Is the Warlock worth playing no. To have a class built around one cantrip and needing to skin some other class on it tells me there are big problems under the hood.
You're confusing a class being built around one cantrip and a class just happening to have a particularly amazing cantrip. You can never cast EB at all and still have a very solid warlock. You'd be missing out on one of your best tools, but it's more than functional.
That said I've always found this kind of a weird sentiment too. Superficially speaking there isn't much difference between a Warlock throwing an EB and any ranged combatant shooting a bow (invocations and enhancements aside), yet I very rarely hear anyone fuss over fighters (or like, any other martial oriented build in the game) being 'built around' the attack action in the same way people seem to get fussy about warlocks and EB. So I mean, even if Warlocks WERE a one button class (and they aren't) that'd pretty much just put them in the same territory as nearly half the options in the game, which doesn't scream broken to me (unless you want to argue that 'martial' style characters are fundamentally broken as a concept in 5e, but that's another discussion entirely).
The warlock's issues are really a lot more nuanced than that. Short rest accessibility can be pretty volatile from campaign to campaign and they rely on those to function well. There are a handful of balance issues scattered about with some options just not feeling very good compared to others and some builds can feel very invocation starved for a long time.
My complaint, although admittedly a very, very small one, is not that Eldritch Blast is the only thing a Warlock con do efficiently, but rather a thing they end up doing a lot of, and hence it turns boring, or feels very one-note.
On the other hand, Fighters and Barbarians are almost always attacking with the same weapon, Monks are probably doing the same combo very often (not sure, haven't really seen one in action, unfortunately!), and Rangers probably play very similarly to Warlocks, what with Hunter's Mark and either melee or ranged attacks being very similar to Hex and melee or Eldritch Blast. I know I ended up firing way more Chill Touches than I expected to as a Necromancer.
This right here, I believe, is the core of the perception/expectation problem people seem to have with Eldritch Blast.
I have been a melee-character type of player most of my gaming life (with the off-shot of a Kithband Warrior for a small WFRP 2ed which I loved to bits), and while getting the gist of magic, I never really delved into a full caster character. Due to this, my first reaction to the Warlock in 5ed was actually "my god this is amazing!", because it made me immediately think of Elric, and of a character that could be versatile and indeed using magic in a very different way than any other class presented so far, not focusing on spell slots for versatility and range of spells to use, but rather on "inherited" powers (invocations) that allowed the use of spells in new mechanic that no other class has access to.
The real icing on the cake for me came with the Hexblade, which I am extremely looking forward to be able to play (for the only campaign I am playing in I had already decided to try out the Kensei Monk [which is a lot of fun]).
To sum-up, IMHO the Warlock is not a caster, it is not a rogue or a paladin, it is something different, that can cover various needs of the party, depending on the choice made at level 1 AND the choices the player can make every level up in terms of Invocations "loadout", which can drastically change the way the character is played and its role in the party.
To sum-up, IMHO the Warlock is not a caster, it is not a rogue or a paladin, it is something different, that can cover various needs of the party, depending on the choice made at level 1 AND the choices the player can make every level up in terms of Invocations "loadout", which can drastically change the way the character is played and its role in the party.
And this, meanwhile, is a sentiment that I personally don't get. Warlocks might not be a neo-vancian caster, but they're still full 9th level magic users, and still fill the same general niche that wizards and sorcerers do in a party.
To sum-up, IMHO the Warlock is not a caster, it is not a rogue or a paladin, it is something different, that can cover various needs of the party, depending on the choice made at level 1 AND the choices the player can make every level up in terms of Invocations "loadout", which can drastically change the way the character is played and its role in the party.
And this, meanwhile, is a sentiment that I personally don't get. Warlocks might not be a neo-vancian caster, but they're still full 9th level magic users, and still fill the same general niche that wizards and sorcerers do in a party.
