The text discusses the use of Mystic Arcanums in Warcraft, specifically for hexblade warlocks. It explains that the spell level of the Mystic Arcanum should be set to an appropriate level and the warlock and pact should be selected in the AVAILABLE FOR CLASS(ES) section. The spells do not become more powerful at higher levels, so it is important to ensure that the spell is not used by a class that does not have it.
The text also discusses the best spell choices for a hexblade warlock through the Mystic Arcanums, which are required to maintain the design choice of the Mystic Arcanum. Warlocks have a limited number of known spells and even fewer Mystic Arcana, so it is recommended to use those with multiple functions.
When choosing a 6th level Mystic Arcanum, one must choose a 6th level spell from the warlock spell list. If a warlock is 12th level or higher, one can replace one spell from their Mystic Arcanum feature with another warlock spell of the same level. However, DDB currently has no way to modify the Mystic Arcanum feature for the warlock.
The text also mentions the issue of Wish being unavailable for the Mystic Arcanum feature, which is a longstanding issue that shows no signs of being fixed. However, casting a 9th level spell with a 5th level slot should allow for the casting of Wish with the 9th level Mystic Arcanum.
📹 The Ultimate Guide to Warlocks in D&D 5e
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📹 The Daolock: A Warlock build for 5e D&D
Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 5:45 Level 1 (Custom Lineage – Fey Touched) 12:13 Ability scores and background 13:17 Warlock – genie …
I love how Warlock “dips” have this inherent temptation to be more than a dip – seems on brand, lol. Here’s what I mean:. 1 lvl of hexblade is great. Weapon/armor/hex weapon, some cantrips and a slot that resets every short rest. But might as well do 2 lvls for the evocations right? Well, 3rd lvl is my pact boon, and that can be really cool. And while we’re here we need that 4th level since otherwise we’d be wasting an ASI or feat of course. But man, 5th level and an extra attack would be really nice, hmmm…. 😂. Next thing you know you’ve devoted your whole life to your patron. It’s perfect.
I kind of like the commonality of the Warlock dip as a lore thing. Warlock is probably the most lore friendly caster multiclass. I like the idea of various patrons being either totally fine with adventurers just making small pacts with them for a bit of power, or be really mad that no one wants to make big long lasting pacts with them.
Making as many spell scrolls as possible is in my opinion one of the best ways to power up a straight warlock. Being actually able to cast all those circumstantial spells or lower level ones feels great. Doesn’t work for every campaign tho. I’ve also had a few dms not like it and it can feel gamy at times and kinda forced them to not give me tons of down time.
Pact of the chain is so useful for a genie warlock. Your familiar can carry your vessel around while you’re inside it. Simply instruct your familiar to follow the party, hop inside, and you can take a short rest while the party travels. An imp can turn invisible with the vessel, turning it invisible as well. You can go inside the vessel as an action, so this can even be used in combat to disappear and reappear somewhere else, or to make a quick getaway. Need to reach an enemy on top of a 100ft wall? Instruct the imp to carry the vessel to the top. Hop inside, and it can fly you up. The utility of pact of the chain is already great, and the bottled respite ability of the genie warlock only amplifies that.
@Treantmonk – Genie fly + grasp of hadar means you can “pull” them into the air 10ft, after which they fall prone and take 1d6 bludgeoning damage. If you put them into a status effect, they now have to spend 1/2 their movement to just stand up. Lance of Lethargy with this reduces their speed by 10ft. Meaning if they have a 30ft move speed, they now have only 10ft left…if that effect is difficult terrain they can only move 5ft, then would have to spend their action to move another 10ft..still potentially not getting out.
A useful circumstance for Sanctuary Vessel, your party Paladin/Fighter/Cleric in heavy armor need to infiltrate an area, you go inside the vessel with them, let the rogue carry the vessel, being the only one to need to make stealth checks (and lets be honest…succeed) and then drop the nuke of a freshly rested chunky party when needed 😀
I can’t help but notice that this build is missing the Warcaster feat and am uncertain if anyone else mentioned this or if I missed this in the article but: Under Components – Somatic in PHB: “If a spell requires a somatic component, the caster must have free use of at least one hand to perform these gestures.” Under Components – Materials in PHB: “A spellcaster must have a hand free to access a spell’s material components — or to hold a spellcasting focus — but it can be the same hand that he or she uses to perform somatic components.” So while picking up the Moderately Armored feat is nice and all so we can wear medium armor and equip a shield, it cripples the build at higher levels (and possibly earlier) unless you don’t ever plan on wielding a staff or rod of the pact keeper (should be fairly common and very helpful for warlockw) while equipped with a shield. Let’s say our warlock equips a shield and a rod of the pact keeper or any other spell casting focus in the other hand, you are now unable to cast the following unless you get rid of one or the other: (Spells below were the spells chosen for the build, I’m sure there are other spells but here are the key ones that run into this issue.) – Eldritch Blast (warlock signature spell) – Mage Hand – Prestidigitation – Counter Spell – Dispel Magic – Sickening Radiance – Synaptic Static – Mass Suggestion TL;DR: Unless you never intend to use a spell casting focus while you have a shield equipped you will be unable to cast spells that have a Somatic component as it requires a free hand or Warcaster.
