Warlock Subclass Tier Rankings (Part 2) In Dungeons and Dragons 5e

this week's episode is sponsored by the grim hollow campaign guide brought to you by our amazing friends at ghostfire games the grim hollow campaign guide is a perfect introduction to running dark fantasy in your games of 5th edition for all of you fans of macabre horror and stories against dark creatures of the night such as vampires demons liches and undead and werewolves this book has got you covered for how to run amazing adventures in worlds haunted by terrible creatures this book includes all sorts of rules for how to hunt these monsters or how to become them so there's a lot packed in this book to expand your game worlds the book is available now on the ghostfire games website through their store you can follow the links below to grab your copy today and now on to this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guys for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode welcome to part two of our series on ranking the subclasses available to warlocks in dungeons and dragons fifth edition if you missed part one we covered the three subclasses available to warlocks in the player's handbook which are the fiend the fey and the great old one and today we're going to be looking at the two subclasses that were introduced in xanathar's guide to everything which are the celestial and the hex blade as well as the subclass introduced in the sword coast adventures guide the undying if you look on the screen right now you're going to see the criteria we use to rank the subclasses we have pitted the subclasses against each other and not those of other classes keep in mind that the flavor and role-playing themes are not taken into account in our overall rankings as well we may touch on multi-classing as a concept but it isn't one of the core attributes we're looking at we look at these subclasses for their potential in all elements of dungeons and dragons gameplay that includes combat but that also means we look at how these subclasses augment the base class's ability to contribute in social interaction exploration problem solving and all the diverse types of situations that dungeons and dragons characters find themselves in it's not just about their raw combat potential but with many of the warlock subclasses most of their class features are rather combat oriented overall so that does become a little bit of a heavier weight across all the warlock subclasses because for the most part warlocks are relying on their other class features to give them those opportunities for problem solving and social interaction there is a lot to look at today so let's get rolling so we're going to start things off by looking at the celestial patron which was introduced in xanathar's guide to everything this is a unique take on the warlock that instead of swearing a pact to serve a really potentially evil or otherworldly sort of mysterious entity you're bound to a rather benevolent entity that might be a kirin an angel a unicorn or some other benevolent force in the universe that still isn't a deity so the celestial kind of crosses this weird threshold where it feels like it's in the same league as like the divine soul or paladins or clerics in that it has kind of this divine magic idea behind it but still with an arcane take so let's start by looking at the expanded spell list that the celestial warlock gets out of the presented spells here there are five or six that i think are worth considering but even then most of them you'll probably be dropping for higher level spells i agree i think that of the of the spells on the spell list there's one spell that i would take at each level i would probably want to bring a long guiding bolt i would probably want to bring along lesser restoration i'd probably want to pack revivify for emergencies i love wall of fire it's a great spell and greater restoration is something that you could very easily upgrade from lesser restoration too although it has an expensive material component cost even guiding bolts which is a great pickup at early levels but with the limited amount of spell slots as soon as you get into some better spell options guiding bolt loses traction really quickly for a warlock yeah and a spell like flame strike is it's really hard to make the case for flamestrike when spells like synaptic static are already on the warlock spell list there are options here but there's nothing in this spell list that i would say is a flat out upgrade to what warlocks already have available i would say keeping revivify in your back pocket for extremely important situations is not a bad idea but again revivify becomes one of those spells that's going to be on the bench while you use your other spells more often and it's there in case of emergency still adding it to the warlock spell list i think is actually the most important spell presented here yeah it's just a difficult thing because how deep your bench as a warlock is going to be is an open question the best spells on this list that are offering new things are all spells that are reactive that you're going to use in an emergency so it's good to have them but if someone else in your party has greater restoration you might not necessarily want to take it so right away when you choose the celestial warlock you gain some bonus cantrips you gain the light and sacred flame can't trip on top of this you also gain the ability healing light which gives you a pool of d6s that you can use as a bonus action to heal up anybody within 60 feet of you it's kind of