, although PAM could give a third you're exchanging an ASI and your bonus action, especially considering a lot of subclasses use the bonus action that's freed up. GOO can give advantage on your attacks, celestial can heal, and the archfey can teleport
I actually said this somewhere else, but the Warlock is just a martial class at this point. It doesn't have enough spell slots to even be a casting class. I think there are literally spell casting subclasses in the martial classes that can cast more spells in a day than the poor Warlock with his potentially 2 spells per day.
I tested how long Spirit Shround would last in battle. Results are at bottom. I took my 12th level Bladelock and made a copy and had them fight each other using FGU. They are using a Longsword with Lifedrinker and Spirit Shroud for a Damage Total of 1d8, 1d6, 2d8 +5. Each has a Con of 18 and so both make Concentration Checks at +4 with Advantage. Both have Breastplate armor for an AC of 16. No shield so that they can cast in melee if need be. Each take three attacks per turn. I reset the battles once someone loses Spirit Shroud. First Test. On 2nd attack roll of the battle, Warlock 1 rolls a crit and Warlock 2 takes 41 damage and fails concentration by rolling a 17 vs a 20 Save DC. Spirit Shroud is gone. Second Test. Two Nat 1s and a Nat 3. Three misses. Warlock 2’s turn. Miss and then a Crit. 32 damage and Warlock 1 rolls a 20 on Concentration and Saves vs a SAVE DC of 16. The third attack is a hit and Warlock 1 rolls a 1 and a 5 on the Save and so at Advantage a total of a 9 vs a SAVE DC of 10. Warlock 1 loses Concentration. Spirit Shroud is gone. Third Test. Round 1. Warlock 1 a miss, miss, hit. Warlock 2 barely makes the SAVE DC of 13 by rolling a 13. Warlock 2 hit, miss, hit. All saves for Concentration against these hits are successful. Round 2. Warlock 1 hit, miss, hit. Warlock 2 barely makes first hit’s save DC of 10 by rolling an 11 and barely makes the third attack’s save DC by one point. Warlock 2 Nat 1 miss, hit, Critical Hit. Warlock 1 takes 42 damage on the Crit and rolls a 15 Concentration Save vs a SAVE DC of 21. Concentration is lost and no more Spirit Shroud. This is just a 1v1 battle. Imagine being hit by multiple opponents in a round. Do not take a Concentration Spell and think that it is going to be part of a character’s meat-and-potatoes damage.
MAN, I hope this doesn't get super nerfed. Warlock was one of my favorite classes, but being confined to hexblade in order to Gish was kind of annoying. Now i can pick any subclass AND Gish it up. We can tone down the damage a bit, but the flexibility available here is AMAZING! Full main character syndrome
I get that Mearls was all about that _elegance in design_ for 5e's design, but the principle of always adding your mod to both your attack rolls and your damage just does wonders (sic) for the game's balance. A little MADness could definitely help balance more than hurt it.
If this damage was done by a specific martial class at least we'd be able to say "well at least they lack spells and overall utility", man it's insane. I mean we all know it isn't all about damage charts, but this doesn't even fit on it. Now you could argue the pro about this is that it means EB with its invocations isn't the go-to thing anymore for warlocks. With that said, what do YOU think would be the fix to this, while keeping all the fun goodies Warlock seems to get now? Afterall if it's a damage issue, then it should be solvable by toning down some numbers right...? Removing that third attack seems like a start to me.
Have you done the calculation with the new eldritch knight? since they can be somewhat similar, having spellcasting and even more feats picking. i think that would be a fair point of comparison. Regarless i don't think it's that bad having that one option which requires a fair bit of investment and the clear lack of heavy armor, hell you need a feat to get that medium armor prof. that is a just good gish, that's something we have always been looking for.
Pretty funny that all of this is before considering resistances too. And movement, as you mention later. Even without the level 11 Extra, Extra Attack I think it's still realistically just superior to other martials as it currently exists. Moving Lifedrinker back up might help a bit for most campaigns, though it's also not like you're sacrificing your casting in any real way for this build either. Still have plenty of Invocations left, so really all you're losing over a pure caster focus is some CON but not a huge amount of it. Compared to other melee, I'm not really sure I'd even call it more fragile due to the healing--its effective health pool should be higher, depending on the exact nature of the encounters I guess. Though back up to 11, it also might not exist for long enough to factor so there would be that at least with other defensive casts eating up damage earlier by taking slots. I think a lot of the trouble I've always had with Warlock is Pact Magic though. Did they give it extra, extra attack in a re-work and then forget they were going back to Pact Magic too?
This warlock build looks to be a bit of a glass cannon and would probably lose its spirit shroud often, so I would expect it to be toward the higher end of the damage spectrum. If the warlock switched to a more defensive setup with sword & board and shadow of moil, I'd expect them to land toward the lower end of the damage spectrum. I'm not claiming that the numbers are in the right place right now, but I'm wary of overreacting to where they are right now (the gap between this warlock build and the berserker is about the same as the gap between the berserker and the beastmaster, and the bow build is right next to the assassin rogue build). For example, just removing the third attack would drop this build to somewhere between the devotion paladin and the assassin rogue while being the riskiest build on the chart.
Instead of going with the crit route, I decided to assume 3 encounters each 3 rounds and 1 short rest and 1 magical cunning recharge. While I assume I probably messed up somewhere, I did get similar results, 48.44 for the Longbow build and 64.84-68.84 for the Greatsword. I also looked at just barebones longbow vs EB at 13th and got 18.4 for EB at 13th lvl and 23.4 for Longbow and at 17th EB pulls ahead at 25.2 vs 23.4. (I used the same invocations as before but no feats, spells, etc). Greatsword was 33.9 due to graze giving it the boost. So what I found was that smite adds about 14.04 to dpr from 11-16th and spirit shroud accounts for about 16 dpr. If spirit shroud was nerfed or removed from the warlock list, It would fit in between beast master and berserker (if kept at hex damage but keep other benefits of spirit shroud) . I still want to look at a few different options and at other classes. The extra attack does help bring the base pact of the blade in line with Eb which I think is good but there are a lot of things that can be added that push it into OP territory.
I think you can make this even better by considering the effects of Advantage. Now that you can have multiple Pacts, you can access a Familiar to Help you get that through either Chain or Tome, and the build here has Invocations to spare, so why not? Using your accuracy targets and melee damage, I think this would look something like: 84% x 24.5 = 20.58 (hit) 16% x 5 = 0.8 (miss) 9.75% x 73.5 = 7.17 (crit) Totaling 28.55 average damage on your first attack every round, which pushes the total DPR to around 74.
This is hard because I love playing Bladelock so much. But it kind of seems like it's borrowing every other melee classes' means of raising damage. Hex=Hunters Mark, Fighter's extra extra attack, and Paladins Site and Improved Divine Smite. I really wish I could keep this OP puppy.
Hadn't noticed until now that Great Weapon Master works with Longbows. Interestingly, none of the Seige Weapons are considered Heavy Weapons, meaning that your Longbow is a Great Weapon but not a Ballista. That's a weird subset of rules that really needs some re-examining (and given how long we have left of playtesting, I'm pretty certain isn't going to get changed).
imagine somehow getting three attacks with a ballista a round! Tiny servants loading and a mule or two to drag it around...oh wait, you can summon it! Instant trebuchet, just add warlock.
I think the safest way to keep this would be to tone down thirsting blade with the second extra attack and the changing damage, however, I suppose it is done so you can have the damage of all the subclasses they did, but if that was the case, they should've made the damage be fixed to the patron chosen (psychic for the archfey and the great old one, necrotic for the fiend and the undead, radiant for celestial, cold for the fathomless, depends on the genie for that one and so on). I just hope they keep the whole charisma for attack rolls with weapon, so the rest of pact of the blade warlock don't need a subclass like the hexblade to be good
Yeah I’m convinced. Skip the 2nd extra attack and just give us old lifedrinker back at 11th level. Though gods do I wish we could just forget the old spells like spirit shroud, but we’re bAcKwArDs CoMpAtIbLe.
Thirsting Blade's 11th level portion really should've be at least a second invocation. I think that's really the thing, invocation taxes need to be heavier for the Warlock (or at least the Bladelock). That includes tying Eldritch Blast to an invocation. That includes hex as an invocation as this spell feels better as a cantrip instead of a leveled spell, because of the re-targeting. That includes breaking up a lot of the Bladelock's front-loaded features including the charisma as your weapon attack modifier, thirsting blade's 11th level add-on, that includes the weapon mastery portion, etc. I also feel like they were right to rework Mystical Arcanum they just did it the wrong way (imo it should not be an optional feature).
This was with old warlock. It doesn’t need a buff. Pètravùm, bearer of Gold and Stardust Lvl 15 Obsidian Dragonborn(actually Gold dragonborn but reflavoring cause fun) +2 to strength +1 to charisma Level 15 hexblade warlock Strength: 10+2 (+1) Constitution: 15 (+3) Dexterity: 13 (+2) Charisma: 19+1 (+5) Intelligence: 15 (+4) Wisdom: 8 (-1) Ac: 19 Hp: 131 Gear Plate Mail +1 Greatsword +2 (pact weapon so always proficient) 2 health potions Dungeoneers pack Boon: Pact of the blade Invocations : 7 Relentless hex Improved pact weapon Eldritch smite Devils sight One With Shadows Shroud of Shadow Thirsting blade Four cantrips Booming blade Eldritch blast (Golden) Green Flame Blade Blade ward 12 spells Staggering Smite (4th level) Banishing Smite (5th level) Hex (1st level) Blur (2nd level) Hold Monster(5th level) Counterspell (3rd level) Dimension Door (4th level) Cloud of Daggers (2nd level) Earth bind (2nd level) Wall of light (5th level) Chaos Bolt (1st level) Three 5th level spell slots Combat Method Round 1 Hex blades curse the first round (bonus action) Banishing smite (action, concentration) If needed reaction walk so you are within 30ft of a pursuer. Try to stay to the back of the battlefield at the beginning of combat. Round 2 Provided that you are within 30 ft, blink to the target (preferrably the biggest most menacing target, using relentless hex) Then use booming blade(an attack is part of the action), if it hits also use Eldritch smite invocation, dealing 2d6(greatsword)+3d8(Booming Blade)+5d8(Eldritch Smite)+5d10(Banishing Smite) +5(proficiency)+5(charisma)+2( magic weapon)+ 5x4(hex blades curse, the bonus for damage rolls applies to all of those individually according to the book,”per damage roll” so as a set of die or a singular die, whether dagger, greatsword or fireball)+1 (Hexblade) Totaling 103.5 average damage Average with crit chance: 113.85 And a second attack, adding 22 damage Bringing the true total to 135.85 avg damage Oh yeah, you can attack twice per turn, one with booming blade and stuff one without, this round blows all your resources though, so be wary. After the nova round get to a nearby ally(if called for) and proceed to beat the everloving crap out of whatever creature remains. Normal attack dpr Booming blade, greatsword +hex curse 3d8+2d6+5+10+3= 38.5 avg damage Second attack 2d6(7) +5+5+3=20 Total avg: 58.5 Total avg with crit chance: 64.35 Feats Heavy Armor Master Tough ASI: +1 to dex and Int
You use all your resources in the two rounds on one enemy You can't use Extra Attack with Booming Blade, it has been explained many times already and people still don't get it. You can't add Hex to each roll separately (also nowhere words ”per damage roll” are used) Nice and all. If you ignore the rules sure you can get huge numbers with everything.
