Race and initial roll

Metallic Ancestry Dragonborn, followed closely by Human are currently (Mod 15) the best races for a dps SW (on an end-game toon at least) thanks to the 3% buffed power from MADB and the 3 additional Heroic feat points which will be put in Blood Pact of Cania from Human, with Tiefling coming up close. But ultimately it doesn’t matter beyond a few percentage points.

Relevant ability scores and their effects

Constitution and Charisma are the 2 most important stats for a SW, with Constitution being better on an end-game toon with high (100%) critical strike chance, while Charisma is more interesting for a newer character. Intelligence is not worth investing into since it has a low impact on endgame performance due to cooldown resets from a well built party.

Since Constitution is NOT the Warlock’s primary stat while still being its +% Damage enhancer, it pretty much makes the best initial roll:

The difference between Charisma and Constitution

Ability scores are not rolled individually. Instead, all six values are selected simultaneously, by randomly picking a row from the following table:

So – in our example, you rolled for the highest Charisma – 18 and a Constitution of 13 (In pink and marked with * in the table above). As you levelled up to rank 70, you added a point to Charisma (a further 7 points) and 7 points also in Constitution.  That means that you have

Combat Advantage (Charisma) : 18 + 7 = 25

Damage (Constitution) : 13 + 7 = 20.

Every point above 10 will give you 1% towards your Combat Advantage (Charisma)/Damage (Constitution).

Remember that all classes have a 15% combat advantage as base too

Combat Advantage(Charisma) : 25 – 10 + 15 (Base) = 30%

Damage (Constitution) : 20 – 10 = 10%

How much DPS does that mean ?

Graph 1 – Amount of DPS from 30 Charisma

As you can see from the graph, 30% Combat Advantage (25 points in Charisma) = an 11.5% DPS increase plus the DPS increase from Constitution : 20 – 10 = 10%

11.5 + 10 = 21.5%

That’s a combined 21.5% DPS increase if we roll for the highest possible Charisma that we can get.

Let’s try that again but this time look at maxing Constitution.

Remember that Constitution is a secondary stat for us Warlocks and the highest we can roll is 16 for Constitution (In blue and marked with ** in the table above) and 16 for Charisma.  If we also add in the 7 points for Constitution and Charisma like we did before :

Combat Advantage (Charisma) : 16 + 7 = 23

Damage (Constitution) : 16 + 7 = 23

As it’s 1 point for anything over 10 that gives us

Combat Advantage (Charisma) : 23 – 10 +15 (Combat Advantage base) = 28%

Damage (Constitution) : 23 – 10 = 13%

Our graph shows us that 13 points

Graph 2 – Amount of DPS from 28 Charisma

As you can see from the graph, 28% Combat Advantage (16 points in Charisma) = an 10.1% DPS increase plus the DPS increase from Constitution : 23 – 10 = 13%

10.1 + 13 = 23.1%

That’s a combined 23.1% DPS increase if we roll for the highest possible Constitution that we can get.

When we look at how the stats work for us and how the stat points equate to DPS it’s clear to see that when you’re near end-game and able to hit the Critical Strike cap then you should be looking to roll for Constitution as your max stat.

Paragon Path and trees

Overview

Hellbringer:

Many people believe that Hellbringer is easier to play than Soulbinder. The Hellbringer paragon has your buffs available quicker than Soulbinder and primarily revolves around the Pillar of Power encounter power.  The damage is a little lower than what the Soulbinder paragon can deliver but the lifesteal aspect is a bit better and helps with some survivability.  It’s a great path for playing to help you understand the Warlock, and good for levelling up your toon.  Due to the nature of the Pillar of Power it’s also the only paragon that you should be using for the Temptation tree.  The Temptation Tree is used to build the Templock and what you’ll see most people asking for when looking to put runs together for CRL, CODG etc.

The Templock (Hellbringer Temptation):

Templock covers 2 roles : healer and buffer.

The buffing aspect
is not tied to gear at all
 and is very easy to pick up. All you need to do is place your Pillar of Power (with Power of the Nine Hells Feat) correctly, use your tab/RB on the main target and throw Dreadtheft as often as you can.

The healing aspect is directly tied to the damage you do and your lifesteal stat, so you need to increase both your dps and your lifesteal if you want bigger heals. The way healing works for the warlock is based on the lifesteal chance, not the lifesteal severity.  Let’s say you deal 1M damage and have a lifesteal chance of 20%.  If you successfully performed a lifesteal then you will heal your team for 20% of 1M = 200,000 HP that you’ve just healed for.  But you’re constantly hitting, you’ll have Pillar of Power (AoE powers only 30% effective) down which will be dealing damage and healing, you’ll be using other powers which will also be dealing damage (some over time too) and every tick of damage that you deal has a chance to heal you and your team. So look at your damage in the combat log, see what you’re hitting for and then think “Hey, I’ve got 40% lifesteal and doing 2M in damage, that’s  … erm … 800,000 HP – do any players have that much HP?”

The answer is “No”, so 40% lifesteal chance would be too much.  Your team will be full of health but think about all those stat points you put into lifesteal – you could use those to help your Defenses Ignored, Critical Strike or Power.  Work out how much is good for you.

The Soulbinder:

The Soulbinder paragon adds a new mechanic to the SW :  Soul Sparks.

There are 5 levels of Sparks and each level contains up to 6 sparks (max : 30 sparks)

Figure 1 – Soulspark counter

Soul Sparks are generated when inflicting a critical hit or by using the at-will ‘Essence Defiler’, or the daily ‘Immolation Spirits’, and they have several effects:

• % Damage Buffs (with the Dust to Dust off hand feature and the Fury feat Burning Souls)
• Out of Combat Action Point Generation (with the Dust to Dust feature) means you will have your big bad daily ready at the start of every fight!
• Increased lifesteal/health regeneration (only relevant at lower item levels)
• Enable use of Soul Scorch encounter (No cooldown but consumes one level), which is hands down our best single target encounter.

You need some time to generate sparks (depending on the setup you use), and part of the game becomes managing your sparks (you ideally want 2~4 completed levels if you’re playing with soul scorch) and not losing your momentum.

Statistics

Main Stat Ratings

• Power:
  POWER / 400 = +% Damage Bonus
• Critical Strike:
  CRITICAL STRIKE / 400 = +% Critical Chance
• Armour Penetration: 100 Points into Arm Pen provides about 1% Defenses Ignored.
• Recovery:
  RECOVERY / 200 = +% Recharge Speed Increase
  •        RECOVERY / 400 = +% Action Point Gain
• Defense:
  DEFENSE / 400 = +% Damage Resistance
• Deflect:
  DEFLECT / 400 = +% Deflection Chance
• Regeneration:
  REGENERATION / 400 = +% Health Regeneration
  •               REGENERATION / 400 = +% Bonus Incoming Healing
• Life Steal:
  LIFE STEAL / 400 = +% Life Steal Chance
• Movement:
  MOVEMENT / 400 = +% Run Speed Bonus
• Armour Class:
  (ARMOUR CLASS – 10) / 2 = +% Damage Resistance

Auxiliary Stat Ratings

Auxiliary Stats all have very high diminishing returns and it is, in most cases, not worth putting more than 1000 points into them. At 1000 points they will provide an increase of 8.1% to their related stat. Auxiliary Stats are:

Action Point Gain, Combat Advantage Bonus, Control Bonus, Life Steal Severity, Stamina Gain, Incoming Healing Bonus, AoE Resist, Control Resist, Companion Influence, Gold Gain.

Thanks to
Mcklaud (Hunter Ranger guide) for the easy breakdown

Offensive Stat Priorities

Armour Penetration

The best damage multiplier is Armor Penetration until your resistance ignored exceeds the mob’s damage resistance

• 60% pre-Chult
• 75% for Chult
• 85% for Tomb of the Nine Gods dungeon and CODG
• 100% for Mod 14 Bosses

But with enough gear it is easy to have too much of it, so you shouldn’t focus on it more than you have to. Your equipment will likely get you most of the armour penetration stats that you need an easy quick boost is the epic mount insignia of aggression.

If you find that you’re still way under the mark on the armour penetration have a look an option to consider is taking the Armour Penetration Guild Boon if you have it; this is a huge amount of stats though so you’ll likely have way too much and would need to re-do your stats again as a result.

Critical Strike

The second-best damage multiplier is critical strike (especially if you play a SB build, which is dependent on critical strike to get its buffs and fire its main damage encounter). Aim for 95 %, as it can also be temporarily buffed by potions and food from the guild.

In reality
there’s an Optimal Power/Critical strike ratio which depends on a lot of factors
, but given that you should run bonding stones and that most parties should increase your Power (and your pet’s which is redirected to you) to some extent, it is better to invest in critical strike to have a functional toon.

Power

This is predominantly the “dump” stat where you’ll dump any extra stats into once you’ve hit the caps. It’s generally got a higher priority than recovery as you’ll do more damage with each hit if you have more power, however you’ll hit more often with more recovery.  Power is still better than recovery especially for solo play, when you get to end-game and running dungeons, you’ll be given a ton of power from the support classes and at this point you should be ensuring you have enough recovery.