like a different version of healing word presented as an ability for the warlock the number of dice in your pool is determined by one plus your warlock level you can use up to your charisma modifier worth of dice at one time and they'll replenish on a long rest at level six you gain the radiant soul power this augments your fire and radiant damage dealing spells adding your charisma modifier to one target of one damage roll of that spell so as an example if you use this ability with flame strike it doesn't add your charisma modifier to every enemy caught under the flame strike you just choose one one thing to be aware of is that this ability is now contingent on you taking a good number of warlock spells that either deal fire or radiant damage so you've got about 10 spells that you can use with this ability so make sure that you pay attention to your spell selection to make sure that you can actually get benefits from this we'll talk about this a little bit more in a moment though you also gain resistance to radiant damage monsters that deal radiant damage are pretty rare at 10th level you gain celestial resilience this is basically inspiring leader but just as an ability for the warlock you can gain temporary hit points when you finish a short or long rest equal to your charisma modifier plus your warlock level you can also include up to five other creatures with those temporary hit points as well finally at 14th level you gain the searing vengeance ability which triggers at the start of your turn when you have to make a death-saving throw you can immediately spring back up to your feet with half hit points and cause a burst of radiant energy to damage creatures that you can that are within 30 feet of you causing them to take a decent amount of radiant damage and become blinded until your next turn once you use this ability you can't use it again until you finish a long rest but it's a good get out of jail free card so as we get into it i think that the celestial warlock is a really valid option for warlock players and it almost made an a tier ranking for me except for the radiant soul ability and the radiant soul ability is such a trap that we need to talk about that it actually pulls the whole thing down i'm giving the celestial warlock a b ranking overall and i want to talk about radiant soul before i talk about radiant soul i should say that all the other abilities presented to this warlock and the spell list although not my favorite still presents reasonable options for a great gameplay style however radiant soul implies that you should double down on taking fire and radiant spells and we've looked at some of the math and actually taking a lot of the radiant options and using them with the radiant solubility does not equate a better damage dealing option than just using eldritch blast and hex or hunger of radar or the spells that are already presented to the warlock here's a really quick example of how the math adds up if you use your third level spell slot as a celestial warlock to cast guiding bolt against a single target it's going to deal 66 points of damage a great advantage if it hits that averages out to about 25 points of damage and then the advantage that your next ally gains may or may not do more damage it's a little bit harder to quantify based on your party but if you simply have a base level warlock with agonizing blast hex and eldritch blast for roughly the same cost a spell slot an action and a bonus action you get the same amount of damage at level six even if both of your eldritch blats miss your hex spell is still in effect you can still keep firing this damage round after round after round after round whereas with guiding bolt you've spent that spell slot and hopefully you get some benefit from the advantage that your ally makes on their next attack but it's not really a good cost benefit ratio flame strike is a decent spell adding an extra five four four or five points of damage to one target doesn't really still make it as compelling to me as say casting static against the exact same targets to deal psychic damage on an intelligence saving throw radiant damage is such a fantastic damage type but it's really it's one of those really weird cases where it doesn't quite sing i think that with with the subclass overall again there are some great options here everything else is pretty cool you have some great healing options you basically have healing word and inspiring leader without needing to take the feet or use a spell slot that's fantastic with the limited amount of spell slots being able to have this pool of dice and basically have a healing spell that you can use without expending a spell slot is great inspiring leader is a wonderful feat and being able to inspire you and your companions without needing to take the feet great even the top level ability if you die you come back in an explosion of radiant energy and get half of your hit points back that's just a great option for it probably won't happen a ton but with a high level ability if you do go down you're not going down without a fight so all of those abilities really really cool it's this problem that brings this from an a tier down to a b tier of the spells presented versus the way that this subclass implies using those spells which actually is worse than the base level warlock just using the base level warlock spells and for that reason i think anybody can have a great time playing a celestial warlock if you ignore that ability yeah throwing around guiding bolts and flame strikes is not as good as