The Crusher feat is a must have on a Daolock build. I picked it up early and I like the combo of it and the Booming Blade cantrip to keep an enemy away if one gets close to me. The idea that I cast the cantrip, use Crusher to move them back so I can retreat without provoking an AoO, and now they have to decide if they want to pursue me and trigger the Booming Blade damage or not is great. And that’s not even going into all the other Spike Growth / Sickening Radiance shenanigans.
This is a SUPER minor thing, but you might find it worth knowing: when we increase both number of attacks and damage per attack, it’s not technically “exponential” as everyone likes to say. It’s quadratic. “Super-linear” (faster-than-linear) scaling is what people are noticing, and everyone just calls it exponential.
The repelling blast + grasp of hafar invocations work very well with spike growth. Adding both to each beam gives you 20 ft of forced movement, or 8d4 slashing per beam. In campaigns where you get frequent rests, I’d consider swapping agonizing blast or devil’s sight for this early on, then picking up the other when it becomes more relevant at higher levels.
That rest tricking thing is definitely something to check with your dm. Since the short rest rules specify that you can’t do anything more strenuous than eating, drinking or tending wounds, and long rest rules clearly call out spell casting as strenuous activity, it’s a very reasonable ruling that such casting would ruin your short rest.
I don’t think devil’s sight provides any benefit in dim light. Isn’t there an invocation that gives advantage on saving throws to maintain concentration? Would you ever consider taking Githyanki on this build? They give medium armour proficiency and two free spells per day. Sure, they’re a bit worse in some areas, but it would give an excuse to not go custom lineage.
First dip was Arcane Trickster/ Warlock of the Celestial. Lots of shenanigans, including healing, misty step, and eldritch blast. I was able to move all over the battlefield, hide, and heal. I was more effective than our cleric. Now I am running a Hexlock for the Paladin like features! Stoked to see how much chaos I can wreak!
Devil’s Sight is not strictly superior to Darkvision. If you are in dim-light, Devil’s Sight won’t do anything, it only works in complete darkness(be that magical or non-magical). So if you have both Darkvision and Devil’s Sight and are in dim light, you’ll see normally until your Darkvision range and from then on, as if you were in dim light.
From my understanding, there’s no such thing as “magical” bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing damage. Instead, creatures that we think have those resistances/immunities have a line that says “resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from non magical weapons” so B/P/S damage that isn’t from a weapon would not be resisted by those creatures, regardless of if it’s magical. This is why rage is so good, because it simply states B/P/S damage so it resists magical weapons and even, say, the bludgeoning damage from falling. Edit: changed a spot where I said “damage” instead of “weapons”.
In my current campaign I went Dao Genie with a plan to go Tome since our party has no wizard and am 1 of 2 full casters. I was originally thinking of going Wildfire Druid but saw too much crossover with our Cleric and I wanted to be a caster that uses a different stat than wisdom to bring in more variety.
It doesn’t reshape things as much as a Hexblade, but a dip into Genie Warlock also seems pretty reasonable. The Vessel damage and utility scale from proficiency rather than Charisma, so if someone still wants a high Strength or Dex they can get some damage and utility. Seems like it could be a decent but also highly flavorful dip. Not the point of this article, but still. Aladdin Rogue is really tempting in its way. Swashbuckler already wants a pretty solid Charisma score, and Genie’s Wrath will smooth out turns when you can’t activate Sneak Attack. One level is the Vessel and cantrips (get that Booming Blade) and few utility spells. Two could be Devil’s Sight and Mask of Many Faces. Three is Improved Pact Weapon, if your campaign is light on magic weapons. Five isn’t really a dip anymore, but would be a cool way to gain extra attack from Thirsting Blade. There’s other ways to accomplish just about all of that, but it doesn’t seem to bad.