Chris, you should correct some things about this video in the next one. Its fine to present the maximum damage potential. Its not really fun to play that way (using 1 spell and smite on crits only), and the reality won't match the white room's theory math. Primarily, Concentration loss will be an issue to worry about. Smites are great when they happen on a worthwhile target and you have a slot to spend, but I wouldn't count that happening as frequently as once/20 attacks. Feats like Great Weapon Master and PoleArm Master have a requirement of martial weapon proficiency that I don't think warlocks meet. You'd need to use an 18 charisma and drop accuracy by another 5% to account for spending a feat on Weapon Master. Do a dpr line with/without Spirit Shroud, so we all see how much of the heavy lifting that spell is doing... Maybe that spell's scaling is the problem and the notion that a warlock could effectively play while using it full time in every encounter. I don't think Warlocks meet the requirements for feats like Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master. To get those you must be proficient with a martial weapon. The Pact Weapon is a temporary proficiency. If you conjure it as a shortsword for example, its a martial weapon and you're proficient with it. But if you pickup a different shortsword in your other hand, you lack the martial weapon proficiency for Shortsword. So as far as I can tell, you don't have proficiency with a martial weapon and that means to get Great Weapon Master you need to multi-class or get the Weapon Master feat first.; Its a level 4 feat so you can't get it as a background feat or use Lessons of the First Ones invocation. Since Warlocks can't easily do GWM, PAM, or wield 2 Cha weapons as a means to get 3 attacks, WotC thinks they should natively get a 3rd attack in Thirsting Blade. I think level 11 is a little too early for it... its really keeping pace with Eldritch Blast's 4th beam that is the issue, not the 3rd beam. On the other hand if Thirsting Blade 's 3rd attack was removed, by taking a Charisma and Bonus Action compromise, Warlocks could still get 3rd attack from either GWM or PAM. If you consider Hexblade subclass features, there are no pre-requisite barriers to those feats and dual wielding Cha weapons is also possible for them. That is in fact the way that Warlocks who wanted a 3rd attack would get one in the past. No GWM = you lose PB bonus damage per turn and you lose being able to do a Bonus Action attack. So from the start, I think these numbers are little inaccurate. You either have to drop Cha to 18 and acc to 55% or you have to remove the PB damage/turn and Bonus Action attack. Maybe WotC will clarify if the Pact Weapon qualifies as a character having a martial weapon proficiency or not, but it seems really obvious to me that Pact of the Blade gives proficiency and mastery with a Pact Weapon no matter its form, but neither apply to the exact same type of weapon if its not a Pact Weapon. Alternately, you can have GWM or PAM but you have to delay increasing Charisma by 2 feats to do it. At level 12 your Charisma could be 18-19. You'd probably do WarCaster > Weapon Master > Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master for your feats. And that would feel really bad for a lot of levels. I think the numbers are misleading by also suggesting that a Warlock would cast Spirit Shroud every combat as opposed to defensive or control options. Yes, its part of their damage potential and being a Bonus Action spell makes it favorable to still dishing out damage in turn 1. I don't think its likely that a player is going to play without any strategy besides Leroy Jenkins!!!ing into combat and focusing on mass destruction with a spell-augmented weapon. I think that's a recipe for boredom and I think the concentration will inevitably drop and the dpr efficiency of it will disappear. Because you can do it, doesn't mean you always will choose to do it, nor should you. Spirit Shroud is 1/3 of the dpr!!!! Its also misleading to suggest every critical hit will be smote? smitten? and to spread that 12d8 on the hits out of 20 attacks as average damage. Yes it will happen, but not in every combat or even every other combat, and maybe its not worth using on 100% of your crits. So you have combats with a smite and combats without one. And its probably going to be just once every 2-3 combats if you're lucky unless you have a supply of advantage. Crit'ing more though doesn't mean you'll always have a slot you're willing to spend on it, in fact the more you smite the more likely you won't have/want to spend another slot to do it again. Finally, are you going to spend the slot to overkill some weak/half-dead mook that you happen to crit??? You don't control when/where those Nat20's pop up. So that'd be a thing I'd put an asterisk on and calculate expected damage lines with crit smite and without crit smite, and say that your damage would be in between those two lines depending on your luck with crits and your "smightiness". Personally, I'd prioritize Pact of the Blade, Agonizing Blast, Lightly Armored, Thirsting Blade, Pact of the Tome, Lifedrinker, Tough, and maybe Other Worldly Leap for invocations. All that said, I think 3rd attack at 11 is unfair to other classes as long as Lifedrinker exists. Or it can move closer to level 17, where its needed. The reason many attacks works ok for Fighters is that they don't really have much in the way of dice they can stack on per-hit- Maneuvers and cantrip damage, and both are limited to once/turn, well twice/turn for high level EK. And EK could probably get Hex with a feat too, so I'd like to see that dpr calculated next to Warlock. Option 1) I think getting access to PAM or GWM would be the same/better than a 3rd attack because of the feat and bonus action costs involved, that would even the playing field with everyone else who uses one of those feats for a 3rd attack. Either feat would still give melee warlock the 3rd attack/damage edge it needs to match blasting. What I don't like about this option is being steered into using a narrower selection of weapon types; I think that detracts from the flexibility of the pact weapon. Option 2) Otherwise as a 2-attacker without easy access to those feats, Warlock's Lifedrinker could scale its 1d6 up to 3d6 at levels 9/13/17 to keep pace with EB (but the healing would cap at 1 hit die/attack). Doing scaling on Life drinker is also a viable solution to achieve damage parity/slight edge over Eldritch Blast. Option 3) The last alternative, and one I personally like, is to keep Warlocks locked out of PAM & GWM & dual wielding Cha weapons, and take away 3rd attack, then change Lifedrinker to be: When you take the Attack action with your Pact Weapon, you can make a bonus action attack with your Pact Weapon. You can roll 1d8 and add that as additional damage to one attack you make with your Pact Weapon per turn. If you spend 1 hit die, you can also recover the number of hp rolled on the d8, and you may choose after rolling whether or not to do so. At level 17 this extra damage increases to 2d8 and can you can spend up to 2 hit dice to recover the hp rolled on the d8's. Pact Weapon damage types have been a little contentious, but I think just setting Force and 1 sublcass-thematic option would tune that back slightly. Pact Weapon has always been a magic weapon, and nowadays that means a non-physical damage type. Pact Weapon is meant to be a high utility feature, so I applaud the variable weapon mastery part of it. It aggravates Fighters and other martials, but I think that its a Fighter problem, not a Warlock problem. Fighters should be able to assign a number of masteries using the number they can know and the ones that a weapon qualifies for as the only the limiting factors... not be limited to just 2/weapon. It should be easier for them to switch mastery property without switching weapon, because they are the masters of weapons and fighting. Utility is a piece of the equation along with damage and which type of spells to use in fight... when it comes to a Warlock deciding if they should risk going into melee or if they should stay back and blast. At most I would say Pact Weapon mastery issue could be limited by- conjure/bind takes an Action instead of a Bonus Action, or scale/gate Bonus Action switching to a higher Warlock level. Or make them choose a number of masteries at the end of a long rest. Any weapons that have one of those properties, the property will be active when the Pact Weapon is in one of those weapon forms. Non-chosen properties will be inactive when the pact weapon is in one of those weapon forms. This too could start with a smaller number of properties and scale to more with warlock levels within Pact of the Blade's description.
I absolutely understand the concerns, and martials I think definitely need improvement, but... I'm just so distracted by the fact that you could extremely easily zoom out like 1-2 clicks and fit bladelock on that graph. It feels incredibly intentional. Not to mention that it assumes you'll always have a spell slot for smiting when you crit.
When I do the survey I'm going to recommending the Weapon Mastery portion be moved to a separate invocation with a heafty level prerequisite, and give fighters a similar level of versatility for free.
I mean you have to take into consideration the other classes survivability. Paladins in heavy armor and aura of protection, fighters with heavy armor and indomitable, rogues with uncanny dodge and evasion. The other classes do great damage AND have survivability. This blade lock is the definition of a glass cannon, he/she/they aren't going to survive a dragons breath weapon or a beholders gazes.
People are overselling the value of plate on what is the low-Constition Paladin standard, or the +3 or +4 Charisma modifier AoP. Plate Armor and Aura of Protection are pretty poor trade-offs for access to any 9th level spells, or a 3rd melee attack (Paladins get this stuff in their first 6 levels). At the same time, I think Bladelocks should more or less be the standard for damage for the rest of the classes that sit in melee, rather than be nerfed into the ground to punish people for just wanting to swing a sword in a TTRPG.
I knew it felt broke, but darn, I didn't realize just how broke it was. This needs to be trashed in the surveys, as sadly, shortsighted players will talk about how much they love it. I'm increasingly concerned that this design by committee approach has some built in flaws. there are times to give the community what they want, then there are times to realize what the community thinks it wants isn't good for it.
You and me both. Even doomscrolling the comments thread here I see a lot of people who are going "hmmm ok maybe that's a bit much, but I hope they're gentle in their tuning." Like really? 3 attacks, tons of bonus damage, insane crits, insane movmement, insane HP, ranged/melee flexibility, on demand weapon mastery switching, and we haven't even mentioned you're a full caster yet, and you think this is only minorly problematic!? lol The warlock community is weirdly zealous. So I'm worried with this one, haha.
You can't take PAM or GWM on a Warlock because they're not proficient with martial weapons, and if you could take them you'd be stuck with +3 charisma at level 11 because neither feat allows you to increase your charisma score. The only weapon that could benefit the Warlock like this would be the double-bladed scimitar, but that's only 2d4 on your main attack and d4 on your bonus action attack.
instead of heavy weapon i would say doing something like a rapier cuz of the new weapon mastery, with vex, giving you advantage once you hit, you can get more consistent chance to hit, and technically higher chance to crits. its probably not the best dpr option but it seem to be a more rounded option, especially with defensive duelist be a little more tanky and have a little more rounded stats. another thing that is need clarification, warlock doesn't have marital proficiency and the pact of the blade only gives temporary proficiency. i actually dont think you are allow to take great weapon master. its probably not the case and you are allow to take it, however the way its wording is, i would say no.
if it were to nerf this would make pact of the blade give you one extra attack at lv 5, and thirsty blade at level 13 or 15+, not letting you summon whatever weapon you want especially in combat. and either made the decision of having life drinker work only once/round and make it 1d10 or not giving them a third attack at all.... i would go with the latter. especially considering every other class also dont have a third attack. now i think about no i say just keep thirsty blade at level 5, keep it with just one extra attack, but you can summon two weapon with the Nick weapon property, so you can two weapon fight with your cha modifier... but that might be too strong. but it would give you the customization and people like customization.
I think with the Longbow, the best choice is Shadow of Moil for permanent advantage. Especially if you can still take Elven Accuracy as a racial feat, still works with the Charisma attacks.
In BG3 the Worlock Blade pact extra attack stacks with fighter, I thought it was a bug until watching this. Overall I'm excited about this version of the Bladelock, hopefully it will be balanced but I have to admit to loving this as is.
Honestly, the biggest issue is that Warlock's should not be getting 3 weapon attacks per attack action at the same level that Fighters do. If they want to give Warlocks a third extra attack it should be at a later level, personally I probably wouldn't grant it until at least level 15.
Considering Champions are more of a middle of the road subclass option for Fighters, I can definitely see more powerful subclass options overtaking the Warlock but it's still crazy to think that Berserker and Beast Master Ranger are getting overtaken despite those being among the strongest multiclass options Barbarians and Rangers currently have available, especially for how little commitment it takes the Blade Pact to go nuclear. I do like the idea of them having access to a third attack to sorta make up for not being able to use Nick as well since that does give every other melee fighter a free extra attack but thry clearly overdid it.
Not full related, but... About The Idea of a especific terrain feature for The Ranger, and things related, i would like to sugest for The playtest 8: (I really would like to know your opinion, guys) -Expertise: Separate from deft explorer, granting the benefit in two skills as occurs with rogue and bard. Later the Ranger could receives expertise in two other skills, totaling 4 as with other Skill focused classes . -Reason: Expertise is in D&D a certificate of a skill-oriented class. You are not truly an expert without it and guarantee that the Ranger will not falling behind classes supposed to be specialists in another area of activity (Rogue or Bard). -Deft Explorer: Completely redesigned. The Ranger receives this benefit on a number of terrains it has come into contact with, like, up to the amount of half its level (rounded up) + wisdom bonus. In them, the character, and allies who can see him up to 30 feet, do not suffer from difficult terrain arising from natural areas, and the Ranger can use stealth, study and surch actions related to the terrain and its creatures as a bonus action. -Reason: help The party menbers to walk in The terrain without problem is basic, simple and eficient. Above this, When an action can be made as a BA, this means it can be performed twice as many times per round, effectively doubling your chances of success and/or cutting the time to perform a task in half (perfect for representing someone familiar with with an environment). Turning this actions in bonus actions instead of give advantage also ensures that other sources of advantage are not wasted as would happen in the original version. The high amount of known terrain (half the level, rounded up, + wisdom bonus) makes it efficient in most scenarios, but the DM still can put The party in unknown terrains as part of a challenge. -Favored Enemy: The Ranger adds hunters mark to his list of spells known. If you already have it, choose another spell. Additionally, as part of the bonus action used to cast or designate a new Hunters Mark target, the Ranger performs a Study action with the appropriate Skill to identify details about the creature. You will receive advantage if the creature is related to known terrain (Deft Explorer). For every 5 above the Skill CD to identify the creature, hunters mark will be cast 1 level higher. -Reason: extra information about a prey's weaknesses and habits is flavorful, and the upcast represents that the Ranger has intuited more efficient ways of not losing his tracks and even causing more damage in the situation. If the number of uses is low, it is possible for this feature to add one or more (wis bonus) extra uses PS: It would be great if hunters mark became concentration free after a certain casting level, as happens with bestow curse. -Deft Explorer Improvement: the Ranger adds his Wisdom Bonus in Study Actions related to known terrains and their creatures. When on familiar terrain, it adds a wisdom bonus to its initiative and cannot suffer the surprised condition. -Reason: Walter is simply not surprised by anything in Texas, just like Aragorn in Middle Earth 😏🤣. It make really good in know The information about the enviroment and perceive threats in it, a core parte of the class identity. -Natures Veil: The ranger adds Invisibility to his list of spells known. If in known terrain, you can cast Invisibility on yourself as a bonus action and when the spell ends because of an attack or spellcasting, it will still last until the end of your next turn. -Reason: increases versatility since invisibility is something quite useful, as it creates a mechanism related to the environment to add flavor. At this point the Ranger would have, on average, 7 to 10 known terrains. considering the number of spell slots It Have on 14th level, The use as original intended can be quite frequent. If the number of uses is low, it is possible for this feature to add one or more (wis bonus) extra uses. PS: um not an english native, so If something is not so clear or confusing, feel free to ask questions.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something but I think for the longbow calculations you added the smite crit for all 3 attacks when you can only smite once per turn. Also, even if you could smite more than once, you would only have 2- 3 slots remaining after casting hex or spirit shroud.
