Any recent optimization discoveries for Eldritch Blast?

[Greywander]

The "eldritch sniper" is a build concept I keep coming back to, so I'm often on the lookout for new ways to improve Eldritch Blast. Extra damage is... okay, but rider effects are typically more interesting. For an eldritch sniper specifically, effects that work at long range are preferable.

Of course, there's all the invocations that specifically benefit EB. There's also spells like Hex or Bless; are there any spells that benefit EB that don't use concentration? Eldritch Spear + Spell Sniper + Distant Spell is also a well known combo.

Hexblade, while kind of boring, is undeniably effective. Hexblade's Curse is limited use and quite short range, though, but it's basically a better version of Hex.

Undead warlock can fear on a hit once per turn. Form of Dread is limited use, but there's no range limit.

Genie warlock adds extra damage on the first hit, but more interesting is the type of damage. If you go dao, the Crusher feat can be used on any attack, including EB. Or, you can go efreet or marid to add elemental damage, making it compatible with the dragon sorcerer's Elemental Affinity for even more damage.

Repelling Blast can be combined with a hazard to deal additional damage by pushing enemies into the hazard. Classic cheese grater uses Spike Growth to do more damage the farther you push the enemy, but Wall of Fire and similar will work well enough. Create Bonfire is a nice at-will option.

Similar to genie warlock, swarmkeeper ranger lets the swarm assist on any kind of attack, which includes EB. Extra damage is lackluster compared to genielock, but you can also move yourself or the enemy. Only thing is it uses your WIS for the save, but the forced movement is pretty significant, especially on top of Repelling Blast.

In theory, the cleric's Blessed Strikes should apply to EB; in practice that's a pretty deep dip on a class that uses a different casting stat. A lot of other bonuses that could be applied to EB suffer similar issues, either requiring a dip deeper than most would like, or into a class that doesn't otherwise synergize well.

"Ghostlance" is an interesting concept. Enemies who move away from the echo knight's echo provoke an OA. You then use Warcaster to replace the OA with EB. With Repelling Blast you can push the enemy back to the echo, so that the process can repeat next turn. If they kill the echo, that's an attack not directed at the party, and resummoning the echo is at-will as a bonus action. The range is short, but it's an effective way to block a choke point.

The new bugbear can apply their faux sneak attack to multiple attacks now, and surprise isn't required. Grab Alert to increase your odds of going sooner. Also combos nicely with assassin rogue. It's only applicable to the first round of combat, but that's the most important round. The more you swing the odds in your favor in that first round, the easy the rest of the fight becomes.

Is that pretty much everything? Or is there anything I missed? Have there been any new discoveries recently?

Edit:
There's also magic items. The big one is the Illusionist's Bracers, but good luck getting your DM to let you have those. Aside from things like a wand +X or Rod of the Pact Keeper, are there any other magic items that benefit EB?

[follacchioso]

Nothing major comes to mind.

Summon Shadowspan (Despair) + Lance of Letargy + Tentacle of the Deep (Fathomless) can reduce an enemy's speed by 40', which is sufficient to stop most creatures in the books. The same spell Summon Shadowspawn (Fury) can be used by a Undead warlock to get adv on all attacks.

[sithlordnergal]

I'm actually toying with a Bladesinger 6 / Pact of the Blade Hexblade X. So far my biggest stumbling block are Ability Scores, since you want a 14 in Con, Dex, and Int, a 12 in Wis for saves, and a high Charisma. It looks like you can do it, it just requires you to be a standard Human with the +1 to every stat. You need the following for the build:

- Bladesinger's Extra Attack

- Hexblade to use Charisma for all of your attacks

- Pact of the Blade

- Improved Pact Weapon

- Agonizing Blast

The basic idea behind it is to fire off a shot with a Hand Crossbow, and follow it up with multiple shots from Eldritch Blast. If you go Bladesinger 8 / Warlock 12 you can get 5 ASI boosts in total, letting you get 20 Charisma, Fighting Initiate: Archery, Sharpshooter, and a +2 to Dex or Int. Because you're using Eldritch Blast, it synergizes with basically any EB optimization. If you really want, you can forgo Archery and snag Crossbow Expert instead for the Bonus Action Hand Crossbow shot.