It indeed gets access to level 9 spells, but the fact alone that it cannot rely on several chances to use most of their spells (in a single combat situation) puts them apart from most other magic-user classes, including Paladins and Rangers. Their magic is powerful, extremely so in some cases, but drastically limited in its use during a single "scene" when compared to basically any other spellcasting class, so the class itself is designed not to be considered or played as a caster, but something else, something that can even drastically change from one level to the next, imho.
It indeed gets access to level 9 spells, but the fact alone that it cannot rely on several chances to use most of their spells (in a single combat situation) puts them apart from most other magic-user classes, including Paladins and Rangers. Their magic is powerful, extremely so in some cases, but drastically limited in its use during a single "scene" when compared to basically any other spellcasting class, so the class itself is designed not to be considered or played as a caster, but something else, something that can even drastically change from one level to the next, imho.
Conversely, warlocks have far more freedom outside of a dungeon, where they can easily splurge their spell slots on random encounters or social scenes, whereas Vancian casters has to conserve. To a warlock, casting Hex on a random merchant or soldier to penalize one's Insight rolls is a no brainer, or calling out Evard's Black Tentacles when dealing with a pack of wolves, because why not? The pacing between a sorcerer and a warlock are different, certainly, but there are plenty of times that a warlock can casually show off their full suite of their magic. Furthermore, given the amount of spells known versus spell slots, its quite common for the warlock to have a bunch of non-combat spells to rely on. The only time a warlock is really restricted in their magic usage is with dungeon crawling.
Furthermore, many warlocks have access to magic items like the Staff of Fire. These items vastly increase the amount of spells that a warlock has access to at any given point in time, and are restricted to various casters. Usually, the offensive casting ones are warlock, sorcerer and wizard, while the more healing staves tend to restrict themselves to bard, cleric and druid.
Your choice of Patron, Pact, and Invocations allow you to create extremely different characters from the same class. You can be a Hexblade front line melee character that uses spells and cantrips to do bolster your attacks, or you can be an at ranged sniper that has a familiar to aid your attacks and give you advantage, or you can be an out of combat Swiss army knife of a caster with the Book of Ancient Secrets ritual casting invocation.
Go Hexblade, wade into melee and you won't be spam blasting EB.
The Warlock class also lends itself to multiclassing. A lot of its benefits are front loaded, so 1, 2, 3 or 5 level dips all have benefits. It meshes extremely well with other charisma based caster classes and adds some versatility to other classes. I'm currently playing a Swashbuckler / Hexblade that uses Booming Blade, Hex, and Hexblade's Curse to increase my effectiveness in battle. I also have shield proficiency if I need +2 to my AC for a particularly dangerous fight. My character can use the Mask of Many Faces Invocation to aid in scouting and sneaking into a building, disguising myself as someone who belongs in the area.
Sure, there are things that I think could be changed to make the class better, but I can say the same for other classes as well. Sometimes you just want to play the bad boy who found a shortcut to power.
Now it is true that a Warlock is not going to be the best at any one thing. Wizards and Sorcerers are better DPS casters. A fighter is going to be better melee damage and have more survivability upfront.
I think Meph above nails it: the Warlock has amazing versatility, depending on the Pact and Patron chosen (as well as multiclassing options).
The strength and weakness of the class are one and the same (which is good design, IMNSHO): few spell slots recoverable upon a short rest. This class really calls for role-playing and creativity: combining background, cantrips, spells, pact features, and invocations to play a unique character that's going feel unlike anything else at the table.
If you play with a race with a Charisma bonus - like Dragonborn - you really open possibilities. Not only do you get the class abilities, you have a breath weapon and racial traits to provide a lot of versatility in combat situations.