Recovery

About 12k (procced) recovery is nice, but that’s not necessary to invest heavily in it if you run with an OP and a good AC DC (which is what most end-game parties want anyway).

The Ruthless enchantments come with both Critical Strike and Recovery, as well as the Gigantic and Black Ice.

Defensive Stat Priorities

These are not in order of priority are these will differ depending on what you actually need.

Hit Points

No matter how much defence you have some enemies will still hit you for more than you can defend against, especially as some have piercing damage. You need to be able to take the hit, this is where your amount of hit points come into play. HP is the most important defensive stat for this reason, and it is the only defensive that that increases your damage independent of mount power bonuses, thanks to Aura of Courage from an Oathbound Paladin.

Defence

The defence stat is there to mitigate the amount of damage that you’ll receive from a hit. It won’t stop piercing damage. For tank builds, most players get to the 80% mark and stop there, anything more isn’t really helpful.  You can spec up to 100% if you choose to do so but the benefit from the extra 20% is not as good as the benefit from HP, deflect or lifesteal. Your team should have some Shepherd’s Devotion mount powers slotted, so you can expect an increase in your defence and deflection when that procs.

Lifesteal

This was explained a bit in Soul Desecration but I’ll put it here again for ease of reference:

The actual formula is complex but to give a very simple explanation of how this works: Let’s say you hit for 100,000 and you have a 50% lifesteal chance and a 75% lifesteal severity. If you had performed a lifesteal on the 100,000 hit then you would steal health of 75,000 (100,000 * 0.75). You heal your team for the amount of lifesteal chance that you have, which is 50%. So, you’d heal the team for 37,500 (75,000 * 0.5). AoE powers are only 30%, but that’s 30% from each target hit.

Given that for most stats 400 points equals 1% for a stat then you might want to put a few points into lifesteal.  You do get a nice amount of lifesteal as you’re a Warlock and some from your boons too. You want to ensure that you can heal yourself between one hit and the next and also heal your team.  Consider how hard you will hit the target.  If you’re in a team and you find that you’re hitting the enemy for 500,000, that’s about 187,500 healing that you’re delivering (assuming 50% lifesteal chance and 75% lifesteal severity) which is more than enough to heal a character from almost dead to full health.  You’ll be lifestealing frequently so you don’t need to go crazy with the amount of lifesteal that you get.

Deflection

For a Warlock your deflection rating is really low and dumping points into this stat for the rare chance it will proc is not really beneficial compared to HP, Defence or Lifesteal.  If you get some deflection from your gear because you chose it for a different stat then great but don’t actively pursue it.

Tertiary Stat Priorities

Combat Advantage

Combat Advantage is used to inflict more damage to the target if you have combat advantage over them.  To know if you have combat advantage, look at the circle on the ground underneath the enemy.  You’ll see a white area there, that’s where you want to stand to gain the combat advantage; it will turn purple or blue when you have it.  Scourge Warlocks have some powers that give combat advantage regardless of your positioning in relation to the enemy which makes it easier to get a bit more damage. The combat advantage stat suffers from some harsh diminishing returns meaning that the more you put into it the less you’re going to get from each point you put into it.

Figure 3 – Combat Advantage

In the graph above (courtesy of Janne (http://jannenw.info/pages/mechanics/ca)) you can see how bad that really is.  Putting about 1200 points here gives a nice benefit to our damage (we also have a 15% CA bonus as standard) the 8.69% for 1200 points is added to our 15% giving a total of 23.69% combat advantage.

Action Points

Action Point Gain (APG) above 1000 isn’t always a good thing to aim for; throwing more into the APG won’t make the daily come back that much faster after 1000 points. Recovery will help with APG, and power cooldowns, which, by extension, also boosts APG. APG gems in a companion will not transfer more APG to you, as anything that a companion does not have a stat in on their sheet will not transfer to you via bondings or augment powers.

Gold and Glory

If you’re into PVP, then on your PVP build you can pick up some extra glory is you would like to.  It’s coming from the utility slots but as you’ll likely want to be moving fast to either chase a fleeing opponent, race to the next checkpoint or in some-cases run away, you’ll likely be running with the Dark enchantment for the movement.

Unless you are constantly swapping enchantments from one piece or gear to another when switching loadouts then you can drop a few enchants in the utility slots to pick up extra gold but honestly, it’s so easy to come by that you’ll only use your utility slots for either increased refinement point drops with either the Fey, Dragon, Quartermaster enchants or Dark for the extra movement speed.

Stats Return on Investment (Aka Toon Optimisation)

This part will assume the following :

• Power over 200k (in a party, which is way under what a BiS party can give you)
• You’ve done your campaigns
• You meet the Critical Strike/Armour Pen caps
• 24 Charisma
• 3/3 Devastating Critical
• Over 1200 Combat Advantage (roughly a 9% bonus)
• You are taking a Wild Storm Elixir (best Elixir)
• All of your damage is from stuff that will perform a Critical Strike (Or scales off Critical Strike in Creeping Death Case) — This number should be closer to 90-95% but things are complicated enough as it is
• Permanent Combat Advantage

Your Critical Severity should be at least equal to :

75 (base) + 15 (Devastating Critical feat) + 6.5 (Tyranny of Dragons boon) +2 (Icewind Dale boon) +2 (Cloaked Ascendancy boon) + 10 (Wild Storm Elixir) + 2.5 Razorwood =  113

And your Combat Advantage :

(15 (base) + 14 (Charisma) + 9 (Tertiary Stat))*1.1 (Underdark boon) +25 = 66.8

For a total of 179.8% Critical severity + Combat Advantage

Which means that 10% additional severity grants 10/(100+179.8) = 3.57 % damage increase

As for traditional stats, the only 2 offensive stats left are recovery and power. Given that the dps increase you get through recovery in a group is hard to quantify (it mostly comes down to gut feeling and the groups you run with), I will just say that Recovery is better on Hellbringer than it is on Soulbinder, and that with a good group, you don’t need to invest at all with Soulbinder. If you need recovery, you can use Black Ice or Ruthless Enchants (on an optimised toon).

For Power, since 100k Power is a x3.5 damage multiplier, you need 400*3.5 = 1400 Power for a 1% damage increase. The better the party, the less your own power makes a difference.

Damage Buff vs Damage Resistance Debuff

In an end-game team with tons of debuff, A 10% buff is much better than a 10% debuff as debuff suffers from both relative increase (since debuffs are additive), and diminishing returns (which is something introduced in mod 12). This explains why the debuff from class-features (and their associated off-hand bonus) are subpar. More info can be found on
Janne’s Site

Figure 2 – Heroic Feat points

Fury

• SB Single Target
  Fury with Infernal Wrath debuff
  • In this example build we’ve chosen Helltouched (If you get hit, the enemy that hit you takes 10% more damage from you for 10 seconds).  It’s worth pointing out that for this to proc you need to take a hit. If you’re running in FBI upwards and you can’t take a hit even when the tank is there then this feat isn’t going to be proccing all that often for you, in this scenario options to consider are Parting Blasphemy (more damage) or Hope Stealer (more survivability)
  • If you’re big and hard enough to take a hit and survive then just make sure to take a hit once every 10 seconds to keep this ticking over nicely.

Damnation

• Hellbringer Damnation is a good build for trash mobs and if you’re running solo whilst levelling up
• The tree is about your Soul Puppet
• You gain a stack of Soul Desecration when an enemy with Warlock’s Curse dies. Lesser cursed enemies are also giving a stack at the time of this guide’s writing.
• See the Soulbinder Single Target build for an explanation of the Fury feats that were chosen
• There are no Boss notes here as we recommend SB for Boss fights.

Temptation

• We didn’t take Soul Reaping and Aura of Cruelty (Lifesteal for teammates) since we have enough lifesteal with Soul Bonding (10%), Hope Stealer (5%), our enchants and our campaigns. If you need more, you can take this boon.

You’ll be there for the buffs and the heals.  You can run your Templock to deliver some DPS or you can go for a more defensive style and run as a Tanklock.

As a Templock, Hellbringer is the only way to go; people will want you for the Pillar of Power. If you do still want to have a look at running a Soulbinder Templock for the fun of it, feel free, just note that you’ll not get many games in groups.

SW Usable Powers

In this part we’ll cover the decent powers of the SW. For the numbers I will assume all powers are at rank 4/4. For AoE, most of our powers have a target cap of 5 (But I didn’t test them all individually). If you want to compare the base damage of SW abilities you can check
SW Ability Coefficient (AKA Base Damage)
  (credits to Sharpedge)

At-wills

Apart from Eldritch Blast (which applies an AoE burst on the 3rd hit) all SW at-wills attack only a single Target. Hellish Rebuke is the hardest hitting at-will available to our class and Essence Defiler grants utility to the Soulbinder Paragon by providing soul spark generation.

Eldritch Blast 

You shoot fire at your enemy. The 3rd deals damage in a small radius. This is one of your fastest at-will powers and benefits from Murderous Flames.