[Bobthewizard]

I would make sure to have elven accuracy to combo with darkness/devils sight, shadow of moil, or foresight.

[animorte]

I know you mention Repelling Blast, but I like to pair it with Relentless Hex (often hex cast on chain imp) to have great control of positioning.

Grasp of Hadar can also be useful, as is any forced movement.

[Chronos]

Yeah, I was going to mention Grasp of Hadar, also. It's not as good as Repelling Blast, since it's only 1/turn instead of 1/hit, but sometimes the positioning is such that you want to yoink instead of yeet. Or both, to (for instance) pull an enemy out of your cleric ally's Spirit Guardians and then push them back in (so they get both "enter the area" damage and "start the turn" damage).

In theory, the cleric's Blessed Strikes should apply to EB; in practice that's a pretty deep dip on a class that uses a different casting stat.

What ability is this? I'm not finding it. If you meant Divine Strike, that only works on weapon attacks.

[Greywander]

What ability is this? I'm not finding it. If you meant Divine Strike, that only works on weapon attacks.

It's an alternative class feature from Tasha's that replaces Divine Strike or Potent Spellcasting.

"You are blessed with divine might in battle. When a creature takes damage from one of your cantrips or weapon attacks, you can also deal 1d8 radiant damage to that creature. Once you deal this damage, you can't use this feature again until the start of your next turn."

[animewatcha]

Recent optimizations may have slowed due to upcoming D&Done UA due to be released for playtest.

[tiornys]

I'm actually toying with a Bladesinger 6 / Pact of the Blade Hexblade X. So far my biggest stumbling block are Ability Scores, since you want a 14 in Con, Dex, and Int, a 12 in Wis for saves, and a high Charisma. It looks like you can do it, it just requires you to be a standard Human with the +1 to every stat. You need the following for the build:

- Bladesinger's Extra Attack

- Hexblade to use Charisma for all of your attacks

- Pact of the Blade

- Improved Pact Weapon

- Agonizing Blast

The basic idea behind it is to fire off a shot with a Hand Crossbow, and follow it up with multiple shots from Eldritch Blast. If you go Bladesinger 8 / Warlock 12 you can get 5 ASI boosts in total, letting you get 20 Charisma, Fighting Initiate: Archery, Sharpshooter, and a +2 to Dex or Int. Because you're using Eldritch Blast, it synergizes with basically any EB optimization. If you really want, you can forgo Archery and snag Crossbow Expert instead for the Bonus Action Hand Crossbow shot.

This is one of the builds I like to suggest to people who have ridiculous stats and aren't sure what to do with them. The build comes together quicker and is more flexible when you have e.g. Dex 18+ Cha 18+ Int 16+ Con 14+, as you only need Warlock 2 of any subclass and can afford to take CBE and Sharpshooter with your first two ASIs.

re: Eldritch Blast synergies, another way to exploit added Genie damage is Wildfire Druid 6 which adds +1d8 to fire damage 1/spellcast. As part of the same feature, you also can cast Eldritch Blast from your Wildfire Spirit if you want, making the forced movement options a lot more flexible.

[Yakmala]

The most obvious one to me is picking up some Sorcerer levels for the Qiuckened Spell metamagic. Turn your Eldritch Blast cantrip into a bonus action spell so you can immediately use another one, effectively doubling your damage.

[sithlordnergal]

The most obvious one to me is picking up some Sorcerer levels for the Qiuckened Spell metamagic. Turn your Eldritch Blast cantrip into a bonus action spell so you can immediately use another one, effectively doubling your damage.

You just gave me a seriously crazy thought:

Hexblade 4 / Fighter 2 / Bladesinger 6 / Sorcerer 8

Attack, Action Surge Attack, Bonus Action Eldritch Blast. Since you're using the Bladesinger's Extra Attack you should be able to fire off three Eldritch Blasts, and get two normal shots off from a Hand Crossbow or Pistol, giving you 14 attacks that round at level 20 xD

You could try setting up Hexblade's Curse the previous round to add your Prof. Modifier to all of those attacks, and have a 19-20 crit range

[Naanomi]

I like the Bugbear Assassin/fighter/warlock/sorcerer... Auto-crit three castings a round from an absurd distance away...