throwing around eldritch blasts and synaptic static flat out i guess there's an argument to be made that like if you didn't want to take hex and elder's blast you still have a decent damage dealing capability but no you don't like it's it's not even close i do think that's what this is trying to advertise is there is an option here to play a warlock that doesn't rely on eldritch blast and hex it won't be as powerful as a warlock who does play into that which is the sad fact of the warlock overall and this tries but it still falls a little bit short of being able to make these other cantrips and spells matter as much as what the warlock already has and it's a tricky thing because hex and eldritch blast is already such a fantastic combination and so having a subclass that beats that combo is kind of would propel it in in probably an inordinate way i do think that the healing word on a stick thing is really cool like we've seen another class that actually gets a similar ability which is the dream druid and i actually think that it's more compelling for the warlock to get this type of ability than it is for the druid because the warlock really is worried about how they're using their spell slots and using a warlock spell slot to cast healing word can save a life but it's not really a very good deal no all the abilities are good but all the abilities land solidly for me as well as a b the strength here is that you have some really good useful healing abilities attached to the warlock who is a great damage dealer so the idea of having having a healer who is simultaneously a really good damage dealer is actually pretty compelling yeah and i do think that that is why this is a b because in certain cases playing a celestial warlock will be the most important character on the table if you are the party healer and you're also dealing the warlock damage yeah you're going to be a hero yeah it's just that well that having both of those things at the same time is cool you are not the best at either of them there are better healers and there are better damage dealers and so that is what prevents it from being an s tier because the combination of those two things is an interesting flavor but d rewards specialization a re a lot and and so it's hard to be a jack of all trades in d d unless you're hard yeah if you can imagine if you decided i'm really excited to play a celestial warlock and you arrive to the party with a paladin of any kind a divine soul sorcerer and a druid uh you're not going to stand out and you're actually going to not be the you're you might end up being the worst thing at that table yeah so that might have you kind of looking down towards hell and maybe wanting to change your patron too and forget you unicorn i want the devil yeah speaking of the dark side if you really want to play an edgelord with a sharp edge blade here we go it's the hex blade warlock the hex blade warlock takes what the warlock offers and turns it on its head a little bit it takes the option of the pact of the blade and gives you a reasonable route to explore the potential of what it means to be a warlock with a blade the hex-wade warlock makes a pact with a shadowy entity from the distant shadowfell that is represented in the form perhaps of a blade like black razor or an entity like the raven queen so it has a little bit of this mismatched lore behind it which is pretty malleable in my experience and it is kind of the most open-ended of how you want to interpret the lore for the hex blade itself so let's take a look at their spell list and interestingly enough we're off to a bad start with the hex blade warlock because this spell list is arguably the worst warlock spell list that any of the options get it's the worst spell list for a very strong class because i think that i would be hard-pressed to take any of the spells on this list yeah there are some of our favorite spells in here but are they better than options already presented to the hex blade and are they ones that you want to blow your spell slots on i might take shield because shield is one of my favorite spells but blowing a warlock spell slot on shield doesn't happen the same way it does with other classes this is you're down to two hit points and you're about to take a hit that's going to kill you you bust out shield but besides that there's not much going on here and then when we look at spells like blink which is a pretty interesting spell and seems really fitting for a hex blade warlock or a spell like cone of cold which is a great aoe spell but then you compare those to something like synaptic static is also an option which in my opinion works better than cone of cold and spirit shroud is a spell available to warlocks now that probably demands the hex blade's concentration and any other choice is a detriment to what you could be doing with a hex blade the hex blade warlock spell list has been warped by the addition of spirit shroud and it means that all of the smite spells are just not worth taking compared to spirit shroud because spear shroud on its own is going to add 1d8 extra damage to all of your attacks um and it's going to upgrade to 2d8 once you get to getting the 5th level spell slots most of the hex blade warlocks that i built and played i didn't take a single spell from this list right away when you take the hex blade you get hexblade's curse this has a number of benefits that help you out with being amazing in melee combat so as a bonus action you can curse your target with your hex plate's curse now you can crit that target on a 19 or 