At this point, my opinions on Warlock border on beating a dead horse, but I'll reiterate anyway. All of this is prefaced, as always, as being solely my flawed opinion drawn from my years on the server; if I've worded anything as undeniable gospel truth, that itself is through the flawed, biased lens of my preconceived notions.
Warlock at the moment has a very specific array of features that, at best, make the class tolerable to play, which by and large are concessions to the fact that Warlock implementation on PotM is nowhere close to their 3.x implementation, despite the server's stated goal to cleave as closely to 3.x implementation whenever possible and plausible. We'll circle back to that in the latter half of my post. For now, let's focus on the features that make them tolerable to play, without which the class would be dead last in terms of all the criterion I consider that make a class worthwhile to play. For clarity; these criterion include, but are not limited to; capability (general power level overall), versatility (how pigeonholed they are into doing specific things), roleplayability (having a specific flavoursome niche that allows the player to engage in specific roleplay), and the nebulous quality of fun (at the end of the day, do I enjoy playing this class, on this server).
So; the features that make the difference between Warlock being tolerable to play, and completely not worth my time as a person. Some classes have specific niches they fulfill on the server and impact how much I want to bother playing that class; Rogue for example can be exceedingly enjoyable due to their roleplayability, which in turn makes them more fun, but their capability is in the dumpster, with middling versatility. We have a limited amount of time to live on this earth and I'll be damned if I spend that time playing something on a server that I don't enjoy, at the end of the day. Warlock, judged by these criterion, has low to mid capability, middling versatility, middling roleplayability (this is hamstrung by a number of things on the server and boosted by extremely specific invocations, such as Call of the Beast); finally, I judge Warlock to be middling to decent fun.
It's Eldritch Blast is borderline useless past a certain level; once you leave Barovia, as a general notion, you'll find whatever burgeoning power at your fingertips to be suddenly gone. Perilous Wall of Flame is useful for soloing specific areas; I use it all the time to go into Hazlan and gather Dread Treant Sap, occasionally I'll go into Har'akir at night to try and kill Huecuva High Priests for money because I don't want to spend 12 hours sitting around waiting for people to buy potions. Darkness plus Voidsense are essentially a necessity due to how the AI treats any sort of ranged attack these days. My suggestion is to warn others that you'll be sitting in distant corners, dropping Darkness on your own head so you're less likely to rip aggro. I say less, because even with Darkness on you, there's a 50/50 coinflip that they'll still bolt for you, because of the 'hearing' system which allows them to 'see' your character anyway. Potentially silent spells can prevent this, but I've not tested. Walk Unseen is another 100% necessity, unless you enjoy being dead more than alive, as well as the versatility it grants in allowing players to run about at all hours, in hostile regions.
All of these things are further complicated by the fact that Metamagic is involved. There's a set of robes with Automatic Quicken Spell 1, there's a set of Warmage Robes with the same. Either of these, preferably the robes, are in my opinion a complete night and day quality of life improvement for any Warlock. The damage output you do is potentially doubled (we'll come back to this also), but the true benefit it provides is being able to, at a moment's notice, go invisible or drop a Darkness on yourself when things go badly. Silent and Still spell exist, as well as Extend, none of which I bother using. Empower takes your Eldritch blast from a level 1 to a level 3 spell, jacking up it's damage by 50% also, but at the cost of no longer using Invocation Essences/Blast Shapes since Empowering those would take you into level 4 or higher. As an aside; the implementation of Warlock Invocations is such that all of your Invocations count as level 0-4 spells. They have a little notice at the top informing you of their Equivalent Spell Level, as in PnP that's how they're supposed to be measured against other, more regular spells. This is utterly irrelevant, it's just flavour text essentially. If it were implemented, 90% of Invocations couldn't be Metamagic'd anyway because they'd be level 6 and above.
Ontop of all this, Warlock is the only caster class I've ever witnessed on the server that will ever reasonably begin hitting exhaustion from spellcasting. I estimate that, depending on your timing, the average Warlock will hit the first tier of exhaustion and thus the first lump of flat arcane spell failure, within 20-40 rounds, if you're using Combat Casting with low to moderate Con score, as well as that one feat that just adds a flat +4 to your exhaustion cap calculations (this is essentially a whole feat for one round extra of casting).
All of this combines to make Warlock a highly active class, in the sense that you're constantly doing things, compared to others. The amount of effort you put in, however, is not commensurate with what you receive in turn.
