Introduction
Your choice of Warlock Subclass will offer spells and features that greatly influence your playstyle, frequently pushing you toward one role within the party. Some subclasses are clearly built to support Pact of the Blade, while others clearly are not.
For legacy subclasses, see our 2014 Warlock Subclasses Guide.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.
The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.
Warlock Subclasses
PHB)
(The Archfey Warlock is all about Misty Step, adding interesting rider effects when you teleport and allowing you to cast Misty Step a few extra times per day. This can be fun for Warlocks planning to be in melee frequently, where they can use teleportation to move about safely. However, the strict resource constraints mean that, for big chunks of the day, you’ll be almost completely unable to use your subclass.
Dependence on a level 2 spell makes a dip into Sorcerer for Font of Magic a powerful option. The ability to melt higher-level spell slots into more level 2 spell slots to fuel Misty Step will make the Archfey Patron’s features considerably more usable.
- : Faerie Fire is a great spell. Sleep is complicated, but can be a very effective save-or-suck spell for your entire career. Sadly, it doesn’t benefit from your spell slot progression.
- : You get three level 2 spells instead of the usual 2. Calm Emotions can diffuse combat situations if you’re lucky. Misty Step is fantastic on any character, and it’s central to the subclass. Phantasmal Force is an incredibly powerful save-or-suck spell.
- : Blink is unreliable. Plant Growth can be excellent area control if you keep a potted plant handy to trigger the effect in places where there aren’t already plants.
- : Dominate Beast negates an entire creature type, but by this level beasts are a rarity. Greater Invisibility is amazing.
- : Dominate Person is powerful, but only situationally useful because humanoid enemies are rare by this level. Seeming is only situationally useful.
: Generally good, but few
truly amazing spells.Because Steps of the Fey allows you to cast Misty Step without a spell slot, doing so doesn’t conflict with the “one spell with a spell slot per turn” rule, which means that you could cast a spell with a spell slot in the same turn. This doesn’t apply if you use a Pact Magic spell slot to cast Misty Step; it will only work if you use the free castings provided by Steps of the Fey.
The biggest problem here is the incredibly tight resource constraints. You’ll get 3 to 5 free castings of Misty Step plus whatever you’re willing to cast with your limited spell slots. You won’t be able to use Misty Step every turn unless Misty Step is the only level 1+ spell that you cast, and even then, you won’t get through a full adventuring day without running out of resources.
- : Not a lot of Temporary Hit Points, but it’s consistently useful, and the THP last until the target finishes a Long Rest.
- : Fantastic if you’re teleporting out of melee. If you put yourself out of reach of the creatures that were within range, they’ll spend the next round attacking with Disadvantage.
: Misty Step is a
powerful tactical option for any character, allowing you to quickly get into
or out of a dangerous position. A few free castings per day is a nice
complement to your limited Pact Magic slots, and the added rider effects
make it much more interesting. Remember that you get to use the rider
effects whether you cast Misty Step using a spell slot or using Steps of the
Fey.- : Get somewhere safe and make yourself untargetable until the beginning of your next turn. You might be able to teleport and then walk behind cover, in which case you should use Refreshing Step or Taunting Step, but that’s not always an option.
- : The damage doesn’t scale, which means that it will quickly become obsolete. Unless you’re being swarmed or you’re teleporting into a crowd of weak enemies, this is a bad idea.
: Using Misty Step as a
Reaction means that you don’t need to use it during your own turn, leaving
your Bonus Action free for things like Hex.- : This conflicts with Misty Escape, and one use per day will rarely have a significant impact. Your best bet is to use this when you suffer a critical hit. Even then, I doubt that this will be worth a spell slot to recharge.
- : Fantastically efficient. This goes a long way to correct the resource constraints of the subclass, allowing you to cast something that isn’t Misty Step without sacrificing the bulk of the subclass’s functionality.
PHB)
(The Celestial Warlock brings the Healer role to the Warlock, allowing you to fill a niche normally occupied by a Cleric or a Druid. While you won’t have the deep well of healing that a normall spellcaster will, the Celestial Warlock can still fulfil essential healing needs while enjoying the Warlock’s other capabilities.
- : Light is a fine utility, and Sacred Flame offers one of the Warlock’s only options for radiant damage. It won’t compete with Eldritch Blast for raw damage, though.
- : You don’t really need either spell. Cure Wounds is tempting, but you get Healing Light, which will provide emergency healing without eating your extremely limited spell slots. You can still use Cure Wounds right before a short rest to get some healing out of any leftover spell slots, but I’ve never seen a Warlock make it to a short rest with remaining spell slots. Guiding Bolt is a fine single-target damage option, but you have Eldritch Blast for lasering things to death.
- : Aid is fantastic, especially with the Warlock’s guaranteed spell slot scaling. You might cast it at the beginning of the day, then immediately take a Short Rest. Lesser Restoration is an essential healing option in any party.