While I do appreciate a single class build I can’t help but point out that starting as a level one fighter would give you the con save and armor proficiencies right off the bat and let you get other feats you want much earlier or different feats. You could grab warcaster and not use your invocation on eldritch mind for example. Still really nice build though. Looks fun.
Would this work with something like a Mountain Dwarf since you get armor and two plus 2 stat increases. Also I think mountain dwarf and dao genie fit well together 😊 I know that won’t give you shield proficiency but you have the extra stat to put into dex and even out your charisma at lvl 4 when you get a get touched.
Honestly, I am sorely disappointed by the last three levels of warlock. Hence why I’ve given up on full warlock – I usually start a warlock by not starting with a warlock – for example starting out with three levels in sorcerer, then going warlock for the rest. Example – Shuò, my Earth Genasi, started out as 3 levels in Wild Magic Sorcerer, then going Dao Chainlock for the rest as he was inducted into the “family business” by his patron/father. Cue daddy issues gallore.
As far as the Fiend Warlock I’ve actually got a funny build of my own for that. It’s really unorthodox, but you only need minimum charisma starting off; may end up higher later on. The weirdest bit is that it requires a bit of a reflavoring. Instead of a devil or demon, your pact was instead with the guardian of the underworld, the ferryman… The Grim Reaper. It’s kinda important for how the build works that this is the case. Point buy stats for this are 15, 12, 13, 8, 10, 14 Works best if you’re Human Variant, and take +1 to Str and Con, followed by the Tough feat; the build will need a little extra durability in the beginning. You’ll start Warlock, cuz the saves are good, and go Fiend of course. Start with Hex and Armor of Agathys as your spells; EB is useful but a blade cantrip is more likely to serve you for now. Then… 2nd level, out of complete left field… Multiclass *Barbarian*. Yes, you read that right. Barbarian, on a Warlock. Keep reading, it’ll make sense. Once you’ve got that one level dip in Barb, you get the martial weapons and shield prof you need to make this work. You also get an unarmored AC that is somewhat better then others, though it may still be required to utilize non-concentration magics to shield yourself. The goal here right now is to maximize the value of THP. Then continue on Warlock, taking Devil’s Sight and either Ag Blast for something to do when you’re not raging or a flavor option of your choosing. 3rd level, go Pact of the Blade, and at that moment swap out AB for Improved Pact Weapon.
I find summoning spells like Summon Shadowspawn and Summon Undead to work really well on warlocks too, especially in tier 2. They scale automatically, and they all have a few different (mostly control) options so they are tactically versatile. Not only that, they last one hour so you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck. And they are uniquely good on warlocks damagewise, because unlike other summoners who have to rely on mediocre cantrips, you can Eldritch Blast on your turn. A level 8 warlock that has summoned a Shadow Spirit can dish out two Eldritch Blasts and two Chilling Hands for (assuming 18 charisma) 2d10+8+2d12+14. Factoring probability to hit that comes out to 26.5 damage, and you still have control options like an AoE fear effect and a slow option.
I couldn’t resist pact of the chain, with either or both of its two invocations. This could help saving throws by giving magic resistance, or the amazing scaling ranged Sprite with an incapacitating poison. That gives something to do with the bonus action, although poison immunity or resistance is not rare. This is probably my favorite warlock, although I think I would dip out at level 19 or 20.
I was pleasantly surprised that you choose the gift of the Talisman and not the chain with the genie warlock. It sorta makes me think this Warlock is like an old school rapper with a huge gold chain with a skull and poison motif emblazoned on it and a big finger bar ring (the ring saying something like “Dao4L” across the knuckle be nice).
I’m going to try this build, but with a mountain dwarf using custom ability scores. I love the idea of a very stereotypical dwarf miner uncovering a portal to the plane of elemental earth in their everyday life. They then become a warlock, leave home, and have a completely different life then they ever imagined having by fully embracing their genie overlord.
A thought: If you put sanctuary on yourself, you can still command your imp to attack, yes? So the spell does not scale, but could be clutch if you are about to die, and more useful if you could attack with your imp instead for a while, which isnt a lot, but better than going unconsious and doing nothing. Do yall think it would be worth it?
