I know people are pretty adamant about warlock being busted in high level duels, but is he shunned from 30 & below as well?
I found a few good splendor bases for lvl 30 and below warlock and a couple decent knives, just wondering if anyones playing lld warlock or if everyone is just banning him?

i have 4 in mind.

a failure choas build

a bind demon build that is stupidity strong

a mirrored strike melee build

an echoing strike build, unsure if it will be any good with no echos

all are geared except for mirrored strike, will get that one done this weekend , but i am missing lots of charms.

these are all very cheap builds as they dont require any gg jewels.


what knives have u found

We did some testing and found out that vlld warlock with goat/mastery/deathmark/sigil/oath looks good on paper at first...
1300 goatmen damage on a level 9 warlock after +6/+6 dagger and tome
3x 2500+ goatmen on the level 30 variant with +10/+10 from dagger/tome, +2 circlet +2 ammy 2x soj +1 vipermagi
....and then it turned out goatmen have their damage scaled with game difficulty

In normal difficulty, that 1300 damage goatmen on the vlld gamebreaking busted bullshit warlock actually deals just 130 damage
because blizzard really wanted every warlock build save fire nova to suck in norm

These are a of the best ones I found, just wasnt sure if people played them and what the most ideal stats to look for are. All level 30 or below.

3abyss/1chaos skills 2os Burnt Text
2mirrored/1bind/1engorge kris 3os
2echoing/1deathsigil/1binddemon 1os Dagger
2eldrich/2miamasabolt/1 bind demon dagger 1os

None are insane but I figured since no spirit shield in lld most players are running jewelers deflecting shields or nice rare 2os shields for lld, i figured warlock would prefer nice books made into splendors? As for weps I'm not entirely sure but Im assuming spirit sword or a robo would beat the ones I found utility wise whether fire or melee..

I'm glad some people build them, will be on the look out for insane warlock lvl 30 or below stuff.




Hmm so really only fire based stats, not summon or melee. Interesting Ill keep searching.

This post was edited by IstdWizspike on Mar 18 2026 04:28pm

I haven't tested all the 30 bracket permutations I've just confirmed every single 9 bracket build is horrible and unplayable, and won't even work for janky sacrifice charge setups or whatever.
I can only imagine the stupidity if you tried to play something like a vlld melee warlock using 4 sigil lethargy, 4 blood oath, 1 goatman, 9 levitation mastery and even use hex bane on swap just for the +ar / -def. You'd have really marginal bonuses of +% / -% damage and even if you're using charges to attack you're still going to be limited by the mana of recasting goatman + sigil because the goat dies in a few hits even with 4 blood oath and the sigil is so small opponents can take 1 step back and attack you again. And stronger builds probably just outmuscle you under it anyway.

but miasma bolt is unplayable, fire nova is unplayable, cleave is unplayable, goatman summoner is unplayable, all deal too low damage / inefficient mana usage (for vlld)

At 30 I have no idea if any of them reach playable damage totals but the competition for builds is way harder

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 18 2026 04:52pm

Really good analysis and thanks for saving me time, I can completely ignore vld warlock based items unless clearly insane.

i cant see these weapons being any use, all the melee builds will be using 2h weapons , but the burnt text may be decent.

ive tested the lvl 30 mirror strike build offline , you can get it to 4 strikes per click , and with high % critical strike and some crushing blow and you can kill thing in hell at a decent clip on solo targets. biggest issue was hitpoints, it seemed a little squishy. so its probably a glass cannon when all charmed out.

im interested to see how it stacks up vs a lvl 30 zealot or other formidable melee