What is blade ward good for, why is it better than the Dodge action?

[Frogreaver]

I disagree that you need all the cantrip effects. The cantrips work in tandem such that landing some of the cantrip effects, some of the time, is enough to put the enemy in a world of hurt, as the example combat shows. Never put all your eggs in one basket of you can avoid it.

Spoiler: Also your math is a little bit wrong

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Having 2+ of 3 attacks hit, at 60% probability per attack, is 64% probability (0.6 * (1-0.4^2) + 0.4 * (0.6^2)), not 36%.

And the Giant has a 65% probability of failing a Dex save, not 85%, but when blasted by the warlock he has to make two Dex saves in a row (as the example shows), which puts his chance of failure at 87.5%.

If the warlock is a full warlock instead of a dip, and has Grasp of Hadar for even more slowdown, it gets even worse for the giants. I didn't assume that case but it's not difficult to achieve if a player prioritizes it.

So I’m a bit frustrated. You started with an example of using 2 different cantrips and evards which is what I based my reply on and now you are changing the example by claiming you don’t actually need both cantrips. You actually only need EB. So I agree - any calculations I did or statements I made regarding the original claim don’t apply here.