20 you do additional damage to it and you regain hit points when the target dies in addition to this at first level you also gain the hex warrior class feature this grants you proficiency in medium armor shields and martial weapons and in addition to this you can now use your charisma modifier instead of your strength or dexterity modifier when you're making melee attacks the caveat here is that you must channel your will into a weapon that you're proficient with that lacks the two-handed property but if the weapon that you channel your patrons power into is also the weapon granted to you by the pact the blade feature it can have any type which means that a hex blade warlock with the pact of the blade can use a two-handed weapon as their hex weapon as long as it's also their packed weapon at sixth level you gain a cursed specter when you kill a humanoid you can rip its soul out of its body and summon it as a specter that gains a bonus to its attack rules based on your charisma modifier and it gains temporary hit points equal to your warlock level so you get a little ghost companion to help you out in battle at level 10 you gain the armor of hexa's ability a target that is cursed by your hex wave's curse that hits you with an attack you roll a d6 on a four or higher that attack just misses you anyways which basically means that half of attacks that hit you by your cursed target still miss you anyways awesome at 14th level you gain master of hexes now when the target that is the subject of your hex blade's curse dies you can immediately move the hex blade's curse to another target within 30 feet you do not gain the hit points for killing the target but you get to keep on hexing the hex blade is one of the best damage dealers in the game and one of the best classes in the game in general as long as you play the specific build which is a very narrow niche if you play a hexwade warlock with the path of the blade that takes great weapon master and polar master takes spirit shroud and takes all the right invocations you have a character that hits like a truck if you don't do all of these things it is considerably less good in my opinion as our audience well knows uh we love polar mastering great weapon master and yeah they're amazing options especially to give to a melee combat character who can do things like add spirit shroud on top of this the example that you've given is the most powerful yeah i will say though that in my opinion you can have s tier level fun without taking polar master a great weapon master you might want to have a giant two-handed sword in which case you still take great weapon master don't take polar master you're still gonna have fun you might want to have a sword and shield you might want to have any number of options here and it's still going to be really cool for a hex blade warlock and i think that this presents one of the most fun options for the gish style character that is available in dungeons and dragons fifth edition and for that reason i give it the s tier as well the the spell list forget about it we're not here for that yeah yeah the abilities are all really cool let's be honest that 10th level ability where just half of the attacks from your hex target miss and there's there's no limit to that if you're fighting a boss monster where it's like oh here's one monster in a room that monster is going to miss you 50 percent of the time that's ridiculous the options presented here that allow you to use your charisma for attacking and being able to take this weapon and augment it critting on a 19 or 20 against the hex target you really get to call out the target you're gonna kill and kill them dead and even for the targets that aren't affected by your hex you're killing them dead too this is an outstanding melee combatant option and i don't think it needs to rely on polar master or great weapon master that's my opinion okay but to counterpoint that i want to expand why this is so asked here because we really fixated on why this is so dominant in combat okay but the thing is is that once you get past all the amazing combat capabilities you now also have a character with a high charisma score and lots of utility magic and that is that's the thing that makes this s tier because it's not that it does a ton of damage it's that the hex wave warlock does a ton of damage and can also be the face of the party so you get to have all these amazing role-playing interactions you don't need to take any other spells with your hex blade warlock aside from spirit shroud so you can load up the entire rest of your spell list with all the amazing utility magic that is in there things like invisibility dimension door and all the weird rituals and all the weird cool things and so the thing that the main the hex blade warlock does is you have main character syndrome like serious main character syndrome you can fight like a badass you can talk everybody down and you have all the cool utility magic to boot and that's why it's so good and not only that you don't have to be a goody two-shoes paladin yeah and if we think about it if we think about it this whole being able to use your charisma for attacks yeah but charisma is also your spell casting christmas also your ability for social engagement this means that unlike every other class in the game which demands usually that you have a primary and secondary stat with the hex blade warlock up your charisma to the max and everything else is completely up to you i would probably say constitution or dexterity or strength but the world's your oyster