Hellish Rebuke (HB, main at-will) 

Deals an initial hit on an enemy. The enemy then takes 62.5% with Gatekeeper Empowerment feat of the initial hit every 1.5s up to 7 times. This dot cannot stack.

• There’s also a class feature (No Pity, No Mercy) that removes the Dot Portion (which is 80% of the damage of this power) but makes the initial tick 50% stronger. This is however worth slotting if you are applying Hellish Rebuke in quick succession as the dot portion is slow and not stackable.
• The only at-will that deals good damage, a must have on HB SW.
• Whether you main HB or SB as DPS you should put your main hand artifact bonus to this

Essence Defiler (SB, main at-will) 

A quick and low damage at-will that grants Soul Sparks. On top of the spark that you gain if you perform a critical strike, you’ll automatically grant one soul spark. The 3rd hit grants 3 sparks on a cursed target. If you have 100% critical strike chance and hit 3 times, you’ll gain:

1 spark for the 1^st hit + 1 spark for the 1^st critical strike.

1 spark for the 2^nd hit + 1 spark for the 2^nd critical strike

3 sparks for the 3^rd hit + 1 spark for the 3^rd critical strike.

With 100% critical strike chance and 3 at-will hits you’ll gain 8 Soul Sparks.

Hand of Blight 

(Secondary at-will for Templock) : This at-will comes with both a melee and a ranged version. The melee version deals more damage and reduces enemy damage output for 5-6 seconds (up to roughly 20% at 4 stacks with the off-hand feature).

Encounters

This is typically the main source of damage for a Scourge Warlock.

Killing Flames 

A single target encounter that should probably be slotted for bosses, but is still viable on AoE if you’re using Tyrannical Curse and/or the Murderous Flames feat that adds a little splash. Its main characteristic is that the damage increases as your target’s HP gets lower (2x damage when the target is at/below 25% hit points), and the cooldown is fairly small. If it kills the target then you gain extra Action Points and you spawn a Soul Puppet (or add Soul Investiture to your existing Soul Puppet if you already have one summoned).

Dreadtheft 

You fire a Laser aimed at your target for up to 6 seconds, dealing damage while it is active. Reactivating it, being dazed/stunned/knocked or entering shadowslip while it’s active will deactivate it. This power can hit any target it passes through, and you may move to reorient it, but it will always be aimed at your original target, or its corpse.

What makes it great though is that on top if its damage if you’re hitting a cursed target, it will briefly (as in only while the spell is active)
debuff it’s damage resistance by 25%
and increase slightly your resistance making it a must-use on a Templock build.

• Its cooldown starts after the encounter power has finished firing
• It can generate several soul sparks (SB)
• It has target cap per tick (5)
• You can resurrect allies crying for help while still firing the laser
• There is a small pre-cast delay in which you can cast some spells right after pressing the key/button to activate this power, however, you cannot use any spells while it is active.
• Dreadtheft ticks10 times.

Fiery Bolt 

Your standard ‘Shoot a fireball at your target and watch it explode’ power and one of our ‘better’ AoE powers. The enemies next to your target will take less damage from the splash effect compared to the main target you aimed at unless the other targets are affected by a curse. If the other enemies are affected by a curse then they will take the full damage from the fiery bolt too. As an example, you can apply Lesser Curse to some enemies, Warlock’s Bargain another enemy and Warlock’s Curse 3 other enemies then use the Fiery Bolt.  All the cursed enemies will take the full damage from the bolt and not just the small splash damage.

Curse Bite 

Deals medium damage to cursed targets. A fun power (that you don’t have to aim !) to use and it 2 charges and a very short cooldown. Perfect for those fade away moments. Due to the two charges, dropping PoP for the instant lesser curse, then Curse Bite, Killing Flames/Harrowstorm and another Curse Bite will really cut those mobs down to size and you’ll have another charge of Curse Bite ready to go soon after you’ve dispatched that last pesky mob. An unfortunate facet of this power is that it does not generate action points, though this in practice is a rather minor issue.

Pillar of Power (HB) 

A must have on HB 24/7. This power places a 13’ fiery green circle on the ground which deals some (little) damage. Its selling points are that it increases your party’s resistance, damage (24% for you, and 18% for party members), and decreases the enemy’s resistance and damage dealt by 10 %…. if they stand in it.  Always place this under both the dps and the boss/enemies. You can freely move away from it if you have PoT9H damnation feat.

• You can only have one Pillar Active
• You want this under the dps, and under the boss/mobs
• The debuff on enemies disappears once they’re no longer on the area
• The buff on party members (including you) disappears once they move out of the area, unless you have the Damnation feat “Power of the Nine Hells“. As a Templock you’ll want to have Power of the Nine Hells feat maxed out, it’s really helpful for the DPS as they won’t always be able to stay in the Pillar of Power when they’re chasing the enemy around the map.
• (BUG) It benefits from All-Consuming Curse even if it is not equipped

Soul Scorch (SB) 

A Must have on SB Single Target. This Powers requires and consumes 6 Soul sparks on use (One level) and deals damage. If the target is afflicted by your Warlock’s Curse, the curse is consumed and the enemy takes Damage over time equivalent to the initial hit. This dot ticks every second and stacks.

• It is your main source of damage on single target (if you exclude Creeping Death, which also scales off this)
• It’s a curse consume power, Warlock’s Curse between each cast for maximum damage
• Creeping Death will tick 5 times from one cast of Soul Scorch and Lesser Curse will tick 4 times

Harrowstorm 

A Tornado of Fire. Kinda. This power moves with your target. In Mod 15, the animation times for encounters were reworked and this one was no exception, it went from a slow cast time to something much more reasonable. It also synergies really well with Aura of Courage from the Paladin, so comes with a nice amount of DPS; an under-rated power, give it a try when you’re in a group with a Paladin and decide for yourself.

Warlock’s Bargain 

A decent single target power. You sacrifice 15% of your HP to curse your target and steal life from your target (depending on damage dealt) over time. Additionally, 15% of the damage you take while this curse is active is redirected to the cursed target, making it good for PVP.

• Both the self-damage and the heal can proc the Primal Weapon bonus for you.

Blade of Vanquished Armies 

Blades appear around you and deal damage to enemies around you. Blades will periodically fling to cursed (any curse, not just Warlock’s Curse) nearby enemies. Additionally, it increases your deflection chance. This power requires you to stay near your target(s) for an extended time.

• It is one of the best Soul spark generators for SB (9 sparks with Unparalleled Feytouched single target, 18 on two targets)
• You can freely move while it is active
• Procs Aura of Courage from the Paladin on every hit
• Certain control powers still deactivate it
• The Encounter itself only procs enchants one per target, however each occurrence of the fling (curse synergy) will proc weapon enchants (and % damage feats)
  • At the time of writing this the best enchantment is Feytouched, if you’ve not managed to get one yet, a lightning enchantment serves quite well here as each hit on a target procs the lightning strike.

Hadar’s Grasp 

An excellent single target encounter, which deals damage over time and lifts your target into the air for its duration. I won’t talk about the normal version since it is simply underwhelming. The Warlock’s Curse Consume has nice damage, will proc % damage feats/Aura of Courage, and has a nice property for SB in that it generates 11 Soul Sparks when you perform a critical hit and have either a weapon proc enchant (Feythoughed) or Killing Curse. An extra feature of the encounter is that your target takes extra damage from Curses and Soul Puppets.

Arms of Hadar 

One of our few AoE Powers that doesn’t require a target. This Power deals damage in an Area and briefly prones enemies. It has a low cooldown at first, but it gradually increases as you use this power in quick succession.

• If the cooldown becomes too important, it is better to wait for the debuff to expire
• Keep in mind that is has more reach in the front that on the side, making it easier to hit lined up enemies
• It has such a long pre-cast animation that in ‘melt groups’ by the time you’ve finally cast this the mobs are usually already dead.

Dailies

Brood of Hadar 

Highest damage single-target daily. It has some nice damage with a little bit of burst and a quick cast time. It’s a fire-and-forget power with a quick to tick DoT. It will immobilize for a small period of time as a Control power. The Brood of Hadar’s Bite is classified as melee splash damage.

• Highest Single Target damage daily
• You can cancel the end of the animation early
• It’s a control power and will proc the Combatant’s Manoeuvre mount bonus

Flames of Phlegethos 

It’s not the hardest hitting daily, it has a bit of splash damage but apart from the nice visuals, it’s not worth using compared to Brood of Hadar. Brood casts faster, hits a bit harder and as it’s a control power it will proc Combatant’s Maneuver, even if a target is control immune.

Tyrannical Curse 

Applies a Tyrannical Curse to one target (see the curses section). It’s situationally the daily to use when it comes to dealing with packs that don’t die instantly. It’s good for when you’re running solo and you’re not quite end-game item level.

• Pretty long cast time
• Target cap of 10, which is more than most of our powers (thanks Sharp)
• If you or the target dies, you lose the curse.
• You have a small window right before the Curse pops, to cast other spells
• It scales with both the (damage resistance) debuffs on the initial TC target and the debuffs on the target of the damage link

Immolation Spirits (SB) 

Summons two spirits that regularly shoot your target for around 12s. Their attacks have a 50% chance to grant you a soul spark.