- : Daylight is only situationally useful. Revivify is amazing, but presents a problem for the Warlock: you only have two spell slots until level 11, and you need to reserve one to cast Revivify if no one else in the party can cast it. This means that fully half of your spell slots may need to go unused just in case someone in the party dies.
- : Guardian of Faith exists solely for the 8-hour duration. You can use it to post a guard while resting, but it’s otherwise not useful. Wall of Fire is excellent area control, and synergizes well with Eldritch Blast, Repelling Blast, and Grasp of Hadar.
- : Greater Restoration is a crucial healing option, but you’ll rarely need to actually cast it. Summon Celestial is fantastic, though you won’t be able to upcast it since the Warlock’s spell slots stop advancing at level 5.
: Mostly good. Includes
essential options to play your party’s Healer, though you may struggle to
keep up with a Cleric or a Druid. You don’t get Healing Word, but Healing
Light fills that gap.- Healbot Olympics. However, it doesn’t solve problems beyond hit point restoration, so you still need spells to handle status conditions. : Roughly equivalent to Healing Word, but without eating into your spell slots. This provides enough healing that the Celestial Warlock made a solid showing in the
Of course, that makes Sacred Flame roughly equivalent to Eldritch Blast from levels 6 through 10, at which point Eldritch Blast’s third ray makes it significantly more damaging, and Sacred Flame has no way to catch up.
The Celestial’s expanded spell list offers a tiny handful of extra spells that deal radiant/fire damage, but many of them aren’t a great use of your Warlock spell slots and the damage still only affects one target on one damage roll (e.g. one target of Wall of Fire one time).
This also works with True Strike since True Strike can deal radiant damage. This can support a rather unusual Pact of the Blade build which focuses on a big singular attack. With True Strike, Radiant Soul, and Agonizing Blast, you can attack with Charisma and apply your Charisma as a damage bonus a total of 3 times. Comparing the math to Eldritch Blast gets a little messy, but a musket used with this strategy will be better than or comparable to Eldritch Blast until level 17 when you get your 4th ray.
: Most Warlocks deal the vast
majority of their damage with Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast. Celestial
Warlocks get Sacred Flame, which is probably the best way to make use of
this feature, and you can use Agonizing Blast on Sacred Flame to add double
your Charisma modifier to its damage.- : This will save a ton of your party’s healing resources. It’s not quite as good as the Inspiring Leader feat since your allies don’t get as many Temporary Hit Points, but it’s very close.
There is no save to resist the blinding effect, so you can stand up and safely walk yourself to somewhere safe before going back to lasering stuff to death. Creatures that you damage are blinded, which gives you Advantage on attacks against them, so it’s a great time for Eldritch Blast.
: A good emergency
option for your whole party, though you need to be sure to keep everyone
within 60 feet to keep them in range. This also only triggers when they make
a Death Saving Throw, so you need to wait for your ally’s turn to trigger
this (or your turn if you’re the one dying).
PHB)
(Straightforward and effective, Fiend Patron offers almost nothing but options which improve the Warlock’s combat capabilities. The Fiend Warlock gets more Blaster options than a typical Warlock, but they’re also heavily dependent on fire damage. Strongly consider the Elemental Adept feat.
Unfortunately, you either need to kill the creature yourself or you need to be within 10 feet of the dying creature, which is a very dangerous prospect unless you’re building around Pact of the Blade. Of course, you can also use a bag of rats. Kill a rat, get THP. Easy.
This combines very well with Armor of Agathys. Armor of Agathys ends when you have no Temporary Hit Points, but it doesn’t require that the THP come from the spell itself. Using Dark One’s Blessing to maintain a pool of THP allows you to maintain Armor of Agathys for an exceptionally long time.
: An excellent amount
of Temporary Hit Points. This makes Fiendish Vigor considerably less
important. It also makes it important that you occasionally pick off weak
foes to ensure that your temporary hit points are up before you focus on
more important foes.- : Burning Hands is passable AOE damage at low levels, and, since Warlocks get armor and more hp than Sorcerers and Wizards, you can survive being close enough to melee to use it. However, I wouldn’t use it beyond very low levels despite the automatic spell slot scaling. You’ll get more total damage out of Hex or other spell options despite Burning Hands’ scaling. Command is a great control/debuff effect and scales really well with your spell slots.
- : Scorching Ray is a bit redundant with Eldritch Blast, but it scales very well and benefits from the same tactics. Suggestion can be a useful save-or-suck, but does have some limitations.
- : A good AOE blast and a good area control effect. Fireball remains the best instantaneous AOE damage spell at every spell level until around spell level 8, and, while the Warlock can’t cast Fireball past level 5 spell slots, it still remains a perfect go-to AOE blast option. However, remember that you will often get better results out of spells with ongoing effects like Hunger of Hadar, and, with so few spell slots, you need to squeeze as much out of them as you can. Stinking Cloud is an ongoing AOE save-or-suck effect, but creatures within the area are Heavily Obscured, so it’s hard to attack them. Hunger of Hadar is likely a better choice in most cases.