I personally prefer the Hexblade/Pact of the Blade comobo for a single-classed warlock; through strategic use of cantrips and spells, you can be a powerful force for your party in first softening enemies up with ranged spells and then closing in for melee. At 5th level, a warlock can take an invocation that gives him/her two attacks per turn; when combined with the hex spell, the hexblade curse, and other possible buffs (having another party member case enlarge on them, for instance), the possibilities for amazing damage are wide open. This is especially true since the combination of the Hexblade patron/Pact of the Blade means you can use ANY weapon as your pact weapon (including great swords or greataxes for 2-12 base damage rolls) and get your charisma bonus tacked on to hit and damage rolls.
I'm currently running a 4th level half-elf warlock (Hexblade, Pact of the Blade) who managed to find Winged Boots - which gives me amazing tactical options, striking at targets from the air initially (eldritch blast + agonizing blast) and then closing to melee using my pact weapon and the aforementioned damage enhancing spells and abilities.
Agreed again with Meph that the warlock is not going to be the best at melee or spellcasting but the class does offer more options in either mode than a straight fighter or wizard.
And none of that is even touching the role-playing possibilities inherent in a character that can't do magic on their own but has made a pact with a greater entity.
I will also add ontop of Versatility is Orthogonal Thinking.
It's easy to build a Warlock that solves all of it's problems with a Greatsword or Eldtrich Blast, by maximizing those invocations. That's great if that's what you want, but Warlocks can also think in 3 dimensions more then others and because their powers reset at Short Rest, it's way cheaper to blow the power "just because". Is the Rogue investigating something? Blow a Invisibility on her, because you only lose a Short Rest reset.
Beguiling Influence lets a Warlock have as many skills as a Rogue. A half-elf Rogue, multiclassed into Warlock with it has probably half the skills on the sheet. Eldtrich Sight, while it feels stupid to pay an Invocations to get at-will what other classes get as ritual, and feel like for free. This means it's always up, so any magic based traps will light up light a christmas tree to your eyes. Gift of the Depths, it's expensive to pay an invocation but up to 10 creatures (which should be your party and all familiars or cohorts) have water breathing every day! Plus you get a swim speed. Not always useful and very campaign specific. Sadly any Ritual Caster in your party can do it better as the Wizard just needs to spell in her book. Mask of Many Faces, have you ever wanted to play The Faceless Men from Game of Thrones? Because this is their power. If your campaign is less hack-n-slash and more political intrigue then this can be a power that gets a lot of use. What to scam someone? Here is your At-Will disguise kit. Misty Visions. I normally don't like illusion magic, I think it's too expensive for what you get most of the time. This makes it At-Will. Which might be worth a 2 level dip in Illusion Wizard, or for an Illusion Wizard to get a bit of Warlock for it.
Personally I don't think Armor of Shadow is overrated. Warlocks start with Light Armor so it only gives +1 AC for what you get for free, and Hexblades get Medium Armor, which blows it away. Unless you have something like Bracers of Defense which require not wearing "armor".
Armor of Shadow is good at early levels, simply because it gives you +2AC over the starting light armor. As you get higher in level with more HP buffering, and the potential to stumble onto better leather armor or a magic robe, its best to swap it out for a different ability.
Aside from the Eldritch blast spam, the Warlock is a sort of support. They make a versatile class in and out of combat, and grow increasingly terrifying as the game runs.
The twelve classes seem to follow a pattern of three warrior (Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian), three skirmisher (Rogue, Ranger, Monk), three support (cleric, druid, bard) and three mage (sorcerer, wizard, warlock), clearly based on the original Fighting Man, Thief, Cleric and Magic User classes. Warrior classes specialize in standing on the front lines and dishing damage out. Skirmishers are the more agile classes, often with a lot of mobility- or stealth-based abilities, such as Cunning Action, spells like Longstrider, or Step of the Wind. Support classes usually come with a number of abilities that heal or otherwise act as force multipliers. And lastly the mage classes tend to come with both counter magics and lots of AoE / battlefield control options.