• It can multi proc enchants, however the procs look bugged and do less damage than intended
• If you attempt to use the daily again while the old one is still active, nothing will happen, and you will lose action points.
• They can get controlled and get smashed
• If you’re fighting close range to the boss, back away a bit and cast the spirits, they’ll usually appear behind you and once they’re in attack range they don’t get any closer. This helps them to stay alive.

Gates of Hell (HB) 

After a long delay summons a Portal, which after another delay fires a giant laser towards your position when you summoned it. Grants extra AP if it kills targets.

This daily has good burst, if you manage to land it and time it with buffs. To aim it, you position the gates, and potential targets are located between them and you.

• On PC, you can use it quickly by changing your options : Gameplay -> Location Targeting activation -> On Release
• If you aim the portal in a pit (ex : trying to place it out of Ras Nsi platform) it won’t cast
• TARGET CAP of 5
• Best used when in front of an immobile target that won’t suddenly become un-targetable or move
• Works great with the Primal Boots for the additional AP gain to help you spam this
• Solo: Great for some burst damage against mobs. When leveling your character, it’s also great for the prone aspect as that gives you a little bit of time to get an extra hit in, great if you’re squishy. When at end-game level you’ll curse, drop PoP and cast Gates of Hell and cast Curse Bite whilst waiting for Gates of Hell to cast and the mob is dead.  With good recovery, and the Flail Snail (Legacy) or Coastal Flail Snail (Legendary) you’ll be back to full AP when you get to the next mob.
• Group: With the long pre-cast animation and long delay once the portal appears mobs are mostly dead. Timing is everything with this power. You want to know when the mob is appearing and from where and have the target already set so that you can fire this correctly to hit the mobs.
• Boss: If the boss has adds, then casting this when the adds are present will help with the AP gain and crowd control. Try to line up the souls in T9 or pre-casting on the lift for Cradle.

Class Features

Shadowslip 

Shadowslip is a class mechanic but we thought it important to mention. it gives you control immunity. It also increases your damage resistance by 100%. This effect diminishes 20% every second down to a 40% increase, so essentially the effect diminishes for 3 seconds. The first second of this power, you are actually considered immune to damage, which makes it useful against enemies with armor penetration.

Deadly Curse 

When you place your Warlock’s Curse on a target that is not already affected by it, you deal damage to your target

• Usable on a Single Target SB build with relentless Curse Damnation feat, which uses a lot of curse consume powers (Soul Scorch, Hadar’s grasp), it roughly adds 2% to your dps, but not being able to curse before the mob has been pulled can be counter-intuitive to what you’re used to doing as a Warlock
• If you curse the mob before the tank pulls, you’ll get aggro and get smashed

Flames of Empowerment (HB) 

Your at-will debuffs your target’s resistance to your damage by 5%. This can be used up to 3 times.

• If you’re using this and not using No Pity, No Mercy (and thus not spamming Hellish Rebuke), you can quickly stack this on your target with Eldritch Blast
• The off-hand feature supposedly increases the debuff by 1% per stack.
• Most players will go to battle and curse targets then use encounters. The 15% debuff looks great but if you’re trying to get the most from this you’d need to cast 3 at-wills before you start using your encounters. By the time you’ve finished this most mobs will be dead at end-game. It should only be considered when running with a team that gives very few debuffs and you’re at the boss that you’ll not melt after your first rotation of encounters.  There’s others that are better for use.

No Pity No Mercy (HB) 

Your Hellish Rebuke (At-Will) initial hit is increased by 50% but the DoT portion is lost, which is ideal if you plan to spam it. Additionally, critical hits briefly (less than 2s) grant you combat advantage against your target.

• Your initial critical strike is not affected by the Combat Advantage afforded by this power
• In the rare fights in which you can’t naturally gain combat advantage (Atropal, FBI Turtle) use it if no one else gives you combat advantage. Classes/builds that grant combat advantage are :
  • GF or GWF with Mark
  • HR with Aspect of the Pack
  • Renegade CW (with Nightmare Wizardry feat)
  • Templock (with Eldritch Momentum)
• The offhand briefly debuffs (only for you again) the targets damage resistance by 5% but is not worth IMO

All-Consuming Curse 

Everything you critically strike will be afflicted by a lesser curse. This ensures all your powers gain their curse synergy effect, and that creeping death procs.

• Your lesser curse can be spread through Tyrannical Curse, if you critically strike the target inflicted by Tyrannical Curse
• It should be slotted in AoE Situations so you can curse as many enemies as possible. (and that trash gets affected by Creeping Death)
• You should slot this if you’re using Curse Consume Powers, unless you are using Relentless Curse. Some ticks of the DoT from Soul Scorch and Hadar’s Grasp won’t benefit from Creeping Death if you don’t.
• The off-hand class feature should be used if you use primarily a HB setup.

Dust to Dust (SB) 

You slowly regenerate your Action Points as your Soul Sparks fade when out of combat. Unless you rush mobs and you kept Soul Sparks when rushing from one mob to the next, your daily should ready by the next fight.

Mounts

Active Power (Legendary mount) available every 60s

• Bat Swarm (+5% Damage buff for you and a stackable 5% debuff)
• T-Rex (for team debuff, or to help clear souls in TonG)
• Swift Golden Lion (If you fancy giving your team a shield)

Passive Power

Coastal Flail Snail / Flail Snail (Legacy)

On daily use you recover 25% of your action point over 10s (Preferred choice). (There are other much cheaper mounts who grant only 15%)

Keep in mind that daily spamming on support builds will also give your team protection/movement through Shepherd’s Devotion (insignia bonus) and Combat Advantage.

For new players you could always look for an Armour Pen/Crit Chance passive power to help you along until you no longer need it.

Stat Bonuses

If you can’t get a snail, you can choose whatever stat bonus you need. Typically power is suboptimal due to the small relative increase it gives in an endgame group. Usually, critical strike or recovery is a better path to go.

Mount Bonuses

There’s plenty to choose from, though there are only a few that are viable:

• Protector’s Camaraderie (Solo or Group)

Whenever your summoned Companion attacks, you gain 3% of your Power and Defence for 10 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times.

When your companion attacks and gets all 4 stacks up, they stay up for a long time, this gives us 12% more power. This works great with Artificer’s Persuasion which procs after you use an artifact power.

• Assassin’s Covenant (Solo)

You lose 10% of your Defence, Deflection, and Life Steal, and gain the combination of lost stats as Power.

If you’re running a support class that gives power share then this makes sense. If you’re running solo then you can take this, but when you’re running with a group the extra power that you’ll get from the bonus doesn’t give that much compared to the loss of defence and the other mount bonuses that you should take. Remember, the power boost from a Warlock to the party is on the BASE power of the target group member, not from your power.

• Combatant’s Manoeuvre (Solo or Group)

Whenever you control an enemy, you gain 5% Combat Advantage damage for 10 seconds.

If you have control powers slotted then this is a nice boost to your DPS. You’ll be using Hadar’s Grasp and Brood of Hadar which are both control powers and will proc this bonus, just remember to get combat advantage to make use of this. It’s important to note that even though bosses are immune to control powers that doesn’t mean that you can’t still proc this bonus on them.  When you cast a control power (Hadar’s Grasp as an example) the game will proc the mount bonus then check to see if the target is immune, it the target is immune then they will not be controlled – but the mount bonus has already procced.

• Gladiator’s Guile (Solo or Group, it helps you to move faster)

When your Stamina is above 75%, you move 15% faster. When your Stamina is below 25%, gain 15% of your Power as Stamina Gain.

This can be a divisive power as some people just don’t think it’s needed. If you never have issues keeping up with a group and you’ve always got a lot of stamina then you might not need to have this slotted. However, if you find that you’re running pretty slowly and not staying with the group then consider having this bonus. If you’re a Templock in a dungeon and you’re not keeping up with the group and dropping the Pillar of Power for the DPS classes you’re not being that helpful to the team. Decide for yourself based on how you and your group play as to whether you need this or not.

Another consideration is the boots that you wear.  If you’ve got high AP gain and recovery and can afford to lose that from the Primal boots then you might consider the Enduring Boots for the extra DPS as this mount bonus gives you a lot of stamina but you’ll need to be at 100% stamina for those boots which again will affect how you need to play to benefit from them.

• Shepherd’s Devotion (Group and Support)

Whenever you use a Daily power, your teammates Defence, Deflection, and Movement are increased by 5% of your Power for 10 seconds.

This is one of the best mount bonuses in the game. If you’re in a team and all got this mount bonus then you’re really helping each other to survive with the Defence and Deflection, the movement is great too if you need the speed boost to run down some stairs in T9. (They fixed the Daily/Cancel glitch but if you’ve slotted the Sigil of the Devoted then you’ll be back to full action points in no time.

• Artificer’s Persuasion (Solo and Group; good to get your cooldowns quickly)

Whenever you use an Artifact power, your Recovery, Movement, Action Point Gain, and Stamina Gain are increased by 10% of your Power for 15 seconds.