Yeah I see it now. It just seems weird to still multiple the crit 3 times for a damage that can only be used once per round. However, I did recalculate it by averaging it out over 3 rounds for 3 combats with 1 short rest and 1 minute recharge and the dpr was still similar, about 64-68 dpr. I'm sure I made a mistake somewhere but happy that I cleared it up a bit for myself.
@F5tornado651 yeah people get confused easily by average damage because you're essentially spreading that possible damage over multiple instances where it's possible to happen, but you have to for the calculation to work. It just isn't very intuitive to conceive of who don't work with statistics a lot, especially when it uses a limited resource like Eldritch Smite does.
I'm less concerned about the math (though it is pretty damning), and more about how it feels at the table. Fighter: "Cool, I get 3 attacks at level 11 !" Warlock: "Me too" Wizard: "I get a 6th level spell !" Warlock "Me too, with Mystic Arcanum"
Fighter: And with your laughable eHP you will be half-dead after the first bigger encounter Wizard: And you are still a wizard wannabe with the cringy number of spells per day from the cringy spell list.
Pact of the tome gives a spell slot which might synergize with Magical Cunning? Pact of the Tome and Pact of the Blade have no prerequistes so other classes can pick up at first level too?
@Treantmonk if Thirsting Blade didn’t scale until 15, or possibly required a second invocation (at 15) would that bring the balance in line in your opinion? As stands I feel like a Hexblade at 13 is getting similar benefit to pure weapon damage, though it is taking their subclass to do so, except minus one attack (though they do benefit additionally from Hexblade’s curse). Lifedrinker lacks healing, but obviously Cha to damage is better than 1d6, and I feel that 9 is late enough. Not to give you more work, but I’d really like to see a level by level damage comparison like you have for other “martials”
You could take archery fighting style as a feet eventually and make the longbow definitely outpace Eldridge blast, especially if it's a +1 or more magic bow.
Warcaster and +1 stat... is this homebrew....? Same for great weapon master, where you add a stat and freely removed the "melee" criteria which is very explicit in the standard feat.
Due to how many options their are for consistent advantage I'm curious if crit builds are functional again. Especially if elven accuracy is still a valid feat.
Playing a Bladelock now, and even just the PAM bonus action attack with Curse and 5th level Spirit Shroud puts me at higher damage output than our Paladin, Echo Knight and Eldritch Knight. With an extra attack I would be rolling 8d8+3d10+1d4+15 against my cursed target. Absolutely insane.
Ok, Pact of the Blade must specify that you CAN'T create nor bond with ranged weapons. I think the adittional attack must be at lv 13 minimum and maybe be another invocation in order to more investment. Now, that would be nice becuase you can get crazy high damage but you have to invest a lot of resources to do it.
PotB could always bond with a ranged weapon going back to 2014. Prior to the Hexblade it was really the only way to play PotB because they didn't have the armour to survive in melee.
Conveniently, 13 str also sets you up for a paladin MC. If you want. This playtest really put the WAR in WAR-lock.
I played a blade lock in bg3 multiclassed with paladin, it’s quite strong and gives a nice party buff, I could see it translating nicely one dnd.
And you know what else, there is no prerequisite for Pact of the Blade in the playtest. You could go straight Paladin and take eldritch adept at lv 4 to pick this up and still get to Aura of Protection at lv 6.
@@alanmaxwell9105a 1 level warlock dip is still less expensive than a full feat my man, you will not be able to raise your charisma to 18 till level 8 if you use the feat, which hurts aura of protection much more
but also, why play paladin when you can straightclass warlock? with this playtest, warlock is waaaaaay more powerful even without aura of protection
@@nyanbrox5418 its funny how bg3 has made me realize how respeccing whenever you want changes how you approach a build haha. I feel like if I want to play a paladin but I just want that charisma based attack, then I would play warlock level 1. then at level 2 i'd respec into paladin 2 so I could play with smites and feel like a paladin. then level 3 id grab warlock 1 to get the charisma casting. but then level 4 I'd respec into paladin 4 with the eldritch adept feat. Then level 5 and 6 I'd stay with the build. but then level 7 I'd respec again into paladin 6 warlock 1 XD.
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It would be particularly funny if you were playing a table that didn't allow respeccing, and just simply found a way to get your character killed every time you wanted to respec haha.
@@nyanbrox5418
You can always go variant human or custom lineage for the feat at level 1, and being able to focus on charisma as both casting and attack stat means aura will be way stronger than most other straight paladins, and getting aura a level earlier rather than a 1level warlock dip is huge considering the level ranges that most campaigns go through and how leveling slows down the higher you go.
But that's just my two cents. Either way will make a strong effective character.
I'm baffled they had the audacity to give blade warlock extra attack 2 before even ever considering giving it to barbarian since on same playtest....
baffled? why though? to me that seems perfectly in line for WotC's design approach.. they made a full caster the best martial dps for absolutely no reason and directly stole parts of fighter to achieve this. makes perfect sense to me that WotC would do that.
@@_claymore It isn't the 3rd attack thats the problem, its lifedrinker and spirit shroud more than doubling the per hit damage. Lvl 13 cleric can cast a 7th lvl spirit guardian and run around with war cleric and pam with 18 strength and do 80-150 dpr. Is it the best melee?
@@rotm4447 I'd disagree. Without the third attack, the average DPR seems like it drops to something more like 40ish, which seems in line considering the warlock is also a full caster.
@@ilovethelegend Sort of, if you have your full caster concentrating on a bad spell to do mediocre single target melee damage, assuming around 44 dpr, instead of a myriad of infinitely more useful control spells, then its not a full caster anymore. It needs changes certainly though.
Warlock is not a full caster because everyone cried about Pact Magic. Still a decent spell caster though when they cast their two to three spells a day.
WotC will watch this video, realise they made an oversight, and nerf the monk.
God I hate how much I think you've got a point.
And they should. Monks suck, but they don't suck enough, yet.
@@freman007 ?
Just one more attack bro, trust me it'll fix everything. Just one more attack.
But seriously having 3 attacks is cool but it feels weird that amongst all the classes that actually train as martials (excluding fighters), the full caster is the one receiving a third attack.
The problem isn't the extra attack. It's Spirit Shroud accounting for a full 1/3rd of the total expected DPR in the calculations. 65.84 expected damage per round with both spirit shroud and 3 attacks. Drop spirit shroud and it brings the dpr down to 43.59. Drop the extra attack instead and it brings dpr down to 44.96. Spirit Shroud quite literally is more mathematically impactful than the 3rd attack.
@dontmisunderstand6041 I don't think the WARLOCK getting more benefit from a spell than a third attack is that wrong. And I would rather that they drop the third attack as that still puts them in line with every other martial right now.
@@dontmisunderstand6041
Your damage is basically the same either way, so obviously you'd prefer not to have to waste the bonus action, spell slot and concentration (and the risk of losing concentration). Keep in mind that if they weren't relying on Spirit shroud they could have some other concentration spell up that dealt damage, pushing your thirsting blade calculations higher and over the spirit shoud numbers.
The problem is definitely the extra attack.
I Agreed@@dontmisunderstand6041
@@dontmisunderstand6041 It is like using shadow blade. Why nto use eldritch knight with green flame blade and shadow blade then. I asure you that cone out damage any other marial. The blade lock NEED some kind of damage boost in lvl 11 or the EB is gone be just better jsut like 5e (except the hexblade and they are a busted subclass)
I strongly believe for balance reasons that melee should do more damage than ranged, but this might be a bit extreme... also the longbow thing.
For a fighter maybe. But should it do more for the wizards blade singer. Not really, imo. IMO warlock is closer to wizard than fighter in that spectrum. Maybe pact of the blade should do more damage but not by much especially when a invocation bakes in a self heal which counters a large part of the weakness of melee.
@@AhglockA bladesinger should never out damage a fighter, that's horrible balance.
It is a full caster, a wizard, at that. Having the most damage on top of that would be ridiculous balance.
@@Veristelle- I wasn't meaning out damage a fighter. I was saying a blade singers melee should not out damage a blade singers ranged attack as they are full casters not martials. And warlocks are imo in the same boat. And if a warlocks melee out damages their own ranged it should be by a fairly small margin. Pure martials should out damage both of them.
@@Ahglock Okay, with how it was phrased, I misunderstood, my mistake.
Agreed on each front, yeah.
I disagree with the sentiment that a bladesinger should be better at range, at least in terms of cantrips and low cost attack options. The entire point of the subclass is that it is a melee combatant, hence its called a 'blade' -singer rather than an arrowsinger or spelldancer if you just care about the AC bonus. I would almost say there should be more encouraging bladesingers to head into melee but I cannot think of a way to do that that wouldn't make them overtuned.
I love that you did the calculations. When I looked at the damage, I didn't think it was doing too much. (Maybe I watch Colby too much.) When you showed it against the other classes, I thought, well maybe those aren't doing enough. I think one of the things that needs to be done to reduce the divide between martials and casters is to start allowing martials to do more damage. They generally are only doing it to one creature anyway, not AOE. And comparing it against a Cantrip, albeit the most powerful damaging cantrip, I feel like weapons SHOULD do more damage. It's a Cantrip, after all. Not a leveled spell.
well he was also factoring eldrich smite into those calculations which you can only use twice so it's not consistent damge which you can spam.
I'm torn because on one hand the new bladelock is so so cool, but on the other I can agree it very much outshines all other damage dealers. I'm just concerned with how swingy WotC can be when it comes to balancing that they'll just gut it completely and make it worthless and not something cool and powerful but not broken
Exactly. And gutting bladelocks doesn't make the martials less bad. That's the real issue, imo.
There are a few options to fix it. The simplest one is either remove the 3rd attack from Pact of the Blade, or give every martial and half-martial a 3rd attack at level 11.
the beautiful thing about this hobby is that you can just save these documents and use them yourself. Once the idea has been created and shared with you, it exists and you can use it haha. If you are concerned about balanced, then flex your own game designer muscles and take a crack at balancing it yourself.
It is MUCH easier to tweak things that exist to make them work, than to make something completely from scratch yourself. that's a big reason I'm following these play tests imo. I really like a lot of the ideas that they've thrown away. They might have given up on those ideas, but I haven't.
@@agilemind6241 Nah, 3 base attack lvl 13 pam zerker barb would do like 80 dpr.
@@agilemind6241 Fighters already have that, and still fall behind this...
As a warlock main, i absolutely adore this. As a dnd fan, this is probably bad for the game. 😅
As a warlock main, I don't like it as it narrows everyone down to pact of the blade. I prefer more caster warlocks.
@Ahglock that's fair. Gish is my favorite character archetype in all of fantasy so being able to be a bladelock and tomelock at the same time really speaks to me. I'd absolutely be playing a warlock with a blade in one hand and a spellbook in the other regardless of optimization, but I get how it would feel bad as a non-blade loving warlock.
@@AhglockI kind of think we should have the pacts as invocation to split the builds up a bit instead of everyone picking blade by default because if they want something else they can still get it. There should be some commitment.
@@Codarius as a Gish fan too, I'm right there with you. I definitely love how awesome they feel but I also kind of wish everything was balanced in such a way that it doesn't seem like I'm doing it straight for the optimization
I love it. Now fix assassin rogue and gloom stalker ranger.
