Cloak of Flies or Eldritch Sight

[kbob]

So I have a Hexblade that just leveled and I need to pick an invocation. He is a melee build but still will fill the arcane role in the party if needed.
My question is would you suggest cloak of flies or eldritch sight? Cloak of flies goes with the melee build and he is often the face of party (though he himself is evil) so the intimidation can help with that. However, spamming unlimited uses of detect magic without components or spell slots seems so brokenly powerful that it would be too good to pass up whether he’s filling the arcane role or not. Thoughts?

[kaervaak]

Do you already have improved pact weapon, thirsting blade, and eldritch smite? Those are pretty key to a good melee warlock build.

Cloak of flies is...pretty terrible frankly.

Eldritch sight is marginally better. I'm guessing you don't have a wizard or artificer in the party who can ritual cast detect magic. Detect magic is helpful, sometimes, but certainly not game changing.

[Keravath]

As the poster above mentioned ...

Do you already have Thirsting Blade and Improved Pact Weapon? Improved Pact Weapon is useful if you need a +1 weapon and also want to use the weapon as a spell casting focus or want a ranged weapon. Eldritch Smite is very lackluster until tier 3 when you have more than 2 spell slots. Melee warlocks should be using Darkness+devils sight until level 7 and then Shadow of Moil from level 7+ in order to have advantage on all your attack rolls and disadvantage to be hit.

You should probably also have Agonizing Blast so that you have a useful ranged attack when you can't get into melee. However, if you have all the essential invocations for your character already then I would rate Eldritch Sight higher than Cloak of Flies. Always on detect magic is extremely useful since you can detect anything magical that you pass by - especially magical traps (like glyphs), magic items and anything else of a magical nature.

[Gale]

Cloak of Flies is a decent way to do extra damage to enemies, but personally I wouldn't take it just for the advantage on Intimidation checks. The invocation causes an evil-looking aura of flies to swarm around you, which is likely to cause a scene; and it has the unfortunate effect of doing poison damage to anyone within 5 feet, which may include allies or whomever you're talking to. It's not something you can take utilize all the time. I should note too, that I'm not the biggest fan of Intimidation as a whole. It may get you what you want in the short-term, but NPCs won't like you for it. It's an easy way to make enemies that will come back to haunt you.

However, it might totally be in character for you to be an intimidating, dark foe who isn't afraid to bully people to get what they want, consequences be damned. Don't let me dissuade you from your character concept if that's the case. Just make sure the rest of the party is fine with that. Generally speaking though, I think Intimidation should be used sparingly, so I can't rate Cloak of Flies too highly if you want it only for that reason.

As for Eldritch Sight, it's good but not broken. If I had to choose between only this and Cloak of Flies, I would go with Eldritch Sight. But otherwise, I think there are better invocation choices than both of them. I would only recommend taking this if no one else in the party has Detect Magic as a ritual. Just consider buying a Wand of Detect Magic if you can, then swapping out this invocation for something else when you level up.