I want to make a dao hex blade warlock earth ginasi that lived his whole life in the desert, In a fremen type society. Earth ginasi can ignore difficult terrain out of stone, so I would imagine spike growth wouldn’t affect him. So you can cast it around you, and them use grasp of hagar to pull them in to the spikes. I might be wrong but I find the imagine amazing
Casting a nonritual spell is in my eyes as strenious as engaging in combat, hence nullifying the effects of a short rest, thus when i dm i dont allow warlocks to cast spells at the end of their short rest so that they can regain their spellslotts after a short rest. Casting goodberry before short rests is another matter entirely ofcourse
I prefer to start with Half Elf. It gives me more skills, pluses on three abilities and an extra language A couple of questions about the genie’s vessel: First, since you can only enter and exit it once a day, how useful is it as a gigantic bag of holding? Second, since it is an extra-dimensional space, what happens if you bring a bag of holding, or a Heward’s handy haversack, or a portable hole in with you? Or, for that matter, what happens if you put your genie’s vessel into one of those? What about Booming Blade as a cantrip, as opposed to Minor Illusion? I prefer to take Armor of Agathys later, once it will hang around longer. I’d take Shield instead. I prefer Pact of the Tome. Unless I’m building a Hexblade, this is always the one that I want. The extra cantrips are nice, but I can get every ritual in the game that I’d want. I’d start out with Find Familiar and go from there. I’d rather take Telekinetic at 4th level, for the extra forced movement and taking my Cha to 18.
Hey Chris, I wanted to know what you thought about any of these possibilities for a Daolock. 1 lvl of Sorcerer for CON/CHA starting proficiencies. 1 or 2 lvls of Twilight Cleric, which would give you your medium armor and shield proficiencies, plus 300ft darkvision. I would love to make articles like you do, just don’t know any of the technical stuff.
Surprised Hex wasn’t considered after lvl 5. The ability to cast it after a long rest and keep it for 8 hours and take a short rest somewhat early so you can have Hex active and both your spell slots back is pretty good. Even if you get to a combat where Hypnotic Pattern or another concentration spell is better, you just drop Hex since its basically free so no downside.
Ok, question though. At low levels why not just use your first level slots/concentration on Bless instead of Hex? Surely that contributes more damage, to most low level parties, than 1 d6 a round. Maybe it’s for the potential use in multiple combats? Like Hex is for the crawl and Bless is for the boss fight?
Right at the start and I just wanna point out that it’s not just fiend and genie that stay good to late levels… Hexblade is amazing into late levels, but I wouldn’t do pure warlock all the way to 20 with any of them, especially with hexblade bc they can get so much more value from other classes in the last couple levels than they would from the last 2 Arcanum usually
I play a Daolock and as a long time fan I’m proud to say our builds are eerily similar! At first level the only difference is the second spell with feytouched. The only big difference is I went Chain and got a ring of spell storing so at 5 I’m going to try out a Sprite and 2 putrid undead synergy. I know it’s all con saves but SO many.
When you talk about rest-tricking with Armor of Agathys, how does that work? The spell lasts 1 hour and a short rest lasts at least 1 hour so unless you get ambushed in the middle (in which case you don’t get the spell slot back), you’re not getting anything out of this. I guess you could cast the spell a few seconds before the rest ends and theoretically get the slot back. As a DM, I wouldn’t allow that.
Man where were you two weeks ago?!? Group did a one shot (thankfully it’s going to now be a legit campaign) and after seeing your subclass tier ranking I’d been dying to do a genie build. We’re only at level 4 so a lot of this will be helpful for later, but I was happy to see a lot of my ideas matched this. I took Telekinetic at 4 though for the extra push and have been thinking about getting crusher next for the extra push. You like to make saving throws and don’t care who knows it so I get going resilient but I wanted as much movement as possible.
Hi Treantmok, great content as usual! The mechanic you described as “rest tricking” doesn’t make sense – during a short rest a player can only perform light activity, spellcasting is strenuous activity, cast a spell a minute before the short rest ends and you don’t get the benefits of a short rest. You also can’t force a saving throw by using grasp of hadar to pull a creature out of sickening radiance and repelling blast to push them back in – the creature has to “move into the spell’s area for the first time on a turn ” in order to force a save. The creature was already in the spell’s area on the turn before you hit it with grasp of hadar, you’re moving it into the area for the second time.