On one hand, this needs to be toned down to not outshine basically every other melee option. On the other hand, at least there's a reason to use POTB over EB?
I feel that if they brought non-spell casting martials up to this POTB as a damage/ weapon utility baseline, it'd be pretty cool. Imagine a barbarian with a feature like lifedrinker instead of brutal critical.
I'll take anything over brutal critical! Sadly it's a case of the name sounding good so people still want the lousy feature.@@killdozerification
Problem is, now there is no reason to use EB. Both fulfil the same role and have the same or very similar costs (invocations). One is quite superior to the other.
Previously, the mutual exclusivity with other Pacts made it a choice. If they go with this new route they need to differentiate the benefits and costs in some fashion.
Example: Remove the Agonising Blast and Repelling Blast invocation taxes and build them into EB directly (probably modify RB a little, maybe something to do with size and how far they are pushed).
Another example: Make Pact of the Blade be melee only, no magic ranged weapon - this forces a choice between safer but weaker EB or stronger but riskier PotB.
>On the other hand, at least there's a reason to use POTB over EB?
The difference is that now you don't have to sacrifice anything to get POTB. Before, it locked you out on the utility of the Tome and Chain Pacts, so it had to compensate for that with damage, which it didn't, as a Tome or Chain warlock with EB could be as good or better. Now, as Chris pointed out, you're only losing one Invocation slot (compared to what you would've taken for EB build) for much more utility than EB, and can still freely access any other Pact.
The whole context of POTB vs EB has changed. Before, POTB should've been stronger than EB. Now, they should be roughly equal.
Warlock has been my favorite class since 5e came out. (Favorite in 3.5 also, but it was like being a “Monk Lover” in 5e!… great idea, terrible design)
The last play test destroyed me.
I hope you did not just help light the fire of mass-hysteria (6th level spell?) with this video.
What I mean is, I’m sure they plan on tweaking the warlock anyway, and I don’t disagree with it. My all consuming fear is that now, everyone else will start shouting “OMG, MOST POWERFULLY BROKEN THING EVER!!!!!!**”causing WotC to OVER correct them into Monk-dom!
In closing, I wish it were “Warlocks of the Coast”, and everyone turned a blind eye to the fact that wizards are the most powerful class in the game, probably since the first edition. And how do they combat that, you ask? (I know you didn’t!) Let’s just ignore it and keep giving them more and more power!
WIZARDS: Hey, they just gave the druid a good 2nd level healing spell**! Let’s shut the s#ît down, and fast!!
I’m obviously being very cheeky… but the general dread/worry is still there. 🫥
Let's hope it gets nerfed to an appropriate degree, and not into the dust. I don't have a lot of experience with Warlocks. I want to say that the UA Paladin's blend of utility and DPR are a good generalized target for the Warlock, aiming for respectable combat capability mixed with spellcasting.
However, the Warlock presents interesting design challenges. The Warlock has to support a good experience for the Bladelock, the Eldritch Blaster, and even the occasional Warlock who does neither of those.
So, maybe the Paladin could be a reasonable, "ballpark" target for the Bladelock. (Again, I'm not a Warlock guy, so maybe not.) If so, though, they also still have to simultaneously thread the needle on the Eldritch Blaster, and get the right amount of general utility. And they have to do those things without leaving too many abusable synergies.
Maybe I'm making it seem deeper than it really is. 😄 I hope they get it right. I know many love the Warlock; but I'm hoping they can do something with it that apppeals to me. The concept is cool, but I just can't get into the mechanics. (Genie Pact is the only one that's ever intrigued me.)
Warlock doesn't have proficiency with martial weapons, so it can't use Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master.
@@freman007 they can if they take pact of the Blade
@@freman007 The Pact of the Blade grants proficiency with your bonded weapon. You bond with a halberd or glaive. Now you can use those features. They need something to close this loophole.
@@freman007this is true. Not sure if the fact they gain proficiency with their pact weapon means they are therefore proficient with a martial weapon. Worst case, you take an elf and problem solved though.
Why? Just disallow it at your table
I will say, I really like the GENERAL changes to the warlock, how they're handling the pacts and boons, and making a distinction between a more weapons and more spellcast-y warlock. But for sure they need to tune the bladelock down a bit, and tune the spellcasting warlock up a bit to match.
Third attack at level 11 for Pact of the Blade is kind of absurd. With just two attacks, about 20dpr lower than they'd currently be, looks like they'd be on par with a Paladin, which is still very good since Warlocks are closer to full casters than to half casters.
Granted, I feel like the Smite on Crits assumptions are a little overgenerous since you only have two slots to use... but just barely. If we never smite, it seems like crits would add only about 1 DPR rather than 3.7 DPR, which would lower the total to about 58, about the same as a Barbarian. While having Pact Magic for 6th and 7th level spells.
At the levels we're talking about (11+) warlocks have 3 pact magic spell slots. But still, reducing the dpr by 2.7 because of not using eldritch smite is not going to shake the core takeaway. Berserker Barbarian is miles better than any weapon user was before, and bladelock now blows it out of the water without even using all eldritch invocations or many of their spell slots. That's not ok.
@@lagg1e Without question, Bladelock early impressions are problematically good. That 3rd attack seems absurd.
I just think that broadly speaking, smites on crits with so few slots (for Smiting you have two not three, since one is used for Spirit Shroud) is a challenging assumption for DPR. That's not particularly sustainable, and a pretty big decision in game. I personally wouldn't include it in a round-per-round DPR calculation, since it does add 8 DPR over the three attacks, which more than a 10% increase. It's important to know that you can get a 12d8 spike critical, and I'd note that and leave it off this chart.
I like to do the math for smites on a per rest basis and divide by 3 round combats, 6 encounter days, and 2 short rests per long rests. I feel like that's more reasonable.
They do at least have to use one of their few spell slots to achieve that damage
It's made me think, if you/I were designing who you think *should* do the most damage, who would it be? The barbarian? The fighter? Or someone else?
I would say the barbarian and fighter should be comparible and at the top
@@TreantmonksTemple Makes sense to me
You shouldn't look at this like a tier 1 warlock. Level 13 warlock has 3 fifth level pact slots plus a 6th AND 7th level arcanum.slot the warlock has had more slot gains than any other caster for quite a few levels at that point and can expect to continue that trend of matching slot gains with arcanum plus improving what pact magic recovers from a short rest
That power Creep .why not making eldritch knight and arcane trickster half casters instead to fulfill our Gish fantasy and also poor ua6 Monk!
Fighter for sure, since barbs just get resistance to the most common damage, extra mobility (if you are doing unarmored) and multiple defensive advatages.
Fighter should be the single target damage expert.
My opinion:
1. Push the variable damage types from the 1st level Pact of the Blade Invocation to the 5th level Thirsting Blade or the 9th level Lifedrinker. That way PotB won't be as front heavy.
2. Change the 1d6 variable from Lifedrinker to match the weapon damage.
3. Drop the 3rd attack all together. Not even half-casters get a 3rd attack, why should a full-caster get it?
Warlock is not a full caster by design, hence why the previous playtest didn't give full casting.
Life drinker has always done a different damage type than the weapon, it’s necrotic in base 5e. Variable damage types are really not that beneficial, I’m not sure why people are making a big deal about it. Thirsting blade definitely needs to be nerfed though, a 3rd attack should be much later than 11th level
@@josephwilliams5292
Putting the variable damage on the 5th level PotB option would put it on par with the damage variable choices of the 5th level option for Pact of the Chain.
@@Battleguild ah, thats a fair parallel to draw then. It’s not like it will be missed at level 1 anyways, that kind of thing is very situational unless you’re facing like a black pudding or something with resistance to nonmagical damage
I don't understand how things like this make it into the playtest in the first place. They talk about having internal tests, but this not only can't have been tested even once, it can't have been read by anybody but whoever wrote it as a first draft.
This assumes they are using the same metrics, the same type of testing and have the same information we do.
We *know* the later isn't true, since we're working only with the released material, and they both know and are making content we just don't have. Like there might be monster reworks or magic items that dampen warlocks over fighters, or boost the fighters much higher.
As for the metrics, we're using math. Its possible they're using like a campaign benchmark instead making it more feels good than math good. Like we have this scenario, this is the level players should be for it and this is how many rounds it should roughly take. Or they have a series of scenerios where this is one the class should do well, and this is one where they shouldn't do as well, and if those conditions work out, they pass the metric. Its very easy for a different set of metrics to produce a vastly different end result. Now, that doesn't mean their metrics aren't flawed, and given play and DM style also plays a factor...
I dont think they had lots of internal tests. I Think that they have some tests. And I think that they dont have otimizers players in the test sessions. Otimizers look for every gap to achieve more and more for the options and rules.
I really wish that all warlocks pacts was improved. And wish more... Pact Magic still a problem to me.
I wish that instead of that weird class feature to recover some spells slots that, the warlock spell slots are linked with the proficiency bonus. This change will make warlocks start with the same spells per day that other full spellcasters.
In Multiclass cases, the character will get more spell slots, but will not improve the caster level or get high level spells.
Even if the spell slots are'nt linked to the proficience bonus, they could use the same numbers for the class progression. Ex: 1st - 2 spells; 5th - 3 spells, 9th - 4 spells, 13th - 5 spells, 17th - 6 spells
There is one excuse that consistently explains a lot of the headache inducing wtf of warlock and refusal to do something about short rest spam. Someone high up is forced to participate in those playtest by actually playing d&d and warlock is their "my guy", just apply standard "dating the gm/gm's girlfriend" type stuff and adjust for "employing the gm"
I feel like they just wanted to "hype" the warlock up and get a higher score by making it OP. I'm nearly 100% certain the devs KNEW that a 3rd attack was OP and that it would be reverted. They just wanted to create more buzz.
I think they sometimes intentionally test multiple features at the same time to gather popularity data to guide which parts they tone down afterward. Other times, I think they don't realize how good something is because the way they test doesn't uncover it. I also like to think that sometimes they nerd out as power gamers and live their overpowered dreams!
I think the 3rd attack is cool but it should be a 17th level feature.
Maybe even make it require another invocation?
@@someusername9591 agreed. Now that they get 10 Invocations, they can spare one more to get that 3rd attack.
yeah, someone needs to do more calculations to figure out an appropriate level that doesn't outspike actual martials.
Or just not be a thing at all. More than two attacks gets into Fighter turf which I don't agree with.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 I definitely agree with that. The warlock getting 3 before even like the bard or monk feels weird
That the pact of the blade would out damage all martials wasn't a surprise for me, but that would out damage the other spellcasters shocked me😲
Honestly, I'm pretty stoked to be able to play a dual-wielding Warlock with just Pact of the Blade owo
Hell yeah I became a patreon just before this video dropped!
Welcome! Glad to have your support.
I love the new Warlock :D In terms of balance, it would be best to remove the third attack so Warlocks can benefit from all those juicy invocations and pacts (or even delay it for later levels).
Or maybe, make it require an additional invocation.
At first glance, losing the 3rd attack takes away about 20dpr, which would still put the Warlock around the same place as the Paladin, which is still incredibly good, considering that you'll have much higher level spell slots.
Yeah, actually.
• Thirsting blade (invocation) at 5th.
• Lifedrinker (invocation) at 9th.
• Devouring blade (invocation) at 13th.
• ??? (invocation) at 17th.
If you rejigged the invocation levels, maybe all the pact boons could work like this.
Just removing it is fine.
Can always tell if Chris found something dubious by the tone of the "Hey" in the opening. One issue I have is with Great Weapon Master since you don't actually have proficiency with a martial weapon (Pact of the Blade only gives proficiency with one specific weapon, not all weapons of that type). You'd need a dip or a half feat. However, even without that (and even without Eldritch Smite), the sample warlock is still hanging out with the barbarian on the chart. Thanks for the spot on analysis illuminating how the parts fit together.
The question for balance, is it the mechanics or the numbers. The third attack is either too much or the riders really need trimming (both would probably be too much). Also for fun, use your 6th level slot for summon fiend and see the numbers balloon. Cheers!
Interesting interaction there. The original hex warrior limited the CHA attack stat to non two handed weapons but you could still get the pact of the blade later to bypass the restriction. Removing a once per turn proficiency bonus amount of damage isn't what is breaking the upper limits of the damage calculations though. As you say its the combination of third attack and the on hit riders that a warlock can select that increases damage faster than other classes can at the level 13 mark.
@@ASUbuckaroo15 It's actually factoring Spirit Shroud into the damage calcs that's doing it. It's accounting for even more damage than that 3rd attack is. Without it, dpr for the greatsword bladelock is only 43.59 using the same calculation process as the rest on the chart in the video. For comparison, keeping Spirit Shroud and ditching the 3rd attack results in a dpr of 44.96. Keeping everything else the same but replacing Spirit Shroud with Hex results in a dpr of 55.1, which is high, but still lower than the Berserker Barbarian. Which is a good thing considering this entire discussion is about a barbarian who chose the warlock class instead for mechanical reasons.
