Warlock Build Guide - Titan Quest
Skill Trees: Rogue and Spirit Mastery
Primary Skills: Ternion Attack, Poison Gas Bomb, Lay Trap, Circle of Power, Flash Powder, Life Drain, Summon Liche King
Important Stats: Vitality Damage Staff, +% Vitality Damage Gear, Attack Damage Converted to health, Energy Cost reduction or Energy Regeneration
Attributes: Dexterity to wear Stonebinder's Cuffs; Intelligence to use all of your gear & increase your damage
Warlock is a combination of the Rogue and Spirit Masteries and despite what you may think these two masteries synergize quite well together. Usually most people who play Warlocks successfully do so as a caster -- based on what I have read online a melee Warlock doesn't typically work out very well.
In order to successfully play a Warlock you'll need to tailor your gear and build to fit a specific playstyle. This build uses a staff that deals Vitality damage which is extremely important for this build. I would not say a Vitality damage dealing staff is required but it'll significantly boost your damage since we use Deathchill Aura which dramatically reduces the Vitality Resistance of the enemies we're fighting.
Vitality Damage Staves: Praxidikae, Fafnir's Heart, Moros Nyx, Strength of the Nile, Gem of the Serpent Priest, Necromancer's Staff
As far as other gear goes, you'll definitely want some +Skills on your gear since there is a lot of skills we need for this build. Of course I am going to recommend Stonebinder's Cuffs as I always do along with Demonskin Walkers if you're lucky enough to get your hands on those bad boys. Necklace of Harmonia is my favorite neck for this build because it gives us some Attack Damage Converted to Health which helps a lot for survivability.
On our other pieces of gear, aside from getting a bunch of resistances to help with our survivability we'll also want to get some + % Vitality Damage. Items like Eurydice's Wedding Band, Rune of Najo-Ja, Marduk's Tablet of Destiny all increase Vitality Damage and will give you a nice DPS boost for this build.
I'd also recommend trying to get some gear that increases Energy Regeneration or decreases Energy cost. This isn't required but it'll defintiely save you a lot of money in Energy Potions if you can get your hands on some gear with these stats. For my Warlock I chose Tunic of the Magi, Stheno's Wisdom of Might (Monster Infrequent), both these items come with some Energy benefits and I also got a pair of Stonebinder's Cuffs with +Energy and +Energy Regeneration.
Note: It's optional but if you get a lot of gear with -Recharge on it you'll be able to reduce the cooldown so much on the Circle of Power skill that you'll be able to drop it every single fight.
When it comes to playing the Warlock, the class is pretty straight forward and easy to play. Our main abilities are Ternion Attack, Poison Gas Bomb and Lay Trap. Ternion Attack is what you'll want to bind to your left mouse click and it's going to be our main DPS for this build. One thing to keep in mind for Ternion Attack and for Titan Quest as a whole is in this game monsters take damage from every projectile they are hit by. Players often call this shotgun mechanics because abilities that shoot multiple projectiles are like shotguns.
To elaborate a bit more, in many ARPGs when an attack fires off multiple projectiles an enemy will only take damage from 1 of them even if they're hit by more than 1. Usually developers do this to properly scale the abilities and not make them too over powered... However in this game, if you stand right next to the enemy and use Ternion Attack you'll be able to hit him with all 3 projectiles and deal the damage of 3 attacks.
Poison Gas Bomb is what I chose for my right click since I use it every single fight much like Ternion Attack. This ability does a lot of damage and is on a relatively short cooldown. Lay Traps is the last primary damage dealing ability I will be talking about for this build and the worst one in our repertoire. It deals low damage and wastes time throwing down traps every single fight... The 2 upsides to Lay Traps are that they're autonomous and deal damage without you having to do anything other than drop them and that it deals Pierce Damage.
Some enemies in this game (Devices & Constructs) are immune to both Poison and Vitality Damage which is a bit of an issue for our build since those are our 2 primary damage types. Our ways of combating enemies like this are Lay Traps, Summon Outsider & Summon Liche King. You can also purchase Calculated Strike in the Rogue skill tree if you'd like to for enemies such as this but I typically just deal with a longer fight rather than purchase that skill.
(Rogue) Flash Powder (Optional): When activating this ability all enemies in a small radius around you will have a 65% chance of being inflicted with Confusion and Fumble Attacks. This is a good ability for survival purposes, if you're taking a ton of damage hit Flash Powder and you'll give yourself enough time to heal/kill all enemies close to you before they recover from the confusion.