This is where you see a lot of people using the “Heart of the … Dragon” artifacts for the 15 second artifact cooldown and procing the mount bonus.  You can cast the artifact just before battle to get that extra recovery and action point gain. 15 second artifact cooldown and 15 second mount bonus = 100% uptime if you can safely cast and hit nothing. Notice that it also gives stamina gain too – in case you’re considering those Enduring Boots.

• Wanderer’s Fortune (Solo for farming RP)

You have a 4% chance after killing a foe to find a Refining Stone at your feet.

This does have an internal cooldown and you’ll see that “Wanderer’s Fortune” pops up on screen but you get no refining stone.  You don’t need to remove the bonus when this happens; you do still get some refining points even after the cooldown has kicked in.  Always remember that when the new Mods land there’s always something that you need to level up (usually a new weapon set) so it’s great to have a nice pool of refining points ready and waiting.

• Cavalry’s Warning (Group if you have a legendary mount)

Whenever you activate a Mount Combat Power, you gain an increase of 10% to your Power, Recovery, Armor Penetration, Critical Strike, Defence, Deflection, Regeneration, and Life Steal.

Any mount combat power will proc this bonus although it does work really well with the Tenser’s Transformation combat power. Now the thing to consider here is that 10% increase on the Armour Penetration and Critical Strike.  If you’re already at the cap then these are just wasted but the power and recovery are extremely useful. However in Mod 15 the BiS mount combat power is from the Swarm and that’s also got a faster cast time than Tenser’s too.

Insignias

A Comprehensible insignia list can be found
here

When it comes to insignias and what you need always look at your stats and see what you need when your companion is not available. Try to be as effective as you can for the team when your companion has been pushed off a ledge etc. When you’re running solo that’s not much of an issue and you can choose what you need when your companion is present so you’ve only got to concern yourself with when they’re not around.

Whether you’re a DPS or a Templock look for your Armour Penetration and Critical Strike above all others and take into account the Cavalry’s Warning mount bonus if you have a legendary mount. For healing the team (when it’s needed) then the DPS you deal is what you should be looking at.

If you’re just starting out or on a limited budget, any insignia type (Green, Blue or Purple) will get the bonus, you can swap these out for higher stat value insignia when you’re able to get them.

Boons

While we wanted this to be more of a guide than a build, we also felt that it was important to show the boons and give a reasoning for why they were chosen so that you can take that mindset and apply it for future mods as they become available.

If you’re respeccing your character, don’t just rush through the boons as quickly as you can.  Take a few minutes after applying a few boons to hit a target dummy and see the effect that it’s had on you before you pick a few more.

Whether DPS or Templock – you’re a DPS character and should look to still pick offense over defence.

For
DPS
try to follow this mindset:

I need to maximise my damage dealt. I first must get past the enemy defence (Resistance Ignored). Once I can beat their defence I need to hit as hard as possible (Critical Strike, Critical Severity and Power).  I’m a Warlock and will have Combat Advantage from my powers, I will use my companion/group to flank the enemy (Combat Advantage) and I will take his health to heal myself or my team (Lifesteal)

• Resistance Ignored
• Critical Strike
• Critical Severity
• Power
• Action Point Gain
• Combat Advantage
• Lifesteal

For
Templock
 it’s slightly different, you want to buff then kill.  You might be a Templock but you’re still DPS:

I need to help my team to kill the enemy. I first must buff my team and debuff the enemy (Buff/Debuff) then I must maximise my damage dealt.

When healing your team, you only really need about 15% – 20% Lifesteal chance. With the numbers that you’ll be hitting it will be enough to ensure your team is fully healed when you lifesteal.

• Buff/Debuff (If you have to choose ALWAYS take a buff over a debuff)
• Resistance Ignored
• Critical Strike
• Critical Severity
• Power
• Action Point Gain
• Combat Advantage
• Lifesteal

For Guild boons we take Power (Armor Pen is good if you can’t cap it)/Hit Points

Gear

The Demon Lord’s Set (A.K.A. The Orcus Set)

Set Bonus: Gives up to a 20% damage buff depending on the difference between your HP and the target’s HP.  So, how does this work?

It takes your current HP and divides that by your max HP to get the % of your health.  Then it does that for the target.  Then it subtracts one from the other, and gets the absolute value (takes away the negative), and divides that number by 5 to get your final damage boost Modifier.  So, let’s say you are at 100% health, and Orcus is at 40%.

1(100%)-0.4(40%)= 0.6

0.6/5= 0.12 or a 12% damage buff

Why is it BIS?  Well, there are a couple of reasons for that.  Firstly, we stay at 100% health most of the time.  We don’t typically draw aggro, and the volume of hits we perform combined with lifesteal means we don’t stay under 100% for very long.  Secondly, if you have seen a common theme, it’s that damage% modifiers are almost always superior to any other.  The stats on this set are not ideal for us, but that is honestly irrelevant compared to the damage buff. Thirdly, while it is true that the damage modifier will never make it to 20%, it doesn’t have to get too high to start out performing our other options.

Many Thanks to Tennessee James (Lilia Drakon) and the Insatiable Peanut Guide to Stabbing (Trickster Rogues Guide for the info).

Some gear recommendations

This can get tricky since you should balance stats with both gear and enchants, so there isn’t a unique way to build your toon, and what you put on it obviously depends on your gear advancement.

If you have enough armour penetration you should heavily focus on critical strike and power. I consider other offensive stats more or less wasted.

The one thing to think about here – percentages are more important than stats. So even though a piece of equipment has better stats than another if the percentage from the equip bonus is not as good as the one with “lesser” stats, go for the one with the best percentage.

Head

Mod 15 Goal : Curselord’s Raid Ushanka, Gallant Raid/Assault Cowl

Notable Mentions :  Vistani

The equip bonus gives you 5% increased damage when you kill something.  Fairly OK when you’re against mobs, chances are you’re not going to get to the second mob before the increase has expired.  When in boss fights, you’ll be looking to kill a minion then focus on the boss.  A great way to get this is to use Tyrannical Curse when the minions appear – you’ll hit them hard and once they’re dead, you’ll get that bonus as you’re melting the boss.  This headpiece alters how you want to fight. For most people, the Barovian head will be more feasible, and work nearly as well.

Armour

Mod 15 Goal : Hag’s Rags, Primal

Notable Mentions : Vistani

Some people run with the Fured Kiuno of the Bear, which does have nice stats but you’re not a Melee class, the only two melee powers that you have are the Hand of Blight when in melee range and the Brood of Hadar’s Bite. Hag’s Rags are BiS for the Scourge Warlock,

Arms

Mod 15 Goal : Eyestalk Wrappers, Terrored Grips, Primal

Notable Mentions : Jawripper’s Gloves, Pioneer, Pilgrim

Most of your powers are classed as Ranged making the Eyestalk Wrappers the clear BiS for the arms, if you’ve not got them but somehow managed to get the Jawripper’s
Gloves they’ll do too but as you’ll definitely be using your At-Will powers the Jawripper’s
Gloves won’t help with that. Eyestalk Wrappers come from Erjellel (a T2 hunt), while Jawripper’s
Gloves come from the Tyrant (T3 Hunt), making the former much more accessible.

Weapon Set

Mod 15 Goal : Masterwork 3 (+1) Weapon Set, Primal, Pilgrim

Notable Mentions :  Primal

The Primal weapons are good, with a nice set of stats and a good equip bonus.  For running solo, you’ll only proc the bonus if you get hit hard enough.  An easy way to proc them is the Warlock’s Bargain encounter power. When in a group your support team should always be proccing this for you.

Masterwork weapons are best in slot due to their significantly higher weapon damage. The group buff is simply icing on the cake.

Mod 16 is approaching an no-doubt there will be some great weapons there too; if you don’t have Masterwork weapons then stick with Primal.

Feet

Mod 15 Goal : Enduring boots

Notable mentions, Primal, Curselord’s Raid/Assault Pigaches

Ideally, you’ll want to run with the Primal if you’re wanting some extra Action Point gain, if you have lots of Action Points coming in, though, you could try swapping to the Enduring Boots. There will be times when you’ll be using your stamina to catch up to people in groups or to rush to the next location and drop your Pillar of Power in advance to help the DPS when you’ve gone Templock.  When you’re running solo then the Enduring Boots are a nice little boost. If you’re using the Eclipse enchantment and use it wisely you have 6 seconds of shadowslip and Enduring Boots boost at the same time.

Neck

Mod 15 Goal : Baphomet’s Infernal Talisman

Notable Mentions : Company Executioner Cloak

For DPS, it’s still the Demon Lord’s Set for the set bonus.  If you’ve not yet managed to pick that up, you can go for the Company Executioner Cloak which gives +2 to your Charisma.

Rings

Mod 15 Goal : Ring of the Shadowstalker + 5 and +4

Notable Mentions : Ring of Offensive Action, Bronzewood and Beaded Masterwork rings

You’ll be looking to get the rings based on their equip bonus with the Offensive giving a 3% increase after you cast a daily power and the Shadowstalker for increased damage when you’re close to the enemy (so usually all the time).