here as long as you have good charisma you're golden and you know what else too now there's the eldritch mind invocation from tasha's which lets you not have to take warcaster to get advantage on your concentration checks either so like all these things from tasha's like spirit shroud and eldritch mind and all the existing things like you're you're pulling your character together from like a bunch of different source books but the result is just an absolute powerhouse now it should be stated that if for some reason you take the hex blade and you listen to this video and you decide to take pact of the chain or pact of the tome and you don't take the invocations that feed into the pack to the blade you're actually not going to end up with the powerhouse that we're talking about this subclass relies on taking pack to the blade so coming off of the brilliance of the hex blade warlock we're going to look at the other warlock option that was presented in the sword coast adventures guide which is the undying warlock the the flavor here kind of avoids saying that your patron is a lich or an evil undead creature to kind of more closely assign it with like this wishy-washy sort of entity but that's fine the spell list the spell list has some options on it that i think are potential bench warmer spells but nothing that goes beyond that speak with dead is one of those that you could tuck away for a rainy day or when the moment comes up that you need to talk to a dead person great you have it i like contagion contagion has its uses but it's hard to look at anything on this as a go-to must-have especially when they're competing for your very limited number of warlock spell slots yeah so i think that the spell list is a little lackluster here some cool spells on here but nothing that you would take above what's already presented at first level you gain the among the dead feature which gives you the spare the dying kantrip which is an okay cantrip and you also have this sanctuary effect that works against undead creatures it's almost verbatim the sanctuary spell which means that undead creatures have to make a wisdom-saving throw before they can attack you or try to harm you this effect is suppressable if you attack them um and if they make the wisdom-saving throw they res they're now ignore the effect entirely at sixth level you gain the feature defy death if either you succeed at a death saving throw or you you spare the dying on an ally you can regain a number of hit points equal to 1d8 plus your constitution modifier once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest then you get an undying nature at level 10 which means you don't need to eat sleep or breathe you also age at a significantly slower rate you still need to take rests though at 14th level you gain indestructible life on your turn you can use a bonus action to regain 1d8 plus your warlock level in hit points and you can re-attach severed limbs once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest this is a terrible subclass straight up it its abilities largely add up to you get the sanctuary spell against undead and here's two healing potions that you can use once per day the magically aging thing and not needing debris thing is so niche like yes i have run encounters like underwater or or in vacuums and stuff but it's just really niche and the spell list is so lackluster uh i think i have to give this a d i i think that's fair and i'm giving it a d as well and realistically the best abilities that this subclass has to offer our niche when i read that ability about not aging as fast and not needing to eat sleep or breathe all that i really read there that's relevant is i can breathe underwater everything else is cosmetic being able to breathe underwater is important in one or two sessions of your hair and warlocks have invocations for that true and then beyond that you're just looking at like do you need to breathe in other situations and it's just such a rare thing like when it comes up you're going to feel amazing but if it comes up at all it's going to be based on the dm sanctuary against undead creatures is fine but warlocks have lots of tools for protecting themselves and they also have tools for healing themselves and so the things that you get from the subclass you're paying the opportunity cost for having not taken one of the other amazing subclasses and you're not really getting a good return on your investment here like the the the healing from these abilities is pathetic the the celestial pack warlock is going to punch this one in the face for even thinking that it might have healing options like look at that difference right like the celestial pack warlock has the healing ability that it can use on itself or other people and the get back up power which restores half your hit points yeah compared to being able to uh assemble a a limb back on once per long rest and getting like a handful of hit points so if we're directly comparing subclasses the celestial's first level ability yep completely undoes the undying's entire thing yes other than the fact that if you are playing in a zombie pirate campaign on the open water and you have to go underwater a lot and fight undead you might have a subclass that can be okay and when i say okay i mean still probably worse than all of the other options yeah because again one of the things that's really important with like any sort of like anecdotes that come from a campaign is like okay well what if you were playing a different subclass like there is it's very easy to say