(Rogue) Lay Trap: This is one of your primary abilities for this build and one of the only attacks we have in our arsenal that can hurt some types of enemies such as Construct or Devices. At the start of every fight you'll want to drop 1 - 3 traps nearby where you will be fighting enemies at. For fights where you can't stand in one location and tank the enemies Lay Traps is even more useful imo. Drop a few traps around the battlefield and kite enemies around in the AoE to whittle down their health.
(Rogue) Poison Gas Bomb: I bind this ability to my right click attack and I consider it to be one of the best abilities this build has. Poison Gas Bomb not only deals significant damage but it also will CC enemies caught in the radius if you get the Poison Mayhem passive which is the 3rd passive for this skill. The only downside of Poison Gas Bomb is that some enemies in this game are completely immune to Poison Damage. Usually these are the same enemies that are immune to Vitality damage too which means they pose the biggest issue(s) to our build.
(Rogue) Envenom Weapon: This skill is a buff you'll want to keep active on yourself at all times since it will modify your Ternion Attack skill and add some Poison Damage as well as add other effects to your attacks such as Confusion with the Mandrake skill. Additionally, the Toxin Distillation passive works for all Poison Damage attacks we use including Poison Gas Bomb.
(Spirit) Ternion Attack: Your left click attack. Essentially this skill turns your primary staff attack into 3 projectiles that shoot out in front of you. It only works with staves and it uses whatever damage type your staff uses. For us it's important we always use a Vitality damage staff since we're a Vitality based build.
(Spirit) Life Drain (Optional): I put this ability as optional because we already have a lot of attacks that deal Vitality damage and I think it's a bit overkill getting Life Drain too... However I personally used this ability often when playing this build for fighting archers. It can be annoying trying to hit archer enemies with Ternion Attack since it's a slow attack and they run around all over the place. Additionally, Archers deal a ton of damage so you'll often find yourself being torn apart by them too. Life Drain I feel helps with both these issues; it's a quick attack that you can cast on a distant group of enemies that heals you.
(Spirit) Circle of Power (Optional): Drops a totem on the ground with an aura surrounding it that significantly boosts your Vitality Damage when you stand inside of it. It also reduces Energy Cost, -Recharge time and increasing Casting Speed. Depending on how much -Recharge Gear you get you may be able to drop this every other fight which would be a lot of extra damage for yourself.
(Spirit) Summon Outsider (Optional): Summon Outsider is an extremely long cooldown short duration pet that deals a lot of damage. The more -Recharge Gear that you stack the shorter the cooldown will be but it's impossible to keep the pet up 24/7. It's also a large Skill Point investment for this skill which is one of the downsides of getting it.
(Spirit) Deathchill Aura: One of the most over powered skills in all of Spirit. It significantly reduces Vitality Resistance of the enemies around you along with their health and also reduces all of the damage they deal. The main thing we're using this ability for is the Vitality Resistance reduction and damage reduction to enemies surrounding us. Deathchill Aura only works on enemies that get very close to you, those pesky archers that are firing at you from a distance probably won't be in range to suffer from the 45% less damage debuff.
(Spirit) Summon Liche King: The Liche King is one of the more powerful pets in the game along with being very costly in terms of Skill Points. There are actually 2 reasons you should get this pet. First and most obvious is he increases your overall DPS. As for the second reason, there will be some enemies that Poison and Vitality Damage will not work on. The Liche King will be able to hit enemies that are immune to Poison and Vitality damage and he's one of the only abilities we have that can do this (Lay Traps being the other).
(Spirit) Spirit Ward: This is a buff that you will want to keep active on your character at all times. It decreases the damage undead enemies deal to you and increases the damage that you deal to them. Undead have a naturally high resistance to both Poison and Vitality Damage so this will help a lot with defeating them.
Other Tips:
- If you're struggling in Titan Quest and need some help check out my Best Leveling Abilities Guide, my Titan Quest F.A.Q or my Titan Quest Tips & Tricks pages for a lot of helpful info about this game. Additionally if you're curious what I think the Best Builds Are in Titan Quest check out that guide too. Last but not least you should consider getting TQVaultAE which is a third party program that nearly everyone who plays TQ uses.
- Curious what other sorts of gear you should get for this build? I have put together a long list of Overpowered Gear Combos in Titan Quest that you may find useful. The guide contains information for all sorts of build combinations and specializations; both offensive and defensive gear choices are included as well as Monster Infrequents you can farm for Best In Slot items for your characters.