Warlocks are definitely more of an "offensive" class in that they're a variation off the wizard archetype. You get access to AoE spells like fireball, hypnotic pattern and tentacles for crowd control, as well as things like hold person. The signature spell of Eldritch Blast can be used to knock monsters around for more control, and Hex is used as a soft debuff (disadvantage on certain attributes). Wizard, sorcerer and warlock are also the only classes to naturally come with Counterspell. The signature magic item, the warlocks Rod of the Pact, even grants more magic slots and increased DCs, very important for a controller.
Now, race, background, feats and subclass options can change things around, admittedly. Aasimar Celestial warlocks are very good at support options, for instance, and hexblade blade pacts can act as warriors; then again, you can have Diviner and Bladesinger wizards as well. So, if we just talk about the core class, independent of all other options? It definitely fits the same general role as the wizard more than anything else.
It indeed gets access to level 9 spells, but the fact alone that it cannot rely on several chances to use most of their spells (in a single combat situation) puts them apart from most other magic-user classes, including Paladins and Rangers. Their magic is powerful, extremely so in some cases, but drastically limited in its use during a single "scene" when compared to basically any other spellcasting class, so the class itself is designed not to be considered or played as a caster, but something else, something that can even drastically change from one level to the next, imho.
Conversely, warlocks have far more freedom outside of a dungeon, where they can easily splurge their spell slots on random encounters or social scenes, whereas Vancian casters has to conserve. To a warlock, casting Hex on a random merchant or soldier to penalize one's Insight rolls is a no brainer, or calling out Evard's Black Tentacles when dealing with a pack of wolves, because why not? The pacing between a sorcerer and a warlock are different, certainly, but there are plenty of times that a warlock can casually show off their full suite of their magic. Furthermore, given the amount of spells known versus spell slots, its quite common for the warlock to have a bunch of non-combat spells to rely on. The only time a warlock is really restricted in their magic usage is with dungeon crawling.
Furthermore, many warlocks have access to magic items like the Staff of Fire. These items vastly increase the amount of spells that a warlock has access to at any given point in time, and are restricted to various casters. Usually, the offensive casting ones are warlock, sorcerer and wizard, while the more healing staves tend to restrict themselves to bard, cleric and druid.
I think a lot of this is going to depend on your DM. In my group, we generally do not get a lot of short rests. Some of that might be because not many of us have short rest features, so we don't often lobby for a short rest. My most recent character is a sorlock multi-class, and our DM (who gets spelled occasionally and gets to play from time to time) is thinking seriously about a pure warlock, so we may start lobbying more for short rests. If we don't get them, I can see how his character would quickly turn into a cantrip spammer.
If we're allowed short rests, he's going to be incredibly happy I think. If not, he will have to spam cantrips, and I am not sure how much fun that would be on a regular basis. With the pure warlock, that's what it comes down to for me; how often am I going to get that short rest? With my sorlock dip, it's not as huge of an issue because I will have my sorc slots to use up. I actually talked with our normal DM/Warlock about that yesterday because we haven't traditionally taken a lot of short rests. He said "with two warlocks in the party, short rests become just about mandatory". We'll see how that works out.
I'm pretty sure that our secondary DM will likely be accommodating, but from what I see online, many just aren't. Warlocks remind me of Wild magic sorcs, they are very DM dependent to be able to really shine.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I think a lot of this is going to depend on your DM.
From the sounds of it, it seems like you're in a catch 22. You don't have short rests, because no one in your group wants to short rest. I've played a monk in such a group once, and let me tell you, it wasn't fun for me without ki points. Resource starvation kinda sucks, no matter what class you play. I don't really think that should change if we consider a warlock to be a caster or not, as LeK said it does.
"Shadow of Moil is similar for non-archfey warlocks"
New to warlock. Not sure I understand what you are saying here as Shadow of Moil is a general warlock spell available to all patrons including the Archfey. What am I missing?