Since we use dailies fairly often, the Ring of Offensive Action is a good and farmable option. It is acquired by giving Lich Lore to an old acquaintance in Omu. The Lore can be farmed every hour by killing Thayans or doing HEs.

Waist

Mod 15 Goal : Demogorgon’s Girdle of Might

Notable Mentions : Greater Belt of Black Ice, Greater Plated Band of Constitution

Run with the Demon Lord’s set if you’ve got it.  If you’re still working your way towards it, then either the Black Ice belt for the stats or the Greater Plated Band of Constitution for the +4 points to your constitution are worth looking into.

Shirt

Mod 15 Goal :  Upper Primal Paints

Notable Mentions :  Shirt of the Chultan Merchant

This works on all SW dailies except Tyrannical Curse

The Upper Primal Paints increase the damage of your daily power, it’s something you should work towards getting. This Shirt of the Chultan Merchant will give you 150 recovery points for every party member (this includes you) which is a 750 increase to your recovery.  If you’re running as a Templock and there for the buffs/heals it doesn’t matter what you run although this will help with the cooldown on the Dreadtheft encounter that you’re likely using. That being said, the 4 second encounter cooldown that you’ll be getting every time the DC casts Anointed Army – you can stick with your Upper Primal Paints and still be spamming.

Trousers

Mod 15 Goal : Shimmerweave Pants +1

Notable Mentions : Lower Primal Paints, Sandy’s Assault Pants

Shimmerweave Pants +1 are cheap pants and available on the trade house if you can’t make them yourself. They’re purely for the stats but they offer the most stats out of all the trousers on offer. The Lower Primal Paints are simply for the stats, you’ll rarely need the extra lifesteal from the equip bonus.  With Sandy’s Assault Pants if you take a big hit then you’ll stun the attacker for a few seconds (long enough to get your health back). Obviously if the enemy is immune to stuns (like bosses) then it’s not any help.  Sandy’s Assault Pants are good for solo play and group play at mobs especially if you’re not in a melt group.

Reinforcement Kits

The reinforcement kits can be made through your professions and cost 100,000 astral diamonds to make one at “Major” level.  They’re not bound so you can sell them to make some astral diamonds but it takes a while to make some of the materials needed.

Try to plan out what piece of kit you need if you can.  If you decide to make some for Armour Penetration and see that you are way over the cap and need to get another reinforcement kit then that’s gonna be really expensive, plus the kit that you’ve got on your equipment at the moment will be destroyed when you add the new kit.

Action Point Gain, Regeneration and Stamina can only go on Neck, Ring and Waist slot items.

All others can go on Head, Armour, Arms and Feet.

You can put reinforcement kits onto the gear that your companion is wearing but the only stat that actually transfers to you is regeneration.

Enchants

Offensive Slots

Always pick according to what stats you NEED :

• If you need Armour Penetration (and some Critical Strike to go with it) pick Savage, Demonic, or Gigantic
• If you need Critical Strike, Azure (for low item level), Brutal, Gigantic, or Ruthless.
• Fill the rest with what you like once you hit the caps.  Try to remember that your companion will die at times so try to ensure you stack as much critical strike and armour penetration on your character as you can and then with armour reinforcement kits and mount insignias then work on your companion. In some dungeons it’s hard to re-summon your companion if they fall of a platform.

Ideally you want to use double or triple stats enchants since they give overall more stats. Black Ice currently give the best mix of endgame stats.

Defensive Slots

Whilst levelling you can go with some Darks for Lifesteal or you can get some HP, it’s what you need for survival. If you pull in enough healing from the lifesteal then just use Radiants for HP. You’ve got several feats (Hope Stealer 5%,Aura of Cruelty 5%, Soul Bonding and a few boons)  that will give you more than enough lifesteal that you don’t need to stack any Dark enchants in the defense slots.  Your HP is also useful when you’re in a group with a Paladin.  They use a feat called Aura of Courage and this will give you extra damage based on the max HP that you have.

Utility Slots

In Mod 15 refinement points are so easy to come by that the only real usage for your utility slots are either Dark for more speed or a few Quartermasters for more refinement.

Weapon Enchant

If you want to compare how enchants work in general and with SWs I recommend you to check 
RJC’s weapon enchant comparison
. Keep in mind that creeping death (which is most of our damage in single target, less in AoE) doesn’t scale with anything that doesn’t boost the original hit (I.E. Vorpal/Feytouched/Dread)

That’s why, for a Single Target DPS Setup, you need Vorpal / Dread / Feytouched.  For a buff/debuff purpose (Templock) we’d recommend Dread, but any debuff enchant can work. Templock can still comfortably use a fey while retaining 99% of their group utility.

Here are some explanations :

SWs main damage powers are pretty bad at proccing enchants if you compare to GWF or even pre-nerf CW.

SW’s main source of damage, Creeping Death (Fury Capstone) only scales with Encounter/At-Will/Dailies damage, which makes boosting your base damage with Vorpal / Dread / Feytouched the best option.

Feytouched 

At Transcendent and Unparalleled level this enchantment is BiS for DPS, a lower ranked Feytouched loses out to a Vorpal due to the downtime of the Feytouched buff. Additionally, Feytouched boosts all damage coming from you, including feats like Killing Curse, Bloody Death in ToNG, Aura of Courage, etc. It is for this reason that it tends to perform on par with and usually better than Dread in groups. When Feytouched procs it also does an additional hit.

The buff only activates after an encounter power.  See the rotations section for more info.

Vorpal 

At unparalleled level this gives a 55% critical severity to you, a 3% debuff to the enemy and a 3% reduction to the enemy’s damage.

Depending on the amount of critical severity that you have you will find that the vorpal doesn’t perform as well as it looks on paper, thanks to how combat advantage bonus damage and critical severity are added together in the damage formula.

If you’re on a budget a Perfect Vorpal is a good way to start off.

Here’s what the Vorpal looks like :

You can quickly see that just on paper, when you have a combined combat advantage damage and critical severity greater than 175% then the Feytouched will deliver more damage as that’s a flat 20% damage all the time.  Just remember to add that 55% to your combat advantage damage + critical severity when finding your total. With all of the buffs that happen in high-end groups you could well find that you’re past the 175% mark for combined critical severity and combat advantage bonus.  If you are then you should be on the feytouched.

Dread 

The dread enchantment only works on your encounter powers.  If you find that you’re using your at-will powers a lot, don’t even consider looking at dread unless you’re running as a Templock and using it just to stack up on the extra debuffs. It’s even really good for dungeon runs in end-game content, but a word of caution, the Feytouched is reducing the incoming damage to your warlock by 20%, that’s a HUGE piece of defence right there.  If your group is not spamming the mount bonus Shephard’s Devotion and you are squishy then you’re not ready to run with the dread in end-game content, stick with the Feytouched, it’s still giving a decent damage boost and some nice defence too.

What about Templock ?

You can take your regular DPS enchant, but if you’ll be more useful to the team if you use a debuff enchantment that they don’t already have. Dread is one that’s not taken by too many support class at the moment so it’s a good place to start.

Choosing Vorpal vs Feytouched vs Dread (For Fury builds):

• ‘Vorpal for HB, Dread for SB’ if you are not going for Feytouched
• Vorpal is the best bang for your buck and you only need it at perfect rank
• Feytouched > Vorpal at Trans Rank and Higher
• Feytouched is BiS on a lot of Classes right now

On mod 15 we used Feytouched and Lightning (I won’t recommend Lightning but it’s fun to play with and helps with trash clearing)

Feytouched vs Dread on SB:

On SB Paragon, you’re going to see higher numbers with Dread than with Feytouched, but you get easy spark generation with Feytouched and Hadar’s Grasp (ranged, cannot be interrupted, and higher damage, procs) which makes the Feytouched the preferred choice for Single Target.

Assuming a Critical Strike Severity + Combat Advantage Damage of 150% with permanent uptime, and that 75% of our damage (without a dread) benefits from Dread (this number can be changed with rotations/playstyle/team.) we get :

DPS gain with Unparalleled Dread enchant :

0.75 * (0.8/(1+1.5))  = 0.24 (24% damage Increase) to encounters only.

Feytouched buffs all damage by 20%. The extra damage it buffs beyond your encounters makes it outweigh dread in most parties.

As you can see the difference, is small. However, if you don’t have combat advantage, Dread wins, but Feytouched has the advantageof spark generation with Hadar’s Grasp.

Armor Enchantment

Eclipse (Unparalleled) 

This adds 25% deflection to whatever you currently have. The Eclipse is great to help with your survivability but it’s also great for movement too.  When you shadowslip and run out of stamina, the Eclipse enchantment will refill your stamina to full again (30 second internal cooldown). It’s perfect if you are doing speed runs or running Enduring Boots.

Negation (Unparalleled) 

Each hit you take, you gain 4% damage resistance, 1.5% increased healing and 1.5% increased recovery for 10 seconds and can stack up to 10 times.

In terms of stopping a hit, it’s not brilliant if you can’t survive the first one.  If you’re squishy right now, don’t look at getting the Negation yet, you’ll need a bit more survivability on your character before you’re ready for this one.