[Omni-Centrist]

Eldritch Glass Cannon
This is better if you have great rolled stats, but it works with 15 15 14 8 8 8.
Variant Human, 8 STR/16 DEX/8 CON/14 INT/8 WIS/16 CHA, Feat: Crossbow Expert
Class Progression: Artificer 1 => Hexblade 1 & 2 => Bladesinger X
Artificer 1 Gives 2 Spells off the spell list, I recommend Cure Wound and Absorb Elements.

Hexblade 2 & 3 Gives 3 Spells, Subclass Features & 2 Invocations, I recommend Devil Sight and Agonizing Blast, as well as Armor of Agathas, Shield and Hex.

Bladesinger is the meat of this build, along with the spell Spirit Shroud. Take this spell at Wizard 5 for later. Bladesinger 6 (Overall Class Level 9) is when this build gets strong: you will get 4 attacks total: 2 eldritch blasts averaging 9 damage each and two crossbow bolts averaging 7 damage each for an average of 32 damage, resourceless and at 30 ft range. That's decent damage at midrange for a spellcaster to have at will. If you want to be a little more risky, you can use Hex to bump the damage by 4d6 a round, average of 16.

Bladesinger 8 (Overall Class Level 11)is when it really comes online. For a Feat, take Sharpshooter. Now you are getting 5 attacks per round (3 eldritch bolts dealing 9 damage each + 2 crossbow bolts) at a max range of 120. On top of that, you can NOVA really hard using Spirit Shroud. Upcasted to a 5th level spell slots, this is a BA casting time spell, 1 min duration that gives you 1d8 extra damage per attack roll if casted at 3rd level and an extra d8 every two levels upcasted. This mean, as long as you are within 10ft of your target, you will do 10d8 damage per round to them, expending no more than a 5th level slot. This only gets better as you level up and use 7th level slots and 9th level slots and get that fourth ray for eldritch blast.

My item recommendations would be: +1 hand crossbow, Amulet of Health to supplement low CON, and a helm of intellect to supplement low INT. If at all possible, you can seek out Illusionists Bracers to get 5 attacks (5d8 extra damage via SS) at level 9, 7 (14d8 extra damage vis SS) attacks at Level 11, and 9 (36d8 extra damage via SS) attacks at Level 17.

-

There is a much more stable build for this using Hexblade 2/Divine Soul Sorcerer X where your stats are more well padded (decent CON), and you can still get mostly the same effect, - the at will bonus action attack. For this build, I would sprint for illusionist bracers before level 11 when you get those 5th level spell slots for that 2d8 damage per eldritch bolt.

[Kane0]

You just gave me a seriously crazy thought:

Hexblade 4 / Fighter 2 / Bladesinger 6 / Sorcerer 8

Attack, Action Surge Attack, Bonus Action Eldritch Blast. Since you're using the Bladesinger's Extra Attack you should be able to fire off three Eldritch Blasts, and get two normal shots off from a Hand Crossbow or Pistol, giving you 14 attacks that round at level 20 xD

You could try setting up Hexblade's Curse the previous round to add your Prof. Modifier to all of those attacks, and have a 19-20 crit range

Why stop there? Throw in Bugbear and a spell like Hex or Bestow Curse

[Hurrashane]

Best I have is the eldritch machine gun. Warlock 2/fighter 2 (optional)/ sorcerer x

Eldritch blast
Agonizing blast
Quicken spell

Those are the main parts, start by firing 2 EBs a round end up firing 8. Action surge for an additional EB 1/SR if you took fighter levels.

Side note, currently playing an alchemist and they get to add their int mod to damage for a roll of a spell if it's cast using alchemy supplies (or whatever the tool is called) and either heals or deals acid or poison damage. Probably not worth exploring but if you could cast EB using alchemy supplies and make it deal acid or poison that'd be an additional up to 5 damage.