Small correction- Warlocks don't get fireball. They generally don't get alot of the traditional direct damage blasting type spells that you think of with a caster class like launching fireballs, throwing lightning bolt and conjuring ice storms.
Small correction- Warlocks don't get fireball. They generally don't get alot of the traditional direct damage blasting type spells that you think of with a caster class like launching fireballs, throwing lightning bolt and conjuring ice storms.
Fireball is on the Expanded Spell list for Infernal Warlocks, so for some Warlocks it's a valid pick.
Oh that is right. Totally overlooked the expanded spells. I just had read Fireball and was thinking to myself "wait that's not on my Archfey Warlock spell list??"
I completely agree. I've only played 2 games since I MC'd into warlock. None of the rest of the group has ever played a class that cares much about short rests. When we needed to spend hit dice was about the only time we ever really took short rests since we started playing 5e. With spell slot recharges on the line, I'm certainly going to be more interested in short rests than I was before. I don't really think that it's going to be an issue, but I'd be a fool to not consider that the group may not want to rest or that sometimes we won't be able to rest.
I've read online about other campaigns where the DM doesn't like to allow short rests, or like to run one large battle/encounter rather than multiple smaller ones. Those are the campaigns I'd be afraid of a warlock in. I switched to a caster for this campaign because after 30 years of mostly spamming melee attacks, I'm looking for something else when I am in combat. Both of the guys who are DMing right now are pretty "rule of cool" oriented, so I am pretty sure it will be OK for me, and for the guy looking at warlocks.
For one of those campaigns, as you mention, asset starvation would be terrible. Warlock is a bit better off than some classes because EB can be just so good, but I think it would get pretty boring pretty quick if I hopped on the typical "quicken EB, then cast it again with your action" train.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
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You're confusing a class being built around one cantrip and a class just happening to have a particularly amazing cantrip. You can never cast EB at all and still have a very solid warlock. You'd be missing out on one of your best tools, but it's more than functional.
That said I've always found this kind of a weird sentiment too. Superficially speaking there isn't much difference between a Warlock throwing an EB and any ranged combatant shooting a bow (invocations and enhancements aside), yet I very rarely hear anyone fuss over fighters (or like, any other martial oriented build in the game) being 'built around' the attack action in the same way people seem to get fussy about warlocks and EB. So I mean, even if Warlocks WERE a one button class (and they aren't) that'd pretty much just put them in the same territory as nearly half the options in the game, which doesn't scream broken to me (unless you want to argue that 'martial' style characters are fundamentally broken as a concept in 5e, but that's another discussion entirely).
The warlock's issues are really a lot more nuanced than that. Short rest accessibility can be pretty volatile from campaign to campaign and they rely on those to function well. There are a handful of balance issues scattered about with some options just not feeling very good compared to others and some builds can feel very invocation starved for a long time.
But overall the class is really solid.
This right here, I believe, is the core of the perception/expectation problem people seem to have with Eldritch Blast.
I have been a melee-character type of player most of my gaming life (with the off-shot of a Kithband Warrior for a small WFRP 2ed which I loved to bits), and while getting the gist of magic, I never really delved into a full caster character. Due to this, my first reaction to the Warlock in 5ed was actually "my god this is amazing!", because it made me immediately think of Elric, and of a character that could be versatile and indeed using magic in a very different way than any other class presented so far, not focusing on spell slots for versatility and range of spells to use, but rather on "inherited" powers (invocations) that allowed the use of spells in new mechanic that no other class has access to.
The real icing on the cake for me came with the Hexblade, which I am extremely looking forward to be able to play (for the only campaign I am playing in I had already decided to try out the Kensei Monk [which is a lot of fun]).
To sum-up, IMHO the Warlock is not a caster, it is not a rogue or a paladin, it is something different, that can cover various needs of the party, depending on the choice made at level 1 AND the choices the player can make every level up in terms of Invocations "loadout", which can drastically change the way the character is played and its role in the party.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I guess its the expectation of caster = complex options in combat?