So, we're left with a class that is a ranged caster, with low to mid versatility as casters are judged, which is very firmly focused on dealing damage to enemies above all else, with a few niche modifiers here and there that do other things; some aoe slows, some status effects, etc. It's arguably sat in the 'jack of all trades, master of none' position of casters, except that even there it lacks. Wizards are the wunderkind of caster versatility, Warmages are the peak of 'you die, I get paid', so on and so forth. Warlocks manage to do nothing really well; I've yet to see anything they are capable of that any other class can't do better. The foremost thing I've witnessed with Warlock is that everything it does takes time. It takes 20 rounds to make a maximum efficacy blazing hellscape with Wall of Perilous Flame. It takes 5-10 rounds of Eldritch Blasting a single target before it drops dead, finally. Meanwhile other classes can do essentially the same thing, but faster. Warlock's tradeoff is that they don't need to rest and that, barring exhaustion, they can just keep on with their grind until the end of time. Can they solo Sithicus content? Sure. Why in the hell would you, though, other than for bragging rights? Literally every time I go out and solo Huecuva High Priests in Har'akir as a level 14, I can jump from being in the 'well rested' state of the XP cap, all the way into blind drive in one sitting.
My foremost complaint with Warlock however is that on a server that espouses to be about collaboration, Warlock brings nothing worthwhile to the fight except another hungry mouth taking a portion of spoils and XP. Were I the sort to minmax party compositions, I would ban Warlocks from every group I travel with once I've gotten out of Barovia. They bring middling to anemic damage output on single targets, even more underwhelming damage to multiple targets with Eldritch Chain. On specific single targets maybe they have Beshadowed Blast to keep the enemy blinded and therefore struggling to fight. That is largely the extent of what they bring to any group they travel with. It gets even worse the higher level you get; by the time you're running the level 12+ dungeons frequented in the Mist Camp, you are essentially useless. Most enemies die before you get off a single cast if you're aiming at a target already engaged, which would encourage you to target the enemies that have yet to be stabbed, except for that whole 'you will die horribly to the AI hyperfocusing you' aspect.
Now; early on, I said we'd circle back around to the subject of Warlock's 3.x implementation versus it's implementation on PotM.
Warlock from tabletop, it can be argued, is designed to one thing above all else; Blast. It's meant to Eldritch Blast a lot, like how a Fighter swings a sword a lot. In turn, it's designed with Eldritch Blast Essences and Shapes. For those not aware; in tabletop 3.x, Warlock's Eldritch Blasts can be customised with Essences and Shapes. These can be combined to create really interesting effects. For example; Eldritch Chain could be combined with Brimstone Blast to set multiple enemies on fire at once. Vitriolic Blast could be combined with Eldritch Doom to make an aoe circle blast that ignores SR checks and deals Acid over time. This feature is one of, if not the foremost foundation of the class in tabletop, alongside general Invocations that 'do stuff', your Walk Unseen, your Dead Walk, etc.
Some time ago I did the math on the missing combinations. Warlock, on PotM, has 14 Blast Essences and 4 Blast Shapes. That's a roster of 56 missing 'spells' from Warlock. For which we get, in concession, Metamagic. The reasoning I've heard given as to why Warlock has not had this core feature of Essence and Shape combination implemented, varies. None of them, in my opinion, are valid excuses or explanations. Is implementing 56 extra spells slow, tedious, irksome and undesirably frustrating? Yes. But it's my opinion that if you're going to implement a class from tabletop on a server which espouses the stated design goal of attempting to emulate 3.x as closely as reasonably possible, with concessions where needed, you should either undertake that as closely as possible, or not bother at all. Warlock, as it is on PotM, is the off brand food your mom says you have at home when you ask her to buy something while out shopping.
Barring the scenarios where implementation is either an impossibility due to coding constraints, or a balance concern, Warlock should have it's Shapes and Essences and have Metamagic removed or curtailed in some way. The foremost opinion I've heard as to why these combinations weren't implemented, is that honestly, nobody wants to crawl through the trenches of implementing 50~ spells into Warlock's lists and coding a way for it to detect you have A and B, therefore it gives you C. This is an understandable and unenviable undertaking; I wouldn't want to do it either.
So, where does that ultimately leave us? With a class that's the neglected stepchild of the family, in my opinion. It's implementation has been half-finished and it shows. Does that make it okay that it can solo content? I don't really think that matters, because the XP system penalizes you heavily for soloing in my experience. But even if we assume it does; like I said before, Warlock does everything slower. The same is true for soloing. Potentially, a Warlock could solo something hilarious like the Mist Dragon or Malthor, maybe? It would be very funny for the sake of the meme, but none of that matters in the face of the bigger problems the class faces.
TL;DR, sure Warlock can solo but it takes forever and I'd rather the class be fixed before it's further broken.
Thank you for coming to my fifth grader presentation on Warlock. Please re-read the entire post as if you were said fifth grader in front of a class to fully understand the tone of my post.
