How do I Vestigelock?

[Wyntonian]

In my campaign that I've been playing in for a few months (1st-7th), my Dwarven Runepriest, Bruh, has seen fit to leave the party to attend to personal matters like his nation being the victim of genocide.

I've decided to replace him with Holly, a Drow Vestige Warlock. I got my DM to give drow a bonus to intelligence instead of charisma, so I have fairly respectable stats, including a 17 in both Con and Int (We're like two combats from 8th level, so I have her temporarily unoptimal stats). My party consists of a druid, bard, warden, rogue and wizard, all pretty poorly optimized. The only one of us who's ever built a 4e character is our DM, and he's done a great job of keeping encounters within a good range of difficulty.

I am new to 4e. My experience ends with a heroic-tier runepriest and building a level 7 warlock. I understand as many concepts as transfer effectively from 3.5, but I'll probably miss the finer details. With that in mind, how can I effectively play a heroic-tier vestigelock in 4e? What feats should I take as soon as possible? What options are traps?

[Tegu8788]

For one, realize that a 17 in a primary stat at level 7 is horribly behind the expected numbers. Unless the entire party is very unoptimized, you are gonna be in trouble.

[Wyntonian]

For one, realize that a 17 in a primary stat at level 7 is horribly behind the expected numbers. Unless the entire party is very unoptimized, you are gonna be in trouble.

It'll be 18 before it matters, but I agree. Our DM had been a little short on fancy magic loot, but has also been coordinating encounters appropriately. Our Bard and Wizard both have 20+ in their primary stats, but everyone else is more on my level.

It's worth noting that the time we spent building characters was about 80% fluff, 20% "oh yeah we need numbers".

[NecroRebel]

For one, realize that a 17 in a primary stat at level 7 is horribly behind the expected numbers. Unless the entire party is very unoptimized, you are gonna be in trouble.

Eh, 17 at level 7 isn't actually horrible. It presumably means a L1 value of 16, which, while suboptimal, isn't crippling.



More information might be helpful, though. How are you trying to play your Warlock? In general, that class is well-suited to dealing decent single-target damage while maintaining reasonable ability to shut down opponents. The Rogue will probably outdamage you, and the Wizard will probably do harder control (and might outdamage you; the Wizard class is great for many things).

If you don't have an Expertise feat already, you should definitely get one. That's really a no-brainer, as they're useful for practically every character. If available, choose the feat corresponding to your favorite implement type from the Essentials books, as they are strictly better than the Expertise feats from the earlier books.

You might also want to look into picking up a superior implement (see mostly PHB3). In particular, one with the Accurate property will help correct your accuracy for your lower attack stat. Actually getting the item can be somewhat difficult if your DM doesn't cooperate with handing out loot, though - consider having one of your party's ritual casters take the Transfer Enchantment ritual (see AV1) so you can avoid this problem.

[Treblain]

If you can spare two feats, Vistani Heritage and Vestige of Vistan get you a third primary Eyes of the Vestige augment and pact boon that slide enemies, which are less situational than the default primary vestiges. You probably also want Expertise and Dual Implement Spellcaster by the end of Heroic, and Bloodied Boon is good too. Take Vestige Dailies, but their encounter powers aren't that good in Heroic, except that Fortune Binding at E3 can be really fun.