In short, it's an outlier spell that's the main issue at play. Turns out doing roughly Fireball damage every round for free with no saves is a bit much. Or maybe it's the entire concept of a martial that gets to cast spells to buff themselves. Who knows. Point is, it's not the extra attack that's actually doing it. It's not even lifedrinker or eldritch smite. It's all of these in combination with a spell that seems weaker on paper than it actually is when you do the math.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I was making the point to OC that the nuanced language of the GWM feat prerequisite might not allow for a pact of the blade warlock to pick it up, but limiting that that for the bladelock wouldn't fix the disparity of its damage output compared to other martials. Weapon type and a once per turn 2-6 damage increase doesn't make a large enough difference to matter so if a warlock wanted to get it and could only use its features while conjuring/bonded to a heavy weapon then I'm cool with that.
I agree with you that spirit shroud makes up a big portion of the damage here but I dont think it is a poorly designed spell. Eldritch knights, paladins, and warlocks have been able to cast it before UA7. And Hexblades could do this with Polearm master before the UA so its not some "new thing".
It's the combination of reliably upcasting this spell AND getting another attack with minimal investment that pushes the bladelock past the other classes.
I think your math actually makes the point that the third attack is what is too good. With it the bladelock is on par with other martials at the cost of an invocation. Add a low level hex spell and they are almost as good as a berserker barbarian. All while having the flexibility to other spells and invocations.
I rather like the idea that a bladelock would need to cast a very powerful spell to match or come close to the damage of a dedicated martial but not having the same discipline/training/ability as a fighter who has dedicated themselves to attacking.
That's kinda the main theme of the class right? You're not a fighter you rely on the power of your patron to do fighter things.
I’m currently in a campaign where the DM is letting me use Shadow Blade as a pact weapon… needless to say that would be broken in this playtest lol
Pact of the blade qualifies for Eldritch Adept feat, multi classing no longer required.
Devotion Paladins in shambles as half their 1 minute Channel Divinity: Sacred Weapon feature changing the weapon's damage type is just a perma buff for a Pact of the Blade Warlock.
Hell, Warlock even got to keep the better no-fail Eldritch Smite in this UA.
The lvl 11 scaling option should be the ability to replace an attack with a cantrip. Maybe make that its own 11th level invitation or something, I love the replace with a cantrip mechanic and I'd like to see more classes have access to it
Only problem with the "replace one attack with a cantrip" mechanic with warlock is that they have eldritch blast as an option unlike Eldritch Knights and Bladesingers.
This bladelock becomes even more powerful if you add undead warlock and half orc in to the mix
Extra Extra attack on something that isn't a fighter feels almost sacrilegious. Can you imagine the horror of an oathbreaker paladin with this multiclass?
It seems like you're better off sticking to Warlock. Buffing every fiend or undead you run into, while having weaker spellcasting, seems just worthless for plate armor and an aura of protection.
Note, Pact of the blade gives you proficiency with the pact weapon when you summon it. It does NOT give you proficiency with martial weapons for the purpose of grabbing the weapon feats. So you can not have any of the weapon feats as part of this warlock, great weapon master included.
Also Pact of the blade specifies MELEE weapon.
As a Bonus Action, you can trace arcane sigils in
the air to conjure a pact weapon in your hand-a
Simple or Martial MELEE weapon of your choice
with which you bond-or create a bond with a
magic weapon you touch
"or create a bond with a magic weapon you touch" is a separate clause. That's why Chris talks about finding a (barely) magical longbow. You can bond with any magic weapon, or you can conjure any melee weapon.
@@LuxTheSlav Ya that feels like an unintended use and is probably going to get adjusted before launch, but good to know.
Yep. This dude is overrated when it comes to being a muncher. He makes so many noon mistakes all the time.
@@schmelzwah It's the same as Hex Warrior in 5e. Let's not go assuming what's intended and what isn't. That's what Sage Advice is for.
@@LuxTheSlav I said "feels" and "probably" I am going to put it in the survey so they know if it was unintended or not. Feels unintended on hexblade too considering there is an entire invocation for ranged attacks. Just because unintended gets through and they go ya that is how it works doesn't mean it wasn't unintended. Just look at the invisibility rules for that, ya it works that you still get advantage even if they can see you, but they are admitting now that while the rule is written that way, it was a mess up on their end.
Chris, seeing Blade pact in the last playtest: "This is underwhelming, they don't even get Weapon Mastery."
Chris, seeing Blade pact in this playtest: "Wow, ridiculous that Bladelocks can just get whatever Mastery it wants."
I agree that Bladelocks have a bit too much going on but a few counterpoints (beyond some math issues with Eldritch Smites in DPR calcs others have mentioned):
1) They removed Medium Armor and Shield proficiencies out of the gate for warlock, meaning trying to wade into melee with a d8 Hit Die in leather is risky to say the least. So you have spend either a feat or invocation just to get some degree of early defense back, on top of already having to be much more MAD to keep up with the new Heavy property rules.
2) As flimsy as it is, the ranged weapon build is dependent on your DM providing a magic bow for you to bond with; otherwise you are locked into only melee weapons with the Blade pact. Plus this is working off of feats from multiple playtests ago when the "meta" of the UAs has shifted drastically, and that bonus damage from GWM being 100% an oversight imo not specifying melee weapons when the cheese of combining Sharpshooter and GWM with a longbow/heavy crossbow exists with those feats. I wouldn't be shocked if the next UA has updated feats.
And 3) This is all under the basis of a level 13 character...and going by your videos rating/ranking each subclass but cutting them off after a certain level and weighing higher level abilities less, reaching this pinnacle after all of this heavy investment in feats and invocations at a level the majority of players/campaigns don't reach....it's worth talking about, but this much, and when the caster-martial divide is still firmly a thing and this just being a not-so-new wrinkle? By that level, casters are already invalidating DPR with what they offer to combat and non-combat scenarios.
I think there are aspects to the Blade pact that are problematic, sure, but only when compared to martial classes. I think Bladelocks can be toned back but shouldn't be gutted and, if anything, it should just be an indicator that martial classes can and should receive more buffs.
I agree that the new Pact of the Blade is superior to the current Hexblade, within the context of going straight Warlock. I do think dipping Warlock for CHA-based attacks is much less attractive now, which is a big win. I’d like to see them tone down EB within multiclassing.
I think the real issue is that Fighters, Barbarians, Monks, and Rogues need to be stronger, and DMs should structure their adventuring days so that casters aren’t getting as many long rests.
I will say, I’m saddened to see Warlocks returning to Pact Magic. I liked the 2/3rds caster progression.
I think Spirit Shroud + Eldritch Blast build not mentioned here is worth considering. You can run the standard EB build most of the time and switch Hex for Spirit Shroud when you want to trade safety for intense damage. EB gets way more hits than a bladelock normally would, at level 17, an upcast SS would deal 9*4 = 36 average damage per turn before accuracy considerations, doubled on a crit.
Also worth considering is the Sorceror/Fighter multiclass to do that twice in one turn.
This. 100%. Not to mention that the Eldritch Blast build can use a shield, which is actually pretty good too.
Agreed, they should tune it down, but not overly so, I would chuck the warlocks access to masteries, cause he should be using the weapon in an unnatural way and not be "skilled" They should pick 1 extra damage type that they can elect to do, when they get thirsting blade, which should probably just give THP instead of being able to heal. I really like the third attack, but feel it belongs to the ranger over warlock so maybe have it to be an extra investment? or be at level 12 or 13?
interesting.
I did not run the numbers myelf, but that heavy 13 str looked debilitating that I had an emotional reaction to it.
I personally have never played at a table where point buy was allowed, it was either standard array or just rolling (and then complianing about characters being strong), so I asumed standard array, and with it an inability to reliably achieve 13 str while retaining 14 dex and 14 con.
I appologize for my outburst, and I thank you for doing the math
It would definitely be a harder build with standard array. I think in that case I would dump strength and use a non-heavy weapon - switch GWM for Charger for the bonus damage.
"Oh, boy, here I come playing the best holy smiting machine I can."
"What class of paladin?"
"No, Celestial Warlock."
Oh yeah, they saw that people were saying bladelock was underpowered compared to EB spam and definitely went in the other direction entirely.
I am 110% behind this, I always hated that I could not do a celestial (or infernal, or fae, or GOO) bladelock. I always thought Celestial could be an interesting Paladin-style gish if only the "use your CHA to hit/damage" wasn't locked behind another patron entirely.
@@jspangler5003 Yeah, it's great. Now hopefully they replace Flame Strike with Summon Celestial on the spell list.
Maybe buff the level 6 ability to work on any roll of Fire or Radiant damage once per turn.
After they nerf Bladelock a little anyway.
@@ZeoffArcaneOfficial My DM let me take Summon Celestial for my Celestial Warlock in a Curse of Strahd game... it was both thematic and incredibly useful.
Food for thought. Subtract just Spirit Shroud from your math and your greatsword bladelock ends up at 43.59 damage per round. Spirit Shroud does not specify melee attacks, so Eldritch Blast on its own should trigger the damage as well. If you were to take just a basic 20 charisma warlock using eldritch blast and agonizing blast, with Spirit Shroud, it comes out to 1d10+5, plus 2d8 spirit shroud for 19.5 damage per hit. 60% chance to hit means 11.7 damage per attack, criticals are a 5% chance to add 1d10+2d8 damage, or 0.73 for a total of 12.43 damage per attack expected, 3 times per round for a dpr of 37.29. You'll notice that's significantly above the baseline you calculated with a warlock spamming eldritch blast, despite it just being a warlock spamming eldritch blast.
You've added the Smite Crit damage to every attack, spending on spell slot for a concentration spell only leaves 2 spell slots to use on crits. So the higher damage on crits can only be used twice total, not every round.
He's adding the average damage of being able to crit once per combat to the DPR calculation.
For melee attacks: If you crit on your first or second attack and use eldritch smite and the enemy is huge or smaller, they are knocked prone and you would have advantage on your subsequent hits. So that would further up the damage per turn of the melee bladelock
Breaking out the numbers on the crit:
Eldritch Smite damage with a L5 spell slot: 6d8 (average 27). This gets doubled to 54 for the smite. With a further 2d6 for the base weapon, 2d8 for the spirit shroud, and 1d6 for the Lifedrinker - a further 19.5.
So yes, saving a fifth level slot to go crit fishing increases your damage per attack by 2.52 (assuming you don't run out), making it slightly more powerful than hex - but no concentration and not under control. And Spirit Shroud's increase of 5.4 damage per attack (more than twice as strong as hex) is pretty powerful.
I hope they nerf it the right way by removing the 3 attacks (which I think would fix the damage) and not weapon mastery and charisma based attacks.
I also Hope so, but I'm afraid charisma based attacks Is the party that causes the most problem overall, maybe if It required an extra invocation for that part It could still be in
I’d be ok with them giving (for an additional invocation cost) the ability to use a cantrip and make an attack as part of the attack action like they’re doing with eldritch knight tbh.
Maybe two changes in pact of the blade:
First, get rid of the charisma modifier replacing dexterity/strength in pact of the blade. That would encourage to invest in one of the two physical attributes.
Second, remove the weapon mastery. If you want such a strong add on, you should multiclass in a martial class.
The simple fact of being able to conjure a weapon as a bonus action and replace it's damage by necrotic, psychic or radiant is already hell of a feature. It is also a good base for further improvements through invocations later on.
The three attack feature from thirsting blade is still less powerful than the four beams from eldritch blast at level 17.
@@grosdawadu18With how ability scores and their progressions work in 5e, even with OneD&D making them all into half feats at level 4, I don't think it's fair to expect Strength based weaponry on a light armor class.
They would need medium armor, and for medium armors to have 12 DEX variants instead of 14 DEX limits. Because 4 pts into a score is just a huge ask, on top of STR and CON and CHA (and God forbid you don't want to be brain dead too).
@@davidecolucci6260don’t kill the charisma attack. As much as people moan and groan about it on paladins, warlocks absolutely need it if they ever want to use heavy melee weapons and not be gimped by stats. Forcing something to be too MAD is NEVER a good balancing decision. Getting rid of the 3rd attack should frankly be plenty. If anything give ALL martial classes that third attack. Fighters shouldn’t be defined purely on that one feature, they should be using maneuvers as a baseline anyway! Instead give warlocks the bladesinger version of extra attack so the gish can cast spells while going ham. Maybe even make it an invocation and at level 11-15 allow the casting of a leveled spell, maybe with a spell level restriction.