I have so much fun playing my Eladrin Bardlock (Eloquence/Dao) :), the 4 hr trance in a bottle right off the bat, my DM let me have a Doalani (Earth Gen) familiar, and as many times as I’ve tried to use Sanctuary effectivly with my pally or cleric in the past, I find great use of it now. As a bonus action, it can be done after your attack, my friends are huge wrestling fans, so I hammed it up, I ran up there, smacked the biggest thing as hard as I could (an undead ogre) and did the whole, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t hit me!” He failed his check, grunted and punted the gnome artificer instead. 🙂 I just added shatter to my spells prepared because I like the concept controllign when the earth breaks. Bard was my dip, Warlock will be my main class.
Only real change I would make is to go Dex 15 and Wis 8 like you did for the Fiendlock. +1 to Initiative, Dex Saves, Thieves’ Tools checks, relevant Stealth/Acrobatics checks and even your AC in the very rare case you were somehow caught without your armor on. +1 to Wis Saves and Skills just doesn’t compare in my opinion. Also, I’d take Scrying, Banishment and Dispel Magic in a slightly different order (Banishment at Level 8, Dispel Magic at Level 11, then lastly Scrying at Level 13 to front the other three circumstantial spells).
From an optimization point of view i think that all these options to push/pull/move are a bit of an overkill. You have used almost every force movement option, while maybe a couple would have been enough. I think that a sorcerer with 2 level dip in hexblade with repelling+agonizing blast could do a similar job: you can quicken a control spell (sadly not spike growth) and push some enemies in it in the same round for example. You don’t even need to waste a feat to gain proficiency with medium armor/shield and you can fully customize your sorcerer (shadow, cockwork, aberrant, divine…)
I think you greatly over value the impact of sickening radiance. The main problem is that it’s con save for nothing and most creatures have really good con saves. If we assume 50% success rate (which is generous, my experience says more often than not they will make the save) and 2 levels of exhaustion to “kill” them then that’s 4 rounds by which point they are long dead from everything else. The push and pull is nice for something like spirit guardians but that’s save for half and most importantly doesn’t hit allies. The warlock is not an evoker, you would deny a huge area of the map from your melee allies greatly reducing overall party effectiveness. Furthermore, most “melee” enemies do have ranged options, albeit inferior options, so they will just run out and still attack.
Im combining this with a Ghostlance build. So 3 lvl’s fighter (echo knight), rest in warlock. Make sure you get warcaster, and you can eldritch blast oppertunity attacks from the echo knight. If using variant human or custom lineage build is working from lvl 5, and starting at lvl 6 (when you get spike growth) it can start combining with dao warlock quite well. You can use action surge to cast spike growth and still use eldritch blast if you were unable to prepare the battlefield ahead of time.
Hexbow seems so, so good, and so, so fun. Adding all the stat, with sharpshooter, with lifedrinker making each arrow seem like a ballista (not to mention smite potential) really helps me imagine the character as a magic archer. But man, the genie seems so fun! I love the flavor, the vessel, the flight, beautiful. It just seems so much weaker if it’s not leveraging spike growth. And even though I want dao mechanically, the Djinn seems more fun to me from a roleplay standpoint. Either way, I wish I could combine my warlock archer with arcane archer for all the flavor or arrow effects and curving arrows, but man, that’s bad. As always, I can’t decide what to play next
I recently did fun tweak to build: My DM really hates my concentration usually, so I struggle really hard to keep it up most of the time. So I switched it up a little bit, and started with lvl1 of ARTIFICER. As artificer, you get cantrips (guidance!! and thornwhip are awesome) 2 level 1 spell slots (mainly for your utility spells), ritual casting, medium armor, shield and CONSTITUTION saving throw proficiency. So as soon as you get proper armor and shield, you can have 19 AC and proficiency for your concentration checks. Combined effect of these for 1 level dip could not be understated. Then I go straight warlock, usually upto level 4 (where you get spike growth as massive power spike imo) or level 5 for ASI (feytouched, crusher, telekinetic… they are all faaantastic). Now if you really want you can add one more level of artificer for infusions. There is nice amount of possibilities – enhanced defense is great, so you have 20 ac (you now have AC of plate armor+shield), enhanced arcane focus for +1 to hit for your eldritch blasts is amazing or if you really need keep up your concentration, you can go mind sharpener, so even if you fail – you just dont fail – it is the single best tool for maintaining concentration in the game, as it works even against those huge, high damage spells. And it frees up one of your invocations. It requires bit of tinkering with stats so you can get 13 int but variant human should be able to do it and it feels so worth it imo as it easily covers up biggest weaknesses warlocks usually have, while even enhancing your damage capability and utility.