And this, meanwhile, is a sentiment that I personally don't get. Warlocks might not be a neo-vancian caster, but they're still full 9th level magic users, and still fill the same general niche that wizards and sorcerers do in a party.
It indeed gets access to level 9 spells, but the fact alone that it cannot rely on several chances to use most of their spells (in a single combat situation) puts them apart from most other magic-user classes, including Paladins and Rangers.
Their magic is powerful, extremely so in some cases, but drastically limited in its use during a single "scene" when compared to basically any other spellcasting class, so the class itself is designed not to be considered or played as a caster, but something else, something that can even drastically change from one level to the next, imho.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Conversely, warlocks have far more freedom outside of a dungeon, where they can easily splurge their spell slots on random encounters or social scenes, whereas Vancian casters has to conserve. To a warlock, casting Hex on a random merchant or soldier to penalize one's Insight rolls is a no brainer, or calling out Evard's Black Tentacles when dealing with a pack of wolves, because why not? The pacing between a sorcerer and a warlock are different, certainly, but there are plenty of times that a warlock can casually show off their full suite of their magic. Furthermore, given the amount of spells known versus spell slots, its quite common for the warlock to have a bunch of non-combat spells to rely on. The only time a warlock is really restricted in their magic usage is with dungeon crawling.
Furthermore, many warlocks have access to magic items like the Staff of Fire. These items vastly increase the amount of spells that a warlock has access to at any given point in time, and are restricted to various casters. Usually, the offensive casting ones are warlock, sorcerer and wizard, while the more healing staves tend to restrict themselves to bard, cleric and druid.
What makes the Warlock worth it? Versatility!
Your choice of Patron, Pact, and Invocations allow you to create extremely different characters from the same class. You can be a Hexblade front line melee character that uses spells and cantrips to do bolster your attacks, or you can be an at ranged sniper that has a familiar to aid your attacks and give you advantage, or you can be an out of combat Swiss army knife of a caster with the Book of Ancient Secrets ritual casting invocation.
Go Hexblade, wade into melee and you won't be spam blasting EB.
The Warlock class also lends itself to multiclassing. A lot of its benefits are front loaded, so 1, 2, 3 or 5 level dips all have benefits. It meshes extremely well with other charisma based caster classes and adds some versatility to other classes. I'm currently playing a Swashbuckler / Hexblade that uses Booming Blade, Hex, and Hexblade's Curse to increase my effectiveness in battle. I also have shield proficiency if I need +2 to my AC for a particularly dangerous fight. My character can use the Mask of Many Faces Invocation to aid in scouting and sneaking into a building, disguising myself as someone who belongs in the area.
Sure, there are things that I think could be changed to make the class better, but I can say the same for other classes as well. Sometimes you just want to play the bad boy who found a shortcut to power.
Now it is true that a Warlock is not going to be the best at any one thing. Wizards and Sorcerers are better DPS casters. A fighter is going to be better melee damage and have more survivability upfront.
I think Meph above nails it: the Warlock has amazing versatility, depending on the Pact and Patron chosen (as well as multiclassing options).
The strength and weakness of the class are one and the same (which is good design, IMNSHO): few spell slots recoverable upon a short rest. This class really calls for role-playing and creativity: combining background, cantrips, spells, pact features, and invocations to play a unique character that's going feel unlike anything else at the table.
If you play with a race with a Charisma bonus - like Dragonborn - you really open possibilities. Not only do you get the class abilities, you have a breath weapon and racial traits to provide a lot of versatility in combat situations.
I personally prefer the Hexblade/Pact of the Blade comobo for a single-classed warlock; through strategic use of cantrips and spells, you can be a powerful force for your party in first softening enemies up with ranged spells and then closing in for melee. At 5th level, a warlock can take an invocation that gives him/her two attacks per turn; when combined with the hex spell, the hexblade curse, and other possible buffs (having another party member case enlarge on them, for instance), the possibilities for amazing damage are wide open. This is especially true since the combination of the Hexblade patron/Pact of the Blade means you can use ANY weapon as your pact weapon (including great swords or greataxes for 2-12 base damage rolls) and get your charisma bonus tacked on to hit and damage rolls.