- : Fire Shield is fine for Pact of the Blade builds. It does seem redundant with Armor of Agathys, which notably lasts longer, provides Temporary Hit Points, deals more damage to attackers, and scales with spell level. Wall of Fire is one of the best area control spells in the game and, with the right invocations, you can push and pull enemies through it to repeatedly capitalize on the guaranteed damage dealt when a creature passes through the wall.
- : Geas is very situational. Insect Plague fills a very similar niche to Hunger of Hadar, but the damage is much better.
: Warlocks get few
instantaneous AOE blast spells, which means that they may struggle against
crowds of enemies. The Fiend’s spell list offers several excellent options
to address this.- : Adds an average of 5.5 to your roll, which is mathematically much better than what you get from Advantage (Advantage is worth slightly more than +3). Unfortunately, you need to declare that you’re using it before you roll, so you can’t use this to rescue failed checks/saves. Save this for saving throws.
- : Powerful and flexible. If you’re not sure what to pick, Slashing and Fire are both reliable choices.
You only get to use this once per Long Rest, but you can recharge it by spending a Pact Magic spell slot. At this level all of your slots are level 5, so we need to compare this to a level 5 spell. This won’t match the damage or versatility of your spells, so we can’t look at this as our go-to use for spell slots. Instead, use it for high-priority targets when the benefits will be especially useful, such as hitting an enemy spellcaster to break Concentration or a bulky enemy who is blocking your party from attacking their less durable allies.
: 8d10 damage is pretty
great on top of whatever your attack was, and the Incapacitated condition
will prevent them from acting, break Concentration, and end some ongoing
abilities like the Barbarian’s Rage. The creature is also functionally
removed from the game until the end of your next turn, allowing you
to place hazards in and around its space like Hunger of Hadar, Wall of Fire,
or the rest of your party.
PHB)
(The Great Old One Warlock is a good generalist, with a good mix of all of the Warlock’s capabilities. They don’t seem to favor any one role in the party, which leaves you a lot of room to build an effective Warlock without being pushed toward one play style.
- : Initially this is just a way to communicate telepathically. The duration is short, so you’re going to use it at short range simply because you can’t get very far before the duration expires. It has almost no mechanical impact until you pick up Clairvoyant Combatant.
- : Two great single-target control effects, but they will become obsolete beyond low levels since they don’t scale with upcasting.
- : Detect Thoughts is only situationally useful. Phantasmal Force is a powerful save-or-suck option.
- : Clairvoyance is a fantastic scouting option if you have a normal number of spell slots like literally any other spellcaster, but Warlocks really need to save their spell slots for something more significant and impactful. Hunger of Hadar is absolutely amazing area control.
- : Confusion is unreliable, but Summon Aberration is great.
- : Modify Memory is only situationally useful, but with Eldritch Hex you can cast it without Somatic/Verbal components, allowing you to safely use it mid-conversation, thereby making it much more powerful. Telekinesis is a great utility, and you can use it to hoist melee-only enemies into mid-air.
: An eclectic mix
with a good mix of debuffs, save-or-suck, area control, and utility options.- : Psychic damage is rarely resisted, allowing you to use direct damage spells with much less caution than many spellcasters. The ability to cast Enchantment/Illusion components subtly can be very helpful in social situations where casting spells can be considered hostile.
This competes for your Bonus Action with Hex, so you’ll need to pick which one you want to use first. You can reapply Hex, but not Clairvoyant Combatant, so save Clairvoyant Combatant for powerful single enemies, then use it before applying Hex until you get Eldritch Hex, at which point you should reverse the order so that your target has Disadvantage on the Wisdom save.
You only get to use this once per Short or Long Rest, so you can’t afford to use it in every fight. You can recharge it with a spell slot, but only do that if you have multiple fights with single powerful foes that justify it.
: Excellent both
offensively and defensively. Melee Pact of the Blade builds will enjoy the
defensive benefits more than most Warlocks, but any Warlock will enjoy
Advantage with Eldritch Blast. Of course, you can do the same thing with
Darkness and Devil’s Sight with a better duration and no saving throws.This works very well with Clairvoyant Combatant.
: Disadvantage on saves
against a chosen ability score allows you and your party to easily
save-or-suck your target to death. The only problem is that most
save-or-suck spells require Concentration, and, if you cast a Concentration
spell, you stop concentrating on Hex, thereby losing the benefits of Eldritch
Hex. You’ll need to rely on your friends or look for spells that don’t need
Concentration.However, you’re casting Summon Aberration at level 5, and it will never improve. This means that your aberration will become relatively less threatening as you gain levels, making it less and less impactful over time. It’s still good, but it won’t keep pace with regular spellcasters who are summoning creatures.
: Summon Aberration is a
good spell. The ability to remove the Concentration requirement is great,
too, allowing you to keep Concentration on Hex so that you and your
aberration can get a damage bonus. The Temporary Hit Points also mean that
your aberration is unusually durable.