If you can survive a hit then look at getting this one simply for the recovery.  The recovery kicks in at Transcendent level so build your negation up to that level before you start wearing it.

Works best in damage over time areas or where you’ll be taking (near) constant damage. As a Templock you should be right in the middle of the action, dropping the Pillar of Power and debuffing everything you can find. If you can take the first hit then the Negation is the way to go.

Barkshield (Unparalleled) 

This enchant gets a charge every 6 seconds up to a maximum of 4 charges. If you take a hit it will protect you for a certain amount of damage depending on the number of charges that it has. At unparalleled level this will absorb :

• 1 charge 28,000 damage
• 2 charges 56,000 damage
• 3 charges 84,000 damage
• 4 charges 112,000 damage

Works best when you have a gap between combat so that it can recharge.

This is great to increase your survivability but does have a big drawback. If you are under the effects of a Damage over Time, this will stop the barkshield from generating a new stack until the damage over time effect has cleared.

Soulforged (Perfect) 

If you die this will instantly bring you back to life.  At perfect level it will give you 6000 HP, and some additional HP over time too.  If you die, as soon as you are back on your feet you’ll be down again, though you lose all of your Soul Sparks, your Tyrannical Curse if it’s up, and all your buffs (unless they persist through death).

If you’re on a budget, the Lesser is ok to get you going.

It’s best used in non-AoE heavy areas, mostly solo play when you’re just doing your dailies.

Artifacts

Primary Artifact:

You don’t need all of these, we’re just mentioning the ones you should be looking into.

DPS Role    

(-Recommended-) Soul Sight Crystal as main artifact for DPS. It comes with 1000 Power, 1000 Lifesteal and 600 Control Bonus and when activated will give a 50% damage bonus buff for 10 seconds. When you’re running as DPS it’s the obvious choice for bosses but it is also good on trash since it works with Tyrannical Curse, but that’s harder to pull off.

For Trash, Sigil of the Devoted (DC Sigil) is a decent starter as it allows you to use your dailies more frequently, making trash clearing a little more forgiving. Alternatively, using Artificer’s Persuasion with a Heart of the … Dragon artifact will accomplish similar things, with better uptime.

Decanter of Atropal Essence also works thanks to its 10% buff for an extended period of time.

Support Role     

What you use when in a support role will depend on what the other members of the group are already wearing. The debuffs from two of the same artifact do not stack so you want to mix them up as much as possible.

• Wheel of the Elements. In 10-man content, since PoP is a group-only buff, you will most likely get in the group with the other DPS which will allow you to place the Fire Buff on them. Remember that the Wheel of Elements is group-only too. On the Fury tree you’ll see Creeping Death, this is the biggest source of DPS for us as we’re predominantly boss killers due to our “slow-burn” approach. Creeping Death is not affected by Fire from the Wheel of Elements.
• Heart of the Black Dragon has a nice debuff which most people in support also have.
• Thirst is a 16% debuff that is applied to the enemy for 8 seconds. Note that a second after casting this artifact, you’ll be propelled across the ground – great if you want to zip down the stairs in T9, bad if you’re in CODG.
• Charm of the Serpent has a 16% debuff that is applied to the enemy in a cone in front of you.
• Lantern of Revelation has a 16% debuff that is applied to the enemy for 6 seconds

Secondary Artifacts:       

For secondary artifacts, you need the Shard of Orcus’ Wand for the complete set, then artifacts that balance your stats: Armour Penetration, Critical Strike, Power. Below is a list of the more commonly used ones that help out but there’s a lot of artifacts available, have a look to see what you NEED.

• Eye of the Giant
• Fragmented Key of Stars
• Lantern of Revelation
• Tiamat’s Orb of Majesty
• Kessel’s Sphere of Annihilation
• Sigil of the Controller

Mechanics

Before we jump into the rotations, it’s worth looking at a how the class actually plays. In our animations you have 3 parts to each At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Artifact and Combat Mount Power usage:

• Pre-Cast Animation
• Cast
• Post Cast Animation

The Pre-Cast animation happens before the game actually casts the At-Will, Encounter etc. Some of the animations for our encounters and dailies are very long, particularly Hadar’s Grasp and Gates of Hell and it can be interrupted. It’s important to understand what’s going on in the fight and how best to deal with our long cast times.  If you’re in a red area or can see that the enemy will perform a “disruptive” attack such as a Knock-back, Prone, Stun attack then don’t try casting a long cast time power.  You’ll get interrupted and that’s a waste of time when you could have either moved out of the way, dropped into a standing-still-shadowslip or hit a quick at-will for some added dps. In some cases, the effects triggered by a power are triggered in the Pre-Cast animation meaning that you can shadowslip to cancel the power but still gain the effect such as mount bonuses.

Example of a Pre-Cast animation – Brood of Hadar : Character raises right arm in the air then brings it down towards the ground.

The cast part of any power is those few frames where the effect of the power you’ve used is applied and calculated. This part of the sequence also triggers the cooldown counter and helps to identify which part of the animation sequence is the cast.

Example of a Cast animation – Brood of Hadar : the right hand touches the ground and you’ll see a black trail on the ground.

The post-cast animations can be interrupted which is a good thing if you’re the one doing the interrupting.  All the effects have happened in the earlier part of the sequence (the cast part) so the end animation is just there for the look and nothing else.

You can shadowslip to cancel the post cast animation with no negative effects and allow you to either move to safety or quickly get into the pre-cast animation of another power. Note that entering shadowslip sometimes takes longer than the post-cast animation, check your timing.

Example of a Post Cast animation – Brood of Hadar : The black trail (the brood) moves along the ground towards the targeted enemy. The Scourge Warlock stands up straight and enters combat stance.

In a nutshell: When it comes to animation cancelling, practice cancelling during the post cast phase to speed up your rotations and maximize your effectiveness.

About DoTs (Damage over time)

Most of the DoTs’ damage (pre-debuffs) is calculated on the first hit. For instance Soul Scorch’s DoT does 1/6 of the initial hit each tick. This means that whether you deal damage as DoT or not, you should fire your most powerful abilities when buffs reach their peak (minus the time it takes for said abilities to land). It also means that the moment your target gets under 50% HP, your DoTs won’t be magically affected by the Fire Archon Active bonus, but only newly applied DoTs will.

Note that buffs affect outgoing damage from you. Damage resistance debuffs affect incoming damage the target takes.

Curses

The Scourge Warlock can apply curses to its enemies which have different effects :

Warlock’s Curse 

• (Max 3 enemies at once) – ‘Tab/RB/R1’ : Your damage is buffed by 20% (30% with Brutal Curse feat) against the enemies afflicted by your Warlock’s Curse.
  • This is one of the most important features of the SW.
  • This is the buff that gets shared to your allies with the Soul Bonding (Temptation Capstone) feat

Lesser Curse 

• (Applied by some feats/a class feature or encounter) : Your enemy takes some chip damage
  • Pillar or Power will apply Lesser curse to any enemies that are standing within it.
  • With the All-Consuming Curse class feature and enough critical strike, virtually everything you touch should become cursed. And the curses can spread through Tyrannical Curse.

Tyrannical Curse 

• (Applied by Tyrannical Curse daily power) : Increases damage to the target by your attacks by 25%. (Note: this is a debuff and if you’re in a high buff/debuff group will not actually apply the full 25%) At the cost of some damage on it, damage taken by the target splashes to nearby enemies, who take damage proportional to the damage inflicted to the cursed target. You only get one curse per daily use, so choose your target wisely!
• Tyrannical Curse will override your Warlock’s Curse buff into a debuff. This means when you lose this power, you deal less damage to the target affected by this curse. This causes this power to be suboptimal on single target fights.

SW powers and Curse effects

Many of the Scourge Warlock’s powers have different effects upon cursed targets.  These effects fall into two categories, Curse Consume and Curse Synergy.

• Warlock’s Curse Consume (for Encounters) : Gains an additional effect if the target is affected by your Warlock Curse (only the Tab/RB curse works), the curse is removed
  • Ex : Hadar’s Grasp, Soul Scorch (Soulbinder)

• Curse Synergy : If the target is afflicted by any of your curses, the power gains an additional effect.
  • Ex : Creeping Death (Fury capstone — don’t believe the tooltip), Fiery Bolt

The Soul Puppet

Some spells (Killing Flames mostly) and a feature can spawn a Soul Puppet which is essentially a pet that attacks enemies. It lasts for 20 seconds (timer stops when not in combat). Performing an action that would normally summon a Soul Puppet will reset the timer back to 20 seconds and heal the soul puppet to full health.

The Soul Puppet has the same critical strike chance as the player, it’s attacks can now critically strike and has a Critical Severity of 50%

It deals some damage and you can even make it off-tank lower dungeons with a specific feat.

Using some feats in the Damnation Tree you can increase the hit points of the Soul Puppet to match the same amount of HP as yourself. You can also transfer 25% of the damage that you take to your soul puppet, given that you can heal the puppet to full health by performing an action that would normally summon a Soul Puppet, this will help to make you much more tanky.