Also give the life drinker damage to barbarians instead of brutal critical and have it scale!
They should probably give a different invocation instead of 3 attacks. Maybe invocations...
When you kill with this pact weapon regain spell slot.
When you hit an enemy with pact weapon apply Hex no concentration until turn.
Etc
The 3rd attack on Thirsting Blade is the problem. Lifedrinker acts as the 3rd attack.
The wording on Agonizing Blast is such that it would appear that you would add your CHA modifier to both the main roll and rider roll for Booming Blade/Green-Flame Blade starting at level 5. Using a Pike (push mastery) for BB or Greataxe (Cleave) for GFB leads to some insanity. But you have to pick one because Agonizing can't be chosen more than once.
Blast... I hate to admit it, but the math proves it. The next question is: what is the most appropriate nerf? Reducing the attacks back down to 2? Making the bond should be more than a bonus action, but summoning the weapon should be just a bonus action.
I have nothing to add about the main part of the video but one of your patrons is named Kvothe, after the main character of "The Name of the Wind". Its pronounced almost like "quoth". Kuv-oath. I doubt that person actually cares but thought it might be worth pointing out.
Yeah maybe its the 3rd attack that pushes them over the edge.
But without the 3rd attack maybe the scaling of going blade vs EB dont align at lvl 11, which is why i think the lifedrinker at 11 is good idea from you.
Just wondering if it would be okay to then for lifedrinker to work on both hits.
Also do you think its RAI for you to be able to bound with a magical bow or maybe it is an oversight?
The edge EB could have over pact of the blade is the range.
2 attacks drops them to low 40ish if you swap the build around to find a bonus action attack. It starts to look far less impressive giving the concentration usage. Monk didn't push this build to the most he could get out of it though, as it currently exist.
Instead of giving a third attack, which just causes way too many problems, it would be interesting if Thirsting Blade, on top of granting extra attack, also cribbed a bit from the Giant Barbarian and gave the Pact Weapon the Thrown property (maybe also increasing the range if the weapon already has the Thrown property) and making it automatically return to the Warlock's hand when they throw it. The Pact Weapon returning to the Warlock's hand when they throw it was part of base Pact of the Blade in Playtest 5, which I thought was the most fun part of the Pact due to the types of builds it opened up (especially taking Mastery into account), but they completely removed it from this playtest.
Awful idea. Very niche, and I want to play a melee guy with a sword, not some Captain America wannabe.
Fair enough. But a player puts in a heavy investment of at least 3 invocations out of 10 total, to achieve the highest result. The Warlock was high up in it's in single target, range damage, with Edritch Blast, Hex spell, and Agonizing Blast innvocation combo. So having them deal the best melee damage, to a single target, using magical enhancements tracks with their role. Especially, since their not flings a lot of spells around in encounters. When compared to the Fighter, for example, the new Bladelock is still lacks in built in staying power. And has to invest more to get a decent AC, and hit point total. So taking the Armor of Shadows and Fiendish Vigor invocations, the tough feat (or armor proficiencies feats instead of Armor of Shadows) all become attractive choices. For a Bladelock that wants to tank better. As does investing more in Constitution, if possible. So you're not getting this extra attack power for free.
Also, players now have another mechanical reason, in addition to an RP reasons or personal preference reasons, to stick wiith the Warlock to at least level 11. Given that the Thirsting Blade invocation gives you a third attack at level 11, which I think was a very good idea. So what they did with the new Blacklock, is give a little more mechanical benefit for player who stick with the Warlock class to level at least level 11.
One last thing is, since the pact boons are now invocations . The Pact of the Tome and Pact of the Chain, do not need to be equal the power with the Pact of the Blade.
At the very least, the Feat Invocation needs to be either deleted or come with some serous restrictions. Blade Pact should also be limited to melee weapons. I'd even be fine with them straight up removing lifedrinker entirely, since it was originally meant to provide a damage boost to a class that couldn't really invest all of its ASIs into strength or dexterity, which isn't a problem anymore now that you can use Charisma. Thirsting Blade also needs to be reverted to its original state; more than 2 attacks per action is a Fighter/Monk thing, not something a spell caster should be getting access to.
Lifedrinker was to allow the Arcane Paladin (blade Warlock) to sort of keep up with the damage of a Paladin with improved divine smite.
Split up additional attack as an additional high level invocation.
Mastery property cannot be accessible with PotB. Needs to be either the WM feat or as an additional invocation, or something else creative.
We need to leave some space for full martials...
I 100% agree but at the same time I don't want to lose the ability to change weapons every turn and using a new weapon mastery. It is just too cool and thematic. Hopefully a suitable compromise can be reached.
For me it's the opposite- Your blade is a literal gift from your patron. Are they really going to be hovering over your shoulder switching them out every so often because you changed your mind? IMO blade pact warlocks should be the least flexible class in the game, in terms of their weapon of choice. If your pact weapon is a glaive, and you find a really cool rapier, tough luck.
Switching between weapons as the situation demands it or as magic items become available should be primarily a Fighter thing, not yet another thing that spellcasters get to be better at than martials.
Changing weapons on the fly may be fine, but I don't think they need weapon mastery on top of that. I'm not even convinced it is that thematically appropriate; many patrons are magical beings, but not that many of them are also known to be master weapon users. If a bladelock must get weapon mastery, I'd say give it to Hexblades only (which would make the most sense thematically and for balance).
Maybe give warlocks fighting style instead weapon master. Then at level 11 instead of the extra attack give them weapon mastery and say you can exchange mastery when you change your weapon( if to broken once per long rest).
Also I believe the pact of the blade is also a gift from you patron but real cool gift. Like you can role play so you change weapons once an encounter( kinda like kite from hunter x hunter). Or the weapon manifests its shape from your inner desire. Maybe your desire is to kill/ stop an enemy who is running away so the weapon manifest itself as a bow. Plus I think you can still switch weapons efficiently as a fighters. Warlocks just do it through magic.
@@bennettpalmer1741
Except you are forming a pact with an entity, not with a blade.
Your patron cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows.
Reasonable challenges I've seen to this build: 1) Pact of Blade Warlock does not qualify for GWM, due to lack of actual proficiency in a martial weapon. The only access is a temporary one granted by bonding a weapon, but it's pretty iffy to claim a temporary one due to magic is an actual proficiency enough to select the feat at gaining the level. 2) It's unreasonable to assume Shroud is up 100% of the time and that should be reduced by some meaningful percentage to account for failing a concentration save, and 3) you likely don't have a spell for every possible crit and the calculation should assume three battles between short rests with the odds of a crit every two battles meaning the odds a spell slot will be available should be reduced by about 1/3 or so. -Mistwell
Hexblade bladelocks are my favorite way to play dnd in general, but. That third attack is wild, although PAM could give a third you're exchanging an ASI and your bonus action, especially considering a lot of subclasses use the bonus action that's freed up. GOO can give advantage on your attacks, celestial can heal, and the archfey can teleport
I actually said this somewhere else, but the Warlock is just a martial class at this point. It doesn't have enough spell slots to even be a casting class. I think there are literally spell casting subclasses in the martial classes that can cast more spells in a day than the poor Warlock with his potentially 2 spells per day.
I tested how long Spirit Shround would last in battle. Results are at bottom. I took my 12th level Bladelock and made a copy and had them fight each other using FGU. They are using a Longsword with Lifedrinker and Spirit Shroud for a Damage Total of 1d8, 1d6, 2d8 +5. Each has a Con of 18 and so both make Concentration Checks at +4 with Advantage. Both have Breastplate armor for an AC of 16. No shield so that they can cast in melee if need be. Each take three attacks per turn. I reset the battles once someone loses Spirit Shroud.
First Test. On 2nd attack roll of the battle, Warlock 1 rolls a crit and Warlock 2 takes 41 damage and fails concentration by rolling a 17 vs a 20 Save DC. Spirit Shroud is gone.
Second Test. Two Nat 1s and a Nat 3. Three misses. Warlock 2’s turn. Miss and then a Crit. 32 damage and Warlock 1 rolls a 20 on Concentration and Saves vs a SAVE DC of 16. The third attack is a hit and Warlock 1 rolls a 1 and a 5 on the Save and so at Advantage a total of a 9 vs a SAVE DC of 10. Warlock 1 loses Concentration. Spirit Shroud is gone.
Third Test. Round 1. Warlock 1 a miss, miss, hit. Warlock 2 barely makes the SAVE DC of 13 by rolling a 13. Warlock 2 hit, miss, hit. All saves for Concentration against these hits are successful. Round 2. Warlock 1 hit, miss, hit. Warlock 2 barely makes first hit’s save DC of 10 by rolling an 11 and barely makes the third attack’s save DC by one point. Warlock 2 Nat 1 miss, hit, Critical Hit. Warlock 1 takes 42 damage on the Crit and rolls a 15 Concentration Save vs a SAVE DC of 21. Concentration is lost and no more Spirit Shroud.
This is just a 1v1 battle. Imagine being hit by multiple opponents in a round. Do not take a Concentration Spell and think that it is going to be part of a character’s meat-and-potatoes damage.
MAN, I hope this doesn't get super nerfed. Warlock was one of my favorite classes, but being confined to hexblade in order to Gish was kind of annoying. Now i can pick any subclass AND Gish it up. We can tone down the damage a bit, but the flexibility available here is AMAZING! Full main character syndrome
While reading the play test material I knew this video was gonna happen😂
I get that Mearls was all about that _elegance in design_ for 5e's design, but the principle of always adding your mod to both your attack rolls and your damage just does wonders (sic) for the game's balance. A little MADness could definitely help balance more than hurt it.
It's literally off the charts! Hexblade approved and ready to demolish all opposition. No one is safe! XD
If this damage was done by a specific martial class at least we'd be able to say "well at least they lack spells and overall utility", man it's insane. I mean we all know it isn't all about damage charts, but this doesn't even fit on it.
Now you could argue the pro about this is that it means EB with its invocations isn't the go-to thing anymore for warlocks. With that said, what do YOU think would be the fix to this, while keeping all the fun goodies Warlock seems to get now? Afterall if it's a damage issue, then it should be solvable by toning down some numbers right...? Removing that third attack seems like a start to me.
Have you done the calculation with the new eldritch knight? since they can be somewhat similar, having spellcasting and even more feats picking. i think that would be a fair point of comparison. Regarless i don't think it's that bad having that one option which requires a fair bit of investment and the clear lack of heavy armor, hell you need a feat to get that medium armor prof. that is a just good gish, that's something we have always been looking for.
Pretty funny that all of this is before considering resistances too. And movement, as you mention later.
Even without the level 11 Extra, Extra Attack I think it's still realistically just superior to other martials as it currently exists. Moving Lifedrinker back up might help a bit for most campaigns, though it's also not like you're sacrificing your casting in any real way for this build either. Still have plenty of Invocations left, so really all you're losing over a pure caster focus is some CON but not a huge amount of it. Compared to other melee, I'm not really sure I'd even call it more fragile due to the healing--its effective health pool should be higher, depending on the exact nature of the encounters I guess. Though back up to 11, it also might not exist for long enough to factor so there would be that at least with other defensive casts eating up damage earlier by taking slots.
I think a lot of the trouble I've always had with Warlock is Pact Magic though. Did they give it extra, extra attack in a re-work and then forget they were going back to Pact Magic too?
why does not anyone make those calculations in wotc before launching playtests?
I like that blade outdamages EB, just not everybody else :)
This warlock build looks to be a bit of a glass cannon and would probably lose its spirit shroud often, so I would expect it to be toward the higher end of the damage spectrum. If the warlock switched to a more defensive setup with sword & board and shadow of moil, I'd expect them to land toward the lower end of the damage spectrum. I'm not claiming that the numbers are in the right place right now, but I'm wary of overreacting to where they are right now (the gap between this warlock build and the berserker is about the same as the gap between the berserker and the beastmaster, and the bow build is right next to the assassin rogue build). For example, just removing the third attack would drop this build to somewhere between the devotion paladin and the assassin rogue while being the riskiest build on the chart.
Instead of going with the crit route, I decided to assume 3 encounters each 3 rounds and 1 short rest and 1 magical cunning recharge. While I assume I probably messed up somewhere, I did get similar results, 48.44 for the Longbow build and 64.84-68.84 for the Greatsword.
I also looked at just barebones longbow vs EB at 13th and got 18.4 for EB at 13th lvl and 23.4 for Longbow and at 17th EB pulls ahead at 25.2 vs 23.4. (I used the same invocations as before but no feats, spells, etc). Greatsword was 33.9 due to graze giving it the boost.