[Crucius]

Since the Genie gives you a flying speed, you can hover above the enemy, then hit them with EB with Grasp of Hadar, yoink them up into the air 10 ft, causing them to take falling damage (1d6 only, but hey, free real estate damage) and going prone.

It's nothing major, but it's a nice tech to have in your toolkit, so melee allies get advantage on the target.

It doesn't need the Genie of course, any source of flying speed will do.

[Person_Man]

As a general matter, I notice that optimization seems to focus on what one individual character can do. In particular, I’ve seen plenty of multiclassing to pick up specific spells/buffs, even when playing a straight build and just asking a friend to combo with you would make much more sense. This has always stuck me as odd, because D&D is a cooperative game thats typically has 2-6 players.

Rogue is probably the clearest example. By itself its meh. But cast Haste on a Rogue, and now you can attack on your turn and then Ready an Action to attack on a different turn. (Or someone else in the party casts Dissonant Whispers or Fear or Charm Person or whatever, you can get an enemy to walk away and trigger an Opportunity Attack). Literally doubling the Rogue’s DPR.

Eldritch Blast has a ton of similar synergies. Have 3 other party members cast area of effect spells with a duration. Then the Warlock moves enemies around the battlefield with EB, triggering them multiple times.

[9heavenspress]

The most obvious one to me is picking up some Sorcerer levels for the Qiuckened Spell metamagic. Turn your Eldritch Blast cantrip into a bonus action spell so you can immediately use another one, effectively doubling your damage.

... okay, here's a build I have to toy around with now.

[sithlordnergal]

As a general matter, I notice that optimization seems to focus on what one individual character can do. In particular, I’ve seen plenty of multiclassing to pick up specific spells/buffs, even when playing a straight build and just asking a friend to combo with you would make much more sense. This has always stuck me as odd, because D&D is a cooperative game thats typically has 2-6 players.

Rogue is probably the clearest example. By itself its meh. But cast Haste on a Rogue, and now you can attack on your turn and then Ready an Action to attack on a different turn. (Or someone else in the party casts Dissonant Whispers or Fear or Charm Person or whatever, you can get an enemy to walk away and trigger an Opportunity Attack). Literally doubling the Rogue’s DPR.

Eldritch Blast has a ton of similar synergies. Have 3 other party members cast area of effect spells with a duration. Then the Warlock moves enemies around the battlefield with EB, triggering them multiple times.

I think that's mostly because we're on a forum. Its a LOT easier to optimize and synergize with a party when you have a party to synergize with. Case in point, I will gladly optimize myself to work as a really good support for a specific party member if we decide to work together. But there's no party to synergize with here on the forum. Cause sure, Haste on a Rogue is great, but there's no guarantee the party will have Haste, or that the caster will give Hate to the Rogue instead of themselves, the Fighter, or the Paladin.

The optimized builds on the forum generally don't make assumptions on magic items, team work, party composition, or spell selection of other party members. They're optimized in a way that lets them slip into any party, including ones that only have a minimum amount of team work, where your fellow players might not even give you a potion because they're not interested in helping a downed member.

Cause yeah, putting down AoE's and having EB shove an enemy around in those AoE's is the best use. But we don't know if the party is going to have those AoE's, they might not have any. As such, we're just optimizing a build that uses EB without assuming your allies will set up something to make use of all those EBs.

... okay, here's a build I have to toy around with now.

Make sure you snag two levels of Fighter. >w> That way you can get Medium Armor without being a Hexblade, and Action Surge once per short rest for an additional cast.

[KorvinStarmast]

As a general matter, I notice that optimization seems to focus on what one individual character can do. In particular, I’ve seen plenty of multiclassing to pick up specific spells/buffs, even when playing a straight build and just asking a friend to combo with you would make much more sense. This has always stuck me as odd, because D&D is a cooperative game thats typically has 2-6 players.

Yep. Teamwork. Thank you for mentioning this. Web becomes a very good spell if you have a SharpShooter rogue on your team.