Companions

Summoned

A few recommendations

• Run a striker companion with at least 2 (if not 3) offensive slots, and which doesn’t have huge range.
• Put Bonding Runestones on it.
• Put your higher level enchants on your summoned pet
• Choose your pet according to the gear you currently have
• If you plan on making alts, make use of account bound companion gear

From mod 13, the Chultan Tiger is the best summoned pet for single target, since it has both a decent active (Damage and speed for a limited time) and a debuff which is triggered only if it has Combat Advantage. It also has the same slots as an Air Archon (2x rings, 1 neck slot, 3x offensive slots) making the transition easy. The only downside is how stupidly he dies. You’ll be looking to put a +4 and +5 version of the Gravestriker rings on your pet along with the Electrum Necklace of your choosing.

(Gravestriker + 5, when your health is greater than 85% your power is increased by 1000 [800 for the +4 variant])

This power does transfer to you through Companion’s Gift when the bonding runestones proc.

Yojimbo is a new companion that was recently released in the the Lanterns event. It’s arguably the BiS companion given the debuff will last for longer than 25 seconds (Chultan Tiger) and is active on up to 3 enemies compared to one (Chultan Tiger). However a word of caution for this companion; he has a teleport attack that will make him appear behind his enemy, it’s his first attack.  On any enemy that is on the edge of a platform (Dragon Turtle [FBI], Atropal [CODG], Ras Nsi[T9] occasionally) he will teleport behind them, there will be no platform for him to stand on and he will die requiring a re-summon when you’re out of combat.  Until this teleportation/death issue is solved the Chultan Tiger is still the way to go for now.

Sellsword/Con Artist/Rebel Mercenary are also decent summoned pets thanks to the debuff they bring; however, their active powers aren’t the best. If you’re running as a Templock you can also consider using the Earth Archon or a Dancing Shield.  These won’t be helping your DPS at all but they do bring something to the table.  The Earth Archon is somewhat tanky and will take the hit that would have potentially killed the pet for one of the DPS class, that helps the team to keep delivering the hurt on the enemy. The Dancing shield is the current best debuff companion with a 20% debuff (twice that of the Sellsword) it’s also good at not falling off ledges and can help to defend the companions for the DPS group members. Remember, as a Templock you’re gonna deliver plenty healing and you’re not there for the DPS, you’re there for the buffs/debuffs that you have.

If you do not plan on getting those I’d recommend getting the Air Archon (Or Fire Archon, but it has the bad habit of placing itself out of buffs)

In Mod 15, the BiS gear for the companion are the Electrum sets. Power/Critical Strike with a single offense slot. You may be thinking that Illusionist’s Gambit or some other double offense slot would be better, the additional stats that the Electrum provides is more than the 1400 stat points that a R14 triple stat enchant would give you.

Active

Razorwood

25% Combat Advantage.
+2.5% Critical Severity.

A 25% increase to your combat advantage damage is a big increase.

Air Archon 

Increases your damage against targets not at full health by +2.0/3.0/5.0%. Each additional active Archon increases this bonus by .5 %

The moment you hit something (or someone else does) then this companion will be active.

Earth Archon

Increases your damage against ta
rgets by +3/4/6% when you are at full health. Each additional active Archon increases this by .5%

You should have near permanent uptime with those with the amount of dots proccing lifesteal, and on top of that they synergize well.

Siege Master

Deal +3/4% increased damage. This effect is increased to +7/8% damage while on Stronghold map.

4% increased damage 100% of the time makes it the better option to have than the Fire Archon as that’s only active 50% of the time but would have given a 0.5 increase to both the Air and Earth Archons. Expect this to be replaced by the new Razorwood companion from Mod 14.

Notable Mentions

• Fire Archon (with Earth and Air)
• Alpha Compy in Chult
• War Boar (if you run with GWF or a GF that knows how to mark)
• Tamed Velociraptor (if all your team has one [a Rare occurrence])
• Batiri (on Bosses)

Rotations

Single Target SB :

Dailies : Brood of Hadar/Immolation Spirits

Encounters :  Soul Scorch / Spark Generator / Spark Generator or Killing Flames

At-Will : Essence Defiler

Class Features : Dust to Dust and All-Consuming Curse  (or Deadly Curse if you have Relentless Curse feat)

Weapon Enchant : Feytouched (Preferred) or Dread

Spark Generators, by order of preference :

Hadar’s Grasp (only works when Critically Striking and Proccing Enchants) / Blade of Vanquished Army (melee only) / Dreadtheft (only viable at lower IL).

At low IL you should probably take two of them to get good spark generation.
If you have a proc enchant (Feytouched) you should use Hadar’s Grasp.

Curse your target and fire off an Essence Defiler to get the companion to attack. This will proc your Bonding Runestones and give you Companion’s Gift. Open up with Immolation Spirits and a spark generator (which needs critical strike, that’s why it’s important to fire them after Companion’s Gift) followed by a combo of Killing Flames then Soul Scorch + Warlock’s Curse, once your sparks are starting to get low (3 levels and under) use your spark generators/Immolation Spirits and use Killing Flames/Soul Scorch/Brood of Hadar when they get high (You ideally want to time this part when the buffs are up).

• Use Soul Sight when you have high Soul Sparks and buffs are about to be up.
• Practice cancelling Soul Scorch to smooth your rotation
• Don’t forget to use your curse after Soul Scorch and Hadar’s Grasp

AoE :

This is a tricky part for a SW since there’s no ‘one fits-all” rotation (It depends on the packs, you, and your team). But here’s some ideas.

• Don’t forget to use your Warlock’s Curse on your targets !
• Gates of Hell is an AoE and will prone your targets as well as apply lesser curse to them if you have 100% Critical Strike chance. This helps with Curse Bite as you’re got a nice group of enemies to hit.
• Will one rotation of encounter powers + daily (Brood of Hadar or Gates of Hell) be enough to melt the pack ? If the answer is no, you can consider using Tyrannical Curse.
• Tyrannical Curse allows us to dish out damage to up to 10 enemies (in a decently big area), just by focusing one target. It also spreads Lesser Curse to targets allowing you to use Curse bite and hit a lot of enemies.
• Use Tyrannical Curse on an elite mob that is at the center of the pack that will ideally survive long enough for the other mobs to die first, Then focus your damage on it (Whether you use AoE skills or not).
• Using an AP Gain Mount helps to have another daily ready sooner than without one.
• Whether you use Gates of Hell or Tyrannical Curse, think about applying it at the beginning of a fight and not the end. You’re dealing damage but the big benefit is applying curses to a lot of enemies quickly to use your encounters to take them out.

Then there are two schools of thought

• A HB Burst oriented one which usually plays with
  Pillar / Curse Bite / Harrowstorm
  
  
  and can use
  Gates of Hell to help spread the lesser curse around.
  This build is the most common. Rocks the ‘No Pity no Mercy’ class feature to grant itself Combat Advantage.
• A SB proc-oriented one which uses encounters that proc %damage feats/AoC/Weapon Enchantments as much as they can. Mostly runs with a (High-Rank) lightning
  • Most used powers are Blades of Vanquished Armies / Hadar’s Grasp for the spark generation, the rest of the encounter slot(s) are usually filled with Fiery Bolt / Killing Flames / Curse Bite

Our advice on this part is, experience different rotations to see which fits you and the situation best. (ex : Don’t use BoVa when you can’t be at melee range for extended periods)

Templock:

Encounters : Pillar/Dreadtheft/Whatever

At-Wills : Hand of Blight and Hellish Rebuke

Class Feature : ACC (for DT Curse Synergy) + Whatever

You should place your Pillar of Power under the dps (and the enemy at the same time if you can) whenever you have the cooldown, and use Dreadtheft for burst phases/whenever you have it available. Don’t be afraid of cancelling dreadtheft if you need it.

Make sure to use a Hellish Rebuke as this will have some chip damage and also some additional DoT healing.  Use your Hand of Blight too as the additional debuff from the last hit will help the DPS to chunk the enemy and add to the group survivability.

You have to use Warlock’s Curse once in a while on your target (Though on bosses, the Curse duration, if it doesn’t expire due to the limit of cursed targets, is really long)  to ensure your allies can be benefit from the buff. If you use a curse consume power here remember to curse the target again.

Except Cursing, placing Pop and using DT, you are pretty much free to do what you want. (That’s why we can say you can use whatever for 3rd encounter slot, though we often use Killing Flames, Fiery Bolt or Warlock’s Bargain).

Useful references if you want to learn more

SW Ability Coefficient (AKA Base Damage)

Information about Base Damage

The SW Discord, which is pretty much where all the SW discussion takes place

https://discord.gg/Yb4GsEa

Janne’s Website which contains a lot of general info and tools about the game that are not explained in detail in this guide. You don’t have to read all the sections, but it helps understanding how some stuff work.

Janne’s Website

Sharpedge’s CW Mechanics Guide

General Info on Weapon Enchantments
RJC’s weapon enchant comparison

The Synergy Guide
Stabbing Group Synergy Guide

Updated List of Insignias/mounts
Bethel’s Insignia bonus tool

FAQ

This section will be updated with the most common questions asked regarding our guide as it receives feedback