So what I found was that smite adds about 14.04 to dpr from 11-16th and spirit shroud accounts for about 16 dpr. If spirit shroud was nerfed or removed from the warlock list, It would fit in between beast master and berserker (if kept at hex damage but keep other benefits of spirit shroud) . I still want to look at a few different options and at other classes. The extra attack does help bring the base pact of the blade in line with Eb which I think is good but there are a lot of things that can be added that push it into OP territory.
I think you can make this even better by considering the effects of Advantage. Now that you can have multiple Pacts, you can access a Familiar to Help you get that through either Chain or Tome, and the build here has Invocations to spare, so why not? Using your accuracy targets and melee damage, I think this would look something like:
84% x 24.5 = 20.58 (hit)
16% x 5 = 0.8 (miss)
9.75% x 73.5 = 7.17 (crit)
Totaling 28.55 average damage on your first attack every round, which pushes the total DPR to around 74.
This is hard because I love playing Bladelock so much. But it kind of seems like it's borrowing every other melee classes' means of raising damage. Hex=Hunters Mark, Fighter's extra extra attack, and Paladins Site and Improved Divine Smite. I really wish I could keep this OP puppy.
Thanks Treantmonk- you are the best D&D authority in the world. Thank you for your expertise!
Hadn't noticed until now that Great Weapon Master works with Longbows. Interestingly, none of the Seige Weapons are considered Heavy Weapons, meaning that your Longbow is a Great Weapon but not a Ballista. That's a weird subset of rules that really needs some re-examining (and given how long we have left of playtesting, I'm pretty certain isn't going to get changed).
imagine somehow getting three attacks with a ballista a round! Tiny servants loading and a mule or two to drag it around...oh wait, you can summon it! Instant trebuchet, just add warlock.
I think the safest way to keep this would be to tone down thirsting blade with the second extra attack and the changing damage, however, I suppose it is done so you can have the damage of all the subclasses they did, but if that was the case, they should've made the damage be fixed to the patron chosen (psychic for the archfey and the great old one, necrotic for the fiend and the undead, radiant for celestial, cold for the fathomless, depends on the genie for that one and so on).
I just hope they keep the whole charisma for attack rolls with weapon, so the rest of pact of the blade warlock don't need a subclass like the hexblade to be good
You cannot take GWM. PoB doesn’t technically give you proficiency with a martial weapon.
That said yeah, Lifedrinker is kind of an issue.
Yeah I’m convinced. Skip the 2nd extra attack and just give us old lifedrinker back at 11th level. Though gods do I wish we could just forget the old spells like spirit shroud, but we’re bAcKwArDs CoMpAtIbLe.
Thirsting Blade's 11th level portion really should've be at least a second invocation. I think that's really the thing, invocation taxes need to be heavier for the Warlock (or at least the Bladelock). That includes tying Eldritch Blast to an invocation. That includes hex as an invocation as this spell feels better as a cantrip instead of a leveled spell, because of the re-targeting. That includes breaking up a lot of the Bladelock's front-loaded features including the charisma as your weapon attack modifier, thirsting blade's 11th level add-on, that includes the weapon mastery portion, etc. I also feel like they were right to rework Mystical Arcanum they just did it the wrong way (imo it should not be an optional feature).
Bugbear hexbladelock with 2 levels of paladin for the fighting style and smite. That's going to be some insane DPR.
This was with old warlock. It doesn’t need a buff.
Pètravùm, bearer of Gold and Stardust
Lvl 15
Obsidian Dragonborn(actually Gold dragonborn but reflavoring cause fun)
+2 to strength +1 to charisma
Level 15 hexblade warlock
Strength: 10+2 (+1)
Constitution: 15 (+3)
Dexterity: 13 (+2)
Charisma: 19+1 (+5)
Intelligence: 15 (+4)
Wisdom: 8 (-1)
Ac: 19
Hp: 131
Gear
Plate Mail +1
Greatsword +2 (pact weapon so always proficient)
2 health potions
Dungeoneers pack
Boon: Pact of the blade
Invocations : 7
Relentless hex
Improved pact weapon
Eldritch smite
Devils sight
One With Shadows
Shroud of Shadow
Thirsting blade
Four cantrips
Booming blade
Eldritch blast
(Golden) Green Flame Blade
Blade ward
12 spells
Staggering Smite (4th level)
Banishing Smite (5th level)
Hex (1st level)
Blur (2nd level)
Hold Monster(5th level)
Counterspell (3rd level)
Dimension Door (4th level)
Cloud of Daggers (2nd level)
Earth bind (2nd level)
Wall of light (5th level)
Chaos Bolt (1st level)
Three 5th level spell slots
Combat Method
Round 1
Hex blades curse the first round (bonus action)
Banishing smite (action, concentration)
If needed reaction walk so you are within 30ft of a pursuer.
Try to stay to the back of the battlefield at the beginning of combat.
Round 2
Provided that you are within 30 ft, blink to the target (preferrably the biggest most menacing target, using relentless hex)
Then use booming blade(an attack is part of the action), if it hits also use Eldritch smite invocation, dealing 2d6(greatsword)+3d8(Booming Blade)+5d8(Eldritch Smite)+5d10(Banishing Smite) +5(proficiency)+5(charisma)+2( magic weapon)+ 5x4(hex blades curse, the bonus for damage rolls applies to all of those individually according to the book,”per damage roll” so as a set of die or a singular die, whether dagger, greatsword or fireball)+1 (Hexblade)
Totaling 103.5 average damage
Average with crit chance: 113.85
And a second attack, adding 22 damage
Bringing the true total to 135.85 avg damage
Oh yeah, you can attack twice per turn, one with booming blade and stuff one without, this round blows all your resources though, so be wary. After the nova round get to a nearby ally(if called for) and proceed to beat the everloving crap out of whatever creature remains.
Normal attack dpr
Booming blade, greatsword +hex curse
3d8+2d6+5+10+3= 38.5 avg damage
Second attack
2d6(7) +5+5+3=20
Total avg: 58.5
Total avg with crit chance: 64.35
Feats
Heavy Armor Master
Tough
ASI:
+1 to dex and Int
You use all your resources in the two rounds on one enemy
You can't use Extra Attack with Booming Blade, it has been explained many times already and people still don't get it.
You can't add Hex to each roll separately (also nowhere words ”per damage roll” are used)
Nice and all. If you ignore the rules sure you can get huge numbers with everything.
Chris, you should correct some things about this video in the next one. Its fine to present the maximum damage potential. Its not really fun to play that way (using 1 spell and smite on crits only), and the reality won't match the white room's theory math. Primarily, Concentration loss will be an issue to worry about. Smites are great when they happen on a worthwhile target and you have a slot to spend, but I wouldn't count that happening as frequently as once/20 attacks. Feats like Great Weapon Master and PoleArm Master have a requirement of martial weapon proficiency that I don't think warlocks meet. You'd need to use an 18 charisma and drop accuracy by another 5% to account for spending a feat on Weapon Master. Do a dpr line with/without Spirit Shroud, so we all see how much of the heavy lifting that spell is doing... Maybe that spell's scaling is the problem and the notion that a warlock could effectively play while using it full time in every encounter.
I don't think Warlocks meet the requirements for feats like Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master. To get those you must be proficient with a martial weapon. The Pact Weapon is a temporary proficiency. If you conjure it as a shortsword for example, its a martial weapon and you're proficient with it. But if you pickup a different shortsword in your other hand, you lack the martial weapon proficiency for Shortsword. So as far as I can tell, you don't have proficiency with a martial weapon and that means to get Great Weapon Master you need to multi-class or get the Weapon Master feat first.; Its a level 4 feat so you can't get it as a background feat or use Lessons of the First Ones invocation. Since Warlocks can't easily do GWM, PAM, or wield 2 Cha weapons as a means to get 3 attacks, WotC thinks they should natively get a 3rd attack in Thirsting Blade. I think level 11 is a little too early for it... its really keeping pace with Eldritch Blast's 4th beam that is the issue, not the 3rd beam. On the other hand if Thirsting Blade 's 3rd attack was removed, by taking a Charisma and Bonus Action compromise, Warlocks could still get 3rd attack from either GWM or PAM. If you consider Hexblade subclass features, there are no pre-requisite barriers to those feats and dual wielding Cha weapons is also possible for them. That is in fact the way that Warlocks who wanted a 3rd attack would get one in the past.
No GWM = you lose PB bonus damage per turn and you lose being able to do a Bonus Action attack. So from the start, I think these numbers are little inaccurate. You either have to drop Cha to 18 and acc to 55% or you have to remove the PB damage/turn and Bonus Action attack. Maybe WotC will clarify if the Pact Weapon qualifies as a character having a martial weapon proficiency or not, but it seems really obvious to me that Pact of the Blade gives proficiency and mastery with a Pact Weapon no matter its form, but neither apply to the exact same type of weapon if its not a Pact Weapon. Alternately, you can have GWM or PAM but you have to delay increasing Charisma by 2 feats to do it. At level 12 your Charisma could be 18-19. You'd probably do WarCaster > Weapon Master > Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master for your feats. And that would feel really bad for a lot of levels.
I think the numbers are misleading by also suggesting that a Warlock would cast Spirit Shroud every combat as opposed to defensive or control options. Yes, its part of their damage potential and being a Bonus Action spell makes it favorable to still dishing out damage in turn 1. I don't think its likely that a player is going to play without any strategy besides Leroy Jenkins!!!ing into combat and focusing on mass destruction with a spell-augmented weapon. I think that's a recipe for boredom and I think the concentration will inevitably drop and the dpr efficiency of it will disappear. Because you can do it, doesn't mean you always will choose to do it, nor should you. Spirit Shroud is 1/3 of the dpr!!!!
Its also misleading to suggest every critical hit will be smote? smitten? and to spread that 12d8 on the hits out of 20 attacks as average damage. Yes it will happen, but not in every combat or even every other combat, and maybe its not worth using on 100% of your crits. So you have combats with a smite and combats without one. And its probably going to be just once every 2-3 combats if you're lucky unless you have a supply of advantage. Crit'ing more though doesn't mean you'll always have a slot you're willing to spend on it, in fact the more you smite the more likely you won't have/want to spend another slot to do it again. Finally, are you going to spend the slot to overkill some weak/half-dead mook that you happen to crit??? You don't control when/where those Nat20's pop up. So that'd be a thing I'd put an asterisk on and calculate expected damage lines with crit smite and without crit smite, and say that your damage would be in between those two lines depending on your luck with crits and your "smightiness".
Personally, I'd prioritize Pact of the Blade, Agonizing Blast, Lightly Armored, Thirsting Blade, Pact of the Tome, Lifedrinker, Tough, and maybe Other Worldly Leap for invocations.
All that said, I think 3rd attack at 11 is unfair to other classes as long as Lifedrinker exists. Or it can move closer to level 17, where its needed. The reason many attacks works ok for Fighters is that they don't really have much in the way of dice they can stack on per-hit- Maneuvers and cantrip damage, and both are limited to once/turn, well twice/turn for high level EK. And EK could probably get Hex with a feat too, so I'd like to see that dpr calculated next to Warlock.
Option 1) I think getting access to PAM or GWM would be the same/better than a 3rd attack because of the feat and bonus action costs involved, that would even the playing field with everyone else who uses one of those feats for a 3rd attack. Either feat would still give melee warlock the 3rd attack/damage edge it needs to match blasting. What I don't like about this option is being steered into using a narrower selection of weapon types; I think that detracts from the flexibility of the pact weapon.
Option 2) Otherwise as a 2-attacker without easy access to those feats, Warlock's Lifedrinker could scale its 1d6 up to 3d6 at levels 9/13/17 to keep pace with EB (but the healing would cap at 1 hit die/attack). Doing scaling on Life drinker is also a viable solution to achieve damage parity/slight edge over Eldritch Blast.
Option 3) The last alternative, and one I personally like, is to keep Warlocks locked out of PAM & GWM & dual wielding Cha weapons, and take away 3rd attack, then change Lifedrinker to be: When you take the Attack action with your Pact Weapon, you can make a bonus action attack with your Pact Weapon. You can roll 1d8 and add that as additional damage to one attack you make with your Pact Weapon per turn. If you spend 1 hit die, you can also recover the number of hp rolled on the d8, and you may choose after rolling whether or not to do so. At level 17 this extra damage increases to 2d8 and can you can spend up to 2 hit dice to recover the hp rolled on the d8's.
Pact Weapon damage types have been a little contentious, but I think just setting Force and 1 sublcass-thematic option would tune that back slightly. Pact Weapon has always been a magic weapon, and nowadays that means a non-physical damage type.