like oh what if i'm playing in a underwater zombie campaign is this subclass going to be good well i actually think the hex blade warlock is still going to eat your lunch in that exact same campaign you just take the right invitations to breathe underwater and you're good to go and who cares if you if undead ignore you when you're not attacking them who doesn't attack undead i could see it being useful in some circumstances but by and large this subclass joins the ranks of our wonderful friends like the four elements monk and the purple dragon knight and the original beast master if you build a party out of these guys have fun so let's take a look at what our community thought of these three so looking at the community rankings for the celestial warlock 16.3 of people gave it an s-tier ranking and 47 of people gave it an a people love their healers um 28.1 gave it a b-tier ranking with just a sliver for the d-tier ranking and only seven percent for c-tier ranking so overall the the community really loves the celestial warlock and i'm inclined to agree it's a good it's a good class i just don't think it's as good a damage dealer as perhaps the radio the bonus damage ability indicates it would be on paper i think that if you don't take into account the little trap that we talked about then yeah it definitely can be an eight-tier sub-class and i think it offers a lot and i'm willing to uh i'm willing to agree with a lot of these votes moving on to the hex blade this gets an insane amount of s-tier ranking we're looking at almost 75 percent s tier uh with about 20 a tier with about 4 b and barely any c or d like less than 1 percent almost only 7 people responded to d tier and they're probably trolling us i i would assume so if you gave the hex blade a d to your ranking you are a troll and get out of here um but 75 wow i i just you don't have to say more than that for the undying warlock um only 2.1 gave it an s-tier ranking with 13 giving in an a 32 giving it a um b tier and 32 also giving it a c tier with 19.6 giving it the d tier this being the subclass that received the highest d and c tier rankings amongst all of the warlock subclasses so i think conclusively we can put this one in the c level even though it's a close tie between b and c i think that the massive weight of the d tier at the end there conclusively says the community thinks that this is less than at least c so once again on screen you're going to see our final rankings for the warlock subclasses and next to that you will see the community rankings for the warlock subclasses overall they are relatively comparable i'd say that that we even out as usual monty and i are a little bit higher on the high end and a little bit lower on the low end but that just tends to be the way that things go where i find that as you get a community vote the middle starts to kind of be where a lot of things end up just because of majority votes and things of that sort overall the warlock presents really interesting subclasses and i think that there are a lot of great options here except for the undying i think that any warlock subclass is going to be an outstanding character at the table absolutely every one of the warlock subclasses are completely playable in a wide range of campaigns and will yield a very satisfying character the hex blade warlock is insanely dominant and tends to steal the show and overshadow a lot of the others as much as we even waxed rapsodically i think that the other warlock subclasses are pretty amazing as well i think the the fiend also got an s tier and should be counted for that the the hex blade presents an s-tier build but it also if you don't build it that way could present a lot of flaws whereas the fiend is just strong it's just a strong option i would say in in review the the fiend is very flexible in the ways that you can build it and it's still going to be really really strong the hex blade is one of those ones where if you lean into the meta build it propels it to the stratosphere but if you try to not play the meta with the hex blade i think you might end up with something that could be weaker than the fiend so this has been a look at our warlock subclass tier rankings part two in dungeons and dragons fifth edition if you have played a warlock tell us about your experience and which subclasses you love in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters from both kelly and myself to all of you out there on patreon a massive thank you for contributing to our work if you enjoy the work that we do here on youtube please consider joining our patreon community and connecting with us on our patreon only discord server you can find out how by following the links in the description below and don't forget that dungeons of drackenheim our live play campaign is coming to kickstarter we've partnered with ghostfire games to bring this campaign to life as a fifth edition module if you want to join the mailing list in the links below you can be up to date on all the information surrounding the upcoming kickstarter and don't forget to check out our live plays in the worlds of drakenheim which airs tuesday nights at 6 pm eastern on our twitch channel you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got plenty more build guides for dungeons and dragons 5th edition including one on the hex wade warlock right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 343,195

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: Ybn1AHJQews

Length: 37min 1sec (2221 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021