[Chronos]

Speaking of Quicken Spell, did we all forget about the Illusionist's Bracers, from Ravnica? Don't just quicken EB as many times as you have sorcery points; quicken every round, all the time, all day long.

[Kane0]

Speaking of Quicken Spell, did we all forget about the Illusionist's Bracers, from Ravnica?

No it was mentioned

[Damon_Tor]

Add a simulacrum to double your damage again. Simulacra can spam cantrips just fine, and they recover non-spell-slot resources like action surges without issue.

[Greywander]

I like the Bugbear Assassin/fighter/warlock/sorcerer... Auto-crit three castings a round from an absurd distance away...

This was actually almost the exact build I was looking at for the Eldritch Sniper concept.

• 7 levels in warlock to get needed invocations.
• 6 levels in sorcerer for Elemental Affinity. As noted in the OP, Genie's Wrath makes it compatible with EB.
• 3 levels in assassin rogue for Assassinate.
• 3 levels in echo knight fighter for the echo. Mostly just for at will teleportation, but ghostlancing is also strong and effective.
• Simple custom race with the bugbear's Surprise Attack as one of my racial traits.

This build is a bit feat-deficient, though. I need Spell Sniper for the concept, and I need Warcaster to ghostlance, and Alert would also be a huge benefit with Assassinate and Surprise Attack. And on top of all of that, I still need to max my CHA, too, and none of those are half feats. And while it looks fine looking at the finished build, I have no idea what order I'd take my class levels in.

I think to pull it off, I would need to use a houserule that either (a) lets me take class levels as epic boons (highly recommend this houserule for every table, as it alleviates the need to plan for your build at 20), (b) doubles up on ASIs and feats, allowing me to pump CHA while also picking up the needed feats, or (c) uses gestalt rules or any similar scheme that allows you to have more class levels than your character level. In that last case, I think some ranger would make a great addition, maybe swarmkeeper for the extra benefits on a hit.

As a general matter, I notice that optimization seems to focus on what one individual character can do. In particular, I’ve seen plenty of multiclassing to pick up specific spells/buffs, even when playing a straight build and just asking a friend to combo with you would make much more sense. This has always stuck me as odd, because D&D is a cooperative game thats typically has 2-6 players.

I don't know that there are a lot of synergies, and the ones that there are are pretty straightforward. Mage creates a damage area? Sure, Repelling Blast an enemy into it. Kraken grapples the wizard? Push the kraken back and break its grapple. All you can really do is push, pull, and slow, and since those last two only work once per turn they're often dropped.

I have played with the idea of an invocations that allows you to sub in the effects of a different cantrip you know instead of EB. So for example you could turn one of your EB beams into a Chill Touch to prevent healing, but since it only replaces one beam it would deal damage as if you were first level. An invocation like this would likely open up some extra options for team synergy.

The most obvious one to me is picking up some Sorcerer levels for the Qiuckened Spell metamagic. Turn your Eldritch Blast cantrip into a bonus action spell so you can immediately use another one, effectively doubling your damage.

Why stop there? Throw in Bugbear and a spell like Hex or Bestow Curse

Make sure you snag two levels of Fighter. >w> That way you can get Medium Armor without being a Hexblade, and Action Surge once per short rest for an additional cast.

I know the middle quote was in response to someone else, but yeah. With the rogue's Assassinate turning every hit into a crit, the bugbear's Surprise Attack adding an extra 2d6 damage (4d6 since it's a crit), and you Quicken to cast a second time, and you Action Surge to cast a third time... You're looking at potentially 2d10 + 4d6 + 5 damage x12, or 24d10 + 48d6 + 60 damage. That's assuming all attacks hit, but Assassinate also gives you advantage on each attack. LudicSavant's damage calculator is saying that expected damage with a 65% hit rate and advantage is 316. If you're also a genielock + dragon sorc, then add another 11 damage to make it 327 damage.

Pretty absurd, but you can only do it on surprise, and it uses up your one Action Surge and some of your sorcery points. You can do this basically once per short rest, though, which is still pretty crazy. Did I mention you can do this from 600 feet away, or 1200 feet if you drop the Quickened EB or have Illusionist's Bracers? This is also only at high levels; it's much tamer with only two or three beams.