Pact Weapon is meant to be a high utility feature, so I applaud the variable weapon mastery part of it. It aggravates Fighters and other martials, but I think that its a Fighter problem, not a Warlock problem. Fighters should be able to assign a number of masteries using the number they can know and the ones that a weapon qualifies for as the only the limiting factors... not be limited to just 2/weapon. It should be easier for them to switch mastery property without switching weapon, because they are the masters of weapons and fighting. Utility is a piece of the equation along with damage and which type of spells to use in fight... when it comes to a Warlock deciding if they should risk going into melee or if they should stay back and blast. At most I would say Pact Weapon mastery issue could be limited by- conjure/bind takes an Action instead of a Bonus Action, or scale/gate Bonus Action switching to a higher Warlock level. Or make them choose a number of masteries at the end of a long rest. Any weapons that have one of those properties, the property will be active when the Pact Weapon is in one of those weapon forms. Non-chosen properties will be inactive when the pact weapon is in one of those weapon forms. This too could start with a smaller number of properties and scale to more with warlock levels within Pact of the Blade's description.
I absolutely understand the concerns, and martials I think definitely need improvement, but... I'm just so distracted by the fact that you could extremely easily zoom out like 1-2 clicks and fit bladelock on that graph. It feels incredibly intentional. Not to mention that it assumes you'll always have a spell slot for smiting when you crit.
Looks to be just the extra attack pushing this out. Id probably limit to tier four play only and make it a separate invocation.
thirstier blade
@@irisinthedarkworldThirsting Blade? Hungering Blade.
When I do the survey I'm going to recommending the Weapon Mastery portion be moved to a separate invocation with a heafty level prerequisite, and give fighters a similar level of versatility for free.
I mean you have to take into consideration the other classes survivability. Paladins in heavy armor and aura of protection, fighters with heavy armor and indomitable, rogues with uncanny dodge and evasion. The other classes do great damage AND have survivability. This blade lock is the definition of a glass cannon, he/she/they aren't going to survive a dragons breath weapon or a beholders gazes.
People are overselling the value of plate on what is the low-Constition Paladin standard, or the +3 or +4 Charisma modifier AoP.
Plate Armor and Aura of Protection are pretty poor trade-offs for access to any 9th level spells, or a 3rd melee attack (Paladins get this stuff in their first 6 levels).
At the same time, I think Bladelocks should more or less be the standard for damage for the rest of the classes that sit in melee, rather than be nerfed into the ground to punish people for just wanting to swing a sword in a TTRPG.
2:45 Great Weapon Master requires proficiency with any martial weapon I just realized... we don't have that as Warlock, right?
I knew it felt broke, but darn, I didn't realize just how broke it was. This needs to be trashed in the surveys, as sadly, shortsighted players will talk about how much they love it. I'm increasingly concerned that this design by committee approach has some built in flaws. there are times to give the community what they want, then there are times to realize what the community thinks it wants isn't good for it.
You and me both. Even doomscrolling the comments thread here I see a lot of people who are going "hmmm ok maybe that's a bit much, but I hope they're gentle in their tuning." Like really? 3 attacks, tons of bonus damage, insane crits, insane movmement, insane HP, ranged/melee flexibility, on demand weapon mastery switching, and we haven't even mentioned you're a full caster yet, and you think this is only minorly problematic!? lol
The warlock community is weirdly zealous. So I'm worried with this one, haha.
You can't take PAM or GWM on a Warlock because they're not proficient with martial weapons, and if you could take them you'd be stuck with +3 charisma at level 11 because neither feat allows you to increase your charisma score.
The only weapon that could benefit the Warlock like this would be the double-bladed scimitar, but that's only 2d4 on your main attack and d4 on your bonus action attack.
instead of heavy weapon i would say doing something like a rapier cuz of the new weapon mastery, with vex, giving you advantage once you hit, you can get more consistent chance to hit, and technically higher chance to crits. its probably not the best dpr option but it seem to be a more rounded option, especially with defensive duelist be a little more tanky and have a little more rounded stats. another thing that is need clarification, warlock doesn't have marital proficiency and the pact of the blade only gives temporary proficiency. i actually dont think you are allow to take great weapon master. its probably not the case and you are allow to take it, however the way its wording is, i would say no.
if it were to nerf this would make pact of the blade give you one extra attack at lv 5, and thirsty blade at level 13 or 15+, not letting you summon whatever weapon you want especially in combat. and either made the decision of having life drinker work only once/round and make it 1d10 or not giving them a third attack at all.... i would go with the latter. especially considering every other class also dont have a third attack. now i think about no i say just keep thirsty blade at level 5, keep it with just one extra attack, but you can summon two weapon with the Nick weapon property, so you can two weapon fight with your cha modifier... but that might be too strong. but it would give you the customization and people like customization.
I think with the Longbow, the best choice is Shadow of Moil for permanent advantage. Especially if you can still take Elven Accuracy as a racial feat, still works with the Charisma attacks.
In BG3 the Worlock Blade pact extra attack stacks with fighter, I thought it was a bug until watching this.
Overall I'm excited about this version of the Bladelock, hopefully it will be balanced but I have to admit to loving this as is.
A level 12 fighter has 3 attacks anyway.
Honestly, the biggest issue is that Warlock's should not be getting 3 weapon attacks per attack action at the same level that Fighters do. If they want to give Warlocks a third extra attack it should be at a later level, personally I probably wouldn't grant it until at least level 15.
I would go as far as saying that a 50% damage increase output sounds like a god damn capstone level of power.
Considering Champions are more of a middle of the road subclass option for Fighters, I can definitely see more powerful subclass options overtaking the Warlock but it's still crazy to think that Berserker and Beast Master Ranger are getting overtaken despite those being among the strongest multiclass options Barbarians and Rangers currently have available, especially for how little commitment it takes the Blade Pact to go nuclear. I do like the idea of them having access to a third attack to sorta make up for not being able to use Nick as well since that does give every other melee fighter a free extra attack but thry clearly overdid it.
Not full related, but...
About The Idea of a especific terrain feature for The Ranger, and things related, i would like to sugest for The playtest 8:
(I really would like to know your opinion, guys)
-Expertise: Separate from deft explorer, granting the benefit in two skills as occurs with rogue and bard. Later the Ranger could receives expertise in two other skills, totaling 4 as with other Skill focused classes .
-Reason: Expertise is in D&D a certificate of a skill-oriented class. You are not truly an expert without it and guarantee that the Ranger will not falling behind classes supposed to be specialists in another area of activity (Rogue or Bard).
-Deft Explorer: Completely redesigned. The Ranger receives this benefit on a number of terrains it has come into contact with, like, up to the amount of half its level (rounded up) + wisdom bonus. In them, the character, and allies who can see him up to 30 feet, do not suffer from difficult terrain arising from natural areas, and the Ranger can use stealth, study and surch actions related to the terrain and its creatures as a bonus action.
-Reason: help The party menbers to walk in The terrain without problem is basic, simple and eficient. Above this, When an action can be made as a BA, this means it can be performed twice as many times per round, effectively doubling your chances of success and/or cutting the time to perform a task in half (perfect for representing someone familiar with with an environment). Turning this actions in bonus actions instead of give advantage also ensures that other sources of advantage are not wasted as would happen in the original version. The high amount of known terrain (half the level, rounded up, + wisdom bonus) makes it efficient in most scenarios, but the DM still can put The party in unknown terrains as part of a challenge.
-Favored Enemy: The Ranger adds hunters mark to his list of spells known. If you already have it, choose another spell. Additionally, as part of the bonus action used to cast or designate a new Hunters Mark target, the Ranger performs a Study action with the appropriate Skill to identify details about the creature. You will receive advantage if the creature is related to known terrain (Deft Explorer). For every 5 above the Skill CD to identify the creature, hunters mark will be cast 1 level higher.
-Reason: extra information about a prey's weaknesses and habits is flavorful, and the upcast represents that the Ranger has intuited more efficient ways of not losing his tracks and even causing more damage in the situation. If the number of uses is low, it is possible for this feature to add one or more (wis bonus) extra uses
PS: It would be great if hunters mark became concentration free after a certain casting level, as happens with bestow curse.
-Deft Explorer Improvement: the Ranger adds his Wisdom Bonus in Study Actions related to known terrains and their creatures. When on familiar terrain, it adds a wisdom bonus to its initiative and cannot suffer the surprised condition.
-Reason: Walter is simply not surprised by anything in Texas, just like Aragorn in Middle Earth 😏🤣. It make really good in know The information about the enviroment and perceive threats in it, a core parte of the class identity.
-Natures Veil: The ranger adds Invisibility to his list of spells known. If in known terrain, you can cast Invisibility on yourself as a bonus action and when the spell ends because of an attack or spellcasting, it will still last until the end of your next turn.
-Reason: increases versatility since invisibility is something quite useful, as it creates a mechanism related to the environment to add flavor. At this point the Ranger would have, on average, 7 to 10 known terrains. considering the number of spell slots It Have on 14th level, The use as original intended can be quite frequent.
If the number of uses is low, it is possible for this feature to add one or more (wis bonus) extra uses.
PS: um not an english native, so If something is not so clear or confusing, feel free to ask questions.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something but I think for the longbow calculations you added the smite crit for all 3 attacks when you can only smite once per turn. Also, even if you could smite more than once, you would only have 2- 3 slots remaining after casting hex or spirit shroud.
He's adding the average damage of being able to crit once per combat to the DPR calculation.
Yeah I see it now. It just seems weird to still multiple the crit 3 times for a damage that can only be used once per round. However, I did recalculate it by averaging it out over 3 rounds for 3 combats with 1 short rest and 1 minute recharge and the dpr was still similar, about 64-68 dpr. I'm sure I made a mistake somewhere but happy that I cleared it up a bit for myself.
@F5tornado651 yeah people get confused easily by average damage because you're essentially spreading that possible damage over multiple instances where it's possible to happen, but you have to for the calculation to work.
It just isn't very intuitive to conceive of who don't work with statistics a lot, especially when it uses a limited resource like Eldritch Smite does.
I'm less concerned about the math (though it is pretty damning), and more about how it feels at the table.
Fighter: "Cool, I get 3 attacks at level 11 !"
Warlock: "Me too"
Wizard: "I get a 6th level spell !"
Warlock "Me too, with Mystic Arcanum"
Fighter: And with your laughable eHP you will be half-dead after the first bigger encounter
Wizard: And you are still a wizard wannabe with the cringy number of spells per day from the cringy spell list.
Pact of the tome gives a spell slot which might synergize with Magical Cunning?
Pact of the Tome and Pact of the Blade have no prerequistes so other classes can pick up at first level too?
@Treantmonk if Thirsting Blade didn’t scale until 15, or possibly required a second invocation (at 15) would that bring the balance in line in your opinion? As stands I feel like a Hexblade at 13 is getting similar benefit to pure weapon damage, though it is taking their subclass to do so, except minus one attack (though they do benefit additionally from Hexblade’s curse). Lifedrinker lacks healing, but obviously Cha to damage is better than 1d6, and I feel that 9 is late enough.
Not to give you more work, but I’d really like to see a level by level damage comparison like you have for other “martials”
I hope they keep it! I might actually play a warlock then.
To be fair, they have to invest many of their choices. I guess Lifedrinker should just not deal damage anymore, since you get a 3rd attack now.
You could take archery fighting style as a feet eventually and make the longbow definitely outpace Eldridge blast, especially if it's a +1 or more magic bow.
Warcaster and +1 stat... is this homebrew....? Same for great weapon master, where you add a stat and freely removed the "melee" criteria which is very explicit in the standard feat.
Due to how many options their are for consistent advantage I'm curious if crit builds are functional again. Especially if elven accuracy is still a valid feat.
Playing a Bladelock now, and even just the PAM bonus action attack with Curse and 5th level Spirit Shroud puts me at higher damage output than our Paladin, Echo Knight and Eldritch Knight. With an extra attack I would be rolling 8d8+3d10+1d4+15 against my cursed target. Absolutely insane.
The monk is the unloved eldest son, and the warlock is the youngest, who gets all the best.
Ok, Pact of the Blade must specify that you CAN'T create nor bond with ranged weapons. I think the adittional attack must be at lv 13 minimum and maybe be another invocation in order to more investment. Now, that would be nice becuase you can get crazy high damage but you have to invest a lot of resources to do it.
PotB could always bond with a ranged weapon going back to 2014. Prior to the Hexblade it was really the only way to play PotB because they didn't have the armour to survive in melee.
Warlock should not get 3 attacks. Fighters should be the best martial character for dealing damage.