I'm currently running a 4th level half-elf warlock (Hexblade, Pact of the Blade) who managed to find Winged Boots - which gives me amazing tactical options, striking at targets from the air initially (eldritch blast + agonizing blast) and then closing to melee using my pact weapon and the aforementioned damage enhancing spells and abilities.
Agreed again with Meph that the warlock is not going to be the best at melee or spellcasting but the class does offer more options in either mode than a straight fighter or wizard.
And none of that is even touching the role-playing possibilities inherent in a character that can't do magic on their own but has made a pact with a greater entity.
I will also add ontop of Versatility is Orthogonal Thinking.
It's easy to build a Warlock that solves all of it's problems with a Greatsword or Eldtrich Blast, by maximizing those invocations. That's great if that's what you want, but Warlocks can also think in 3 dimensions more then others and because their powers reset at Short Rest, it's way cheaper to blow the power "just because". Is the Rogue investigating something? Blow a Invisibility on her, because you only lose a Short Rest reset.
Beguiling Influence lets a Warlock have as many skills as a Rogue. A half-elf Rogue, multiclassed into Warlock with it has probably half the skills on the sheet.
Eldtrich Sight, while it feels stupid to pay an Invocations to get at-will what other classes get as ritual, and feel like for free. This means it's always up, so any magic based traps will light up light a christmas tree to your eyes.
Gift of the Depths, it's expensive to pay an invocation but up to 10 creatures (which should be your party and all familiars or cohorts) have water breathing every day! Plus you get a swim speed. Not always useful and very campaign specific. Sadly any Ritual Caster in your party can do it better as the Wizard just needs to spell in her book.
Mask of Many Faces, have you ever wanted to play The Faceless Men from Game of Thrones? Because this is their power. If your campaign is less hack-n-slash and more political intrigue then this can be a power that gets a lot of use. What to scam someone? Here is your At-Will disguise kit.
Misty Visions. I normally don't like illusion magic, I think it's too expensive for what you get most of the time. This makes it At-Will. Which might be worth a 2 level dip in Illusion Wizard, or for an Illusion Wizard to get a bit of Warlock for it.
Personally I don't think Armor of Shadow is overrated. Warlocks start with Light Armor so it only gives +1 AC for what you get for free, and Hexblades get Medium Armor, which blows it away. Unless you have something like Bracers of Defense which require not wearing "armor".
Armor of Shadow is good at early levels, simply because it gives you +2AC over the starting light armor. As you get higher in level with more HP buffering, and the potential to stumble onto better leather armor or a magic robe, its best to swap it out for a different ability.
Aside from the Eldritch blast spam, the Warlock is a sort of support. They make a versatile class in and out of combat, and grow increasingly terrifying as the game runs.
So are they a support class, or offensive class?
Yes.
The twelve classes seem to follow a pattern of three warrior (Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian), three skirmisher (Rogue, Ranger, Monk), three support (cleric, druid, bard) and three mage (sorcerer, wizard, warlock), clearly based on the original Fighting Man, Thief, Cleric and Magic User classes. Warrior classes specialize in standing on the front lines and dishing damage out. Skirmishers are the more agile classes, often with a lot of mobility- or stealth-based abilities, such as Cunning Action, spells like Longstrider, or Step of the Wind. Support classes usually come with a number of abilities that heal or otherwise act as force multipliers. And lastly the mage classes tend to come with both counter magics and lots of AoE / battlefield control options.