Speaking of Quicken Spell, did we all forget about the Illusionist's Bracers, from Ravnica? Don't just quicken EB as many times as you have sorcery points; quicken every round, all the time, all day long.

I did mention it in the OP, albeit as an edit. I meant to mention them, then forgot to put it in until after posting.

In a way, I think I'd actually rather not get the Illusionist's Bracers. The problem is that they're so strong that I'd feel like I was wasting my bonus action if I used it on anything else. A lot of the cool stuff I could do suddenly gets overshadowed by an option so powerful that it would be foolish to use anything else. Basically, it's like introducing a stupidly broken ability into an otherwise balanced game, so you have all these fun abilities that you could use, but it's more effective just to spam that one broken ability over and over.

Yeah, I'm saying the Illusionist's Bracers are bad game design. Wouldn't be so bad if EB wasn't a cantrip, but I feel like a lot of EB optimization is tied into the fact that it is a cantrip, in particular how it doesn't lose any effectiveness if you multiclass out of warlock.

[Naanomi]

If you are building custom races somehow, don't forget to be at least half elven so you can take elven accuracy along with that bugbear damage boost (your poor mother)

[BoutsofInsanity]

I just have the death combo that I found a while back.

Fiend Warlock.

Have access to mental prison and repelling blast and basically delete and opponent.

Mental Prison - Into Eldritch Blast - Hurl Through Hell to get full deletion status.

[Bigmeaty]

You just gave me a seriously crazy thought:

Hexblade 4 / Fighter 2 / Bladesinger 6 / Sorcerer 8

Attack, Action Surge Attack, Bonus Action Eldritch Blast. Since you're using the Bladesinger's Extra Attack you should be able to fire off three Eldritch Blasts, and get two normal shots off from a Hand Crossbow or Pistol, giving you 14 attacks that round at level 20 xD

You could try setting up Hexblade's Curse the previous round to add your Prof. Modifier to all of those attacks, and have a 19-20 crit range

I like this with spirit shroud if you're willing to Wade into combat. An extra 3d8 on all 14 of those attacks is just dumb.

[Chronos]

Quoth Greywander:

Yeah, I'm saying the Illusionist's Bracers are bad game design.

I don't think that's a very controversial position.

[Silpharon]

Int-based Eldritch Blast received through an All Purpose Tool gets:

An extra d8 of damage for a level 5 Artillerist artificer through Arcane Firearm.

Or an extra int mod of damage in addition to PB fire damage for a level 5 Alchemist artificer/level 1 Fire Genie warlock through Alchemical Savant. Edit: this may be up to interpretation of damage roll and Genie extra damage.

[MadMusketeer]

I have played with the idea of an invocations that allows you to sub in the effects of a different cantrip you know instead of EB. So for example you could turn one of your EB beams into a Chill Touch to prevent healing, but since it only replaces one beam it would deal damage as if you were first level. An invocation like this would likely open up some extra options for team synergy.

I've felt for a while that Warlock would be much more interesting if, instead of Eldritch Blast being a single cantrip that gets more attacks as you level up, Warlocks got a class feature (possibly an invocation, possibly just a class feature) that would allow you to split any single-target attack cantrip into multiple attacks. The invocations would all be the same (or similar), but would apply to any cantrip, making alternative options much more viable and allowing interesting attack cantrip options to stay relevant for longer - spells like Ray of Frost, Thorn Whip and Chill Touch start looking a lot juicier with multiple targets. This would stop Warlocks from being locked into always spamming the same cantrip, and would allow for more expression and individuality, along with more interesting choices and more tactical depth (different cantrips would be useful in different situations and could be really good combined with particular invocations).

Further, if cantrip progression (in terms of number of hits) was tied to Warlock levels rather than character levels, dipping Warlock to get Eldritch Blast would stop being such a dominant strategy for Charisma casters to get a better attack, reducing the overall frontloaded-ness of the Warlock class and the dip-heavy nature of 5e optimization in general.

Edit: I think this is worth discussing, so I'm gonna make it its own thread