Warlocks are definitely more of an "offensive" class in that they're a variation off the wizard archetype. You get access to AoE spells like fireball, hypnotic pattern and tentacles for crowd control, as well as things like hold person. The signature spell of Eldritch Blast can be used to knock monsters around for more control, and Hex is used as a soft debuff (disadvantage on certain attributes). Wizard, sorcerer and warlock are also the only classes to naturally come with Counterspell. The signature magic item, the warlocks Rod of the Pact, even grants more magic slots and increased DCs, very important for a controller.
Now, race, background, feats and subclass options can change things around, admittedly. Aasimar Celestial warlocks are very good at support options, for instance, and hexblade blade pacts can act as warriors; then again, you can have Diviner and Bladesinger wizards as well. So, if we just talk about the core class, independent of all other options? It definitely fits the same general role as the wizard more than anything else.
I think a lot of this is going to depend on your DM. In my group, we generally do not get a lot of short rests. Some of that might be because not many of us have short rest features, so we don't often lobby for a short rest. My most recent character is a sorlock multi-class, and our DM (who gets spelled occasionally and gets to play from time to time) is thinking seriously about a pure warlock, so we may start lobbying more for short rests. If we don't get them, I can see how his character would quickly turn into a cantrip spammer.
If we're allowed short rests, he's going to be incredibly happy I think. If not, he will have to spam cantrips, and I am not sure how much fun that would be on a regular basis. With the pure warlock, that's what it comes down to for me; how often am I going to get that short rest? With my sorlock dip, it's not as huge of an issue because I will have my sorc slots to use up. I actually talked with our normal DM/Warlock about that yesterday because we haven't traditionally taken a lot of short rests. He said "with two warlocks in the party, short rests become just about mandatory". We'll see how that works out.
I'm pretty sure that our secondary DM will likely be accommodating, but from what I see online, many just aren't. Warlocks remind me of Wild magic sorcs, they are very DM dependent to be able to really shine.
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From the sounds of it, it seems like you're in a catch 22. You don't have short rests, because no one in your group wants to short rest. I've played a monk in such a group once, and let me tell you, it wasn't fun for me without ki points. Resource starvation kinda sucks, no matter what class you play. I don't really think that should change if we consider a warlock to be a caster or not, as LeK said it does.
"Shadow of Moil is similar for non-archfey warlocks"
New to warlock. Not sure I understand what you are saying here as Shadow of Moil is a general warlock spell available to all patrons including the Archfey. What am I missing?
Small correction- Warlocks don't get fireball. They generally don't get alot of the traditional direct damage blasting type spells that you think of with a caster class like launching fireballs, throwing lightning bolt and conjuring ice storms.
Fireball is on the Expanded Spell list for Infernal Warlocks, so for some Warlocks it's a valid pick.
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Oh that is right. Totally overlooked the expanded spells. I just had read Fireball and was thinking to myself "wait that's not on my Archfey Warlock spell list??"
I completely agree. I've only played 2 games since I MC'd into warlock. None of the rest of the group has ever played a class that cares much about short rests. When we needed to spend hit dice was about the only time we ever really took short rests since we started playing 5e. With spell slot recharges on the line, I'm certainly going to be more interested in short rests than I was before. I don't really think that it's going to be an issue, but I'd be a fool to not consider that the group may not want to rest or that sometimes we won't be able to rest.
I've read online about other campaigns where the DM doesn't like to allow short rests, or like to run one large battle/encounter rather than multiple smaller ones. Those are the campaigns I'd be afraid of a warlock in. I switched to a caster for this campaign because after 30 years of mostly spamming melee attacks, I'm looking for something else when I am in combat. Both of the guys who are DMing right now are pretty "rule of cool" oriented, so I am pretty sure it will be OK for me, and for the guy looking at warlocks.
For one of those campaigns, as you mention, asset starvation would be terrible. Warlock is a bit better off than some classes because EB can be just so good, but I think it would get pretty boring pretty quick if I hopped on the typical "quicken EB, then cast it again with your action" train.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha